Ft352 April 2017 £4.25 Are Youa Fan of the Walking Dead? Check out When There’S No More Room in Hell, Part One of the Outstanding Zombie Trilogy from Luke Duffy

Home , Anton Bakov, Cyclobe, David Tibet, German Corpse Factory, No More Room in Hell

FT352 APRIL 2017 £4.25 ARE YOUA FAN OF THE WALKING DEAD? CHECK OUT WHEN THERE’S NO MORE ROOM IN HELL, PART ONE OF THE OUTSTANDING ZOMBIE TRILOGY FROM LUKE DUFFY.

Mankind is on the brink of extinction. A deadly plague sweeps the globe like a tsunami causing the dead to rise and prey on the living. When there’s no more room in Hell is a horror/action set in a post apocalyptic world filled with suspense, drama, humour, grief and action. While one brother fights his way home from the Middle East, battling through the horrorsand confusion of a savage landscape, the other finds himself as the leader of a rag-tag band, struggling to survive against the onslaught of the dead. Both series are available on audible.co.uk

ALSO AVAILABLE IS @LukeDuffyBooks THE DEAD WALK THE EARTH LukeDuffyBooks SERIES. Part one only £1.99 LukeDuffyBooks.com to download from Amazon. Fortean Times 352

strange days

The illuminati go mainstream, murderous mermaid, weird ﬁ sh, enigmatic statue, Star Wars gibbon, giant frog sighting, Yeovil alien encounter, self-proclaimed ‘King of Germany’, CONTENTS leprechaun hunts, MH370 mysteries – and much more. 05 THE CONSPIRASPHERE 21 MYTHCONCEPTIONS 14 ARCHAEOLOGY 23 ALIEN ZOO the world of strange phenomena 15 CLASSICAL CORNER 25 FAIRIES AND FOLKLORE 16 GHOSTWATCH 26 THE UFO FILES features

COVER STORY 28 FORTFOOLERY: FORTEANA AND APRIL FOOL HOAXES While gathering in this year’s spaghetti harvest, ROB GANDY was struck by the fact that a signiﬁcant number of April Fool pranks over the decades have featured fortean themes – from fake UFOs to cryptozoological creatures – in their attempts to put one over on the public... 34 THE CORPSE FACTORY ‘Fake News’ is nothing new and false stories were widely spread by propagandists during World War I. DAVID CLARKE investigates a gruesome rumour of factories for converting human corpses into fat and oil that has been called the

JOHANNES STEHLE / DPA / ALAMY LIVE NEWS “most appalling atrocity story” of the 1914-18 conflict. 6 THE BITTER END Flash-frozen foxes and fish, plus a pair of battling moose encased in the ice 40 FAKING FORTEANA Manufactured and misleading news predates the Internet age. Its roots go back in part to the 1920s, and a forgotten journalistic revolution improbably conceived by ‘the father of modern bodybuilding’ and a socialist muckraker. MIKE DASH dons his fedora to report. 46 SEARCHING FOR THE PLACE OF THE SKULL As pilgrims descend on the Holy Land to celebrate Easter, TED HARRISON proffers a word of caution: if you’re looking for the location of Jesus’s crucfixion and burial then, tradition aside, you need to investigate a growing list of

ANA / AFP / GETTY IMAGES competing sites. Just where exactly was Golgotha? AY TSY VA forum MANAN 16 A SICKNESS OF SPIRIT 34 THE CORPSE FACTORY Ghosts, possession and mental health World War I and the birth of fake news 55 Alien Dawn Patrol by Nigel Watson 56 Clones, psychics and the Antichrist by Mark Greener reports

52 BUILDING A FORTEAN LIBRARY No 20. The Sirius Mystery 76 FORTEAN TRAVELLER No 110. The Museum of Funeral History, Vienna regulars

02 EDITORIAL 78 READER INFO LIOR MIZRAHI / GETTY IMAGES 28 HOAXED! 46 SEARCHING FOR GOLGOTHA 59 REVIEWS 79 PHENOMENOMIX The world’s best fortean April Fools Where is the site of the Cruciﬁxion? 71 LETTERS 80 STRANGE DEATHS

COVER IMAGE: COURTESY WWW.THINKGEEK.COM FT352 1 www.forteantimes.com Fortean Times

editor dAVid SUttoN ([email protected]) foUNdiNg editorS bob rickArd ([email protected]) pAUl SieVekiNg ([email protected]) Art director etieNNe gilfillAN ([email protected]) editorial book reViewS editor VAl SteVeNSoN ([email protected]) reSideNt cArtooNiSt HUNt emerSoN Faking it SUbScriptioN eNqUirieS ANd bAck iSSUeS www.subsinfo.co.uk [email protected] NEVER LET FACTS GET IN THE WAY... party source of expertise to help Facebook fact- FORTEAN TIMES is produced for Dennis Publishing by Wild Talents Ltd. Postal address: Fortean Times, Fake news continues to crop up in the headlines, check some of the dubious material appearing PO BOX 71602, London E17 0QD. even if what exactly is meant by this term on its news feeds, but itself came under a form of You can manage your existing subscription through remains somewhat nebulous: does it refer to attack from the Daily Mail, who while reporting http://www.subsinfo.co.uk/ – this should be your first port outright untruths presented as news items or on alleged sexual and financial improprieties at of call if you have any queries about your subscription. to coverage of objectively ‘real’ events in which the website seemed to be subtly undermining the Change your address, renew your subscription or report problems the presentation of the ‘facts’ doesn’t fit the notion of ‘fact checking’ itself; or so the Guardian UK subscriptions: 0844 844 0049 confirmation bias of the reader? Examples of suggested last year (16 Dec). A couple of months USA & Canada subscriptions: (+1) 800-428-3003 (toll free) both are plentiful, but the waters have become later (15 Feb), the same paper reported that the Fax (+1) 757-428-6253 email [email protected] Other overseas subscriptions: +44 (0)1795 592 909 muddied to the point where the cry of ‘fake UK government had apparently hired advertising Fax: +44 (0)1795 414 555 news’ now rings out whenever a newspaper agency M&C Saatchi to combat “the increasingly publishes a story someone else – whether widespread influence and propaganda of the LICENSING & SYNDICATION Fortean times IS AvAILABLE FOR politicians or particular interest groups – objects so-called ‘alt right’”. It seems darkly ironic that INTERNATIONAL LICENSINg AND SYNDICATION – CONTACT: to. the powers that be wish to save the world from Syndication Manager RYAN CHAMBERS TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 6133 Covering the wilder shores the rising tide of post-truth by [email protected] of news reporting, Fortean employing the dark arts of the Senior Licensing Manager CARLOTTA SERANTONI TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 6550 Times has long been aware of hidden persuaders; we really [email protected] manufactured news items. must be in trouble. Licensing & Syndication Executive NICOLE ADAMS TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 6134 The material to be found This month, we grapple with [email protected] in American newspapers this slippery contemporary YOU CAN REACH FT ON THE INTERNET of the 19th and early 20th issue by showing that, despite www.forteantimes.com centuries, for example, the contemporary obsession runs the gamut from what with fake news, we have most © Copyright Dennis Publishing Limited appear to be obvious hoaxes certainly been here before. dreamt up on slow news days David Clarke examines the pUbliSHed bY deNNiS pUbliSHiNg, or the descendants of the way the British government, 30 Cleveland Street London W1T 4JD, UK Tel: 020 7907 6000 ‘tall tales’ of frontier life to intelligence services and pUbliSHer groUp AdVertiSiNg dHArmeSH miStrY director lifeStYle seemingly credible bits of media spread false stories 020 7907 6100 ANdreA mASoN forteana giving names, dates about the existence of German circUlAtioN mANAger 020 7907 6662 and places. Some of these ‘corpse factories’ during JAmeS mANgAN andrea_mason@ james.mangan@ dennis.co.uk appear to offer tantalising World War I (p34), while Mike seymour.co.uk SeNior SAleS execUtiVe hints of genuine mysteries; Dash looks at how the growth export circUlAtioN brAdleY beAVer often enough, they turn out of true-life ‘confessional’ mANAger 020 7907 6701 to be either unverifiable or magazines in the 1920s led to a gerAldiNe grobler bradley_beaver@ geraldine.grobler@ dennis.co.uk simply fabricated. It’s the kind "You couldn't make it up!" number of classic fortean cases seymour.co.uk SAleS execUtiVe of material that our own Theo being elaborated, exaggerated SeNior prodUctioN imogeN williAmS Paijmans, in his regular ‘Blasts from the Past’ or even invented and the ways in which this has execUtiVe 020 7907 6247 feature (taking a breather in this crowded issue), continued to bedevil fortean research ever since micHAel HillS imogen_williams@ 020 7907 6116 dennis.co.uk does a fine job of unearthing andve in stigating. (p40). On a lighter note, as this is our April issue, michael_hills@ dennis.co.uk Then there are the knowingly absurdist Rob Gandy celebrates the fun side of fakery in stories concocted by tabloid ‘newspapers’ such a round-up of the best fortean April Fool hoaxes PRINTED BY WILLIAM gIBBONS & SONS LTD as the Weekly World News in the US or the perpetrated by our truth-loving media over DISTRIBUTION Sunday Sport in the UK, featuring a World War the years, from the Wiesbaden Martian to the Distributed in UK, Ireland and worldwide II bomber on the Moon, a bat child found in a Tasmanian Mock Walrus (p28). And if you believe by Seymour Distribution Ltd. 2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT cave and headlines like “Jeremy Corbyn Sex that the Red Baron shot down a flying saucer 100 Tel: 020 7429 4000 / Fax: 020 7429 4001 Dwarf Eaten by Otters”. Is fake news necessarily years ago this April, perhaps you should turn to Queries on overseas availability should be emailed to [email protected] reprehensible or dangerous when both its Nigel Watson’s Forum piece on p55. Meanwhile, Speciality store distribution by Worldwide Magazine producers and consumers know it to be a kind of not forgetting that this is also our Easter issue, Distribution Ltd, Tel: 0121 788 3112 Fax: 0121 788 1272 simulacrum produced solely for the purposes of Ted Harrison sets out for Jerusalem to find the STANDARD SUBSCRIPTION RATES 12 issues: UK £39.98; EU £47.50 material profit and idle amusement?, Or in the site of Golgotha (p46); or at least he tries to. It Ballardian and Baudrillardian world in which seems no one can agree on where it really is... Fortean Times (USPS 023-226) is published every four weeks by Dennis Publishing Ltd, 30 Cleveland Street, London, W1P 4JD, United Kingdom. we now appear to live, does this growing elision The US annual subscription price is $89.99. of entertainment and information compromise Airfreight and mailing in the USA is by Agent named Air Business, C/O Worldnet Shipping USA Inc., 149-35 177th Street, Jamaica, public discourse to the point that the entire

New York, 11434. notion of truth simply breaks down and life daVid r SUTToN Periodical postage paid at Jamaica, NY 11431, USA. becomes a kind of infinite, uncheckable news US Postmaster: Send address changes to: Fortean Times, 3330 Pacific Avenue, Suite 500, Virginia Beach, VA, 23451-2983, USA. feed full of fake stories, dodgy infomercials and bob rickard PaUL SiEVEkiNG REST OF THE WORLD £55; US $89.99 ($161.98 for 24 issues) propaganda? DENNIS PUBLISHING LIMITED The website Snopes.com has always been a GROUP CFO/COO BRETT REYNOLDS useful tool for checking up on stories that appear ExECUTIVE DIRECTOR KERIN O’CONNOR CHIEF ExECUTIVE JAMES TYE to be (and usually are) nothing more than urban Why fortean? COMPANY FOUNDER FELIX DENNIS legends, but over the course of the recent US Everything you always wanted to presidential campaign it also started debunking Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations. know about Fortean Times but Circulation 14,320 (Jan-Dec 2015) what purported to be news items, such as those were too paranoid to ask! Printed in the UK. ISSN: 0308 5899 suggesting that Pope Francis supported Donald © Fortean Times: MARCH 2017 Trump. Snopes was cited as a possible third- SEE PAGE 78

2 FT352 www.forteantimes.com LISTEN IT JUST MIGHT CHANGE YOUR LIFE

LIVE | CATCH UP | ON DEMAND a digest of the worldwide weird strangedays

temple.These talented chaps “immediately spotted in the A murderous mermaid spiritual realm a mermaid (Mame Water) being the cause of the impediment to the smooth Fish-tailed female held responsible for double drowning in Zimbabwe sail of events on the dam site.” One of them travelled to the Bui River and managed to capture children had died and started “a weird beast in the form of a crying,” said Chief Nemangwe. snake with the head and hands “A whirlwind suddenly engulfed of a woman”. A local priest the place before the mermaid explained that it was not the swiftly appeared from the water sort of entity that is normally and grabbed the boys for the visible to us. “It is not good to second time, but this time their see this kind of Mame Water lifeless bodies resurfaced later.” physically,” he said. “They are According to local belief, spiritual creatures which always when someone is seized by a remain unseen and the moment mermaid, the last thing people they are physically seen it means should do is cry, as this can lead there is something gone wrong.” to dire consequences, such as [FT293:20]. the death of the victim.The Chief again: “Two other people • Another African ‘mermaid’ that I am aware of were also was encountered near a bridge killed at the same dam in similar in the Buffelsjags River in circumstances. As a community Western Cape, South Africa, on we have since performed some 12 January 2008. Daniël Cupido rituals to calm down the water saw a figure “like that of a white spirits. During the ceremony woman with long black hair we slaughtered a beast and the thrashing about in the water”. meat was consumed without Thinking to save her, he waded salt.” Acting Midlands Provincial into the water, but stopped when police spokesperson Assistant he noticed a reddish shine in her Inspector Ethel Mukwende eyes.The sight sent “shivers” said investigations were in down his spine, yet he was pulled progress to ascertain what really forward as if hypnotised. He transpired. shouted to his friends to come Work on the pumps at Sengwa and take a look. Martin Olckers 2/Gwehava Dam in Gokwe said he saw a female figure once stopped after terrified swimming near a low water s / Getty imaGes to workers complained of machines bridge and then standing on the breaking down under mysterious bridge before diving back into circumstances, and blamed the black water. It made “the China Pho mermaids.The work later strangest sound”, like a woman • At around midday on 19 the area falls under. “According resumed after traditional healers crying.The villagers recognised February, two boys fromVillage to a friend of the deceased boys, brewed beer and carried out the creature as something 7, Gokwe, Zimbabwe, were his companions jumped into some rites to appease the water known locally as the Kaaiman, seized by a “mermaid” near the dam and tried to grab the spirits. zimbabwenewsonline.com, last seen in 1993 and more than Pachemumvuri Dam, dragged mermaid because they believed 5 Mar 2017. 20 years before that. As Martin under the water and drowned. it was just a big fish. But the Olckers said he saw it standing, The creature had allegedly mermaid pulled them down • Talk of dams and mermaids it presumably didn’t have a been seen on the banks of the into the water.” The friend then reminds us of a story from 2012. fish’s tail like ave “con ntional” dam several times before. “It ran home to alert the elders, Chinese engineers working on mermaid. Some people held is reported that on the fateful who arrived at the dam to find the Bui dam in Ghana found it responsible for drownings. day the two boys who were in the boys lying on a rock, alive. that the functioning of their [FT238:19] Form One and Two at Ganye The elders were “counselling” excavating machinery was Secondary School were herding the boys when their parents obstructed by some force they For a wave of mermaid sightings cattle when they saw the arrived on the scene. “When regarded as supernatural, so in Israel in 2009, see FT254:4. mermaid at the dam,” said Chief their parents got to the dam they consulted “spiritualist That issue of FT also has several Nemangwe, whose jurisdiction they panicked, believing their scientists” in a Shanghai features on mermaids in general.

4 Ft352 www.forteantimes.com turkeY the New chiNese circle imperialists skYwalker Sinister gobblers The King of The funky new perform occult Germany and gibbon named ritual to raise a other monarchical after a Star Wars dead cat? pretenders character page 10 page 20 page 23

The Conspirasphere Extra! Extra!

Get your T-shirts here! Noel rooNeY scores himself some official merch from the Illuminati FT’s FavouriTe headlines website... but is this commercial activity by the hidden masters actually anything new? From around The world the ‘official illuminati website’ has some commentators have excited a mini furore in the last couple attempted to trace the website, of months, at least as much in the without much success. one part of it is mainstream as the alternative media. registered to a domain shop in Canada, several newspapers have run stories on another to an individual apparently named Irish Times, 30 Oct 2015. it, and questions have been bandied obsidian maskreet, in Beverley hills, about on a few of the more popular California; perspicuous investigative conspiracy sites. Quite why it hacks have suggested this may be has suddenly become a thing is an alias. there is a social media unclear; to my knowledge, the outlet too, which seems to have website has been around since a large number of followers. Why 2014 at least. But papers like the anyone would go to these lengths Daily Express and Sun have run for a scam is a question only articles giving the impression marginally more mysterious that the phenomenon has than why the masters of the suddenly burst onto the internet. Universe would need to rely on North Devon Advertiser, 18 Nov 1993. actually it’s a group of sites: there’s merchandising. illuminati.org, which looks like the home the appearance, or resurrection, of portal; illuminati.am (i believe .am is the the site prompted me to go in search of signature for armenian websites, which other contenders for the official illuminati may or may not tell us something); and Website; it turns out that this is a crowded dodis.co, which appears to be the official market, although to be fair the others are merchandising arm of the group (you mostly pretty amateur by comparison. Inside Housing, 21 Oct 2015. can get t-shirts and banners, as well as nonetheless, there were a few gems the now well-publicised pendant, which littering the field. i particularly liked the incorporates the representative cliché wonderfully illiterate illuminati-order.org, symbols of the illuminati into one ugly which offers a beautiful example of why hybrid, a sort of vulgar monas hieroglyphica you shouldn’t use Google translate for of the new World order). your manifesto (“without forgetting the there has been an enjoyable amount teachings them great masters all the of agonising in the Conspirasphere as to times”, as we in the know like to gurgle whether this is really them coming out into our napkins). equally entertaining is of the (presumably rather well-appointed) the illuminatiofficialafrica.org site, which closet, or merely a scam to tempt a few offers, among the other benefits of joining punters to part with money for a pendant the hidden masters, a golf package. if you D.Telegraph, 11 Nov 2015. and a copy of the (comically badly written) prefer your illuminati portals enigmatic, illuminati testament; the fact that there is then i’d recommend illuminatiorder.org. a membership sign-up option has prompted the entry page is a shimmering pyramid; a few to twist the tale a little further and there is little else to the site except for a suggest that it is a hoax on a hoax to blank white square asking for a Key Value, entrap the unwary into signing up to the whatever that is. if you want real payoff, ‘real’ nWo. the tV ad (actually a youtube type illuminati backwards into your search video that has been around for a while now) engine and you’ll end up on the nsa is a velvety big-production number with website; now that is strange. Western Daily Press, 6 Nov 2015 a throaty voice-over offering, well, all the things you might expect from the benign www.express.co.uk/news/weird/758675/ hidden masters of the world; peace, love, illuminati-website-new-World-order- and reassurance that they are watching. illuminatioffical-org; http://illuminati-order. along with some brief, bland bits of blurb org/newworldorder/; www.illuminatiofficial. under pretentious titles, it’s the nearest org/;www.illuminatiofficialafrica.org/blogs/ thing to information on the sites. tag/illuminati%20official%20africa/ Sydney Morning Herald, 30 Nov 2015.

Ft352 5 www.forteantimes.com TRAPPED IN ICE

FLASH-FROZEN FOX Hunter Franz Stehle, who found a dead fox encased in ice covering the Danube on 2 January, cut out a block of ice encasing the fox and put it on show in front of his family’s hotel at Fridingen in Baden-Wurttemberg, southwest Germany, until the ice melted. He suspected it had drowned and was then frozen solid. He had seen a frozen deer and a wild boar before fi nding the fox. The image features in a Twitter photo contest for the best animal carcass (#BestCarcass). BBC News, 13 Jan; Int. NY Times, 21 Jan 2017. PHOTO: Johannes Stehle/DPA/Alamy Live News. FRIGID FISH pushed the frozen water and its fi shy contents antlers apparently locked together. It was the The fi sh in the photograph above look as if they upward into a 4ft (1.2m) ice wall. Kelly Preheim, end of moose rutting season, and the animals have frozen to death in mid-jump, but what really who took this photograph, said the thousands of were probably fi ghting over a female moose. Jeff happened is more complicated. In 2015, the frozen fi sh on the lake drew “hundreds of bald Erickson, another teacher in Unalakleet, also area around Lake Andes in South Dakota had eagles, various gulls and American crows,” who photographed the frozen animals when he went been suffering from drought, and water levels swooped in for the convenient feast. Huffington to check out the scene a couple days later with were low. Thick ice formed on the lake’s surface. Post, 14 Jan; Int. NY Times, 28 Jan 2017. Webster. “It was such a surreal sight – so serene Along with snow cover, it blocked out sunlight, and quiet, but a stark vision of how brutally preventing photosynthesis by algæ and other ICY BATTLE harsh life can be,” he wrote. Webster and a few aquatic plants. Oxygen levels dropped and the On 2 November 2016, Brad Webster, a science others went back later and removed the animals fi sh suffocated under the icy surface, fl oating teacher in Unalakleet, a remote village on from about 8in (20cm) of ice covering open to the top in their thousands. At some point Alaska’s unforgiving western coast, came upon water, recovering some of the spoiled meat for the ice may have expanded and, as it reached two moose frozen in battle and encased in ice. dog food and trapping bait. the shore, crumpled and shot upward, dead He photographed the massive animals poking For other fl ash-frozen animals, see FT331:73, fi sh included. Or it’s possible that strong winds through the ice as they lay on their sides with 333:67, 336:22. FT199 7 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

