Innholdsfortegnelse for 456 i Fortean Times

AWAY WITH THE FAIRIES Welcome to our April issue, in which Nina Antonia tells the strange, sad story of Netta Fornario, whose mysterious death on the Scottish island of Iona made headlines around the world 100 years ago. Nina paints a vivid picture of the British occult scene of the era, and the concurrent fascination with fairy lore, that shaped the young Netta’s life and probably contributed to her lonely death. Elsewhere, Noel Rooney tries to make sense of the alleged ‘Zizian’ murder spree and another scenario in which unconventional beliefs appear to have contributed to a deadly outcome, although not just for the believers this time, and Clive Bloom, introducing his new book London Uncanny, ponders the hidden Gothic currents that run beneath the surface of the capital. We…

KENYAN CONUNDRUM Residents of Mukuku in southern Kenya were startled by a large metallic ring that crashed into the village at roughly 3pm on 30 December 2024, fortunately without injuring anybody. The ring, which was described as “red hot” when it landed, was eight feet (2.5m) in diameter and weighed around 1,100lb (500kg), and as soon as authorities became aware of it, the Kenya Space Agency (KSA) “secured the area and retrieved the debris for further investigation”. They went on to issue a statement saying that they believed it was “a separation ring from a launch vehicle (rocket),” adding thatthese“areusually designed to burn up as they re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere or to fall over unoccupied areas, such as the oceans.” Suspicion fell on an incoming rocket body associated with an…

308: COME BACK, DAVID MELLOR A tabloid headline of the day: ‘MADE LOVE IN CHELSEA STRIP’ For present purposes, that’s all we need to say about David Mellor. Donald Trump made history of a sort when he became the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl game. Some hailed him for this; others objected. Can’t see anything wrong with his being there. Didn’t try to steal the limelight, nor did he dole out silverware as do our royals at Wembley. Not sure why he had no predecessors. Lack of personal interest? Security concerns? Perhaps significantly, the TV cameras never focused on him. Ronald Reagan did the Coin Toss in 1985, but from the safety of the White House’s Map Room. Presidents routinely toss out the ceremonial first pitch at…

At the time of writing there’s still a cornucopia of forteana on show in the suitably grand surroundings of Moyse’s Hall Museum, Bury St Edmunds, believed to be one of the oldest civic buildings in England, dating to the 12th century. “Superstition: Strange Wonders and Curiosities”, as the exhibition is titled, includes some fairy loaves – fossil seaurchins (FT278:63, 332:42) – that could be found in abundance in the sandy soils locally and that slightly resemble miniature, round loaves. These were thought to have been baked by the fairies; they were said to bring good luck in Suffolk and to ensure a plentiful supply of real bread. Paradoxically, in the neighbouring county of Norfolk, bringing fairy loaves into your home was thought to invite misfortune. Also on show, from Moyse’s…

STARFISH IN A STORM Strong winds washed ashore “several thousand” starfish–mostly just a few centimetres in diameter – on the sandy western beaches of the island of Sylt, in the German North Sea. The mass death appears to have been caused by the storms of the preceding days. According to information from the Wadden Sea National Park, the mostly one-year-old starfish are torn away en masse from the subsoil – such as mussel beds – when the sea is heavily disturbed by storms. They cannot hold on to sandy ground and end up on the beach. This phenomenon repeats itself regularly and is said to be completely normal. welt.de, 7 Jan 2025. WANDERING SQUID At the cliffs near Hohwacht Stakendorf on the German Baltic coast, Thomas Freiberg, a palæontologist, announced…

PHANTOM FLORISTS In 1968, a cyclist approaching the Boy’s Grave near Kentford, Suffolk (see FT393:18-21), found his front wheel rising mysteriously upward, forcing him to dismount. He wasn’t alone in this peculiar experience – another local reported the same uncanny mechanical rebellion at this precise spot. The grave in question – a modest mound between road and trees on the ancient Icknield Way – had already accumulated more mysteries in its relatively short history than most consecrated plots gather in a millennium. Most persistently, there are the flowers. For over a century, fresh blooms have appeared on the grave, placed by ‘hands unseen’. In 1934, the historian John Saltmarsh became so intrigued by these mysterious offerings that he kept a detailed diary of them – recording everything from elaborate wheat…

Despite Francis King using the chapter heading “Mrs Mathers Accused of Murder” in his Ritual Magic and drawing heavily on Dion Fortune’s account in Psychic Self-Defence, it is highly unlikely that Moina would have returned from the grave to launch an otherwordly attack on Netta Fornario. It has been stated that Fortune accompanied Netta to Iona, but they had already parted company and gone their separate ways. The unknown female companion was most likely housekeeper Miss Varney. Suggestions that Aleister Crowley murdered Netta Fornario on Iona because it was feared that she would divulge the secret knowledge of the Golden Dawn are also unfounded; Netta was never a member of the Order. Claims that there was Golden Dawn or Occult insignia on the victim’s cape are also groundless. Netta wore…

