Innholdsfortegnelse for 454 i Fortean Times

HAIR FARMING The increasingly hardline Taliban regime in Afghanistan has made it illegal for soldiers to be clean shaven, court martialling or dismissing any who refuse, or are not able, to grow a beard. All soldiers must now comply with Islamic law and have a beard “at least the length of a fist”. They are not the first army to have mandatory facial hair; between 1860 and 1916 all British soldiers were required to have a moustache, again with penalties for being clean shaven. Irish Independent, 28 Aug 2024. SWEAR ME A RIVER Although it has been possible to swear a pagan oath in court since 2006, Paul Powlesland made legal history at Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London when he became the first juror in history to swear a…

Residents of an unnamed Devon village were surprised to find that a vast pile of Monopoly board games had appeared in the overgrown drive of an uninhabited local bungalow. The heap was made up of more than just the classic version of the game, it also included a whole variety of special editions such as Elf, Minions and World Football Stars Monopoly, and most seemed to be of fairly recent manufacture. No one saw them being dumped and there was considerable speculation about where they might have come from on Reddit, ranging from a collection belonging to someone who had died that their family had disposed of, to warehouse stock from a bankrupt company. One commenter said “My guess is messy divorce. They know they’ll be round in a couple…

In mid-November, authorities in New Jersey started receiving reports of repeated drone incursions over Naval Weapons Station Earle, as well as over the large military research and manufacturing facility at the Picatinny Arsenal and over Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf course. The drones were estimated to be “SUV-sized”, and their origin could not be identified, so the FBI appealed for public assistance in spotting the devices and their operators, while stressing there was no threat to public safety. This resulted in more than 5,000 reports of sightings from the public, of which the FBI felt only 100 were worth following up. Noel Thomas from Edison reported seeing “a triangle-shaped drone with three flashing lights of different colours” hovering over a power plant. Evan Cutler from Montclair saw something he at first…

NUMBER THEORY “Better is the poor that walketh in his uprightness, than he that is perverse in his ways, though he be rich” – Proverbs, 28:6 On the rare occasions when I refer to biblical sources, the text is usually the point of the exercise. If you are familiar with the Bible, however, you will know that this particular text is not unique; the sentiment it expresses can be found regularly throughout the Old and New Testaments to the point where it becomes a biblical truism. The secret here is that little number at the end: that and the game of Monopoly. There are times when a sensational event, a public assassination, say, provokes a reaction that tends to the mystical end of conspiracy theory; that murky, liminal space where…

Help! The drones of doom are coming to take us away. Starting in November 2024 there was a veritable invasion of the blighters in the East of England, then in New Jersey spreading to New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, California and Florida (see pp.14-15). As witnesses reported seeing them manoeuvring in a manner beyond the capabilities of known technology, were the drones some new secret weapon? Or were they of some more mysterious and esoteric origin? One New Jersey witness said: “To me, they’re looking for something. My concern is we have ammunition bases here in New Jersey.” Another said the drones were being sent up by al-Qaeda. President-elect Donald Trump made a statement about the situation: “The Government knows what is happening… and they’d be better off…

What would be the best, most accurate, way to ‘deliver’ bombs to their intended targets from within military aeroplanes, do you think? How about to place postage stamps on them? Parcels generally get safely to their intended locations, don’t they? That’s why, prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the cunning Japanese placed one dollar US postage stamps on each individual item of payload; that way, the Postmaster General of Honolulu could legally and efficiently deliver them onto the desired addresses of the US Navy ships and warplanes waiting exposed below like static tin houses. Sticking with infamous explosion-related matters, how did the Twin Towers really collapse on 9/11, back in 2001? Everyone knows there was something suspicious about the way the whole thing went down; metal structures…

The Watkins Book of Urban Legends Gail de Vos Watkins Media 2024 Hb, 400pp, £16.99, ISBN 9781786788559 A 2019 letter published by the Guardian’s Notes & Queries asked what had become of “urban myths – alligators in the sewers etc – that used to be very popular”. Ironically, this question appeared alongside a feature examining popular conspiracy beliefs such as the faked Moon landings. Urban myths are also known as FOAF-tales, as they are often told by a friend of a friend, but legend scholars such as Gail de Vos prefer to call them contemporary legends, or urban legends as in the title of this book. A leading light in the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR), de Vos has compiled around 200 of the best-known stories “for your…

In the mid-1980s, stalwart US broadcaster NBC aired a pilot-series that focused on cold cases of both true crime and mysterious events, but with the emphasis distinctly on the former. To underline this, the first run of Unsolved Mysteries featured six episodes with three hosts in rotation, each an actor renowned for their portrayal of a no-nonsense, insightful detective: Raymond Burr (Ironside), Karl Malden (Streets of San Fransisco) and Robert Stack (The Untouchables). Each brought a sense of gravitas and balance to the proceedings, and while Burr and Malden both departed from their screen image (Burr ambulatory and Malden without his hat), Stack retained his Eliot Ness trench coat and became the permanent host. The series ran for 15 years and had a three-year revival in 2007. TV juggernaut Netflix…

FORTEAN TIMES is a monthly magazine of news, reviews and research on strange phenomena and experiences, curiosities, prodigies and portents. It was founded by Bob Rickard in 1973 to continue the work of Charles Fort (1874–1932). Born of Dutch stock in Albany, New York, Fort spent many years researching scientific literature in the New York Public Library and the British Museum Library. He marshalled his evidence and set forth his philosophy in The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents (1932). He was sceptical of dogmatic scientific explanations, observing that some scientists tended to argue according to their personal beliefs rather than the rules of evidence and that inconvenient data were ignored, suppressed, discredited or explained away. He criticised modern science for its reductionism,…