SIDELINES... New updates on stories EARTHLIGHTS FORTEAN FOLLOW-UPS covered previously in FT Footage filmed in Wellington, New Zealand, during a 7.8 magnitude earthquake near Christchurch last November shows the night sky lit up with bright colours. Clips show flashes of green, white and blue over a span of a few seconds. Similar accounts of lights in the sky emerged following the previous Christch- urch earthquake in 2011. Geologists point out that such lights have been spotted weeks before an earthquake, probably due to stress building in the fault lines. Metro, 14 Nov 2016. LONELY HEART A human heart was found in a plastic bag near a gas station in Norwalk, Ohio, baffling NNICK PITOU / AFP / GeTTY ImAGeS

police. The preserved organ – YA with ‘anomalies’ likely to have ABOVE: Police carry a piece of debris from an unidentified aircraft found in the east of the French Indian Ocean islandofLa Reunion. been present at birth – was discovered last August. Metro, THE FATE OF MH370 ended its flight in a controlled To recap: early on the morning 15 Sept 2016. [FT345:12] ditch; but another expert, Mike of 8 March 2014, MH370 took off NORTHERNMOST NAZIS In January, officials Exner, insisted the damage on from Kuala Lumpur en route to responsible for the flaperon and another found Beijing. After 40 minutes it passed Russian scientists have dis- locating missing subsequently was consistent with the last navigational waypoint in covered a secret Nazi military Malaysia Airlines high-speed flutter, indicating Malaysian airspace. Six seconds base on the island of Alexan- Flight 370 announced a rapid uncontrolled descent after that it went electronically dra Land, 600 miles (965km) that their two-year, [FT438:69]. By November, seven of dark. Wise says that in the brief from the North Pole. Built in £122 million search has come to an the 20 pieces of debris recovered gap between air-control zones, 1942, it was mainly used as 2 a tactical weather station and end. Having searched 120,000 km from around the Indian Ocean when no one was officially keeping 2 was abandoned in 1944 when (46,332 miles ) of the southern were said to be almost certainly an eye on it, the plane pulled a scientists stationed there Indian Ocean to a depth of 4.8km from the missing plane. U-turn, crossed back through were poisoned by polar bear (three miles), teased out from However in February, Jeff Wise, Malaysian airspace, and then meat (probably getting hyper- the satellite data, they’ve found writing in the Huffington Post, vanished from military radar vitaminosis A from polar bear no trace of the plane and the asserted that the Réunion debris screens. At that point the plane livers). 22 Oct 2016. 239 souls on board. However, a was completely coated in goose was completely invisible, and panel of experts, pointing to the barnacles, a species that grows could have been flown anywhere locations of recovered debris, only immersed in the water. When in the world without fear of insist the search should be the debris was tested in a flotation discovery. extended to include 25,000 km2 tank, it floated half out of the However, three minutes later, (9,653 miles2) north of the area water. Wise said barnacles couldn’t a Satellite Data Unit (SDU) already examined. On 4 March, have grown on the exposed areas, rebooted and initiated a log-on families of those on board MH370 a conundrum officials were unable with an Inmarsat communications launched efforts to raise at least to reconcile.The implication is satellite orbiting high overhead. £12 million to fund a new Indian that the piece did not arrive on Wise points out that an SDU Ocean search. Réunion by natural means, a reboot is not something that A wing section called a flaperon suspicion reinforced by a chemical can happen accidentally, or that was discovered on Reunion Island analysis of one of the barnacles, airline captains generally know off Madagascar in July 2015, showing that it grew in water how to do. Over the next six hours, and confirmed as debris from temperatures that no naturally the SDU sent seven automated MH370 the following September drifting piece of debris would have signals before going silent for

mARTIN ROSS – it reportedly carried MH370’s encountered. Wise also cast doubt good. Soon after the SDU reboot, “unique numbers”. Crash on the identification of the other the plane apparently turned investigator LarryVance said recovered debris (but failed to south, flew fast and straight until that the damage pattern on the provide any evidence to back up in ran out of fuel, then dived into flaperon showed that the plane his scepticism). the sea. Using this information,

8 FT352 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

SIDELINES... officials were able to generate company”. He had travelled from this country” and they like it a probabilistic “heat map” of Lahore to London Heathrow two “because the environment BOOM INVESTIGATION where the plane most likely days before his body was found, makes you feel you are closer to Seismologists at the University ended up. However, no one and was caught there on CCTV. the simplicity of your original of maryland are trying to iden- questioned whether the data He had died after swallowing rat self”. Something existential, tify the source of mysterious could have been tampered with poison (strychnine), available then. Previous theories for the loud booms that have been – a major oversight, says Wise, in Pakistan but banned in the cause of the influx included jolting residents of Cheverly since the very same peculiar UK. He had not been reported mistaken identity, a covert from their sleep and damag- set of coincidences that made it missing, either in Pakistan social experiment or possibly ing their homes for decades. possible to tease a signal from the or the UK. It then transpired Oxfordshire’s connection to Resident Nikki Greco described Inmarsat data could have enabled he was formerly called David Inspector Morse. Baz Daniels, who one as sounding like a truck a sophisticated hijacker to enter Lautenberg and was born has lived in Kidlington for more ramming into the house. The the plane’s electronics bay (which in London in 1948 to Jewish than 20 years, asked a friend booms caused cracks in her lay beneath an unsecured hatch refugees Sylvia and Hyman in China to try and explain the basement requiring a $50,000 at the front of the business class Lautenberg. He changed his tourist influx. “Kidlington is loan to fix. NBC Washington, 14 cabin) and alter the data fed to name to Lytton after a falling- apparently being marketed by Dec 2016. the SDU. out with his family. He lived Chinese tourist agencies as a FAIRWELL YAHYA If this vulnerability had been in Streatham, south London, beautiful English village on the So, after 22 years, Yahya exploited, then the plane could for more than three decades way to BicesterVillage shopping Jammeh, 51, self-styled have been flown not south over before moving to Florida and centre,” he said. “Many of the “excellency Sheikh Professor the ocean, but north toward land. then Lahore. Why he chose to visitors live in cities and love Doctor President” of Gambia, Not all the Inmarsat data was die where he did is a complete to see things like the hanging was voted out of office in susceptible to spoofing, says Wise. mystery. BBC News, Manchester baskets and little flowers in December and forced into From the portion that wasn’t, a Eve. News (online), 26 Jan; people’s gardens.” exile in January. He claimed to narrow band of possible flight D.Telegraph, 27+29 Jan; (London) A month later, Sun Jianfeng, have invented a herbal cure paths can be deduced: they Eve. Standard, 10 Feb 2017. 48, a tour guide with Beijing for HIV (that only worked on all terminate in Kazakhstan, a Hua Yuan International Travel, mondays and Thursdays), and close ally of Russia.Three ethnic LURE OF THE COMMONPLACE offered a completely different in march 2009 he ‘exorcised’ 1,000 people by force-feeding Russians were aboard MH370, [FT344:4] explanation: the visitors, he them hallucinogenic potions including one who was sitting During the said, were being punished for [FT250:16]. D.Telegraph, 3 Dec close to the electronics bay summer, residents refusing to pay a hefty surcharge 2016; Sunday Telegraph, 22 hatch. Four and a half months of Kidlington, an to visit nearby Blenheim Palace. Jan 2017. later, a mobile launcher from ordinary village Customers were normally a Russian anti-aircraft unit north of Oxford, charged £53 for an optional GOAT BURNING shot down another Malaysian were bemused by Chinese language tour of the Sweden’s Christmas Goat airliner, MH17. Whether or not the weekly arrival of up to 40 stately pile, but some had didn’t last long on its 50th anni- the Russians were responsible Chinese tourists, who wandered realised they could buy an entry versary. The giant figure, made for MH370, Wise believes the around a nondescript 1970s ticket on the day for only £24.90, of straw and wood, an annual failure of the seabed search housing estate taking photos of to the annoyance of those who Yuletide tradition in the city of and the inconsistencies in the flowerbeds, garage doors and had paid more.The solution was Gavle since 1966, went up in flames just hours after it was aircraft debris should undermine parked cars and requesting to drop “those who had opted inaugurated on 27 November. complacency about the official selfies with local residents. On 23 out” four miles (6.4km) away in Arsonists just cannot stay narrative. BBC News, 2 Nov + 20 October, one of the tour leaders Kidlington where they would not away from the giant decora- Dec 2016, 17 Jan 2017; Sunday was handed a questionnaire have time to walk to Blenheim tion, which seldom survives Times, 4 Dec 2016; [R] Metro, 18 and the mystery was solved Palace before continuing to the the season without someone Jan; Jeff Wise in Huffington Post, 12 (sort of).The tourists were next coach stop. BBC News, 1 Nov; trying to burn it down. [AP] 28 Feb; Sunday Telegraph, 5 Mar 2017. “looking for the true sense of D.Mail, 7 Dec 2016. Nov 2016. SADDLEWORTH MOOR THE EYE DECEIVED MYSTERY [FT242:80] A distressed caller rang police After a year-long on 16 December to report investigation, a man an elderly woman “frozen to death” in a parked car in whose body was Hudson, New York State. Offic- found at Dovestone ers found a seat-belted figure Reservoir on wearing an oxygen mask sitting Saddleworth Moor, motionless in the front passen- Greater Manchester, on 12 ger seat of the snow-covered December 2015 has finally been car. They broke the rear window identified as David Lytton, 67, and discovered it was an sometime London taxi and tube extremely realistic mannequin. driver who had lived in Pakistan The car owner arrived and said since 2005. Police said he was “a he used it for his job selling bit of a loner” and “liked his own ABOVE: Kidlington, Oxfordshire – not really all that exciting. medical training aids. [CNN] BBC News, 17 Dec 2016.

FT352 9 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

SIDELINES... Poultry in motion GIVE US A HAND A human hand was discovered washed up on a beach at Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Did turkeys perform occult ritual to raise cat from dead? Wight on 28 December, and passed to police. It was said to have been in the water for a “significant amount of time”, and was sent away for analysis. [AP] 29 Dec 2016. WEIGHT IS BANG ON Paula Richards went to weigh herself on a set of Aldi scales when they exploded, sending glass shards across her bathroom in Atherstone, Warwick- shire. Sun, 30 Dec 2016. AUTO-SNACK On 30 November a man entered the Wilko store (previously known as Wilkinson’s) in Haymarket, Sheffield, went upstairs to the electrical aisle, picked up some bolt cutters, chopped off his big toe and stood eating it. The police

were called and he was taken JONATHAN DAVIS to hospital. [PA] 1 Nov 2016. ABOVE: Jonathan Davis filmed the turkeys in Boston, commenting “It is the craziestve thingI’ ever seen... Bro, this is wild!” ATHLETES IN ARIES The day to be born for athletic A flock of 20 ketur ys was the video. Krakauer continues: success is 23 march, with observed performing what looks The turkeys “During my studies of wild the Sun in early Aries (the like a bizarre ritual around turkeys I watched a coyote trot Ram). The birthday is shared the body of a dead cat that could be through a group of turkeys – the by runner mo Farah, rower Sir had been run over in Boston, turkeys gave it some space but Steve Redgrave, cyclists Jason Massachusetts. Jonathan Davis stuck in some acted alert in a similar manner Kenny and Sir Chris Hoy, first filmed the startling spectacle to this video. In that instance sub-four-minute miler Sir Rog- and uploaded the 24-second the coyote kept walking and er Bannister, world champion clip to Twitter on 24 February kind of never- the turkeys went back to their boxer Joe Calzaghe and former with the caption: “These business. However, in this video, england cricket champion turkeys trying to give this cat ending circle the dead cat ‘predator’ doesn’t mike Atherton. If you want to its 10th life.” They were walking get up to leave, and the turkeys sire a champion, the date for in a circle – not running or appear to be kind of stuck in conception is advised to be 29 distressed, but walking with behavioural ecology of birds. their pattern of behaviour. June. D.Mail, 18 Aug 2016. intention – around the cat in He explained that turkeys, Maybe they are waiting to see the middle of the road. The clip when faced with an animal that if the cat wakes up?” That is, quickly went viral (and earned might eat them, sometimes waiting to see if the dead will the splendid headline “Gobble, follow the risky route of actually arise, instead of ritually working gobble, toil and trouble” in the approaching the predator. It can to raise the dead. Daily Mail). help signal to other turkeys in Richard Buchholz, a professor Biologist Debra Kriensky told the area that there’s a threat, of biology at the University of mARTIN ROSS the New York Post: “It’s certainly or help the turkeys evaluate Mississippi has also seen this unusual. Circling in itself isn’t how big a danger the predator kind of circling behaviour in unusual behaviour for turkeys is. “Or it could let the predator the turkey bird family, which – the males sometimes circle know the prey are aware of its includes chickens, pheasants, females when getting ready to presence, which might encourage and quail. Following the tail in breed... But it’s unusual to see the predator to move elsewhere front of them is a way they stick so many circling a dead cat for to seek an easier meal,” he together as a flock, he says. What example.” said; “a lot like a group of small could be happening is that the Perhaps the birds are songbirds mobbing a hawk turkeys are stuck in some kind performing what’s called or owl they have discovered.” of never-ending circle, with each a “predator inspection,” Such behaviour could of course bird following the tail in front says Alan Krakauer, a backfire – if the predator is of it. The Verge, npr.org, 2 Mar; biologist who studies the more conscious than the cat in D.Mail, Sun, 3 Mar 2017.

10 FT352 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

West Country weird SIDELINES... NESSIE SIGHTINGS Last year the number of Nes- sie sightings was the highest Faceless alien at a bus stop and a polt in a block of flats since 2000 (when there were 11), according to the Official Loch Ness Sightings Register. Two of the seven sightings were photographed on the same day at different locations round the loch and two were by webcam, including one from an online watcher in the US. Dundee Courier & Advertiser, 7 Dec 2016. HOTHEAD A shoplifter in mansfield, Nottinghamshire, hid a sizzling roast chicken under her hat in Tesco and was arrested after swooning from the heat. Fellow customers rushed to help the LEFT: A witness sketch of the 7ft alien. woman as she began fainting ABOVE: Gilton House, Brislington. in the aisle. Sun, 22 Jan 2017. SUITABLY NAMED months ago. Gloria Edie, 69, said she initially thought she In September 2015, student Alison Smith, 24, was punched was going mad when she found unconscious by her 40-year-old a plug in her bedroom had been lecturer boyfriend before he smashed and a walking stick was poured salt in her eyes. The missing. She then noticed that vile academic, sacked by the ornaments in her living room University of Sussex after a were being switched, moved or 3,000-strong petition, was Dr turned around whenever she Lee Salter. D.Mirror, 16 Aug went out.Things would go missing 2016; Sun, 19 Jan 2017. and then reappear in plain sight later after she returned from FROG WEDDING a trip to the shops. “A couple Priests married two frogs in a

SWNS.COm of other residents said they village in Assam in a bid to ap- too had experienced strange pease the rain god Barun and YEOVIL ALIEN things happening,” she said. end a drought. Hundreds of A man is convinced he saw a 7ft “It was like “Some said that they noticed guests attended the two-hour (2m) tall faceless alien waiting that when they went out, they’d Hindu ceremony, showering at a bus stop in Ilchester Road, something come back and their front door the frogs in flowers and then Yeovil, Somerset, around 2.45pm would be unlocked when they holding a feast for the newly- on 15 December 2016. “I was out of science clearly remember locking it.The weds. The frogs were being driving up the road and saw this chap upstairs said all his lights kept as ‘pets’ (hostages?) until dark-looking figure by Yeovil were switched on whenever he the rain arrived. Metro, 6 Sept College,” said the man, who asked fiction” returned home. I began to double- 2016. not to be named. “It looked quite check things and noticed more COPROLITE CHAMPION tall and had this big Stetson hat. stuff was happening. One time George Frandsen, 36, from I slowed down to have a closer entity, noting it was black, wore a my fireplace was completely Florida, has earned the Guin- look and thought it’s not a man, it “weird” coat and had silky hair. hooked off the wall. I called in my ness World Record for the was about 7ft [2m] tall. It had this “I just keep thinking I was in the neighbours and they all agreed largest collection of coprolites. long thin tube coming from the wrong place at the wrong time,” someone must have done that, His collection of 1,277 fos- top of it and spikes coming out of he said. “It’s just mad.” Western it didn’t unhook itself.” At a silised turds features samples the side.The middle bit of it was Daily Press, 23 Dec 2016. residents’ meeting on 31 January, from 15 US states and eight like moleskin and hairy. The thing some said they would install other countries. The larg- wasn’t moving at all and was in PESKY POLTERGEIST? CCTV cameras inside their front est specimen, weighing 4lb this box that had sparks coming More strangeness from the doors and others expressed fears 3.5oz (1.9kg) and nicknamed out of it. It was like something out West Country: some residents that someone had obtained a ‘Precious’, was produced by a of science fiction.” The encounter in Gilton House – a block of master key. Did anyone wonder huge miocene crocodilian spe- unnerved him so much that he 46 warden-monitored flats in whether a particularly vigorous cies in South Carolina. [UPI] hadn’t slept for a week. He drew Brislington, Bristol – began poltergeist might be at work? 15 Nov 2016. an annotated drawing of the noticing weird goings-on some Western Daily Press, 2 Feb 2017.

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SIDELINES... Creature features SICK JOKE The New mexico Department of Health said about 70 of its employees fell sick with A microscopic human ancestor and an outsized amphibian gastrointestinal issues after its Christmas party. At the time of the report, investi- GIANT FROG SPOTTED gators had not identified a In March 2013 a strange creature specific contaminated food. was seen crawling out of Lake more than 200 employees at- Itasca in north-central Minnesota. tended the catered luncheon The state is known as “the land in Santa Fe. NBC San Diego, of 10,000 lakes”; the actual figure 22 Dec 2106. is 11,842. Lake Itasca is less than ETERNAL FLAME SPUDS two square miles in area and has a depth of around 35-40ft A screengrab from a video (11-12m). The witness was ‘Don’, apparently shot on 29 No- vember and circulated on a keen outdoorsman who was the Internet appears to show strolling along the lakeshore with two young men in Bishkek, his German shepherd dog Ben capital of Kyrgyzstan, roasting when he noticed a disturbance in potatoes on the eternal flame the water at a distance of around at the city’s memorial to the 50ft (15m). As he got closer, he country’s World War II dead in was stunned to see a huge frog Victory Square. The mayor’s crawl out of the water and, for a office has asked residents to couple of seconds, peer intently help identify the men; it was and eerily in his direction. It was not clear what charges they truly enormous: Don reckons might face. Radio Free Europe about 4ft (122cm) in length. He (online), 6 Dec 2016. thought about taking a picture PRIMATE PERIL with his iPhone, but before he could do so, the creature flopped A report by Conservation mORRIS / JIAN HAN back into the water with a International concludes that AY powerful splash, and was gone. 60 per cent of the world’s

S CONW Don spent the entire day and primates (apes, monkeys, night staking out that area of lemurs, tarsiers and lorises – when they had already begun to the lake, but the beast did not about 300 species) are facing ANCESTRAL OLD BAG diversify into vertebrates, and extinction as agriculture A team of British scientists has return. Monster-hunter Ken and industry destroy forest announced in the journal Nature animals like sea squirts, starfish, Gerhard said: “Back in 1995, habitats and the animals’ that humanity’s earliest known sea urchins and acorn worms. there were an incredibly large populations are hit by hunting evolutionary ancestor is a 1mm Simon Conway Morris, number of deformed frogs and trade. Guardian, 19 Jan creature resembling a “wrinkled professor of evolutionary that were found in a pond in 2017. old sack” that spent its life palæobiology at Cambridge, said: southwest Minnesota. It made “wriggling around” on the ocean “To the naked eye, the fossils big national news. It was looked floor 540 million years ago. One we studied look like tiny black at as a sign of the times: there of its most intriguing features grains, but under the electron was so much pollution that man’s was an apparent lack of an anus, microscope the level of detail is impact on the environment was meaning it ate and excreted jaw-dropping. All deuterostomes causing these really bizarre frog from the same large aperture. had a common ancestor, and mutations.” The US Geological The fossil was unearthed in we think that is what we are Survey said: “Malformations Shaanxi province, China, and looking at here.” The creature’s included missing limbs, missing named Saccorhytus coronarius. body was symmetrical, a digits, extra limbs, partial limbs, The team had to crunch through characteristic inherited by many skin webbing, malformed jaws, three tonnes of limestone to find of its evolutionary descendants, and missing or extra eyes… just 45 of the microfossils. Their including humans. It was It is likely that one or more discovery means we can now covered with a thin, flexible skin, combinations of chemicals, trace our roots back a further suggesting it had some form of biological, and physical factors 30 million years. The creature is muscles, leading researchers are responsible for causing the thought to be the most primitive to conclude that it got around malformations in Minnesota example of the deuterostome, by wriggling. The small conical frogs.” Whether these factors a category of animal life from structures on its body may have could lead to a frog the size of which vertebrates eventually allowed swallowed water to an Alsatian is a bit of a stretch. emerged. Most other early escape, and so were perhaps the All we can hope for is another deuterostome groups date from precursor of gills. D.Telegraph, sighting… mysteriousuniverse.org, about 510–520 million years ago, Guardian, D.Mail, 31 Jan 2017. 4 Oct 2016. mARTIN ROSS