Hollywood’s first effort at tackling the folklore of lycanthropy came in a short 1913 silent flick, The Werewolf, about a Navajo woman who turns into a vengeful wolf; it’s impossible today to judge how effectively it captured the switch from woman to beast as the print was destroyed in a 1924 fire, though contemporary accounts state that the defining scene consisted of a straightforward dissolve between the two shots. Although not werewolves per se, supernaturally-infused wolves – well, their sounds, at least, as we never see the animals that make them – feature memorably inTod Browning’s 1931 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a film I watched as soon as I could tape it off late-night television; it was to be a few more years, just into my teens, that I…

A familiar, diminutive, anoraked figure emerges from the darkness, bursting with enthusiasm and new tales to tell – he leans into the camera, and breathily asks: “Are you…” – challenging pause – “Team Believer orTeam Sceptic?” Yes, Danny Robins, his red coat and his weird hairstyle are back with series two of Uncanny, joined once more by the pub-dwelling Waldorf and Statler team of Ciaran O’Keefe (Sceptic) and Evelyn Hollow (Believer), as he brings us another quartet of spooky stories following last year’s successful leap from radio to TV: unusually, the Radio 4 version also continues, last year ranging further afield for some USA-based weird yarns with varying degrees of credibility (and varying degrees of ridiculous sceptical explanation.) Anyway, back to BBC2 and domestic shores, kicking off with a farmhouse…

It began with a shootout on the border. On the day that PresidentTrump was inaugurated, in the little border town of Coventry, Vermont, Teresa Youngblut and Felix Bauckholt, a German national who identified as ‘Ophelia’, were stopped by border patrol agents. Youngblut allegedly produced a gun and started firing, killing border agent David Maland. Youngblut was wounded in the ensuing exchange of fire and Bauckholt was killed. The pair had been under surveillance for about a week, after reports that they and a third person had been seen acting suspiciously in the town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Specifically, they appeared to be rehearsing some kind of tactical manoeuvre, and witnesses claimed that at least one of them was armed. Bauckholt had been living in Chapel Hill for a couple…

The world’s official oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera, died on 19 August 2024 at the age of 117 years 168 days, with Guinness World Records saying, “Maria passed away peacefully at the nursing home in Catalonia, Spain, where she resided for the past two decades”. Born in the US, Morera had lived in Spain for most of her life. She was the eighth longest lived person on record and had been granted the title in January 2023 after the death of French nun Sister André, who reached the age of 118. Morera remained free of cancer, dementia and heart problems until the end and believed she had lived a long life thanks to “order, tranquillity, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets,…

BEAR SHELVES On Saturday 30 November 2024 a 47-year-old supermarket employee in Akita, Japan, was working on the delicatessen section while preparing to open the store at 6.20am, when he was attacked by a bear, which knocked him to the ground and left him with head and facial injuries. A colleague helped him to a storage area before calling police, who took the man to hospital, where his injuries were found not to be serious. The bear, however, remained inside the supermarket. The store manager attempted to assess the situation by peering in through the shop windows, and could see that the animal had ransacked the meat department, broken shelves around the store and shattered the vases in the flower section. Bloodstains, believed to be either from the bear or…

The myth Exposed to space without a spacesuit, the human body will instantly explode or else freeze and shatter like glass. The “truth” Neither fate awaits you, despite what it says in the films. True, you’re still going to die (unless you’re rescued very quickly, which seems unlikely given that your crew-mates have just tossed you out of the airlock wearing nothing but your innocence); however, your death will occur in minutes, not seconds, and it will be from asphyxiation. You won’t immediately freeze, because you’re in a vacuum and therefore losing heat slowly through radiation. The lack of atmospheric pressure does mean that your bodily fluids will start to boil and turn to gas, and therefore your bodily tissues will expand. But the human skin is sufficiently gas-proof and…

The Highest Strangeness Richard Freeman CFZ Press 2024 Pb, 430pp, £15.99, ISBN 9781909488724 There’s probably quite a sizeable list of people to whom this interesting and entertaining book should not be recommended: hyper-sensitive individuals, anxiety-prone bureaucrats who draw up trigger-warnings for university students and timid souls who crave a world that is humdrum, ordinary and predictable, should steer clear. Within this book Richard Freeman features his choice of reports and novel stories that should be given the “weirdest of the weird” status in the paranormal and forteana. An active cryptozoologist and inveterate traveller, he provides here what in an earlier age would be a fine collection of travellers’ tales and seafarers’ yarns, a fast-moving text examining what he terms the highest strangest cases gleaned from diverse sources including alleged factual…

“All Moon Wiring Club albums revolve around a central concept,” explains Ian Hodgson. “Cats, gonks, or conspiracies within aTudor Manor House. I’d had a vague ‘horse concept’ in mind for about 15 years, without ever managing to pin it down. But then, while I was working on these tracks, I started to envisage dried-up, baking hot riverbed trails with spectral horse riders whispering around them. And dusty ghost towns with invisible, meandering clip-clop pathways…” For almost two decades, Ian has been creating synæsthetic soundscapes in his guise as Moon Wiring Club, and his windswept new record Horses in Our Blood is indeed, as he pragmatically puts it, “the MWC Horse Album”. Drifting between its funk-fuelled beats are Morriconeesque flutes and arid, fly-blown slabs of ambience, all created – as with…