The chimpanzees of the Nimba Mountains Nature Reserve in Guinea have become world famous for using stone hammers and anvils to crack open nuts, something no other chimp community has been seen doing. However, as Seny Zogba was working in a cassava field in nearby Bossou, one of the reserve’s chimps attacked her, biting her badly and making off with her eight-month-old baby, named as Yoh Hélène, who was wrenched from Zogba’s arms. Villagers gave chase, but could not catch up with the chimp, and shortly afterwards Yoh Hélène’s mutilated body was found 3km (1.9 miles) away. She had been killed, disembowelled and partly eaten by at least one chimpanzee. Scientists at the reserve’s research centre say that they had recorded six attacks on humans by chimpanzees in the area…

KEEPING AN EYE ON THE HAUNTED WORLD For generations Edinburgh has topped many lists of great haunted British cities, enthusiastically embracing its multitude of ghosts and grim historic crimes as an attraction and entertainment for visitors, long before the term ‘Dark Tourism’ was ever uttered. For decades now ghost guides and tours have flourished in and around the Old Town of Scotland’s capital sharing a selection of vintage supernatural and hair-raising tales. Up and around the Royal Mile you can shudder at retellings of these classics, with guides dilating accounts of the wicked Major Weir, the infamous warlock of the West Bow (FT311:30-38), and the ghostly piper trapped in a tunnel leading to Edinburgh Castle. You may hear of the murder of Rizzio, the lover of Mary Queen of Scots…

CAPTAIN MAINWARING, PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR Winter, 1967. A dark and windswept evening envelops a farmhouse on the Yorkshire Moors. Inside, a hushed silence descends upon a circle of table-tilters keen to contact the beyond. Asked to knock once for ‘yes’ and twice for ‘no’, a restless spirit is able to communicate a warning: someone in this room is destined to die. One man at the table has his doubts… a brave and stoic investigator… a figure determined to get to the bottom of a seemingly paranormal mystery… and that man is… Captain Mainwaring? Well, Arthur Lowe, anyway. On Friday 6 February 1967, television viewers tuned in to ITV for the final episode of Turn Out The Lights, a six-part comedy drama series that featured the actor as an investigator of the…

The most gruesome case in Finland’s history began on Tuesday 19 August 1930, when 14-year-old Leo Löfman found a human hand in a spring. The boy had been picking berries in Tattarisuo, a marshy, unpopulated area on the outskirts of Helsinki. He had thrown a stick into the water for his dog to fetch; the dog instead found a severed hand beneath a stone. Officers at the nearby Malmi police station initially doubted the shaken teenager’s sensational claim. Eventually, three policemen agreed to go with Löfman to investigate. When they reached the scene, they saw that his story was true: in a wide pool, a hand was floating on the surface of the clear water. The officers determined that it was a right hand that had once belonged to a…

The Great When Alan Moore Bloomsbury 2024 Hb, 336pp, £20, ISBN 9781526643223 Two very different views of an alternative London, from two very well-known authors. Alan Moore’s The Great When, the first of a trilogy, is set in a 1949 London barely beginning to recover from the War. A socially inept young lad, Dennis Knuckleyard, who works in the grottiest secondhand bookshop imaginable, buys in some early editions of Arthur Machen books – and accidentally buys a book which was never published in our world. If he can’t get it back to the Other London where it came from he could be physically turned inside out. Dennis is helped into the Other London by the artist Austin Osman Spare, who of course straddles all worlds; at one point they’re in…

50. THE BIRD-MAN OF THE TUILERIES Monsieur Henri Pol was born in the Department of the Somme some time in the 1830s. In 1857, he was employed as a clerk by the French telegraphic service at their office at the Rue de Grenelle in Paris; fast forward 40 years, and he was still there, now a rather dotty bachelor in his sixties, busy at his duties in the telegraph office. His prime amusement in life was to take a stroll in the Tuileries gardens during his lunch break, to read the newspaper and to feed the sparrows with breadcrumbs. It soon struck him that the sparrows had been done a great injustice by the naturalists: these humble Parisian birds were in fact highly intelligent. When M. Pol gave his favourite…

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A MONTHLY EXCAVATION OF ODDITIES AND ANTIQUITIES POLISH HOARD A treasure trove of coins linked to Antoni Jaczewicz, one of Poland’s most infamous hermit criminals from the 1700s, has been discovered in the country’s ŚSwietokrzyskie Mountains, roughly 110 miles (177km) from Warsaw. The Swietokrzyskie Exploration Group had been exploring the mountains for roughly seven years when their search yielded a find of ancient coins. It started with a single pile, but the group soon found more coins buried in groups, all from the 17th and 18th centuries. The stockpile features orts, sixes, patagoons, kraicars, and kopecks, but the most fascinating piece was a gold Hamburg ducat from 1648 with an image of Madonna holding a child. A hole punched into the coin has led experts to believe it was once…

Red Dwarf: Discovering the TV Series Volume 1: 1988-1993 Tom Salinsky White Owl/Pen & Sword 2024 Hb, 192pp, £20, ISBN 9781399034944 I, Tardis Memoirs of an Impossible Blue Box Steve Cole BBC Books 2024 Hb, 303pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781785948985 Books about TV series can be very variable. These two, about the two longest-lasting SF series on British TV, are a case in point. Volume 1 of Red Dwarf: Discovering the TV Series covers the first six seasons, from 1988 to 1993. Playwright and podcaster Tom Salinsky is a self-confessed fan of Red Dwarf, and this book is fannish and unofficial and all the better for it. He covers each episode with a couple of pages of commentary: a brief introduction, then a number of headings, including “That Rimmer’s a solid…