12 FT352 www.forteantimes.com a gReat Way to fight PoveRty fRom caRe inteRnational uK

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maKe a loan – change a life REUTERS / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO MATT PATTINSON www.forteantimes 14 F T 352 h uzigNeolithic puzzling The LEFT: ABOVE new A IDOL-SMASHE ABRAHAM, genitals 14 or News, breasts BBC of [R] sign no with asexual, is its of not certain is so are they or How Thessaly Macedonia. of regions from Greek is northern it the that personal only a assume to They belongs collection. it as sure provenance, be its cannot of also Experts museum. the with said society,” with but and man ideology with the do to nothing has which human-lik a fi depict could “It legs. to stumpy leading belly, neck round long markedly and a nose pointed BC. a 5,000 has about It Neolithic, it late as the tools, from metal dates of benefit the without granite, (36cm) 14in The show. museum the in temporary a ex of part Athens, in Museum statuette ex enigmatic an March, 26 Until IT? 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Dec 23 om, i rmthe from him s Tu ye aw ks iyof city rkish r, adMorelli. said ars,” nsfrom ings ex “C eiinto pedition av t a of e Ke Te . bir pe . MARCO MORELLI Bill the Bard’s rhapsody is almost verbatim from Plutarch (Antony, ch26), endorsing the Classi Cal common view that the biographer was his prime source for the Roman plays. Hannibal was more practical-minded, despite his Roman biographer (chs10-1) CORNeR Cornelius Nepos’s moral qualms, defeating the armada of King Eumenes of Pergamum by catapulting into his flagship clay pots containing live poisonous snakes. FORTEANA FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD COMPILED BY BARRY BALDWIN Around AD 150, Lucian (The Ship) left an excited account of the giant grain carrier Isis that he’d just seen docked at Athens’s 210: all shipshape Piræus. He expatiates on its size (180ft x 45ft x 44ft), its tonnage (c. 12,000, capable of transporting an entire years’ worth of grain “No one ever went to Hell in a black ship” His aforementioned monster was an to Attica), its scarlet sail, gilded prow, the – Homer attempt to out-godzilla the good ship name Isis elaborately painted on, with a crew Jehovah, wearing his naval architect’s Syracusia, designed (c. 240 BC) for King the size of an army – “all relying on one little hat, gave (Genesis 6-9) Noah a very specific Hieron II by Archimedes, taking time off man steering with a broomstick-like tiller.” DIY ark-building set of instructions: build a from his much-disputed burning of Roman When not shagging his three sisters or vessel of gopher wood, smeared inside and ships’ sails by gigantic refracting mirrors designating his racehorse Consul, Caligula out with pitch, with three decks and inside and shouting ‘Eureka’ – Greek for “I’ve amused himself with his pleasure boats on compartments, an entrance on the side, 300 found my rubber duckie” – in his bathtub. Lake Nemi. Rediscovered in 1929 (burnt cubits long, 50 cubits wide, 30 cubits high Athenæus (chs206d-209e) categorises the in 1944), with Mussolini taking a keen and with a roof finished to a cubit upwards – a details. Cargo capacity almost 2,000 tons, doubtless envious interest, Suetonius’s cubit was measured from elbow to finger- space for 1,942 passengers, 200 soldiers, biography (ch37 para2) has this awestruck tips, hence of variable length. A fair-sized and a catapult. As Noah’s Ark, it was pitch- description: “Ten banks of oars, jewelled hulk. But, just how did he get all those coated, reinforced with horsehair, praised sterns, multi-coloured sails, enormous animals in? – We won’t go into the question by modern experts – cf. Lionel Casson’s bathrooms, banquet-halls, colonnades, even of disposal of bladder and bowel effluvia. Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World profuse vines and fruit-trees, that he might Unless we reckon the Ark to have been an (1971) as earliest example of pro-active anti- feast amid songs and merriment along the aquatic proto-Tardis. fouling technology. Every detail was the last Campanian shore.” After all, Noah was (Genesis 7.6) 600 word in luxury. Apart from opulent cabins, In AD 59, Nero decided to bump off years old, an ancient mariner by terrestrial passenger amenities included a flowered, Agrippina the Queen Mum. Since she was standards, average for a Time-Lord. Cries out canopied deck, gymnasium, hot-water pool, long fortified against poison by a diet of for a mini-series with resurrected William and (a touch of Swan Hellenic Cruises, if not antidotes, the plan was to sink her in a Hartnell. Meanwhile, we must make do with the Titanic) a library and mosaics depicting collapsible boat – he and mistress Poppæa periodically reported sightings of the vessel the entire Iliad. Also (again) a masterpiece got the idea from a theatrical show – there on Mount Ararat – talking Turkey here, we of futility: it sailed only once, then dry- was also a Greek precedent. As described by ark-eologists [see FT44:14-15, 54:27, 74:47, docked, clocking up immeasurably less Tacitus (Annals, bk14 chs 4-8), the scheme 120:34-39, 139:66, 152:34-39, etc] furlongs than our naval Queens Elizabeth & was a total clap-out; cf. Alexis Dawson’s Demetrius ‘Poliorketes’ (337-283 BC) – Mary. hilarious ‘Whatever Happened to Lady his nickname means ‘Besieger of Cities’, not “ The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d Agrippina?’ Classical Journal 64, 1969, ‘Taker’, was the first to deploy ships with 15 throne, 251-67.The supposedly doomed vessel or 16 banks of oars (Plutarch, Demetrius, Burned on the water: the poop was beaten failed to telescope – only Agrippina’s cabin chs43 paras4-5). Or does this means 15/16 gold; ceiling fell in, crushing a male companion, rowers per? Debate continues – a case of Purple the sails, and so perfumed that and no one remembered she was a strong either/oar? The winds were lovesick with them; the swimmer, making it through the calm (hardly They worked, unlike the monster oars were silver, ideal for staging a fake shipwreck) Bay of (Plutarch subjoins) constructed by Ptolemy Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke... Naples to her villa where she was presently Philopator (r. 221-205 BC): 40 banks of she did lie slaughtered by a military SWAT team. oars, 280 cubits long, 48 cubits high to top In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold, of tissue... “Every shipwreck brings out of stern, propelled by 4,000 rowers, also (Antony & Cleopatra, Act 2 Scene 2) merrymakers” – Fort, Books, p636. carrying 400 extra sailors and 3,000 soldiers. But, gibes Plutarch, the thing was merely for show, being unable to move. Another uselessly large vessel was the flagship of PhilipV of Macedon, which after their victory the Romans insultingly allowed him to keep, confiscating his other ships (Polybius, Histories, bk18 ch44 para6) – could add a verse here to John Masefield’s ‘Cargoes’. Philopator also had built (Athenæus, Learned Men at Dinner, chs20e-206c) a pleasure boat, likened by some moderns to an oversized catamaran, luxurious enough to satisfy the most exigent Russian oligarch, with its ample dimensions, luxurious cabins and suites and purple sails – outdoing the hues in that classic ditty ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’ – and fitted out for maritime orgies – one visualises navel engagements without ABOVE: Mussolini admires one of Caligula’s pleasure boats, rediscovered in Italy’s Lake Nemi in 1929. loss of semen.

FT352 15 www.forteantimes.com TTINSON GHostWatcH PA MATT

aLan MUrDie attends a conference examining the ghostly dimensions of human illness

LEFT: The Renaissance poet Tasso believed that he a sickness of spirit could communicate with spirits; others wondered For thousands of years different cultures whether he was insane or feigning madness. around the world have believed in a psychic, and often specifically ghostly, dimension to human illness and suffering. The belief spirit attachments. that sickness and misfortune are caused by In summary, Dr Furlong’s position is discarnate entities – and the corresponding that humans are spiritual beings, each idea that symptoms can be relieved by possessing a spirit which has chosen to be spiritual means such as prayer, ritual or incarnated, and enjoying an inner mental exorcism – are universal notions that can be world every bit as vast as the outer one. As traced back for millennia (see for example a result of trauma – which may occur in this Magico-Medical Means of Treating Ghost- life or in previous incarnations – part of the Induced Illnesses in Ancient Mesopotamia, personal spirit can split and fragment into 2012, by JoAnn Scurlock). a multitude of sub-personalities (although a Equally, doubts concerning such beliefs soul or higher self simultaneously remains). have been ventilated for centuries. Whilst These damaged sub-personalities may the Renaissance Italian poet Tasso (1544- attract negative attention from discarnate 1595) was convinced he spoke with spirits, spirits or ‘dark energies’. The role of the baffling his friend Manso, others variously spiritual healer is to re-integrate these

labelled Tasso as an insane genius, love-sick, fragments, through hypnosis, therapy n ARCHIVE / GETTy IMAGES a victim of oppression or simply one feigning and spiritual techniques. This may involve TO madness (see Torquato Tasso: A Study of extensive courses of therapy, one extreme HUL the Poet and of his Contribution to English case requiring 200 sessions to remove spirit Literature, 1965, by CP Brand). THE MATERIALIST attachments. Since the end of the 18th century, Concerning the symptoms caused by Western medicine has increasingly rejected CONCEIT WAS external entities and affecting their chances any doctrine of spirits. Orthodox medicine of recovery, the patient retains a degree of and psychiatry operate from a presumption QUESTIONED AT choice. Dr Furlong also spoke of the added that both body and brain lack any spiritual effects of the patients’ chakras and of or mental component relevant to either THE CONFERENCE angelic influences, incorporating ideas from treating illness or its causation. To this purely Eastern and Western religious traditions. materialist dogma early psychology, Freudian Thus he presented a complex model of psychoanalysis and psychical research all homes are reported as ‘haunted’. the personality as subject to physical-mental- mounted varying degrees of challenge and The conference opened with a recognition spiritual interactions. In advancing such resistance. of how commonplace reports of experiences hypotheses, he is not alone; a handful of This same materialist conceit was of ghosts remain in developed societies, psychiatrists in the UK and USA such as Dr openly questioned at an interesting one- with the first session delivered by Dr Erlendur Alan Sanderson and psychologists such as day conference “Spirit Influence on Mental Haraldsson, a psychologist from Iceland and Tom Zisner have publicly endorsed similar Health: Is ‘spirit’ intrusion an important a veteran psychical researcher. He cited ideas and have written about them. (See overlooked contribution in hallucinatory the European Human Values Study (1980- Soul-Centred Healing, 2011, by Tom Zisner). disorders?” on 4 February 2017. Held at 1983), which found that up to a third of But these ideas are certainly unsupported Regent’s University, London, it attracted the population in some Western countries and contradict existing standard scientific some 90 attendees, being organised by the believe they have been in touch with a models. Spirit Release Forum, which has the avowed deceased person, with a European average Complicating matters, an alternative aim of “helping individuals find spiritual, of 25 per cent. Comparing results with earlier spiritual model was presented by the mental, emotional and physical well-being surveys commencing from the Society for next speaker, Mike Williams, a practising through an understanding of how spirit/soul Psychical Research’s monumental collection medium for 35 years. He specialises in consciousness operates through the body”. Phantasms of the Living (1886) vols 1 & 2, clearing haunted houses and helping people It brought together a range of speakers to patterns appear suggesting that individuals hearing voices, work detailed in his book consider ideas that are controversial – to who make their post-mortem presence felt Schizophrenia or Spirit Possession (2014). put it mildly. As Guy Playfair wrote in the are statistically more likely to have suffered a He maintains that spirit attachment causing context of the Enfield Poltergeist: “Mention of violent or unexpected death (e.g. in murders, distress and illness is a reality and provides spirits invariably polarises people into either suicides and accidents). Dr Haraldsson also a better model than many conventional ones fanatical believers or total sceptics” (in This spoke on research findings into reincarnation for explaining schizophrenia (or at least House is Haunted, 1980 + 2013). in non-Western nations going back to the patients labelled as schizophrenic). However, Attending this conference, I was 1970s. he departs substantially from the model particularly interested in the approach to The next speaker, Dr David Furlong, presented by Dr Furlong, advancing a rather evidence. Having worked professionally for diverged greatly from this straightforward traditional view of the spirit world, envisaging many years as an advocate in cases before presentation of parapsychological data, spirits of the deceased lingering in an courts and tribunals where an assessment of taking proceedings onto a wholly different afterlife dimension interconnecting with the the physical or mental health of individuals is level with an outline of his beliefs as a material world, before translating to Heaven. an issue, I am aware of the many difficulties practising spiritual healer. A co-organiser of The goal of mediums such as himself is to in achieving a correct diagnosis or verdict. the conference, at the outset he pointed out ensure transition of these spirits, whereupon From a psychical research perspective, when he is not a medical doctor (he is actually an the physical or mental symptoms afflicting considering claims of the paranormal, I have expert in town planning and architecture), the living person disappear. He rejects long considered that the health of witnesses but he speaks from direct experience as a reincarnation. and their families can be very important when spiritual healer, ridding patients of unwanted My question to both speakers was to what

16 FT352 www.forteantimes.com AnA / AFP / GETTy IMAGES Ay TSy VA MAnAn

ABOVE:A young Indian woman believed to be possessed by evil spirits goes into a state of trance at the 650-year-old shrine of Sufi Saint Hazrat Shahdana Wali.

extent they examined the medical history Existing conditions may also be of such claims. of clients prior to applying their techniques. exacerbated where a patient actually Looking back to the 1970s, past life Both stated that as a rule they do not experiences genuinely paranormal events, regression through hypnosis promoted explore the pre-existing medical history. e.g. incidents of spontaneous telepathy, by Arnold Bloxham (see More Lives Than This struck me as a diagnostic weakness rapping sounds or object movements One? 1977, by Jeffrey Iverson) provides a for both proposed therapeutic approaches. themselves possibly symptoms of underlying further precedent for doubting such claims. Long-standing experience with psychological distress or Unfortunately, no corroboration for these often haunted properties indicates illness (see The Paranormal vividly recalled past lives was obtainable from that conventional medical or and the Recognition of historical records. psychological explanations lay Personal Distress, 1981, by Furthermore, the generation of false behind some manifestations James F McHarg, Journal of memories by patients undergoing therapy is rather than discarnate the SPR vol 51 200-209). a problem dating back to the early days of entities. Sometimes it can However, their origins may psychoanalytic treatments pioneered by Freud be as straightforward as a lie in the unconscious mind in Vienna in the 1890s. Again, precedents person hallucinating from of the individual rather than may be found more recently with the serious excessive medication, the discarnate influence. problems and social panics that arose ghosts vanishing once a more Following lunch, the during the 1980s and 1990s with allegations moderate dosage is achieved. conference received the of childhood sexual abuse founded upon neurological disorders, testimony of an individual questionable and spurious recovered memory imagination, neurosis and currently undergoing spirit techniques, often involving hypnosis. These drug addiction may all be release therapy, who framed techniques contributed to many unfounded causes. personal experiences in allegations of organised ritual abuse and Moreover, whilst not terms of entities, dark energy also fuelled then fashionable claims of alien subscribing to psychosocial and curses accumulated abduction. theories that attempt to both in this life and in past nonetheless, it became apparent ascribe all cases of unusual illness or psychic incarnations, spread over nearly 1,500 during discussions that some members phenomena to iatrogenic diseases (basically years. Unfortunately, no independent proof of the audience readily accepted the ailments caused by the doctor, therapist or of these past lives, curses or traumas was serial reincarnation model, both practising healer themselves), I believe some alleged provided outside supposedly recovered serial hypnotherapists and troubled individuals hauntings are triggered purely by suggestion. reincarnation memories and a personal actually undergoing therapy for presumed negligent and reckless pronouncements of conviction of being subjected to numerous spirit attachments. Listening to some of psychics and mediums can result in what curses in this life. Inevitably, such a deficiency the latter, I felt that at the stage they had have been dubbed ‘ersatz poltergeists’ or of evidence and corroboration engenders reached it would be prudent not to express ‘phoneygeists’. caution and precludes uncritical acceptance any point of view at the conference. Discourse

FT352 17 www.forteantimes.com ABOVE LEFT: Dr Terence Palmer, a hypnotherapist and practitioner of spirit release therapy. ABOVE RIGHT: newspaper coverage of the tragic case of Michael Taylor, a mentally ill man who brutally murdered his wife after undergoing an exorcism in 1974.

veered on to the question of supposed pacts had recklessly dabbled in occult practices Whatever view one takes of these topics, and contracts that might be formed with or dallied with ouija boards and methods of more research in this field to increase discarnate spirits and dark forces and how channelling. knowledge is undoubtedly welcome. Firstly, it these could be nullified and voided in therapy. This fundamentally more cautious is clear that current orthodox psychiatric and This had echoes of even earlier and historic approach reflects the stance of the Church of medical techniques do not provide solutions social panics, including the pacts of sorcerers England since the 1970s after an exorcism to many mental health conditions and even found in the fantasies of witch-finders in the of a mentally ill man in Leeds in 1974 struggle to adequately define many of them 16th and 17th centuries and later inspiration contributed to the brutal homicide of his (see Introduction to Psychopathology, 2000, for the mid-20th century black magic fiction wife in an insane frenzy (see FT313:36-38). by Alexandra Lemma). This is reflected by of Dennis Wheatley. Today, ‘dark energy’ has Committed to a mental hospital for life, he the unfortunate failure of standard clinical substituted a personified Devil as the other was released after four years of conventional approaches in achieving measurable party forming these alleged soul-threatening psychiatric treatment. The lesson learnt (or improvements for a substantial number of bargains. re-enforced) was that irresponsible exorcisms patients with symptoms. More widely, it struck me that many of can inflict more harm and damage on Secondly, regardless of the resolutely the critiques raised concerning conventional patients than the condition they supposedly materialist and secular stance of modern psychotherapy and its sometimes exotic cure. (For a careful and sober discussion of medicine, supernatural beliefs remain an variants (e.g. Arthur Janov’s still current issues, see Deliverance: Psychic Disturbance infectious social reality. Such beliefs are primal scream therapy, where patients are and Occult Involvement, 1996 + 2012, by increasingly appearing in cases examined encouraged ‘to scream their little heads off’ Michael Perry). not only in the psychiatric ward or clinic to cite the rather dismissive view of Robert A The final session of the day was a talk by but also in the courtroom. In the 10 days Baker Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions Dr Terence Palmer, who holds a degree in after the conference, the following were all from Within, 1996) were applicable here. psychology from Canterbury Christ Church reported: an imprisoned 50-year-old devil The fact a patient undergoes a strange University and a master’s degree in the study worshipper committing suicide after his experience does not in itself validate the of mysticism and religious experience from conviction for strangling his policeman lover; explanation or interpretation offered for it, Kent University. A hypnotherapist for 20 years a schizophrenic Muslim teenager who fatally whether by the patient or the therapist. What and a spirit release practitioner for 12 years, stabbed one person and slashed five others for the patient, the psychoanalyst or the he was the first person to receive a doctorate who told a psychiatrist someone had “put shaman may be true on a symbolic mental for research into spirit release therapy for spirits in him”; and police reporting a “sharp level is not necessarily true in any objective his thesis, A Revised Epistemology for an rise in witchcraft used against children” in sense. Psychical research initially reacted Understanding of Spirit Release Therapy in abuse cases. (D.Mail, 6+7 Feb; D.Telegraph, against the materialism that identified the Accordance with the conceptual Framework 13 Feb 2017). These are not isolated body with the real person; but it is equally of F.W.H. Myers. He outlined a model for examples, and given such a context, it is questionable to simply substitute words such practical spirit release therapy which he hard to uphold simply dogmatic opposition as ‘soul’, ‘spirit’ and ‘energy’ and conclude explained had recently been applied in the to the prospect of a new line of therapeutic that they provide a key to understanding case of an ex-serviceman who had suffered research (providing, of course that studies complex and challenging psychological and hearing voices for over 20 years, whom are conducted seriously, ethically and within psychiatric conditions. conventional psychiatric techniques had recognised research parameters). The next speaker, Dr David McDonald, failed to relieve. This technique had produced However, we should not imagine that took an altogether more cautious and an almost instantaneous cure. Details have paranormal experiences are a monopoly conventional approach. A consultant not yet been published but a film record has of the psychologically abnormal and those psychiatrist specialising in child mental health been made of the process. He announced suffering mental illness. Any study should and a member of the Church of England that a research project to further test this also recognise that the majority of psychic Deliverance Study Group, he cited cases approach had been initiated, aiming to put experiences are reported by people who are where an awareness of spiritual factors was the subject and its reputation onto a firmer healthy, normal and balanced and often find an element in the successful resolution of scientific footing. In essence, his argument them a positive feature in their lives. In this mental disorders occurring in children and is that the efficacy of spirit release should regard, positive experiences of psi effects in adolescents. These suggested a psychic be judged from the results, which can be healthy humans and animals will also have element, including instances where someone objectively assessed. much to tell us.

18 FT352 www.forteantimes.com

strangedays

Russian monarchists plan the Romanovs’ MODERN IMPERIALISTS return; German nationalists rewrite history.

of land “twice as big as the Vatican”; but the latest proposal is being seriously considered by authorities in Kiribati, a series of 33 coral atolls roughly halfway between Hawaii and Australia. The low-lying nation faces an uncertain future due to rising sea levels and has been seeking fresh sources of income, as well as potential places of refuge for some of its 107,000 citizens whose homes and livelihoods are under threat. Kiribati’s government said its foreign investment commission was considering Bakov’s proposal. Former Kiribati president Teburoro Tito said the plan could bring much-needed investment kov ba and turn the nation into a remote island tourist attraction akin to anton ABOVE: anton bakov (l) and Prince karl Emich of Leiningen (r) are planning to restore the pre-1917 Russian monarchy. BELOW: neo-nazi the Maldives. Bakov is ambitious: druid burghard b. FACING PAGE: Peter Fitzek, self-proclaimed “king” of the Reich citizen movement, on trial for fraud in Germany. “We are planning to construct air and sea ports, solar power RoMANoV EMPIRE stations, freshwater plants, RESToRED? hospitals, schools and settlements A Russian human rights activist is for the employees,” he said. seeking to buy three uninhabited “The main economic objects of islands in the remote south Pacific the islands will be eco-friendly nation of Kiribati to restore the hotels and fish processing plants. Romanov Empire and create an We would also develop tropical “alternative Russia”. Businessman agriculture and Russian Imperial Anton Alekseyevich Bakov, 51, a University.” However, some former Russian MP and founder academics are urging caution. of Russia’s monarchist party, Dr Sitiveni Halapua, a Pacific visited the tiny nation in late development specialist, told January after he was invited there Radio New Zealand that he finds to discuss his plan to purchase or Bakov’s plans “very strange” and lease three uninhabited islands – “scary”. Others have suggested Malden, Starbuck and Caroline. Bakov’s unstated aim is to create He has proposed creating the a tax haven. BBC News, 30 Jan; capital of the new Russian nation D.Telegraph, 31 Jan; Guardian, 7 on Malden Island, an empty coral Feb 2017. atoll, where he says he plans to invest £280 million on resorts. GERMAN IMPERIAL CITIZENS Bakov, self-styled “Archchancellor Meanwhile in Germany, there of the Imperial Throne” wants of the Russian throne but also a is a tiny but growing movement Prince Karl Emich of Leiningen, Bakov plans great number of Russian patriots of “imperial citizens”, which a 64-year-old German great great who are not happy with Putin’s appears more sinister than grandson of Tsar Alexander II, to to purchase regime and would like to have Bakov’s project. The so-called restore the monarchy overthrown their revival of Romanov’s empire Reichsbürger are convinced that in 1917 and accede as Tsar three islands in visible – as an alternative Russia,” the Federal Republic of Germany Nicholas III. (It might be relevant he said. doesn’t exist. In its place the that Bakov was born and still lives remote Kiribati Bakov has previously old German Empire endures, in Yekaterinberg, where Nicholas made attempts to restore the which in their telling was never II and his family were murdered.) monarchy in the Cook Islands, properly abolished and persists Visiting Kiribati with his backing of a large number of a south Pacific country in free in the borders of either 1871 or wife Maria, who acted as an Russians who were dissatisfied association with New Zealand, 1937. There are nearly as many interpreter, Bakov said the with Vladimir Putin. “This is and in Montenegro – where he lines of pseudo-legal reasoning idea for the restoration had the the desire not only of the heir bought a 80ha (198-acre) plot as adherents. One rests on the

20 Ft352 www.forteantimes.com Mythconceptions by Mat Coward 210: PUSHING THE BUTTON

fact that the Allies never signed several hundred identified a peace treaty with Germany in each. Worried about a rise after World War II. Another cites in incidents, a think-tank in selectively from a decision by Brandenburg recently published Germany’s supreme court in 1973 a handbook for bureaucrats regarding an agreement between dealing with Reichsbürger. West and East Germany. The The best approach, it advises, upshot, say Reichsbürger, is that is to avoid responding at all. the Federal Republic is really a Typically, a Reichsbürger will limited-liability company based only deluge a bureaucracy with in Frankfurt and controlled by a verbose letters studded with Jewish world government based obscure citations. Others get in America. aggressive. Some 20 interrupted To the Reichsbürger the FRG’s a trial this year and tried to police, judges, laws and tax “arrest” the judge. The first case agencies thus have no authority, of armed violence occurred in and its documents carry no October. Wolfgang P. , a hunter weight. At a traffic stop, say, a in Bavaria, had outed himself ILLustRatIons: hunt EmERson Reichsbürger will overwhelm as a Reichsbürger in the course The myth the (usually puzzled) police of disobeying local authorities. with references to phony legal When officers approached his the button you push at a pedestrian crossing, to turn the little man paragraphs and treaties while house to confiscate his rifles, he from red to green, has no effect – it is a “placebo button”, conning producing a driver’s licence or opened fire from the upper, floor you into thinking that you control your destiny. or, if you prefer: that other identification issued by injuring several and killing one. button does indeed turn the little man green, and to believe otherwise the Empire. The insignia vary Locals told the press that the is a paranoid delusion. because it is not clear even to 49-year-old was a loner raised by the Reichsbürger who the true his grandmother, whose death imperial government-in-waiting had apparently unhinged him. The “truth” is. There are about 30 rival Peter Fitzek, a Reichsbürger Well, how about that: it seems that both the conspiracy theorists and imperial chancellors, several who claimed to have set up the the sceptical debunkers are wrong. In britain, some of the buttons princes and at least one king (see “Kingdom of New Germany” with work, some of them don’t, and some of them sometimes do and below). One of the chancellors, himself as king, faced charges sometimes don’t. the basic idea is simple: traffic lights work on cycles a man named Norbert Schittke, last October of embezzling 1.3 which can be temporarily interrupted by pressing the pedestrian button also claims the English throne. million euros from his “subjects”, to allow foot-traffic to cross busy roads. In many places, especially Though they draw ridicule who had deposited money in where there’s no road junction involved, this is exactly what happens. even from neo-Nazis, the accounts at his bank. In January, at some crossings, the lights are uninfluenced by the pedestrian Reichsbürger are considered another prominent Reichsbürger buttons, which exist for the sake of design consistency, and perhaps part of the extreme right. Many was arrested for allegedly to discourage jaywalking (which is legal in Gb, though not in northern (though not all) are racist and hoarding weapons. Burghard Ireland). at others, the button has an effect only between certain anti-immigrant. Most are male B, 65, a bearded neo-Nazi from hours, usually at night when there is less traffic. there are also some and live in rural areas. Of the Saxony-Anhalt, resembles sites, usually where walkers are trying to cross two roads at once, four regions that monitor their Gandalf as he dresses as a druid, where it is actually necessary to press the button – otherwise the numbers, Brandenburg and carrying a tribal spear. Guardian, system will miss out the pedestrian stage of the cycle altogether. In other words, people who resolutely refuse to press the stupid buttons, Thuringia, both in eastern D.Telegraph, 22 Oct; Economist, 12 because they’re damned if they’re going to be made mugs of, could Germany, have the most, with Nov 2016; Metro, 31 Jan 2017. literally be standing there waiting for the light to change for the rest of their lives.