In 1587, Elizabethan adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, the “Cittie of Raleigh”, landing initially on Roanoke, an island off the coast of what is now North Carolina. Their ship carried 115 colonists including women and children and while an initial colony was successfully established, it had trouble becoming self-sufficient, so expedition leader John White sailed to England for more supplies in 1588. However, his return to Roanoke was delayed by the Anglo-Spanish war, and he didn’t make it back until 1590, by which time the colonists were nowhere to be seen. The only clue being the word “CROATOAN” carved into a wooden post. White took this to mean that they had relocated to nearby Croatoan Island, but before he could…

SLURPED Adrián Simancas went kayaking with his father, Dell, near Bahía El Águila in the Strait of Magellan off Chile, expecting peace and encounters with the abundant local wildlife. However, he had a rather closer encounter than he had bargained for. Among the creatures the Strait is famed for are its humpback whales, and as Simancas kayaked through the chilly waters, which can be as cold as 39F (4C) in the winter, a whale rose up under his boat and slurped it into its vast mouth, engulfing Simancas totally for a few moments, before spitting him out unharmed. “I thought I was dead,” Simancas said. “I thought it had eaten me, that it had swallowed me.” While he felt terror as the whale enveloped him, he said that fear only…

ALAN GAULD Psychologist and revered psychical researcher Dr Alan Ogilvie Gauld demonstrated an unwavering life-long interest in ghostly phenomena and life after death. An active researcher over nearly 70 years from the 1950s through to the early 2020s, he investigated over 100 haunted locations and undertook in-depth studies of mediumship past and present. A respected council member of the Society for Psychical Research for many years and its President between 1989 and 1993, he also served on the editorial board of its Journal and knew more of the secrets of the Borley Rectory case than any man alive. Born in Portland, Dorset in 1932, Gauld ascribed his interests to childhood influences in the 1930s when psychic themes were in vogue. An early stimulant was a Mickey Mouse cartoon, The Lonesome…

London is an uncanny space. Is it a conglomeration of mere concrete and asphalt or a territory both of fantasy and phantasy, locked into the head, through imagination, the unconscious and the presence of others, of those who wander its streets dreaming? To ask if London exists in many forms is only an absurd question if we discount the many ways it does exist. Its origins are approximately 2,000 years old, and for some dreamers, considerably older; it is a city of bizarre ‘facts’ gathered from the rubbish heaps of forgotten lore and custom resonant with hidden signs and symbols, a city to be read and constructed; for others, it is the city of ghosts and revenants, a night time place of alleys and fog; for others it is the…

The Rule of Jenny Pen Dir James Ashcroft, NZ 2024 In cinemas 17 March This is a superbly made, but deeply upsetting, thriller about a psychopath who terrorises his fellow residents in a care home. Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush) is a judge who is recovering in a care home following a stroke. He is cantankerous, rude, snobbish and intolerant. He manages to alienate not only his roommateTony Garfield (David Henare), a former All Black, but also the staff, particularly the brusque manager Madeline (Holly Shanahan). However, Stefan soon realises that there is an even more unpleasant resident than himself in the home: doll-wielding Dave Crealy (John Lithgow), who enjoys cruelly tormenting people during the night. It’s a curious film. In some quarters it’s being promoted as a horror film, in…

Elvis Presley I enjoyed “Elvis: King Of The Strange” [FT453:28-35] and can recommend searching out the book Elvis Presley Speaks, written in 1978 by prolific paranormal author Hans Holzer (1920-2009). Featuring a communication with Presley from beyond the grave by medium housewife Dorothy Sherry, who not only had contact with the King almost every night during 1978 but was also his wife, apparently, in many other lives (she calls him ‘El’) – naturally, Presley avows his love for her several times; indeed, the book is dedicated to her, “By request of Elvis Presley”. She also claims that she was due to be reincarnated into the body of Presley’s twin brother (who died at birth) but caused his death when she changed her mind, because she didn’t want to be a…

145. Grutas Park, Druskininkai, Lithuania There were more statues of Lenin than you could shake a stick at. A superfluity of statues and busts in various scales, from life-size to huge, in a line stretching into the pine forest as far as I could see. Lenin, Lenin, Lenin. Or “Leninas” as he’s known in Lithuanian: the grammar of the Lithuanian language means the names of most famous people are Lithuanianised to ensure agreement of nouns by gender and case ending. It was a peculiar set of circumstances that brought me to the faux frontier post guard’s kiosk at the entrance to Grutas Park. It was a “dark tourism” side-trip that was part of a health tourism honeymoon – I was accompanying my brand new bride, supporting her in getting a…