Sources http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23869955; http://www.traffic-signal-design.com/pedestrian_facilities.htm

Disclaimer If you are privy to the occult knowledge of the buttons, please feel free to condemn, correct or amplify our findings via Ft’s letters. page

Mythchaser the above raises an obvious question: which other buttons, which we are invited to press during our daily rounds, don’t really do anything? JEns schLuEtER / GEtty ImaGEs

Ft352 21 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

Russian deep sea fisherman’s catch includes creature something fishy plucked from the pages of a mediæval bestiary roman fedortsov

ABOVE LEFT: the bishop fish or sea bishop was described in Gesner’s Historiæ animalium. ABOVE RIGHT: the strange fish caught by russian fisherman roman fedortsov last year.

This photograph of a fish extended rough hewn brow, it to its natural habitat, and included a picture of a bishop resembling the bishop fish which reportedly resembles eventually he agreed. Once set fish in his Libri de piscibus of mediæval bestiaries was a bishop’s mitre; hence the free, the grateful creature made marinis (1554-55), stated: published in the English- creature’s name. There was a the sign of the cross before “I think that certain details language Moscow Times last curious mediæval belief that plunging into the ocean depths. beyond the truth of the matter December. It was caught by every creature in the air or on In 1531 a bishop fish was have been added by the painter Roman Fedortsov, a deep-sea the earth had its double in the caught off the German coast, but to make the thing seem more fisherman based in Murmansk. sea. it refused to eat and died after marvellous.” Some researchers In the 1990s Turkish fishermen The existence of bishop three days. It was described and believe that the bishop fish yma caught a fish with dyrud fish was first documented in pictured in the fourth volume be a kind of deformed manta pigmentation and vaguely 1433, when a specimen was of Conrad Gesner’s famous ray, whose features bear some humanoid features that bore found swimming in the Baltic. Historiæ animalium (1551- slight semblance to those of a a striking similarity to the old It was captured and given to 58). Later, a “strange looking man. Those who subscribe to descriptions of bishop fish. the King of Poland, who was so fish” described as “a peaceful this theory claim that a ray’s According to marine folklore, taken by his new prize that he creature that appeared to have “wings” could create the illusion the bishop fish or sea bishop is a refused to return it to the sea. A the mitre of a bishop” was of the cape-like appendage large creature with a scaly, fish- group of Catholic bishops were caught in the Atlantic off the attributed to these creatures. shaped body, claw-like flippers granted an audience with the British coast. It perished soon The debate continues whether and a large fin, which it can creature. The story goes that afterward, and its corpse was bishop fish are some kind of wrap around itself in a fashion the fish gestured to the bishops, returned to the sea. anomalous variety of known that resembles a clergyman’s apparently communicating Scholars were always sceptical marine life or an altogether new cloak. Its skull, said to appear its desire to be released. The of this strange fish. Guillaume species. Cryptopia, 15 Dec 2009; almost humanoid, bears an bishops urged the king to return Rondelet, for example, who gizmodo.com, 20 Dec 2016.

22 ft352 www.forteantimes.com ALIEN ZOO Karl ShuKer presents his regular round-up from the cryptozoological garden N PENGFEI UIC SCIENCE FA

ABOVE LEFT: The huge skull nicknamed ‘The Old One’ (left), with modern polar bear skulls at right. ABOVE RIGHT: The newly-discovered but already endangered Skywalker hoolock gibbon. BELOW: This previously undescribed species of opossum was first found as a museum specimen before being tracked down alive and well. inBrazil

A WEASEL BEAR’S SKULL? A FUNKY NEW GIBBON postgraduate biology student Silvia Pavan was According to the traditional legends and lore It’s not every day that a new species of intrigued by an unidentified rat-sized opossum of native hunters in Arctic Canada, in addition ape is scientifically described and named. skin with noticeably rich mahogany-coloured fur to the normal polar bear there is a very special Dubbed the Skywalker hoolock gibbon (yes, and a red head. She sought further specimens variety that is much bigger, but narrow-bodied, its discoverers are Star Wars fans), but known in other museums and discovered several, and fleeter-footed. They call it the tiriarnaq or formally as Hoolock tianxing, this brown-furred, none of which had been formally identified tigiaqpak, names that translate as the weasel white-eyebrowed denizen of rainforests within either. Some of her colleagues then travelled bear, on account of its lithe build and speedy Gaoligongshan nature reserve in southwestern to the source of these specimens – Itaituba I pace. Although scientists working in this region China’s Yunnan province had been the subject National Forest in Pará, Brazil – and succeeded have known about the local hunters’ belief in of primatological studies for some time. in capturing some living individuals using a the weasel bear, they always dismissed it as However, it had not been recognised as a series of humane pitfall traps. mythical – until the recent public revelation species in its own right, taxonomically separate After subjecting these examples to a full that in 2014 a discovery was made here of a from both of the two previously recognised study, Pavan and her colleagues confirmed very unusual zoological specimen that may hoolock species, until a research team led by that they represented a hitherto-undescribed just conceivably represent tangible evidence Fan Peng-Fei from China’s Sun Yat-sen University species of short-tailed opossum, which for the weasel bear’s reality. Approximately began to suspect that subtle differences in they have now officially named the gnome 650-800 years old and thus earning for its its facial markings might indicate this. Their opossum Monodelphis saci – the saci being erstwhile owner the nickname ‘The Old One’, suspicions were confirmed when comparative a magical gnome-like entity from Brazilian the specimen was recovered from an eroding genetic and morphological analyses with folklore that wears a red cap, and which this archæological site southwest of Utqiagvik, other gibbon species were conducted. Also new red-headed opossum brought to mind. Alaska. It consisted of an exceptionally large, existing in neighbouring Myanmar, this newly Ironically, it appears to be widely distributed in fully intact, but very odd-shaped polar bear skull, revealed species is apparently represented four different Brazilian states, despite its very noticeably different from modern polar bear by no more than around 200 individuals, so it existence having been recognised by science skulls. Despite its huge size, it was slender, should be officially categorised as endangered, so belatedly. elongated at the rear end, and exhibited especially as its continuing existence is already http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/ unusual structural features around the nasal threatened by habitat loss. gnome-marsupial-new-species-brazil/ 23 Feb area and elsewhere. The significance of its www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/ 2017. distinctive appearance will require genetic and jan/11/new-species-of- detailed morphological analyses before any gibbon-discovered-in-china answers are forthcoming. As noted by Anne 11 Jan 2017; http://www. Jensen, an Utqiagvik-based archæologist sci-news.com/biology/new- working for the science department of the species-skywalker-hoolock- Native village corporation UIC (Ukpeagvik Iñupiat gibbon-04533.html 13 Jan Corp.) who has been leading excavation and 2017. research programmes in the region, ‘The Old One’ may have belonged to a subspecies, or a A MAGICAL MARSUPIAL different genetic ‘race’, of polar bear – or was Another unexpected possibly something else entirely. In view of its mammalian discovery made skull’s narrow form, might this “something else recently is one that occurred entirely” have been the legendary weasel bear? not in a rainforest but inside www.adn.com/arctic/2017/02/19/could-a-giant- a museum. In 2008, while polar-bear-skull-found-at-an-eroding-alaska- browsing in the collections archaeological-site-be-the-legendary-weasel- of the Museu Paraense bear/ 21 Feb 2017. Emílio Goeldi in Belém, Brazil, AO MACIEL

FT352 23 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

This month, we say goodbye to an alumnus of Saturday Night Live who suffered from a NECROLOG rare delusional syndrome and record the lonely end of a nudist hermit and herbalist.

improved, thanks to anti-psychotic they’re telling us something very medication. After his release he profound about the need to be in was reunited with his wife and touch with our environment.” We continued to work in obscure TV are reminded of the Dark Age pillar and movie roles. He died of a saints of the desert. heart attack. Peter O’Neill, nudist hermit, born c. Antonio Rosato, actor and Capgras 1945; died Wicklow mountains, c. sufferer, born Naples, Italy 26 Dec Jan 2015, aged about 71. 1954; died Toronto, Ontario 10 Jan 2017, aged 62. JAmeS CROnin Brett taylor Cronin shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics with Val Fitch, for PeteR O’neiLL demonstrating that there was a

NK / GETTY IMAGES The body of Peter O’Neill (if that fl aw in the central belief held by BA was his real name) was found scientists almost since the time TO in his remote dwelling in the of Galileo: that the laws of physics Glenmalure Hills of Co Wicklow, are immutable. In the early 1960s NBCU PHO Ireland, on 8 May 2015 after a Cronin and Fitch investigated local hotel reported he had not unstable subatomic particles tOny ROSAtO ratings doldrums during Rosato’s come to collect his post in a while. called kaons (or K mesons). These Actor Tony Rosato is the only tenure, it is likely that the actor The hermit, who spoke with an have a lifetime of only fractions of famous person I’ve ever heard reached his widest audience with English accent, had lived alone in a second, but during that life they of to have suffered from Capgras his video game-related voiceovers, the Wicklow Mountains for more oscillate rapidly between kaons Delusion, the so-called Imposter providing the voice of Luigi in the than 20 years. He had built a hut and their antimatter counterpart, Syndrome [Ft123:14, 133:16, cartoon shows The Adventures where an old ruin once existed antikaons. Conventional wisdom 145:17 and p56-57 this issue]. of Super Mario Bros 3 and Super in the middle of the forest. “He predicted that they would undergo When the syndrome is mentioned, Mario World and a couple of was a wild-looking character but the same number of transitions the immediate response is to think characters in the Resident Evil he was clean-shaven, his hair in each direction, but in fact the of the movie Invasion of the Body 3 game. He did voices for a few was as if he cut it himself,” said transition from antikaon to kaon Snatchers, based on a Jack Finney dozen cartoon shows, including retired Garda Richard Galvin. “He occurred about half a per cent novel. Finney, explaining the book’s those spun off from movies like complained he had been hunted less frequently, thus violating origin in Stephen King’s Danse Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and out of everywhere.” He was a keen CP symmetry, a principle that Macabre, makes no mention Free Willy. herbalist, and spent much of his states that the laws of physics of being familiar with the real Rosato’s life took a bizarre turn time naked. He had been dead for should be the same if a particle is delusion, but he might well have in 2005, when he was arrested several months; his last diary entry interchanged with its antiparticle. heard about it from a budding after stalking his wife Leah and was for 18 January. He left behind Thus after the (hypothetical) Big medical student during his days their infant daughter. He had hundreds of letters and books, all Bang, antimatter decayed more at Knox College in Galesburg in previously contacted the police to accompanied by complex notes, rapidly than matter, leaving behind the Thirties. The syndrome also claim that his wife and daughter suggesting he was attempting the matter that constitutes the fi nds echoes in Shirley Jackson’s had been replaced by imposters. to fi nd some common thread. Universe rather than an infinite story “The Beautiful Stranger” and, In some instances the Capgras “He had questions of a religious void. Hallelujah! later, Charles Beaumont’s Twilight sufferer turns hostile or violent nature that he was trying to suss James Watson Cronin, physicist, Zone script “Person or Persons towards the person he believes out,” said Fr Oliver Crotty, a local born Chicago 29 Sept 1931; died Unknown”. Capgras Syndrome is to be an imposter. Such was parish priest. “I was amazed at St Paul, MN 25 Aug 2016, aged believed to have a biological basis, the case with Rosato. Though the sheer scale of his knowledge. 84. such as a lesion on the brain, obviously suffering from mental There are 37 other such men living possibly caused by some injury. illness, he was sent to Quinte in forests around Ireland. Maybe JOSePh B KeLLeR Rosato is best remembered in Detention Centre in Napanee for Joe Keller, Professor Emeritus his adopted homeland of Canada, two years, a judgement which of Mathematics and Mechanical where he appeared on the cop Daniel Brodsky described as the Engineering at Stanford, developed show Night Heat for four years in longest ever given for criminal mathematical formulæ to explain the late Eighties, winning a Gemini harassment in Canada. It is hard a wide range of contingencies, Award. Before that, he was one to imagine the toll that the trauma from the esoteric to the mundane. of a handful of actors to appear of living in prison would take on He was best known for his on both of the USA’s top satirical one who is suffering from such a Geometrical Theory of Diffraction, shows of the Eighties, SCTV and mental illness, and it is hard to a method for describing the Saturday Night Live (SNL). He had regard the sentence as anything propagation, scattering and two memorable roles on Michael other than cruel. diffraction of waves, especially O’Donoghue’s notorious Hallowe’en Rosato was confined to a as they bend around the edges episode of SNL, which introduced psychiatric hospital for 19 months, and corners of an obstacle. The punk rock to Middle America via and released in 2010. Happily, theory built on work he had done the band Fear. Since SNL was in his condition seems to have during and after World War II using

24 FT352 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

sonar to determine the presence and location of submarines and , underwater land mines. He developed and used a mathematical method of approximation known as “asymptotic analysis” to tackle problems that cannot be solved exactly, and applied it to predict behaviour throughout the domains of science. He figured out how to make a teapot spout that doesn’t drip, for which he was awarded the Ig Nobel prize for Physics in 1999; he won a second Ig Nobel in 2012 for identifying the physical forces that make a jogger’s ponytail swing horizontally even though the jogger is oscillating vertically. He also worked out how earthworms (but not snakes) can wriggle even on glass. Joseph Bishop Keller, mathematician, born Paterson, NJ 31 July 1923; died Palo Alto CA 7 Sept 2016, aged 93. Fairies, Folklore and Forteana Whitney Smith Whitney Smith turned a childhood Simon Young FiLES A nEW REPoRT FRom THE inTERFACE oF STRAngE PHEnomEnA AnD FoLK BELiEF fascination with flags into a scholarly discipline of which he was the leading light. Aged 18, he gave it white and sitting under a hedge playing a tiny a name: vexillology, from the Latin leprechaun hunts harp. for flag, vexillum. “Some of the kids It is April 1908. We are in County Down, Second, and most disturbingly, the thought I was weird,” he told People Ireland, in the townland of Killough and leprechaun was caught. On 12 August two magazine in 1985. “But to be 13 groups of boys are hunting for a leprechaun. policemen were summoned to a farmhouse at years old and literally the only person The story first broke in the newspapers around nearby Mullingar in West Meath, for a small in the Western world who knew what 20 April, and by then several locals had seen and ravenous man had been discovered there. the flag of Bhutan lookede, lik well, the “man of dwarfish proportions... clad in red, The ‘leprechaun’, who could not speak, was this was my world.” As a political with a small peaked cap” and escorted to the workhouse, science undergraduate at Harvard, he this curious being had caused where he was treated “with designed a flag for newly independent ‘the greatest excitement’. the interest mixed with awe” and Guyana. In 1961, with Gerhard Grahl, The excitement was not just children besieged the building he created the bimonthly Flag Bulletin, about an encounter with the leprechaun desperate to catch a glimpse. the first journal of its kind. A year later paranormal, but also depended Third, the press went mad. he founded the Flag Research Center, on baser motives: leprechauns, was spotted British newspapers sent a consulting firm that answered of course, give up their treasure their agents to try and get a inquiries from filmmakers, historians if captured. sitting under a photograph of the little man and and commercial flag makers. Now there are, as it happens, GK Chesterton wrote a lyrical He wrote the standard work, Flags several cases where groups of hedge playing piece for the Illustrated London Through the Ages and Across the boys have gone leprechaun mad News. At least the press went World (1975), and 26 other books and torn up an area looking for a tiny harp mad until it was discovered that on the subject. In 2011, the editors diminutive shoe makers: one the ‘leprechaun’ was mentally of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1938 from West Limerick ill and all too human. He had noted that he was their most prolific and another from Liverpool in left home in early August, two contributor, having written more 1964 [see FT299:26-32] – the last case possibly months after the leprechaun hunt had begun than 250 flag histories. Flags of a explained by Liverpool’s Irish roots. and he wasn’t even, it transpired, that small. kind date back at least 5,000 years; In itself, then, a leprechaun hunt in 1908 The ‘leprechaun’ was sold by his father for £10 Smith liked to cite an ancient Iranian in County Down is not that surprising. But to a freakshow in Glasgow and the story sank one, made from copper. However, he some of the twists that followed are absolutely into local folklore. The fairyist Evans-Wentz argued that their modern significance unique. For one thing, the leprechaun hunters found the countryside alive with leprechaun started with the 16th century Dutch kept at it. Twenty days later a journalist wrote: rumours when he passed through at the end revolt against Spain. For the first time “This week the little creature is reported to of the summer. One sceptical newspaper it was not a state or monarch being have made several appearances in the district, ventured that the leprechaun was nothing symbolised, but a people, a language, and these are much believed by the people... more than a spotted badger, the propensity a culture and a cause. On one occasion some of the children pursued for that creature to sit under hedges and play Whitney Smith Jr, vexillologist, born it to a moat hard by a churchyard, where harps being well known... Arlington, MA 26 Feb 1940; died it disappeared.” On another occasion the Simon Young writes on folklore and history Peabody, MA 17 Nov 2016, aged 76. leprechaun was spotted dressed, for once, in and runs www.fairyist.com

FT352 25 www.forteantimes.com the UFO files FORTEAN TIMES presents our monthly section featuring regular sighting reports, reviews of classic cases, entries on major ufological topics and hands-on advice for UFO investigators. The UFO Files will benefit from your input, so don’t hesitate to submit your suggestions and questions.

To contact The UFO Files, email: [email protected]

PETER BROOKESMITH PRESENTS HIS REGULAR FLYINGSAUCERY SURVEY OF THE LATEST FADS AND FLAPS FROM THE WORLD OF UFOLOGY

THERE IS NO SENSE IN TRYING to me as a ‘fictional entity’, ‘it’ and posting pivotal arguments in this infantile brouhaha “…but it’s all right, Ma – I’m only dying…” ‘Who the f—k is Isaac Koi and why won’t he was over that famous German 1950 April Ufology has a way of killing off some, even if comply w the standards we do?’). … Fools’ joke (for another from the same year, not all, of its brighter stars, who make fi ne “Even more worryingly to me, given my see p37), the photo of a little alien held by contributions to the subject and ere long concern not to have clients know about my two betrilbyed B-movie G-men in trench coats, depart in disgust. So the fi eld is left with a interest in ufology in case this adversely (below) which someone had whimsically collection of halfwits and buffoons who loudly affects my income, he has now posted today identified as coming from “the Cape lay claim to the Truth, but who curiously – after various people were kind enough to Girardeau, Missouri, UFO crash on April 12, enough fail to agree on almost everything support me in the relevant discussion on 1941”. The original of this doctored picture except that the aliens are here, and some of Facebook (including Edoardo Russo, Curt has long since been found, by the way. them come from Zeta Reticuli. Should you Collins, Rich Hoffman, Paul Dean and others) – Isaac’s great strength has been his doubt my words, read Robert Sheaffer’s Bad called those supporting me ‘little butt sucking sedulous persistence in tracking down and UFOs blog reports on the 2017 International followers’ and said ‘just watch how I make putting online archaic ufological newsletters, UFO Congress in Fountain Hills, Arizona. Part these malcontents famous anytime someone journals and magazines, all with copyright of his bad news is that the bar was intolerably searches their name’.” clearance, for all to view for free. Now, some expensive. Otherwise the gathering was Charming. Isaac posted a 100-odd page may think this a trifle nerdy, a facet of the treated to a collection of mostly has-beens document on his Facebook page and the philatelic tendency in the fi eld, and that his churning out the same old stuff they’ve been Above Top Secret (ATS) website with all the concern that knowledge of his interest might peddling for years, decades in some cases. grisly details you might require. For those adversely affect his appeal as a barrister is And bats they mostly are. (Comparisons with short of time, I commend Curt Collins’s a little overwrought. We don’t, for instance, noble members of the House of Lords should summary of the byzantine background to recall that Harry Harris, Mancunian solicitor be stoutly resisted.) Those attending were the case on his excellent website (www. and egregious devotee of our dreadful libel treated among other things to Col Charles blueblurrylines.com/2016/12/erica-lukes- laws, ever suffered from his promotion of Halt doing his Walter Mittyish shtick over ted-roe-and-attack-on-isaac.html). One of the questionable abduction cases. So Isaac’s Rendlesham, Stan Friedman (in)voluntary retirement is a loss, remorselessly oblivious to the especially to those of us who might debunking of the Fish star model not, without his efforts, have been (see FT242:50-52), someone able to appreciate, for example, else unmoved by all rational what a brilliant production UFO (and conclusively provable) Brigantia was – ufology as comedy, explanations of the Phoenix lights indeed. If ufology is to survive of 1997, and one Ted Roe, who – if only as comedy – it needs in the course of a self-regarding young guns to succeed the kind discourse remarked that in of superannuated sclerotics who ufology one must restrain those appeared in Arizona. Isaac was who “start attacking peoples’ one such new kid in town, doing image”. something worthwhile, and he will This is a bit rich coming from be much missed. He is survived by Roe, who late last year expended his website, and his many posts much energy dissing Isaac Koi for on ATS. operating under a pseudonym, and threatening to expose his SURPRISING SILENCE real identity. (Roe now denies I had thought that the discovery of doing any such thing, guffaw, and TRAPPIST-1, a dim star 40 million went on to accuse Koi of lacking light years away, with no less than integrity.) In early December seven rocky Earth-like planets an understandably upset Isaac circling it, one of which seems to be released this statement: a fi ne candidate for nurturing life in “Goodbye: I seem to have some form, would have the ETHers greatly annoyed Ted Roe about a squeaking with joy, and proclaiming month ago when I posted a brief it ‘proof’ of their ill-founded beliefs. comment on Facebook about his But one fi nds not a peep from the new IAUPR group. Without wanting usual suspects. I doubt this silence to bother you all with the details, has much to do with a sudden he has subsequently posted on access of knowledge or wisdom, so various Facebook pages attacking must be content with fi nding it odd, my use of a pseudonym (referring if mildly encouraging.

26 FT352 www.forteantimes.com JENNY RANDLES SUGGESTS IT’S TIME WE LOOKED UFO CASEBOOK AT THAT ‘FIVE PER CENT’ OF UNSOLVED UFO CASES

PROJECT FIVE PER CENT It was years ago, but stuck in his memory Early in January 2017 I received a UFO after he described it, over and over, to others report from my small Stockport community. as he added various features of the UFO A middle-aged woman was awoken in the ‘propulsion system’. It was pure chance that early hours by a strange noise – a deep this didn’t become another classic encounter humming mixed with a faint whirring – and in our bulging fi les, because I had followed a glowing light illuminating her bedroom. up other sightings of the same thing. This Looking outside, she could see that the witness had really seen a spectacular burn- object creating the glow – and, she inferred, up in the upper atmosphere when a piece of the sound – was hidden behind trees to the space junk in decaying orbit disintegrated. south, as if “something eerie” had landed. He did not know this and his understandable So far, so intriguing; but my suspicions grew certainty that he had seen a ‘spaceship’ as her story unfolded and she noted that she (which ironically he had!) meant he followed returned to bed, wishing it away, and the next the path of unintentionally evolving his thing she knew (I suspect after falling back to account into more than the sum of its parts. JENNY RANDLES sleep) both light and sound had disappeared. One close encounter that I investigated Over the 45 years that I have investigated Venus was makes this point well. On 21 October 1983, UFO cases I have heard many accounts a couple had been visiting their son in like this, and while I might have a possible close to Earth Shropshire before driving back to Cheshire. solution for many, some remain unsolved Around midnight, they saw a ‘UFO’ swoop mysteries that can easily grow into legends. towards their car and engage in a game of Here, that was not the case, because I and bright in cat and mouse, hugging the hedgerows. For quickly realised what the witness had seen. about 50 minutes the terror of this encounter I knew this because I had seen and heard it escalated as they were followed northwards. myself, but had been merely miffed because the winter sky The UFO beamed a light at them, but cast it woke me up. I had discovered its cause no shadow. Both witnesses were scared because I lived much nearer to the source and upset. One even suffered hypertension than she did: right next to the main line not, then we stand on shifting sands. afterwards. The man was a skilled engineer railway. The ‘UFO’, out of sight in a cutting, Over the years I have seen this happen in and both were 100 per cent sincere in was a group of engineers working on the too many otherwise baffling cases to dismiss describing what they saw to Jodrell Bank track overnight. They were using a large arc the argument, even if – we tell ourselves – space centre, which passed them on to me. light with a generator that emitted a hum as there really are some truly insoluble cases. The object this couple described was a described. It seems less disastrous to a fortean classic UFO with multiple lights. It could easily Although this case isn’t Earth-shattering, researcher, because the phenomenon itself have become an impressive case had I not it does reveal the social factors and pure and how society has then been changed by it suspected what they had seen and asked luck that can make the difference between is our focus: any cause is almost secondary. them: Did you see the Moon? Surprised, they a strange encounter being interpreted in But many ufologists have a deep need to said the night appeared moonlit, but they had a supernatural context or being resolved. uncover some extraordinary cause for at seen no Moon. Yet the Moon was almost full, Nobody who investigates fortean phenomena least a few of the events they investigate. and given the weather and the route taken should ignore what this means. It’s worth pondering how this influences the should have been spectacularly visible. If Ninety-five per cent of reports of something dissemination and understanding of evidence, you put two and two together you can make ‘weird’ are nothing of the kind: they are as investigator bias, albeit unconscious, can either a UFO or a baffling misperception of normal events fi ltered through some quirk be insidious. the Moon. The witnesses were sure it was of circumstance that makes them seem Dozens of UFO sightings were made during the former. I am more cautious, because I stranger than they really were. But they can January 2017 of a huge ‘starship’ hovering know that amazing things can be seen by grow into something that enters the personal in the south-western sky. The witnesses experienced witnesses; if they are thinking ‘folklore’ of a witness’s life to the extent that were not deluded, but were watching the ‘UFO’ rather than ‘Moon’, then that is what they retell the story over and over again. If, spectacular sight of Venus, close to Earth and they will see. as is frequently the case, the witness never exceptionally bright in the winter skies, as So did this UFO become an IFO? How many gets an answer, they go on to believe for the pictured above; and in the case of those with more of our unresolved fi ve per cent sit in rest of their days that they have joined the less than 20/20 vision they saw artefacts this ambiguous borderland, simply waiting ranks of those who have briefly touched the created by their eyes that made it mimic a for the right resolution? Perhaps we need a unfathomable. I suspect this is a template structured craft. Countless sightings result new study into the ‘Ones that Got Away’ to for how nearly all strange experiences evolve. when we are caught unawares by changes fi nd out. I propose that we put together a That 95 per cent of such experiences do in the night sky. We rarely understand how team of analysts with a range of expertise to have resolution – of a kind that the sincerely shapes and movements are the result of our explore a few of these most baffling cases. bemused witnesses making up the remaining less than perfect eyesight, not the ‘craft’ we We have new assets – such as the power fi ve per cent didn’t fi nd – should set alarm think we are seeing. and resources of the Internet and the ability bells ringing, yet it very rarely does. It leaves Numerous classic and widely promoted to instantly exchange ideas online. Perhaps an unspoken question that researchers tend cases have resulted from trained observers we can dig deeper into the fi ve per cent and to evade, as if it’s a terrible secret that must unaware of a natural event in the skies. The apply new knowledge and modern resources be kept lest it destroy their dreams: how do wave of ‘Flying Crosses’ that baffled many to currently unsolved cases. We should focus we know for sure that there really are fi ve per police forces in the 1960s and fi lled the on multiple witness events and define a cent of cases that are not like the other 95 national press is one example. There were Strangeness Factor based on researchable per cent? What if all those UFO cases are just no crosses in the sky: they were artefacts evidence that helps us choose the best the ones that got away in terms of fi nding created in the human eye. candidates to reinvestigate. If you think you resolution? The ones in which there was no Sometimes witnesses develop the can help such a “Project fi ve per cent” then lucky break allowing us to unpick the real narrative of what they saw into an art form. send an email to [email protected] and cause? Are we right to say that fi ve per cent I recall an excited witness who described a volunteer. Perhaps in a future issue we can of ‘unknowns’ will forever defy resolution? If spectacular space vehicle he had witnessed. report our fi rst conclusions.

FT352 27 www.forteantimes.com FortFoolery Forteana & april Fool Hoaxes

While gathering in this year’s spaghetti harvest, RoB gaNDy was struck by the fact that a signiﬁcant number of April Fool pranks over the decades have featured fortean themes – from fake UFOs to cryptozoological creatures – in their attempts to put one over on the public...

n 1 April each year people everywhere play simple tricks on family and friends so they can shout o“April Fool!”This has been handed down the generations, with children often encouraged by one parent to hoodwink the other with statements like “Look Mum there’s a fl ying saucer in the garden!” But how did this tradition begin? April Fools’ Day, or All Fools’ Day, has been celebrated for centuries by different cultures, but its exact origins are a mystery. Some historians speculate that it dates to 1582, when France switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar (see FT**:**): people who were slow or failed to recognise New Year had moved to 1 January, and continued to celebrate it from 25 March to 1 April, became the butt of jokes and hoaxes. Others link it to Hilaria, an ancient Roman festival celebrated at the end of March, which involved people dressing up in disguises. Whatever the truth, April Fools’ Day was celebrated throughout Britain from the 18th century. 1 Increasingly, over the 20th century, the popular media tested people’s credulity with April Fools’ Day hoaxes ranging from the subtle to the outlandish; many were bought hook, line and sinker. Some refl ected contemporary culture, but others involved strange creatures and scientific discoveries. I found myself wondering what proportion of April Fools’ pranks involved fortean

themes. Some lazy armchair research THinKGeeK identified the excellent Museum of Hoaxes website,2 which details “Wonderful stories contrived for the public from ancient times to the present day”, and lists “The Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time”. I analysed this list using “soft and slow” – as opposed to washed in the Tower of London’s moat (1698). “hard and fast” – fortean categorisation and allFools But I found 38 fortean-related hoaxes, which provide my analysis and some specifics below. I categorised into: Cryptozoology (9); Science The range of hoaxes is wide, and includes (13); UFOs/Space (4); Psychology (5); and non-fortean japes such as no-hole polo Day Has Been Miscellaneous (7); see panel. mints, the division of Belgium, and viagra for hamsters.They also include a 1983 video of CeleBrateD cRyPToZoology hoaxes a Boston University professor (apparently) The highest ranked case involved zoologists revealing the fourth century origin of April from Yorkshire’s Flamingo Park Zoo fi nding Fool’s Day, and a summary of the oldest For CentUries the dead body of the Loch Ness Monster. known prank: sending people to see lions Scottish police intercepted them taking

28 FT352 www.forteantimes.com CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: 1) The harvesting of spaghetti from a ‘vine’ on the ceiling of lo spiedo, an italian restaurant in central london, in 1961. 2) The hotheaded naked ice borer, as reported in Discover magazine in 1995. 3) richard Branson’s ‘uFo’ balloon sparked sightings across london in 1989. 4) An easter island statue washes up on a beach in the netherlands in 1962. 5) The capture of an extraterrestrial visitor following a roswell-style saucer crash in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1950. n ArcHive / GeTTy imAGes To KeysTone / Hul

FT352 29 www.forteantimes.com Nessie’s corpse back to Yorkshire, but found the creature was a large bull elephant seal that had died a week earlier in Dudley Zoo. Flamingo Park’s education officer, John Shields, had shaved its whiskers, padded its cheeks with stones, and kept it frozen, before sneakily dumping it in the Loch, intended as an April Fool’s prank on his colleagues. He admitted the joke had got a little out of hand.3 Everyone knows about unicorns, but two hoaxes focused on how to eat them. In 2010 retailer ThinkGeek announced the sale of canned unicorn meat, as “the new white meat”; the concept proved popular enough for the company to later sell the product ‘for real’: customers received a stuffed unicorn toy inside a can. However, customers in Germany didn’t receive their orders because customs officials apparently believed unicorns were real and decided the product breached regulations banning the importation of meat from

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: 1) The endangered Tasmanian mock walrus (1984). 2) The BBc’s flying penguins (2008). 3) How to cook a unicorn, courtesy of a fake mediæval manuscript from the British library (2012). 4) Beef tomatoes? in 1983, a New Scientist article, by macDonald and Wimpey of the university of Hamburg, discussed a new “plant-animal hybrid” called Boimate. 5) in 1962, swedish viewers were told that stretching an old stocking over their black-and-white tellies would result in colour pictures.

30 FT352 www.forteantimes.com ‘rare’ animals. In 2012, the British Library negative energy that caused electrical airholes in their sides, so that when fully announced the discovery of a long-lost devices to produce the opposite effect to cooked, they emited a “97 decibel signal” mediæval cookbook in its archives, which what they normally would do: for example, indicating they should be removed from the featured a recipe for cooking a unicorn, the bulb of an ordinary lamp would cast stove. including instructions for a marinade and darkness instead of light. griddle-roasting.The library reproduced Other scientific gems were: thousands UFo/sPace hoaxes hand-drawn illustrations. of “rogue bras” where the support wire The top-ranking UFO/Space hoax involved A literal White Elephant, supposedly was made from a kind of copper originally British astronomer Patrick Moore, 6 who on from Burma, attracted over 1,000 people designed for use in fi re alarms – when it 1 April 1976 announced that at 9:47am that to Frankfurt Zoo in 1949, but it was just a came into contact with nylon and body day a once-in-a-lifetime planetary alignment regular grey elephant painted white.The heat, it produced static electricity which would occur which would temporarily zoo’s director was forgiven for this genuine interfered with local television and radio counteract and lessen Earth’s own gravity. attempt to raise much-needed cash. A more broadcasts; British scientists who had Moore told radio listeners that if they jumped Jurassic Park-style stunt involved an article developed a machine to control the weather in the air at the exact moment the alignment about “Retrobreeding the Woolly Mammoth” within a 5,000-km radius; a car sunroof occurred, they would experience a strange in MIT’s Technology Review, which described that could be kept open in the rain because fl oating sensation. Hundreds of listeners Soviet scientists’ efforts to bring the creature jets of air blasted the water away from the telephoned the BBC claiming to have felt just back from extinction. top of the car; a Veterinary Record article that. Antarctica is the source of two more about diseases afflicting the species Brunus Richard Branson fl ew a hot air balloon crypto-hoaxes: Discover magazine reported edwardii (otherwise known as the “Teddy designed to look like a fl ying saucer over a new species – the hotheaded naked ice Bear”) 5; Thomas Edison invented a machine London in 1989, while in 1950 Germany saw borer – with bony plates on their heads transforming soil directly into cereal and a Roswell-like announcement of a crashed which can become burning hot, because of water directly into wine, thereby ending saucer near Wiesbaden, with a photo of a innumerable blood vessels.This allows them world hunger; a New Scientist article, by small, one-legged extraterrestrial supposedly to bore through ice at high speeds, or melt ice researchers MacDonald and Wimpey of the found near the wreckage by American beneath penguins, causing the unfortunate University of Hamburg, about a successful soldiers. birds to sink beneath the surface where “plant-animal hybrid” called Boimate, which In 1967, Swiss Radio announced that US the hotheads would eat them. However, had resulted in tomatoes containing genes astronauts had just landed on the Moon – two penguins from Terry Jones’s colony of Adélie from a cow; in Germany, a farmer could years before they actually did – with an hour penguins would simply take to the air – as obtain lard from live pigs by operating on of elaborately staged updates, correspondent fi lmed by the BBC. 4 Rather than endure them (using novocaine) to remove rashers, reports and expert interviews. Belief was Antarctic winters, these amazing penguins before bandaging them and letting them near total – as advised, masses of people left fl y thousands of miles to South American heal, a process that could be repeated up to Zurich to watch the “Moonship” take off from rainforests to bask in the tropical Sun. three times a year; and genetically modified the Moon at 7pm, from high vantage points The remaining two hoaxes involve unheard “whistling carrots” which grow with tapered away from city lights. of animals with peculiar characteristics or powers. Telecommunications company Qualcomm suggested expanding wireless coverage by implanting tiny base-stations into pigeons hybridised with wolves (wolf- pigeons).They could fl y overhead but simultaneously defend themselves, forming packs when necessary, whilst going out as “lone wolves” to areas without coverage. By comparison, the Tasmanian mock walrus was four inches long, looked like a walrus, purred like a cat, and had a hamster’s temperament. It never bathed or used a litter box, but it ate cockroaches, potentially ridding an entire house of its roach problem. scIeNce hoaxes Scientific breakthroughs evoke a sense of wonder, and are therefore favourites for pranksters. No surprise then that many believed the following. In Sweden, viewers were persuaded that by pulling a nylon stocking over their black & white TV screen, the mesh would cause light to bend in such a way that the image would appear as if in colour. BBC TV broadcast an interview with a London University professor who had perfected a technology called Smellovision, which allowed the transmission of smells over the airwaves. Then there was the man who could fl y using a device powered only by the n ArcHive / GeTTy imAGes breath from his lungs, or the terrifying To new weapon invented by Soviet scientists capable of “harnessing the latent energy of the atmosphere” to hurl objects of any KeysTone / Hul weight almost unlimited distances. Another ABOVE: in 1976, Patrick moore convinced people that a rare planetary alignment had lessened earth’s gravity. unlikely discovery was “contra-polar energy”,

FT352 31 www.forteantimes.com TOP APRIL FOOL HOAXES WITH FORTEAN THEMES (Showing overall rank in Top 100 and year)

Cryptozoology (9) #13: The Body of nessie Found (1972) #19: Hotheaded naked ice Borers (1995) #25: Flying Penguins (2008) #40: The Frankfurt Zoo’s White elephant (1949) #51: retro-breeding the Woolly mammoth (1984) #53: canned unicorn meat (2010) #71: Qualcomm’s Wolf Pigeon (2009) #82: How To cook A unicorn (2012) #93: The Tasmanian mock Walrus (1984)

SCienCe (13) #2: instant colour Tv (1962) #12: man Flies By own lung Power (1934) #30: Boimate (1983) #31: Thomas edison invents Food machine (1878) #34: The interfering Brassieres (1982) #36: Whistling carrots (2002) #43: Diseases of Brunus edwardii (1972) #45: smellovision (1965) #49: rain-Deflecting open Top car (1983) #54: lard From live Pigs (1921) #61: contra-Polar energy (1995) #70: Atmospheric energy Harnessed (1923) #92: The British Weather machine (1981)

UFoS/SpaCe (4) #6: Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity (1976) #8: uFo lands in london (1989) #28: The swiss moon landing Hoax (1967) #52: The Wiesbaden martian (1950) ABOVE: A 1998 poster for Burger King’s left-handed Whopper (the condiments were rotated 180 degrees). ABOVE: in the same year, David Bowie helped launch William Boyd’s biography of fictional artist nat Tate. pSyChology (5) #37: Gmail motion (2011) Psychology hoaxes new sandwich in restaurants, and “many others #20: The left-Handed Whopper (1998) Google’s announcement introducing Gmail requested their own ‘right handed’ version.” #42: viewers Take offense (1960) Motion, a technology enabling email writing In early 1960 – pre-Captain Kirk #66: nat Tate (1998) using only hand gestures through a and Lieutenant Uhura – a viewer #83: Why Doesn’t America read computer’s webcam with a “spatial complained about seeing a black Anymore? (2014) tracking algorithm” translating man kiss a white woman on a gestures into words and commands, television show. The network MiSCellaneoUS (7) is very vaguely plausible. But a concerned flew an executive to #3: The eruption of mount edgecumbe Left-Handed Whopper? Burger King meet the viewer to explain that (1974) advertised this as being specially the actor was actually white, but #16: easter island statue Washes Ashore designed for the 32 million left-handed the local station had accidentally (1962) Americans: the same ingredients broadcast the show at a high #21: The Predictions of isaac Bickerstaff were used as for the contrast ratio, making him (1708) original Whopper, but all look dark-skinned. Paul condiments were rotated Krassner (editor of the #33: Atomic mist invades eindhoven (1947) 180 degrees for the benefit satirical underground of left-handed customers. magazine The Realist) #76: The Derbyshire mummified Fairy The next day Burger was outraged that a (2007) King had to confirm this TV network was so #79: Frogs meet Wave (1906) was a hoax because afraid of offending a #84: World to end Tomorrow (1940) thousands of racist, and asked his ZArA / corBis viA GeTTy imAGes

customers had readers to write to the AZ requested the network after the 1 April sTeve

32 FT352 www.forteantimes.com airing of the panel show Masquerade Party to complain about being offended by something on it, without specifying what had offended them. Hundreds obliged, causing panic at the network. Apparently the TV executives watched recordings of the show repeatedly, desperate to work out what had caused so much offence. William Boyd’s biography of the late American artist Nat Tate — a troubled abstract expressionist who leapt to his death from the Staten Island ferry – was launched at a star-studded party in New York, with David Bowie reading selections aloud, and art critics making appreciative remarks about Tate’s work. A week later it was revealed that Nat Tate didn’t exist and was entirely Boyd’s fabrication. It was noted that while no one at the party had claimed to know Tate well, no one admitted to never having heard of him — although no one had. When NPR News linked its Facebook page to the article “Why Doesn’t America Read Anymore?” it generated hundreds of comments. However, none of these posters had clicked on the link to read the article, ABOVE: Porky Bickar’s 1974 April Fool, which involved hauling hundreds of tyres into a dormant volcano and set- because if they had, they would have read: ting fi re to them – remains a classic. BELOW: The discovery of a mummified fairy in Derbyshire in 2007. “We sometimes get the sense that some people are commenting on NPR stories that they haven’t actually read. If you are reading this, fairy, with many dismissing the subsequent FINal ThoUghTs please like this post and do not comment on it. confession of hoax as a a “cover-up”. Over one-third of the best April Fools’ hoaxes Then let’s see what people have to say about this Then there was the press release from have a fortean theme. I fi nd it reassuring that ‘story.’” Clearly the posters had unwittingly Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute on 31 fortean topics appear to play such a major role demonstrated the relevance of the question. March 1940 declaring the world would end in the public imagination, with so many people the following day. 7 More than 200 years accepting the possibility of decidedly strange MIscellaNeoUs hoaxes earlier, in 1708, there was Jonathan Swift’s phenomena. It’s worth noting that in very These hoaxes demonstrate the full range of prank aimed at the famous astrologer John many cases people simply reacted to headlines human ingenuity and gullibility at the same Partridge. Assuming the personage of Isaac rather than reading further, and the more time. In 1962, an “authentic” Easter Island Bickerstaff, an unknown London astrologer, reliable and established the source, the more statue was washed up on the beach near Swift published an almanac predicting willing people were to believe. What was the Holland’s Zandvoort. An “atomic mist” was Partridge’s death by fever on 29 March, and Number One hoax on the list? It couldn’t be to descend upon Eindhoven in 1947, but the then published a pamphlet announcing the anything other than the superb Swiss Spaghetti effects could be ameliorated by “sitting on a prediction’s fulfilment on 30 March. Despite Harvest shown on the BBC news programme thin pole with your arms and legs stretched his protests Partridge couldn’t convince Panorama in 1957.This reported a bumper out in front of you”. At 10 o’clock on 1 April people that he wasn’t dead, and eventually spaghetti crop and showed Swiss peasants 1906, thousands of Kansans went to Wichita to stopped publishing his own almanacs. pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. 7 see the predicted meeting of an 11-feet high But for sheer effort, a prize must go to Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. So on wave moving southward down the Arkansas Alaska’s Porky Bickar who fl ew hundreds of 1 April 2017, don’t believe everything you see River with an 11-mile long mass of millions old tyres into the crater of the long-dormant and hear reported in the media! of frogs migrating northward up the river. In volcano Mount Edgecumbe. He set them on 2005, an eight-inch winged creature found in fi re and convinced the people of nearby Sitka noteS Derbyshire and identified as a mummified that the volcano was stirring to life. 1 www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-fools-tradition- popularized 2 http://hoaxes.org 3 By pure coincidence John was a fellow student i knew in Goodricke college, university of york. 4 www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dfWzp7ryr4 5 Veterinary Record, 1 Apr 1972; 90(14):382-5. 6 Patrick moore was an inveterate hoaxer. He was accused of being “cedric Allingham” who wrote Flying Saucers from Mars, which he always denied. see Ft298:26 and https://drdavidclarke.co.uk/2012/12/09/ sir-patrick-moore-1923-2012-astronomer-and-flying- saucerer/ 7 www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvo_wkxH9du

aUThoR BIogRaPhy

ROB GANDY is a visiting professor at the liverpool Business school, John moores university. He has written for FT on ghostlore, football curses and phantom hitchhikers.

FT352 33 www.forteantimes.com THECORPSE FACTORY

‘Fake News’ is nothing new and false stories were widely spread by soldiers, civilians and propagandists during World War I. DAVID CLARKE investigates a gruesome rumour of factories used for converting human corpses into fat and oil that has been called “the master hoax” and the “most appalling atrocity story” of the 1914-18 conﬂict.

That Germans boil dead soldiers down for fat; LEFT: A report on the ‘corpse factory’ from an And he was horriﬁed. “What shameful sin! English regional newspaper. OPPOSITE: “Cannon O Sir, that Christian souls should come to Fodder – and after”. In a Punch cartoon from April 1917. The German Emperor addresses a new that!” 1 recruit with the words “…and don’t forget that Siegfried Sasson, The Tombstone Maker your Kaiser will ﬁ nd a use for you – alive or dead”.

uring World War I, Allied soldiers were the source of a gruesome was required to damage the German war Drumour that the Germans were effort – one that substituted shells with boiling down the bodies of their words. After three years of war and an Allied own dead – an atrocity that was used by naval blockade, Germany was desperately British propagandists to blacken the name short of some of the most basic materials. of the enemy. “Out of their own mouths, Meanwhile, the Allies were plotting to bring the military masters of Germany stand China and other neutral countries in the Far convicted of an act of unspeakable savagery East into the war against the Central Powers. which has shocked the whole civilised world,” proclaimed a pamphlet produced by THE RUMOUR MILL British military intelligence for worldwide Where did the unlikely story of the corpse distribution in 1917. “Attila’s Huns were factory originate? Rumours had been guilty of atrocious crimes, but they never circulating since 1915, both in Flanders desecrated the bodies of dead soldiers – and on the Home Front, that claimed their own fl esh, as well as the fallen of the the Germans had secret installations enemy – by improvising a factory for the behind their front line where the bodies conversion of human corpses into fat and of dead soldiers were rendered down into oils, and fodder for pigs”. 2 “THE MILITARY fats. Depending upon which source you The ‘Corpse Conversion Factory’ or believed, the Kadaveranstalt utilised these Kadaveranstalt was just one of a series of MASTERS OF fats to manufacture industrial munitions, rumours and fake news that spread through lubricants, fertiliser, candles, boot dubbing, Allied countries during the war. Some animal feed and soap. originated in gossip and rumour before they GERMANYSTAND The rumour was so well known on the appeared in print. Others were encouraged Home Front that by June 1915 Cynthia by false news reports passed by the censor. Asquith, the daughter-in-law of the British From 1914 the German Army was demonised CONVICTED” Prime Minister, referred to it glibly in her by influential sections of the British media, diary. One day after a “pleasant dinner”, which accused the Kaiser’s forces of a she notes how “we discussed the rumour series of atrocities. Examples include the ‘frightfulness’ of the German military that the Germans utilise even their corpses massacre of Belgian civilians and, following machine. by converting them into glycerine with the Second Battle of Ypres at Easter 1915, But the failure of the Somme campaign, the by-product of soap”. She suggested, the crucifixion of a Canadian soldier. For launched by the Allied armies in 1916 to jokingly, that Lord Haldane “should offer his the fi rst two years of the war these stories break the stalemate on the Western Front, vast body as raw material” to David Lloyd – some true, some demonstrably false and meant the grinding attrition of trench George, who at that time was Minister of others unresolved – encouraged new recruits warfare would continue.The British military Munitions. 3 to join the fi ght against the brutality and realised that a different type of warfare It is impossible to trace the story to its

34 FT352 www.forteantimes.com FT352 35 www.forteantimes.com “CAN’T BELIEVE A WORD YOU READ, SIR, CAN YOU?”

this boiler, and arms and legs were sticking out. About a dozen wooden buckets, like those used for lard, were full of yellow fat.” Cpl Beresford came forward to tell his story in October 1925 after the press broke the story of General Charteris’s reported confession. 1 The soldier said he and Lance Cpl J Ibbitson had no doubt’ the bodies they saw “were boiled in the pot” and had been rendered down for their fat. But where Beresford and Ibbitson saw a ‘corpse factory’ others who visited the scene saw something else entirely. Writing to the Hull Daily Mail, Thomas Leggott said everything he and fellow officers examined in the chamber “was consistent with the R MUSEUM © IWM (Q 9384) place being a Bosch cook-house, the dead WA Germans evidently having been killed by a shell”. The underground chamber IMPERIAL was also visited by the journalist Charles ABOVE: The cook-house in the tunnel of the St Quentin Canal, hit by an Allied shell on 4 October 1918. Edward Montague, who was an intelligence officer during the war. In Disenchantment, A gruesome incident from the fi nal stages of Corporal Arthur Beresford, a miner from published in 1922, Montague says that WWI serves to illustrate how deeply ‘trench County Durham. “A bout four yards inside “shells had gone into cook-houses of ours, myths’ such as the Corpse Factory legend the entrance of the tunnel there was an long before then, and had messed up the had become embedded in the psyches of underground chamber… an officer went in, cooks with the stew. A quite simple case”. war-weary soldiers. In the autumn of 1918 and in a few seconds came out spitting. He describes how an Australian sergeant a carefully planned counter-attack by the We went in and saw a number of bodies of surveyed the “disappointing scene” of Allies, reinforced by thousands of fresh German soldiers, fully clothed, and tied up death and destruction, “then he broke American troops, broke through the German in bundles of about six each. We had found the silence in which we had made our defences along the Hindenburg Line. In bodies tied up like that on the battlefield inspections. ‘Can’t believe a word you read, October, a team of Royal Engineers arrived at before and we took it that it was done for sir, can you?’ he said with some bitterness. Bellicourt, where the St Quentin Canal runs them to be carried away easily… The walls Life had failed to yield one of its advertised underground for 6km (3.7 miles). The ‘booby- of the room were blackened with smoke marvels. The press had lied again. The trappers’ were given the task of exploring and inside there was a big wooden block, propaganda myth about Germans had every nook and cranny for landmines left scored on the top with the blows of an axe or cracked up once more.” behind by the retreating German army. cleaver. There was a set-pot, like a big round “It was at the Bellicourt end of the boiler… with the remains of a fi re in a grate NOTES tunnel that we made the discovery,” said underneath. Parts of human bodies were in 1 Leeds Mercury, 29 Oct 1925.

source, but Adrian Gregory suggests “the reducing their soldiers to ashes.The Germans disturbing disparity between visible British drew upon the most advanced science and corpses after the fi rst day of the Somme, technology to help dispose of human remains and the near absence of German dead on with Teutonic efficiency. As one soldier many parts of the front” may have led some interviewed by the Daily Express put it, troops to resort to “a folkloric explanation” when the corpses are recycled into animal to explain what happened to them. 4 The feed “other folk eat the pigs and poultry, so horrible ‘Corpse Factory’ or ‘Tallow Works’ you may say it’s cannibalism. Fritz calls his was hiding in plain sight, in a poem by margarine ‘corpse fat’ because they suspect Siegfried Sasson written in October 1916 that that’s what it comes from.” refers to the bodies of German soldiers boiled down to extract their fat. Its source, like many READ ALL ABOUT IT rumours, did not originate with one person Until 1917 these stories had never received or organisation but sprang up in many varied official confirmation from any official locations. Paul Fussell in The Great War and source. That was until two newspapers Modern Memory refers to an analogous legend owned by one of the most powerful Press of the sinister Corpse Reducer or Destructor barons, Lord Northcliffe, published the that was located on the British side of the story as a proven fact. Alfred Harmsworth, front, at the notorious British training camp fi rstViscount Northcliffe, had launched the in Etaples. One of his sources refers to this million-selling Daily Mail in 1896. His political as “the largest Destructor the British Army influence and pre-war anti-German vitriol had possessed. Everything that could come under proved so effective that he was offered the the head of refuse was brought here… to post of director of propaganda by David Lloyd be reduced to ashes – even, according to a George, who succeeded Herbert Asquith as sinister report, the arms and legs of human Prime Minister in 1916.The newspaper baron 5 beings”. ABOVE: A Daily Express story from April 1917. was hated so much by the enemy that at one But the enemy were accused not just of point the German navy sent a cruiser to shell

36 FT352 www.forteantimes.com ABOVE LEFT: A British newspaper uses an image of German battlefield dead to suggest that a macabre fate lies in store for these fallen soldiers. ABOVE RIGHT: A 17 April report in the Daily Mail offers what purports to be a fi rst-hand account of a visit to a ‘corpse factory’ from a German newspaper. his home in Kent. damnable work out of which Germans are On the same day, 17 April 1917, his papers making handsome dividends,” it claimed. the Times and the Daily Mail published what THE GERMAN “This is not so. The factories are established they claimed was conclusive evidence the in each army area, including Rumania. ‘corpse factory’ did exist.The Times ran the GOVERNMENT This the Germans have admitted”.7 A story under the headline ‘Germans and their cartoon published by Punch soon afterwards Dead’, attributing the claim to two separate imagined the horrific scene under the caption sources, a Belgian newspaper published PROTESTEDAT “CANNON FODDER – AND AFTER”. It in England and a story that originally shows the German Emperor addressing a new appeared in a German newspaper, Berliner THESE CLAIMS recruit, a young private: “…and don’t forget Lokalanzeiger. The latter was a short account that your Kaiser will fi nd a use for you – alive or by reporter Karl Rosner who described an dead”.8 unpleasant smell “as if lime was being burnt” The German government protested against as he passed a factory behind the German James Hayward in Myths and Legends of the what they called “these loathsome and lines. He said the fats that were rendered First World War says the account that follows ridiculous claims”, which were the result of there were turned into lubricating oils “reads like a nightmarish parody of Jules a deliberate mistranslation of the German and manure, adding that “nothing can be Verne or HG Wells”.The workers were “… word Kadaver. On 11 May, the German Foreign permitted to go to waste”. Rosner used the equipped with long hooked poles used to push Secretary threatened newspapers in neutral word Kadaver, which referred to the bodies of the bundles of bodies to an endless chain, countries with libel proceedings if they re- animals – mainly horses – not human bodies. which picks them up with big hooks… The published the lie. But their protests fell on But the Daily Mail described this as a bodies are transported on this endless chain deaf ears as both the Chinese Ambassador “callous admission” by the Germans that the into a long, narrow compartment, where they and the Maharajah of Biikanir issued public factory was used for “extracting oils, fats and pass through a bath which disinfects them. expressions of horror at German treatment pig-food from the bodies of German private They then go through a drying chamber, and of their dead, the latter warning if the bodies soldiers killed in battle”.The Times said fi nally are carried into a digester or great of Indian soldiers were treated in this way it Rosner’s story was corroborated by what it cauldron, in which they are dropped by an “would be regarded as an atrocity that would called “a striking account of this horrible apparatus …In the digester they remain for never be forgotten or forgiven”. German industry” that appeared in the six to eight hours, and are treated by steam, In the House of Commons, in response Independence Belge, published in Holland, on which breaks them up while they are slowly to questions from MPs, Lord Robert Cecil, 10 April. “Omitting some of the most repulsive stirred by machinery”. 6 the Under Secretary of State at the Foreign details,” the account quotes an anonymous Soon afterwards the Daily Express published Office, refused to deny the story, saying: “In source who says “the factory is invisible a story that directly accused the Germans view of other actions by the German military from the railway… it is placed deep in forest of cannibalism.The paper claimed the “fat authorities there is nothing incredible in the country, with a specially thick growth of trees farm”, as it was known by German soldiers, present charge against them”. Officially, the around it.” Bodies arrived on trains where was established soon after the slaughter on Department of Information at Wellington they were unloaded by staff who “wear oilskin the Somme in 1916. “Some people believe House – the HQ of the British government’s overalls and masks with mica eyepieces”. that there is only one German factory for this propaganda bureau – refused to circulate

FT352 37 www.forteantimes.com “it had a powerfully persuasive effect on THE HUMAN SAUSAGE FACTORY many people around the world [and] it was cleverly presented to maximise credibility”.10 Some historians entirely blamed the interview, not as historical fact but as Northcliffe press for giving official credence “clear horror stories”. This prompted to this most false of all WWI fake news some readers to protest. They insisted stories. Newspapers with massive circulations the story was “not folklore” because took an idea that had, until 1917, lacked they, or their parents and friends, had credibility and made the ‘evidence’ for it personally visited the ruins of the factory appear convincing by the use of eyewitness and wanted to set the record straight. testimony. But who provided the ammunition One Tartu resident, born in 1941, and encouraged them to fi re it? In 1928 phoned the archive to “tell [Eda] the the Labour MP Arthur Ponsonby, in his story… is, unfortunately, true, just like book Falsehood in Wartime, pointed the fi nger the human hair hanging from hooks and of blame at the British government, which he the brown stains on the walls, which claimed had both “encouraged and connived” I saw with my own eyes” as a child. with its friends in the Press to set this hare Kalmre located a KGB memorandum from running. February 1947 that refers to rumours For its part, the government failed to spread by ethnic Estonians of “persons issue a complete denial until 1925 when Sir unknown [who] were engaged in killing Austen Chamberlain admitted, in a House of people” among the ruins of a building on Commons statement, there was “never any the corner of Soola and Turu streets. It foundation” for what he called “this false says the story emerged after one woman report”. But in the same year the Conservative managed to escape and raise the alarm. MP John Charteris, who as a Brigadier Rumours spread that the fl esh of General had served as Chief of Army Rumours about cannibalism on the the factory’s victims had been made Intelligence under Douglas Haig during the battlefield are not confined to the horrors into sausages and soap that had been Great War, caused political embarrassment of the Western Front during World WarI. In sold in the market. Militias had arrested after he said it had indeed been used for 2013 the Estonian folklorist Eda Kalmre three people: a Jew, a gypsy and an propaganda purposes 11. published a study of rumours about a Estonian. The KGB document reveals Whilst on a lecture tour of the USA in ‘human sausage factory’ that operated the three persons arrested were all local 1925, Charteris reportedly admitted his in the ruins of the Baltic country’s Estonian women. Under interrogation intelligence branch at GHQ France had second largest city, Tartu, after World they claimed to have seen human skulls played a role in spreading the story. The New War II.1 The persistence of this story and other bones among the ruins of a York Times revealed how, at a dinner meeting was demonstrated 70 years later in building, but the KGB gave no credence of the National Arts Club, he confessed to testimony provided by Tartu residents to their stories. As a counter-measure, having transposed captions from one of two that Kalmre interviewed during her the head of Tartu’s State Security photographs found on captured German research. Council threatened to prosecute anyone soldiers. One showed a train taking dead During WWII Estonia’s population engaged in spreading what they called horses to be rendered.The other showed a suffered occupation fi rst by the Soviet “provocative rumours”. train taking dead soldiers for burial.The Union (1939-41) then by the Nazis Kalmre says that what transformed photo of the horses had the word ‘cadaver’ (1941-44) until the devastated country a “horror story” into plausible reality written upon it and Charteris “had the was absorbed back into the Soviet for some Estonians is implicit in their caption transposed to the picture showing the Union, where it remained until 1991. stories, in that after the ruinous war German dead, and had the photograph sent to Kalmre argues the censorship imposed “times were so bad that anything was a Chinese newspaper in Shanghai”. According during the Soviet occupation and the possible, even selling sausages made to the Times report, the story was planted in lack of reliable journalism encouraged from human meat”. the full knowledge that it would be followed false rumours to spread. She found up by European newspapers and generate references to the factory whilst working NOTES horror and anti-German feelings. 12 in the Estonia Folklore Archive and 1 Eda Kalmre, The Human Sausage Factory: On his return to Britain, Charteris referred to them, in a newspaper A Study of Post-War Rumour in Tartu (2013). denied making the remarks, and since that time no one has been able to discover any clear evidence that might link military intelligence with the press campaign of 1917. the story. But fi les show that a number of But I found what I believe could be one of officials at the Foreign Office believed the the photographs referred to by Charteris corpse factory was a fact. At a meeting of the THE REPORT in Foreign Office fi les at The National British War Cabinet on 2 May, the Chief of the Archives in Kew. The black and white Imperial General Staff, General (later Field WAS USED FOR image, dated 17 September 1917, clearly Marshal) Sir William Robertson told the shows bodies of German soldiers, tied in Prime Minister that he had obtained a copy bundles, resting on a train as Charteris had of the German Order for the 6th Army, “giving PROPAGANDA described in 1925.The covering letter, from details relative to the despatch of corpses, an MI7 officer at Whitehall, is addressed which indicated clearly that the corpses in PURPOSES to the Director of Information, Lt Col John question referred to human beings”. 9 Buchan, author of the espionage novel The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915). It offers Buchan BLACK PROPAGANDA repackaged as a piece of black propaganda “a photograph of Kadavers, forwarded by But despite the certainty of such highly- designed to demonise the Germans and General Charteris for propaganda purposes”. placed believers, the German Corpse Factory entice the Chinese and others to join the A handwritten note urges caution but says the did not exist. It began as a rumour with Allied forces. Sociologist Randal Marlin photograph should be placed in “the Kadaver no single source, but by 1917 it had been believes the story was so successful because fi le”. 13

38 FT352 www.forteantimes.com CROWN COPYRIGHT / THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

ABOVE LEFT: Could one of these photographs – showing a train taking dead German soldiers for burial – be the one recaptioned and planted in the foreign press by Brigadier General John Charteris as a piece of ‘black’ propaganda? ABOVE RIGHT: “A las! My poor brother!”. A particularly sinister cartoon by Bruce Bairnsfather, creator of ‘Old Bill’.

There is no evidence that any newspaper 1917 MI7 employed 13 officers and 25 paid Pollard’s claim to be the sole author of the in China printed this or any other photograph writers, some of whom also worked as ‘special legend must be questioned, 17 but philosopher showing ‘Kadavers’, but early in May the Daily correspondents’ for national newspapers. 15 Bertrand Russell, in his account of wartime Mail published a similar image under the One of the most talented was Major Hugh propaganda, attributes the corpse factory headline ‘The Kadaver Horror’, captioned: Pollard, whose WWII SOE fi le reveals he to “one of the employees in the British “In view of the ghastly revelations of the combined his secret work as a propagandist propaganda department, a man with a good utilisation of their dead, this photograph, with a reporting role on the staff of the Daily knowledge of German, perfectly aware that found by a British cavalry officer on the body Express. The paper’s proprietor, Lord ‘Kadaver’ means ‘carcase’ not ‘corpse’ but of a German near Delville Wood, is sufficient Beaverbrook, became Minister of Information aware also that, with the Allied command of indication of the Huns’ treatment of those in the War Cabinet during 1918. the means of publicity, the misrepresentation who have died that “Kultur” may live”.14 After the war, Pollard boasted of his role could be made to ‘go down’”. 18 For those who MI7 were a military intelligence branch that in the corpse factory saga to his cousin Ivor spread fake news in World War I, the Germans specialised in anti-German propaganda in Montagu, who writing in 1970, recalled “… were so evil that anything could be used as a neutral countries. One of its tasks was to how we laughed at his cleverness when he told propaganda weapon against them – and that censor captions from captured photographs. us how his department [MI7] had launched included rumours, lies and what we would In 1917, its writers produced a four-page the account of the German corpse factories today call fake news. pamphlet called A Corpse-Conversion Factory: and of how the Hun was using the myriads of A Peep Behind Enemy Lines that was published trench-war casualties for making soap and AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY by Wellington House.The Foreign Office fi les margarine”. According to Montague, Pollard show that officials authorised its translation claimed full credit for the original invention DAVID CLARKE is a Research into a number of foreign languages and for of the story, intended “to discredit the enemy Fellow in Journalism at distribution in Europe and the Far East. MI7 among the populations of Oriental countries, Sheffield Hallam University. was disbanded in 1918 because its work had hoping to play upon the respect for the He was for many years been accomplished and its records were dead that goes with ancestor-worship. To the one of FT’s ufology destroyed on the grounds they could be surprise of the authorities it had caught on, correspondents and is a UFO incriminating. and they were now making propaganda out of consultant for The National Surviving histories show that in it everywhere”.16 Archives.He is the author of

NOTES 6 Times, 17 April 1917. intelligence work including (1916-18), INF 4/1B. to work as a spy for MI6 1 Siegfried Sassoon, The 7 Daily Express, 21 April those about the Russians 16 Ivor Montagu, The at the outbreak of WWII War Poems (1983), p54. 1917. ‘with snow on their boots’, Youngest Son (1970), p31. but he was dismissed in the Angels of Mons and 1940 for reasons that 2 A “Corpse Conversion” 8 Punch, 25 April 1917. the Crucified Canadian. He 17 Pollard’s role in the were redacted from the Factory, Darling & Son, AA. Milne, the assistant refers to all of these in his creation of other WWI fi le. In another note a MI6 London, 1917 (copy editor of Punch, was memoirs At GHQ (1931) rumours will be discussed officer describes him as in Masterman Papers, attached to the General but curiously his book in a future article for FT. “definitely unreliable where University of Birmingham Press Propaganda section omits any reference to the His SOE fi le at The National money and drink was special collections). of MI7’s offices in Adelphi strangest rumour of all, the Archives reveals he was concerned”. Court, Strand. fl uent in French, German 3 Cynthia Asquith, Diaries corpse factory. 18 Bertrand Russell, 1915-18 (1968), p44. 9 TNA CAB 23/2/48. and Spanish. It describes 12 The Times (London), 4 him “an ardent fascist” ‘Government by 4 Adrian Gregory, The Last 10 Randall Marlin, Nov 1925. who helped to fl y General Propaganda’, in These Great War (2008), p306. Propaganda and the Ethics 13 TNA FO 395/148. Franco from the Canaries Eventful Years (1924), of Persuasion (1999), p72. p380. 5 Paul Fussell, The Great 14 Daily Mail, 3 May 1917. at the beginning of the War and Modern Memory 11 Charteris collected Spanish Civil War. The fi le (1975), pp116-17. many rumours during his 15 TNA History of MI7 reveals he was recruited

FT305 39 www.forteantimes.com BETTMANN / GETTY IMAGES tell-all semi-fictionalised prurient, the journalism, in the matters ya wa life adult his throughout sported Macfadden scalp baldness va opposed implacably also he commonplace), we honest ve whole of virtues the H n quac and He promoted contest man’ de perfectly most ‘World’s a of ta,tesa fatosn oi book comic ad thousand a of star the Atlas, Charles themselves; influential became who others promoted and inspired He physique. his off show to li of thousands influenced who publisher i 0,cniudt oepractically pose to continued 70s, his and, bodybuilding, popularised public fo fa Mid-West orphaned an man: self-made of ev the name, his of he decided what crafted he 1868, in McFadden www.forteantimes 40 ve rc mbya 1 etre himself turned he 11, at rm-boy k lion’s a oke cnto,adbelie and ccination, eals hdigcresadbeing and corsets shedding getables, kn his nking ve Fo afde matters Macfadden re h rdc fdcdssetviolentl spent decades of product the s lbfr they before ll ute in – further auatrdadmsedn ne misleading and Manufactured wa .He s. fwl noa into will of e fa FT in rts, a r . 352 ve Th iar mla fprescience of amalgam bizarre a s ve ther fi fo ab fo tradpplrsro confessional of populariser and ntor fo ue fhsda his of gures fi wa e to:br li Bernar plain born ntion: mthat rm ch kery wa u e alieshe ideas (all sex out rs ta,ho rtean, ut another quite r re oedistinguished more a s mindself-impr ampioned .c t ow ettreated best s wa re barel be may Macfadden Bernarr man. a of giant and tall, 5ft 6in than more no stood e akbepmaorthat pompadour markable om fo ieogpooe of promoter lifelong a ; of ro ebrdno membered hair n und mn h most the among s ar ro we we oenbdbidn’ada and bodybuilding’ modern . ln rsitne to intended “r”s lling mu He wev fa ere re to ounderpin to on nt pa fo by ea h winner the as me lti-millionair ve wa d,etn fresh eating ods, fo y. er FORTEANA by rt motel the htencroaching that d many r He ye , nentirel an s Macfadden re by Macfadden. he t to sn He ason. ro wa w, takn the attacking y ch ve ots. u he but h 19 the master a s ove wa we re ampioned loped fa d by s asons. ve ment, e linto ll mous a y rs y wa nu FA ion 20 de s y s, n a and ws QU PRESCIENCEAND OF ANAMALGAM MACFADDEN fo snta in an not is rg AC so KING ot ils muckraker. cialist te KERY journalistic n ve nt ion of WA re h In the MIKE vo uinimprobably lution S te DA ntae Its age. rnet the fEla Mor Eilean of h ‘Se the Isles – Flannan uninhabited the in lighthouse lonel a from 1900, Christmas around ihhuecr lighthouse Atlantic. (32km) miles nterlogbook. their in deepened that puzzle a behind leaving nre htthey that entries SH my oshis dons tr fthe of stery ve mu memor more incredible, mor something into turned they until them elaborated and truth, of a possess might that tales took the re of aftermath the in infamous the like afde anhdbeha launched Macfadden that magazines indeed, 1920s, the toda it bedevil that in the rt paper a wrote in back, dated me eluded ch unexpectedl oltn our polluting re toda TV ‘reality’ bottomless apparently the Je Confidential ades–pssfrtecmr n1923. in camera the for poses – of baldness foe implacable and publisher bodybuilder, LEFT: fi tell me let So VA Th rs etU rsdnilelection. presidential US cent pnil inad – sponsible by utr, they Hunters,’ n r pigri h 90,and 1990s, the in Springer rry sn ona down asing ch nonee afde quite Macfadden encountered t e h opie h entir the comprised who – men e IHN LIGHTHOUSEMEN NISHING y. ew h 5ya-l enr Macfadden Bernarr 55-year-old The h tag,quasi-mystical strange, the . we ro ve es‘true.’ less Th ncneune he consequence, In – tosad‘impr and ntions to h erds u nthe in out Hebrides, the of st fa re ot we co va fe ke va e a disappeared, had men e fo re we go s ihdwtottrace, without nished nte15s pa and Oprah 1950s, the in nceived y, ihn lighthousemen nishing dora esmlsta became that mills news r fi yo nesodt ha to understood fo ye oetm ago time some r so ’re fa l iha with eld re u r t o19,when 1998, to ct, ars. Fo my eec hthad that ference ve ba we y. ta Studies rtean to wa fa tnl – rtently Th Fo confession. re kmuch ck iirwith miliar consider s trouble e r re ab ald 20 called, by ove mu my wa e–and – le ve por we y ments’ ch idof riad ‘t , also s d fo lof ll while he mu of ke ve r t. e They I ab on rnel I left ch – ly e TO IAN COWE / ALAMY STOCK PHO

ABOVE: The Flannan Isles lighthouse, from which three men vanished in 1900. BELOW: The story was retold and embellished in the August 1929 issue of True Strange Stories.

Without the details of the log, indeed, the watch. It was unlikely that Marshall – the mystery was less compelling. Lighthouse most junior of the lighthousemen – would keeping can be dangerous work, and Eilean have made insubordinate notes in a log that Mor (the rock on which the lamp was his superiors would read. And, read carefully, perched) had been hit by an enormous storm it seemed likely that the entries were written shortly before Christmas. It would have been after the event: easy to suppose that the men were all out working in the storm, and were swept into the It would hardly be peculiar, during sea by a freak wave, had the entries not made a routine and tedious turn of duty, for it clear that their disappearance took place a lighthouseman to be ‘quiet’, so why after the storm had passed. would Marshall think to note the fact? It seems to have beenVincent Gaddis, a Sensationalist writers have hinted that well-known writer of the 1960s, who fi rst the notes were made because the men were mentioned the existence of this logbook in a increasingly aware of looming, supernatural fortean work. Written in the scrawled hand of disaster. I believe they point, rather, to the the Third Officer, Thomas Marshall (Gaddis entries being a fabrication. Ducat’s and noted in Mysterious Fires and Lights), the Macarthur’s moods of 12 and 13 December Flannan log charted a steadily-intensifying are significant only because of what happened atmosphere of unspoken dread – one familiar to them on the 15th. to any horror movie fan – that seemingly overcame the First Officer, Thomas Ducat, Further than that I could not go at the and his assistant, Donald McArthur: time. Gaddis had recorded where he had “Ducat,” Gaddis observed of this odd found his information: it had been published Dec. 12: Gale, north by north-west. Sea lashed evidence, “usually very good-natured, in an American magazine called True Strange to fury. had just returned from his leave on shore. Stories in August 1929. But it was not easy Why should he be irritable?... McArthur, a then to consult TSS, and I let the matter rest Stormbound 9pm. Never seen such a storm. hardened, veteran seaman… well known for more than a decade until, in 2008, the Everything shipshape. Ducat irritable. as a lusty, fearless brawler on land, crying! science writer Giles Sparrow found me at the What could have been the mysterious, FT Unconvention and handed me a copy of 12pm. Storm still raging. Wind steady. extraordinary situation that would make the article itself. Stormbound. Cannot go out. Ship passed strong McArthur weep? And Michael It was immediately obvious that True sounding foghorn. Could see lights of cabins. Harrison – a writer who never encountered Strange Stories was indeed the source of the Ducat quiet. McArthur crying. a mysterious detail he was not happy to mysterious entries.The author of the piece, endorse – went further in his own version of one Ernest Fallon, insisted that the details of Dec. 13: Storm continued through night. the tale. “With that last mysterious entry,” he the log were drawn “from English sources”, Wind shifted west by north. Ducat quiet. wrote, “the log closed, and the three terrified, but gave no further details – and large chunks McArthur praying. praying men vanished for ever from this of the remainder of his story were either world.” heavily fi ctionalised or altogether wrong. 12 noon. Grey daylight. Me, Ducat, and When I fi rst wrote about all this in 1998, One mystery had replaced another. Who was McArthur prayed. I gave several reasons for suspecting that Fallon? What sort of things did True Strange these entries were fakes. Nautical logs are Stories publish? And was it possible that these Dec. 15: 1pm. Storm ended. Sea calm. God is not impressionistic diaries, kept by just one “English sources” existed? over all. person, but precise records of events, written Details from the archives of the Northern up by a changing rotation of officers of the Lighthouse Board and contemporary

FT352 41 www.forteantimes.com KEYSTONE-FRANCE / GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES

ABOVE LEFT: In 1919, Bernarr Macfadden launched True Story magazine; its sensational confessional content set the template for decades of successful publishing. ABOVE RIGHT: A serious-looking Macfadden oversees his ever-expanding publishing empire from his ofﬁce, in a photograph from around 1930.

newspapers suggested that the answer to the Or, as Macfadden himself was said to have last of these questions was “No”. Both made IFA STORY observed – in terms that have a very current it clear that the log was kept only up to 13 resonance – if a story merely sounded true, it December, with subsequent entries being was true enough for him. noted, in chalk, on a slate for later transfer to SOUNDEDTRUE, True Strange Stories, then, published articles the book; the whole notion of a log extending that were “true” in Macfadden’s meaning of as late as 15 December is a fallacy. Even if we the word. And it looked very much as though are charitable, and count the entries on the ITWASTRUE the spooky details that appeared in Fallon’s slate as part of the log, it is explicitly stated article ‘The Strange Log of the Seven Hunters’ that the last notes (a record of the weather) ENOUGH FOR HIM were exactly the sort of elaborations that a were written at 9 on the morning of 15 Macfadden title would happily condone. So December. The contemporary record is clear everything pointed to the piece in TSS being that no entry was made as late as 1pm.This such as illegitimacy, adultery, unemployment a very 1920s version of fake news. But could I must imply the records quoted by Harrison and crime (a mix readily satirised by critics prove it? and Gaddis are a hoax. as “I’m ruined!” journalism), the magazine As for Fallon, it seemed impossible to prove peaked with sales in excess of two million FINDING FALLON he even existed. A superb Internet resource, copies a month, made Macfadden’s fortune, The answer, it seemed, had to come from ‘The Science Fiction, Fantasy and Weird and received, its proud proprietor claimed, in fi nding out who Ernest Fallon was. And Magazine Index’ compiled by Phil Stephenson- excess of 70,000 readers’ submissions every the solution to that mystery turned out to Payne, notes the existence of this article, but year. lurk in the memoirs of the editor of True it was apparently the only one that Fallon ever Macfadden was quick to see potential in Strange Stories – another forgotten man wrote. His name appears absolutely nowhere True Story, and numerous spin-off titles were who was famous in his time. His name was else in the literature of pulp magazines or launched – True Romances,True Confession,True John L Spivak, and in 1929 he was only just fortean phenomena. Intriguingly enough, the Detective and, eventually, both Ghost Stories getting his start as a writer, which explained same unusual claim to fame was shared by and the short-lived True Strange Stories, which why he was willing to work for a notorious at least six other named contributors to True was born and died in the year of the Wall Street cheapskate like Bernarr Macfadden. In the Strange Stories. Crash, 1929. All shared the formula honed by 1930s, though, Spivak went on to better I was driven back to look at TSS – and, with True Story – a mix Macfadden himself liked to things. His socialist convictions led him to the realisation that the magazine had been call “the folk literature of the common people turn out a series of muckraking exposés of part of Macfadden’s stable, the story came of America” but that his critics denounced American anti-Semitism, the conditions of suddenly into focus. as trash that followed a simple formula: its black prisoners on Georgia chain gangs, and subjects sinned, suffered and repented, the infamous ‘business plot’, an apparent MUSCLES AND MUCKRAKING eventually fi nding redemption (except in Ghost planned coup involving George W Bush’s Macfadden was such a remarkable character Stories, where, as Will Murray sagely notes, grandfather, which sought the overthrow of that his life has been well studied, as has they died, dematerialised and repented). For democratic government and the installation his considerable impact on publishing and Jacqueline Hatton, though – a scholar who of a fascist dictatorship in the United States journalism. Beginning with a single title, wrote a PhD thesis on Macfadden’s publishing of the Depression era. It’s thanks in large part Physical Culture – at fi rst little more than an empire – something much stranger and more to Spivak’s work that we know as much about advertising sheet promoting the sale of fi tness remarkable was going on: these things as we do. gear – he slowly built a publishing empire.The Spivak’s memoirs make three key points real breakthrough came in 1919 when, noting The relationship between truth and reality about his tenure as the editor of TSS, “a the popularity of the fi rst-person stories of in True Story is too complex to be reduced to magazine they were launching to see if there triumph over adversity sent in by readers of his a yes/no question… The true/false conundrum was a market for something besides rape, fi tness title, he launched True Story, a magazine is unresolvable, and indeed pretty much adultery and muscles”. One was that the made up entirely of such features, which irrelevant, because the concept of truth itself budget was tight.The second was that the became the publishing sensation of the next was highly ambiguous in True Story. [It] magazine required huge quantities of copy – two decades. A compelling mix of sex and sin, inscribed truisms rather than truths, beliefs 16 to 18 features each month, each of at least covering hitherto barely mentionable topics rather than realities. 5,000 words. And the third was that a kernel of

42 FT352 www.forteantimes.com truth was plenty for a true strange story: of Spivak’s many pseudonyms), but also by 1926), and in Kansas’s Emporia Gazette on 7 working through the contents of the private December. In desperation, I decided to write them papers that the writer willed to Syracuse In the Standard’s item, the Gräf & Stift was myself. One Saturday morning I went down to University Library. Box 32 of these papers a large comfortable six-seater car, painted an the [NewYork Public Library]. All I needed for turns out to contain a typescript of what is attractive red that not only seemed destined a Macfadden “true” story were a few unusual substantially the same article, revised for to carry misfortune and disaster”, but also facts, a name or two, a place or two, and, resubmission to another magazine during the “justified its evil reputation to the end”. if possible, a picture to give a semblance of 1950s. It is attributed to ‘Monroe Fry’ – the Pressed back into service after spending believability. In two or three hours of research name under which the blacklisted radical the war years in a museum, it came close to I took enough notes for half a dozen such Spivak was forced to live for around a decade killing the Yugoslavian governor of Bosnia, stories. during the McCarthy years. and did see off its next owner, who “was found By nightfall I had done a once-over-lightly The “Hoodoo Car” story is a cursed car dead in a ditch with the car on top of him”. draft for the fi rst story; Sunday morning legend. It looks at the numerous deaths The vehicle was then recovered and sold to a I did another. Each... meant from $100 to supposedly associated with the Gräf & Stift Transylvanian second-hand car dealer named $120. By then I was married and had a touring car in which the Austro-Hungarian Tiber Hirschfield. daughter, Jacqueline, who used to watch me, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was driving when By this time, the account went on, it had fascinated, as I pounded the typewriter keys. he was assassinated in Sarajevo in June such a fearsome reputation that Hirschfield I explained that she should not distract me; 1914.That murder triggered the outbreak of could fi nd no buyer for it, and took to driving every keystroke was worth two cents. That, World War I, and the millions of deaths and it himself. He was “taking six friends to a considering how much she could purchase unimaginable suffering that came with it. It’s wedding in it when it came into collision with with two cents, impressed her… She would not surprising, in such circumstances, that another car which it was attempting to pass at clap her hands in time with the clacking of the the car should become associated with an top speed.The car was completely smashed, keys and cry delightedly, “Two cents, two cents, elaborate curse legend. and those who were not killed were badly two cents!” Spivak did not invent the “Hoodoo Car” injured”. story; early versions of it began to circulate The UP story, or another very like it, fairly It is not exactly a confession, but it is near around the mid-1920s. It may be that the story clearly served as a basis for Spivak’s “The enough. ‘Ernest Fallon’ was John L Spivak.The originated somewhere in eastern Europe, Hoodoo Car That Started a World War”. Its mystical logbook entries were examples of the but the earliest account that I have been chief features, just to recap, were the limo’s elaborations that he added to make mundane able to trace was written by an unnamed wartime career in a museum, and three later mysteries exciting.The crying, praying journalist in the London office of the United owners – at least one of whom was killed by it. lighthousemen never existed. Press news agency in November 1926.This The car ends the story “completely smashed” And Macfadden’s 1920s fake news mill had version of the story appeared in several and unfit for any further service. added another – especially memorable – true American newspapers in the autumn of that This version had changed considerably by story that would pollute fortean potboilers for year, including the Freeport Journal Standard, the time that True Strange Stories had fi nished several lifetimes. published in Freeport, Illinois (30 November with the cursed tourer. The fi rst elaboration

THE HOODOO CAR True Strange Stories was not a proper precursor to Fortean Times. Each issue ran to 100 pages and contained an eclectic mix of true confession pieces, crime, offbeat celebrity features and fi ction serials. All this meant that no more than two or three of the articles that appeared in any given issue focused on strange phenomena. But, in the course of its short life, TSS nonetheless managed to cover a number of cases that are still familiar to us today. Among the content that Spivak churned out were features on Phineas Gage, the railway worker who lost a large part of his brain to a tamping iron in an 1848 blasting accident; the curse supposedly attached to the Koh-i- noor diamond; and stories of children raised by wolves. (For Gage, see FT38:30, 258:18-19; for the Koh-i-noor curse, see FT161:6; and for children raised by wolves, see Paul Sieveking ‘Wild Things’, FT161:34-41.) It’s worth taking a closer look at a second example from TSS’s fi les, if only to establish that the sort of techniques that Spivak deployed to tell the story of the vanishing lighthousemen were typical of his magazine’s approach to other features. Its treatment of another fortean classic in its August 1929 issue shows this was the case. “The Hoodoo Car That Started a World War” is a feature attributed to ‘Arthur Willstach’. But it is another example of Spivak’s work. We can be certain this was the case not only by referring once again to ‘The Science Fiction Index’ (which confirms this article was the SPECIAL COLLECTIONS RESEARCH CENTER, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES only one that ‘Willstach’ ever apparently ABOVE: John L Spivak went on to be a celebrated left-wing writer, but his early career included a stint producing produced, and hence that this was likely one suitable yarns for Macfadden’s titles under a series of pseudonyms.

FT352 43 www.forteantimes.com potboiler Stranger Than Science, and most elaborately in a Weekly World News spread dating to April 1981 – a couple of things are immediately apparent. One is that many of the innovations introduced by True Strange Stories have been retained in these later accounts; the story as it’s told today still moves from Franz Ferdinand to Potoriek to two staff ofﬁcers who kill two peasants, the car still costs the Yugoslavian governor an arm, and the tale still includes the disastrous deaths of a wedding party. But it’s equally obvious that some of the ﬁ ne details that Spivak introduced have been lost along the way. Monsieur Blunti becomes merely an unnamed “Swiss racing driver”, Dr Srskic gets passed over, and – perhaps most intriguingly – the vehicular sentience that is the central horror in the True Strange Stories account gets written out. That’s perfectly consistent, it seems clear, not only with the nature of ‘fake news’ as we understand it now, but with the way in which stories (including folklore) have always been transmitted. Strong, memorable details

JOE KLAMAR / AFP / GETTY IMAGES get reinforced and elaborated. Incidental, ABOVE: The Franz Ferdinand Gräf & Stift ‘cursed death car’ or ‘Hoodoo Car’ as it appears today: drab green overcooked, hard to recall ones wither and die. rather than “devil red” and sitting placidly in the Vienna museum where it was fi rst placed in 1914. And, all too often, nobody checks even the most basic details of the story – which may have been hard to do in the case of the that Spivak introduced was to make a of road. After that, the Gräf & Stift passes to a lighthouse logbook from Eilean Mor, but is telling change to the car’s colour – from an Bosnian landowner, who commits suicide, and entirely straightforward in the case of Franz “attractive red” to “devil red”. He also seems then to Peter Sveatich, an industrialist. He is Ferdinand’s Gräf & Stift. Because the fabled to have decided that the Standard’s version lucky to survive a further accident – a head- cursed car still exists – painted, as it always of the story was too tame. Out went the on collision that kills one person in the other has been, a defiant drab green, not Spivak’s years spent in a museum; in came General car and badly injures four others. Once again, “devil red” – in the sameVienna museum Oskar Potoriek, governor of Bosnia at the the horror is turned up a notch. According to where it has sat, unmoving, since it was fi rst time of the assassination, and the Austro- Spivak’s version of events, the car “seemed to placed there in the summer of 1914, before its Hungarian commander on the Serbian front jump – literally to jump” into the path of the entirely fi ctional rampage across the roads of in World War I. In life, Potoriek proved so oncoming vehicle. the Balkans even began. FT inept that he was replaced and retired before By 1926, the limousine had been repaired Christmas 1914, but – in Spivak’s version again and passed into the hands of a Swiss SOURCES of events – after taking care to “clean the racing driver, “Monsieur Blunti”, who dies in Mark Adams, Mr America (New York, 2009); Mike blood-stained cushions and repair the bullet another head-on crash, this one in a high pass Dash, “The Vanishing Lighthousemen of Eilean holes in the woodwork” of the car, he pressed through the Dolomites that drives the other Mor”, Fortean Studies, Vol 4, (London, 1998); the Gräf & Stift straight back into service, vehicle involved over a cliff, killing all its Frank Edwards, Stranger Than Science (New York, 1959); ‘Ernest Fallon,’ “The Strange Log of the commandeering it to tour the front, only to passengers. Spivak’s account concludes with Seven Hunters,” True Strange Stories 6 (August see his army suffer a crushing defeat that the cursed car passing into the hands of Tiber 1929); Vincent Gaddis, Mysterious Fires and Lights drove him mad and into an asylum. Hirschfield. Like the Standard, he has the (New York, 1968); Michael Harrison, Vanishings Spivak’s account next ramps up the horror “gorgeous, fi ery” car wiped out in one fi nal (London, 1981); Jacqueline A Hatton, True Stories: in expert fashion, passing the car on to a pair bloody disaster involving a wedding party. In Working-Class Mythology, American Confessional of Potoriek’s staff officers, who experience an Spivak’s revised version of events, however, Culture and True Story Magazine 1919-1929 unexplained loss of control that makes them the Gräf & Stift kills fi ve of the six wedding (unpublished PhD thesis, Cornell University 1997); swerve into two peasants, who are crushed guests – and it appears that the lone survivor Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: and killed. A new owner, General Sarkotic – is allowed to live solely to recount the Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Oakland, 1986); Will Murray, “True Ghostly Confessions”, in who really was military governor of Bosnia terrifying detail that the accident occurred Lurid Confessions 1 (1986); Rob Robbins, “Haunted in 1915 – brings in a chauffeur, who kills because the cursed limo “physically leapt” auto claimed the lives of 20 million people”, Weekly two more peasants in a similar accident, but into the path of the approaching car. World News, 28 April 1981; John L Spivak, A Man survives to insist that the accident occurred In Spivak’s telling, then, the number of In His Time: An Autobiography (New York, 1967); when the wheel “turned by itself”.The accidents involving the Gräf & Stift is more ‘A rthur Willstach,’ “The Hoodoo Car That Started a Yugoslavian governor inherits the car next, than doubled, and the death toll rises from World War”, True Strange Stories 6 (August 1929). and we get significantly more details of his fewer than fi ve to well over a dozen. Even Jim Bennett curates an extensive and invaluable experiences: there are three accidents in two more significantly, perhaps, the cursed car online resource covering the life and times of months, and then a fourth in which the car acquires a sort of sentience – apparently, the Bernarr Macfadden at bernarrmacfadden.com. swerves into a tree and costs the governor a reader is led to suppose, as a result of the forearm. leading role it played in the horrific chain of AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY According to Spivak, the limousine’s next events that saw Europe slide into war. owner was a “Dr M Srskic” – a name that TSS MIKE DASH is a longtime member of the Gang seems to have borrowed from Milan Srškic, THE LEGEND LIVES ON… of Fort. He was FT’s publisher for some years, a fairly prominent Yugoslav politician at If we compare Spivak’s version of events as well as a regular contributor, and is the the time he wrote. Spivak’s Srskic is “a man with accounts of the cursed car that began acclaimed author of the books Tulipomania, of science”, though, killed when the car to appear in other works years later – most Batavia’s Graveyard, Thug, Satan’s Circus and unaccountably overturns on a smooth stretch influentially in Frank Edwards’s 1950s fortean The First Family.

44 FT352 www.forteantimes.com

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THOMAS COEX / AFP / GETTY IMAGES WALTERS ART MUSEUM ABOVE: Empress Helena discovers the three crosses in a 15th-century fresco at the Church of San Francesco, Arezzo, by Piero della Francesca. BELOW: Turkish archæologist Professor Gulgun Koroglu supervised excavations at Balatlar church; a stone chest and wooden relics were found, which it has been suggested are related to Helena’s fi nds. the tomb and Golgotha, which are today Jesus and the two thieves had been put to incorporated within the ancient Church of the death, as nearby her men supposedly found Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. the sign placed on Jesus’s cross by Pilate on For centuries, the tomb and Golgotha which was written ‘Jesus of Nazareth King have been guarded by monks of several of the Jews’ in three languages. The dig also denominations, who are so argumentative and revealed nails and clothing. But which one disputatious (for a particularly violent monk- was the cross of Jesus? The answer came on-monk brawl, see FT244:4-5) that they are when a sick woman failed to be healed after not even trusted with the church key. The touching two of them, but was cured after door is unlocked every morning by a member touching the third. of one of two Muslim families. Part of the cross was left with Bishop Helena’s claim to have found the holiest Macarius in Jerusalem and the rest of of Christian sites, though widely accepted by the fi nds were taken back to Emperor Christians, has often been challenged. She Constantine. One story suggests that he had was a Christian convert and famed for her the nails fi xed to his helmet and made into a charitable deeds and in 327, her 80th year, bridle for his horse! Today it is claimed that she set out on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. This was not simply an act of piety – she was eager to see the places where Jesus had walked and to fi nd tangible evidence of His life. She found the Holy City in a sorry state: it had been ransacked by the Romans 200 years earlier. Many living there had been killed or had fl ed. There was a residual memory of where Jesus might have been buried, but Emperor Hadrian had built a temple on the site in honour of the Gods Jupiter and Venus. Today, as St Helen, Helena is patron saint of archæologists, but there was little science in the way she set about looking for relics. With the guidance of a heavenly dream, she ordered Hadrian’s temple to be knocked down and once it was cleared ordered her men to start digging. Almost immediately, they found three wooden crosses in an ancient cistern. Helena was convinced they were the crosses on which

48 FT352 www.forteantimes.com there are at least 30 places where the nails, or iron from the nails, are kept. One of the nails is said to be incorporated in the Iron Crown of Lombardy kept in the Cathedral of Monza, another piece is in Rome at the church of Santa Croce (along with a thorn from the Crown of Thorns) and a third is in the Duomo in Milan and is said to be shaped like a horse’s bridle. HOLY RELICS The belief that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built over the place of Jesus’s death and resurrection has been re-enforced over the centuries by stories of miracles. For 12 centuries, Orthodox Christians have claimed that a holy fi re is divinely kindled in the pitch-dark tomb at Easter. The fl ame is then spread from candle to candle in the church to symbolise the Resurrection. The fl ame is taken, like an Olympic torch, around the city and wider Orthodox world. Muslims LEFT: Skull Hill, also known as Gordon’s Calvary, have long denounced the holy fi re as a piece THE BIBLE from an 1897 drawing by BH Harris in Pictures of the of trickery and non-Orthodox Christians, East: Sketches of Biblical Scenes in Palestine and Greece (London, 1897). especially Protestants, are wary of what they see as mere superstition. PROVIDES FEW However, many Christians across the St Helen’s belief that the tomb and the site traditions have confidence in the fi ndings of the Crucifixion were in close proximity to of St Helen’s amateur archæology, despite CLUESAS TO THE each other is based on a single Bible passage. the fact that it was based on a nocturnal Only John, of the four Gospels, makes this revelation rather than a ground radar survey. LOCATION OF point: “At the place where he was crucified Pieces of the True Cross, which she identified there was a garden and in the garden a new and which confirmed to her that she had tomb, not yet used for burial.” Nevertheless, found Golgotha, are amongst the most highly GOLGOTHA pilgrims to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre prized relics in Christendom. fi nd both reputed sites so close to each other While some of the wood was enclosed that they are under the same roof. within a statue of the Emperor, much was person.” 1 That the wood found comes from Even though the Church of the Holy distributed around the Empire. Twenty years St Helen’s discovery is possible, but despite Sepulchre is the main focus of pilgrimage after St Helen’s return to Rome, Cyril of years of tradition, her claims have been widely for Christians and the culmination of the Jerusalem wrote: “The wood of the cross has disputed. devotional walk known as the Via Dolorosa, been diffused throughout the world”. Before historical evidence for its authenticity is very long, great prestige was attached to owning OUTSIDE THE CITY WALL fl imsy. And yet this highly questionable claim even a sliver and Roman emperors and Church The Bible provides few clues as to the underpins the holiness of Christianity’s most authorities have, over the years, been able location of Golgotha, perhaps because to the sacred relics and places. to buy loyalty and gratitude by giving bits early Christians the location was well known away. The practice of buying and selling pieces and no detailed description was thought SKULL HILL of the Cross continued in Mediæval times. necessary. It was outside the city walls, says In 1842 a German theologian named Otto Mark Twain observed that when he toured St Paul, who, although not a witness to the Thenius noticed a rocky outcrop, which was Europe he saw enough ‘holy’ wood in the events, knew many of those who were. “Jesus identified to him as ‘Skull Hill’. It has been churches he visited to make 50 new Crosses. suffered outside the gate,” he wrote in his widely believed that Golgotha got its name The Monastery of Xeropotamou on Greece’s epistle to the Hebrews. Yet, to counter that because it was a feature in the landscape that Mount Athos claims the largest single piece, evidence is the widely held view that Paul resembled a skull. Could this be the true site along with a number of smaller segments. On himself did not in fact write this epistle of the Crucifixion, Thenius wondered. Forty the large piece, weighing 320g (11oz), it is said attributed to him; although an unknown years later, General Charles Gordon was in that the holes made by the nails of crucifixion author might also have had direct access to Jerusalem and had the same idea (for more are visible. It is only displayed on special feast the fi rst apostles. on Gordon’s search for biblical locations, see days, although a second piece is sometimes As any visitor to modern Jerusalem will FT336:44-49). As he was a highly respected allowed to be sent away from Mount Athos to know, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre lies member of Victorian society, many British carefully selected destinations to be revered within the walls of the old town. It is reached people took an interest in his suggestion. Yet, by the faithful. The True Cross, it is believed, by navigating a maze of narrow streets fi lled not unlike St Helen, Gordon was “guided by not only has miraculous powers to heal, it also with shops and market stalls. The present- his mystical and deep devotion to the details exudes a heavenly perfume (for more on holy day walls, however, are not the original and of the Scriptures” 2 By coincidence, nearby odours, see FT350:30-37). were built by the Ottoman Turks in the 16th was an old Jewish tomb hewn out of rock, fi rst A lost fragment of the Cross was believed century. Two thousand years ago, the walled noted in 1867 by Conrad Schick, a German to have been discovered in Turkey in 2013. city was smaller. The fi rst century historian archæologist and missionary. It fi tted the Modern archæologists excavating a 1,400-year- Josephus described the route of the wall Gospel descriptions. As a Protestant, Schick’s old church in Balatlar, by the Black Sea, and it is clear from his account that the interest was in historical research rather than found a stone chest that contained various present-day Church of the Holy Sepulchre fi nding relics, but when his discovery was artefacts they believed were holy objects. would indeed have been ‘without the city linked with General Gordon’s observations, Professor Gulgun Koroglu, who was in charge wall’. Golgotha was not included within the the belief in an alternative Golgotha gained of the excavations, confirmed the discovery: city’s fortified boundary until new defences in popularity. The tomb, most conveniently, “The appearance of the chest suggests that were completed in AD 44 under orders from is in a garden, as described in the New it was a repository for the relics of a holy Herod’s grandson Agrippa I. Testament.

FT352 49 www.forteantimes.com Thanks to the efforts of two away to the north, in a quieter part of Victorian ladies, Charlotte Hussey Golgotha where there were tombs and and Louisa Hope, the Garden Tomb gardens… When Constantine captured Association was formally established the eastern Empire and sought to in 1893. Purchasing the land was commemorate his victory with the fraught with legal problems, thanks building of a magnificent basilica in to a constantly changing political Jerusalem dedicated to the sign of the administration, but eventually it was cross, local Christians could point to bought and has since been a popular the site of the tomb and the Temple of focus for Protestants. General Booth Venus as a fi tting building zone. The of the Salvation Army visited and site of the Crucifixion, on the other preached there, as did the celebrated hand, seems to have been quietly American evangelist Dwight Moody, forgotten.” 3 who infuriated local Muslims by using Interestingly, Constantine’s a Muslim grave as a pulpit. “I have hagiographer Eusebius, in his notes on preached 30 years,” he declared, “but various biblical places he could still I have never felt the awe of God as I fi nd in Palestine, wrote of Golgotha do now.” being beside the northern parts of For several decades scholars Mount Zion. He never referred to vigorously contested the claims. Sir the site of the Emperor’s basilica as Charles Wilson, who was in the city Golgotha. working for the Ordnance Survey, took a sceptical line in his 1906 book. He CRUCIFIXION COP argued that the area in front of the This year, a fourth theory has emerged supposed Golgotha had only been as to the true site of Golgotha. Bob given its skull-like appearance during Cornuke is the president of the the Crusader period, when it was Bible Archæology Search Institute quarried for stone. in Colorado and has travelled The garden today is a tranquil spot extensively in the Holy Land within a hectic city and a popular examining and questioning religious place of prayer and meditation. sites. He dismisses the provenance of both the Church of the Holy GOING SOUTH Sepulchre and the Garden Tomb as Professor Joan Taylor of Kings College being “fraught with geographical London has also queried the St Helen fl aws”. He proposes an altogether legend: “I concluded that the evidence different place for the Crucifixion: does not point us to the authenticity namely a Palestinian neighbourhood of the traditional site but rather to “but the traditional tomb of Jesus may very outside Jerusalem called Silwan, which a site slightly further south.” Through an well be authentic.” is about 600ft (180m) east of the City of analysis of both the four main Gospels The place of the Crucifixion, Professor David in Jerusalem. 4 and apocryphal writings, she questioned Taylor suggests, was an oval-shaped disused The former cop has relied on his reading of the proximity of the tomb to the place of quarry located west of the second wall and the Bible and his examination of 19th century execution. “The tomb is not said to be very north of the fi rst wall. “Jesus was crucified photographs and has published his fi ndings near the site of the Crucifixion,” she writes. in the southern part of this area, just outside in a book called Golgotha. Previously, he has It was further south than the traditional site, Gennath Gate… He was buried some 200m claimed to have found the anchor of the boat RCLAY / CREATIVE COMMONS BA BOB CORNUKE GRANT

TOP: The skull simulacrum above the Garden Tomb was most likely formed by quarrying during the Crusader period. ABOVE LEFT: Former cop Bob Cornuke believes he has located the real site of Golgotha in the Palestinian suburb of Silwan, just outside Jerusalem. ABOVE RIGHT: The Garden Tomb, noted by Conrad Schick in 1867.

50 FT352 www.forteantimes.com RODGER DUSATKO

ABOVE: Rodger Dusatko received a mystical tip-off regarding this skull-shaped mound that would, he says, “have had a close-up view of ripping of the Temple curtain”.

in which St Paul was shipwrecked, Noah’s That the Temple was visible from the site execution was at a greater distance from it Ark and Mount Sinai, where Moses received of the Crucifixion is central to Dusatko’s than St Helen supposed. Once St Helen had the Ten Commandments. He has also claim. “As Jesus died, three of the four found three wooden crosses that matched searched for the lost Ark of the Covenant. Gospels testify that the Temple curtain what she was looking for, there was no need Cornuke began his quest for Golgotha by ripped… it was the curtain at the entrance of in her mind to look further. querying the position of Solomon’s Temple. the Temple. The Gospels also testify that the Yet does any of it matter? To many in It was not where most scholars believe, he centurion and those with him on Golgotha the Orthodox and Catholic tradition and claims, but about 600ft (180m) to the south. saw the curtain rip. There is only one single to Protestant fundamentalists it does. For As a consequence of this, all the traditional place where those gathered would have had members of the ancient churches, who fi nd sites of Christian, Islamic and Jewish history a close-up view of the ripping of the Temple great comfort in the adoration of holy relics, in Jerusalem have to be rethought, he says. curtain.” And that would have been from to have the St Helen story undermined would Not averse to upsetting orthodox believers, the top of the skull-shaped mound Dusatko invalidate the authenticity of hundreds of he suggests the Wailing Wall and the Dome believes was the true Golgotha, just outside sacred objects which have become foci of of the Rock are not the genuine articles, and the eastern wall of Jerusalem. faith. Fundamentalists who take the Bible neither is the holiest sanctuary in the Church Like St Helen, Dusatko was led mystically literally want to be able to identify the of The Holy Sepulchre. to the site. It was Friday afternoon on 5 June real places where real events happened To confirm to himself that he had found 2009, he recalls. He was sitting on a bench to strengthen their belief in an inerrant the right place, he had to see it for himself. at the base of the Mount and heard God’s scripture. It was, however, located in what he has words “inwardly very clearly: ‘I want to show Yet to millions of Christians around the described as a notoriously rough and you something’. So I told those I was with, ‘I world the question “where was Golgotha?” poverty-stricken area. He encountered a must leave you for a time. But I will be back matters not a jot. Knowing the site is not in hostile reception as he ventured in, but shortly’. Then the Lord directed me up the any way essential to their faith. FT eventually met and persuaded a community steep southern slope of Golgotha. As I was leader to give him access. Before long, “I was climbing, the Lord said, ‘This is Golgotha’.” NOTES actually standing at the foot of the stone 1 NBC Science News, 31 July 2013. cliffs I had come so far and had spent so FOCI OF FAITH 2 www.gardentomb.com/about/brief-history/ much time and treasure trying to see: the So which of the theories is correct? Perhaps cliffs of the Silwan village. I gazed up at none of them – it’s a pity the Gospel writers 3 Joan Taylor, Golgotha: A Reconsideration of several ancient split-open tombs, which were were not more specific. the Evidence for the Sites of Jesus’ Crucifixion and Burial, New Testament Studies, Vol 44:2, exactly as the Bible described! My mouth Most 21st century rationalists would April 1998, pp180-203; www.biblearchaeology. went chalk dry.” be very wary of accepting dreams and org/post/2010/01/11/Golgotha-A- A further description of an alternative divine revelation as evidence. St Helen’s Reconsideration-of-the-Evidence-for-the-Sites-of- site for Golgotha comes from a Californian identification of the modern Church of The Jesuse28099-Crucifixion-and-Burial.aspx. preacher, now based in Germany, called Holy Sepulchre site needs therefore to be Rodger Dusatko. 5 He draws a list of Bible viewed with caution. But perhaps the story 4 Robert Cornuke, Golgotha: Searching for the True Location of Christ’s Crucifixion, Koinonia prophecies together and relies on the ancient of the dream is a later embellishment to House, 2016; www.baseinstitute.org/Cornuke; description of Golgotha as resembling the the story of her visit to Jerusalem; perhaps www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTURg_3y6o8. cranium of a skull. “There is only one mount she was acting on some reliable oral near Jerusalem which looks like a cranium, history when she ordered the demolition of 5 www.dusatko.de/golgotharediscovered.pdf the skull-pan of a head. And this mound is Hadrian’s pagan temple. only 330m (1,080ft) from where the Temple Of the theories reviewed, that of Professor AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Entrance once stood.” It is close by the Lion’s Joan Taylor is the only one that is not Gate in the city walls. “From the mound it motivated by a religious enthusiasm to fi nd a TED HARRISON is a writer, artist and former would have been possible to see the exact holy place. She accepts that the traditionally BBC religious affairs correspondent. A regular place on the north side of the altar where the acknowledged burial place of Jesus may well contributor to FT, his latest book is The Death sacrificial animals of Israel must be killed.” be the correct one, but suggests the place of and Resurrection of Elvis Presley.

FT352 51 www.forteantimes.com THE HIEROPHANT’S APPRENTICE PRESENTS cbUilDinG a c fortean library 20. you can’t be sirius

eccentric philosopher – before we get to There is a certain class of book that strictly speaking one needn’t read and maybe the reason why he’s germane to the story. even shouldn’t read, lest it drive you whimpering to the safety of the apple cellar (Temple cannot bear to drop a name you or to serial bungee-jumping or worshipping Diane Abbott, or yet worse; and yet the may have heard of without flaunting his book remains curiously irresistible. Here we treat of one such. In 1976, Robert Temple acquaintance with said luminary.) But it published The Sirius Mystery, which as we recall was a hefty volume in black covers was always worse than that. and none-too-large print. The book attracted both scathing criticism and a certain Temple provides a long introduction cult following, and a dozen years later Temple followed it with a revised and updated to his revised edition, in which he claims edition (the one we examine here) that, to its detractors, did not markedly improve on the original but lowered Temple deeper into the hole he had already dug for that the CIA have been on his case for himself. The cult following merely expanded, if the dreaded Internet is any guide. One years, trying to wreck his relationships question the book provokes is how and/or why it should so divide opinion, although with distinguished members of NASA, we confess that its attraction for its devotees is a mystery in itself – for reasons that stealing manuscripts of key documents, will become apparent – and we won’t spend too much time on that. Nonetheless, it’s and generally trying to ruin his career. a book that should be in every fortean’s library, as an example of how not to proceed One has to wonder why they would bother. with any investigation. It is a kind of tragedy, for Temple’s researches are wide, deep, He also expends much time and many and appear to be erudite; his conclusions are entirely off the mark, because his pages on a proposal that the Nommo are premises, logical and factual, are so profoundly mistaken. A mountain of labour; a currently parked on or even in Phoebe, mouse of evidence – and a dead one at that. a moon of Saturn that happens to have a retrograde orbit. He thinks it may be artificial, perhaps hollow, and is perfectly Temple’s thesis is as follows. He round, with “a smooth surface without discovered that in the late 1940s and craters or other lumps or bumps”. It early 1950s, the French anthropologist is neither. It looks (if anything) like a Marcel Griaule had, by his own account, misshapen, much-abused potato, and penetrated the innermost secrets of the there’s nothing strange about its density. lore of the Dogon, a West African tribe Temple’s odd speculations include the living south of the River Niger in Mali. thought that the Mars Orbiter probe didn’t According to Ogotemmeli, his sole malfunction after all, but sent back a informant, the Dogon regarded the star stream of secret data about the red planet, Sirius – the brightest in the night sky – as while he says brightly of the infamous central to their system of beliefs, and ‘Face on Mars’ image “it looks pretty were aware that it had an invisible, very convincing, doesn’t it?” Well, no it doesn’t dense, companion. This surprised Griaule (Temple asks many questions to which (and captured Temple’s imagination) the answer is “No”), and high resolution because although this knowledge was images from a later survey proved the allegedly ancient to the Dogon, Western point. All this is in the introduction to astronomers had not even speculated the revised edition. Stranger things are upon the existence of a companion star to come. (Sirius B) until 1844, from calculations His subtitle notwithstanding, Temple based on perturbations of Sirius A. This makes two fundamental scientific was confirmed in 1862 when Sirius B errors in his book. First is the classic was first seen through a telescope. It was presumption of believers in the identified as a white dwarf in 1915, and Extraterrestrial Hypothesis that the first photographed in 1970. Yet it was emergence of life on other planets will central to Dogon mythology, and they infallibly result in the evolution of knew too about its 50-year orbital cycle. but provided this arcane information intelligent life, and scientifically and So how did the Dogon learn about it? about Sirius B – albeit in coded form – to technologically accomplished life at that. Griaule also learned of the Dogon’s humans; and the Dogon had it from the There is, any sane Darwinian will tell secret creation myth, which involved Egyptians. you, nothing inevitable about intelligent creatures called the Nommo. These And that is about it, and Temple life – evolution is an altogether chancy – at least in Temple’s interpretation – manages to fill the best part of 650 pages process, not a progression from ‘lower’ came from the Sirius system, and were justifying his belief. It is exhausting stuff, to ‘higher’ creatures, although some amphibious. Temple proposes that the full of irrelevant digressions: we get a later Victorians thought so. And any Nommo visited Earth in the distant past, couple of pages of Temple telling us about half-literate student of history can tell where they not only kick-started the his acquaintance with Arthur M Young – you that the development of science Sumerian and Egyptian civilisations, designer of the first Bell helicopter, and and technology is the product of no

52 FT352 www.forteantimes.com less contingent events in the culture of much of agriculture is conducted without Western Europe (hint: Martin Luther any reference to it.” More surprising, has much to answer for). His second “reaDinG MaDe van Beek – after carefully and discreetly fundamental error is his failure to address preparing his ground – found no one who the basic nature of the Sirius star system. Don QUiXote recognised any aspect of Griaule’s ‘secret’ Sirius itself is only about 250 million years lore, although many other features of old and may last only a billion more; and a GentleMan. Dogon culture remained intact decades the stars themselves (one excessively hot, after first being recorded. Contrary to the other cold and dim) are well outside belieVinG WHat Griaule/Temple’s account, the Nommo are the age and temperature range considered not ancestors of the Dogon, and Nommo conducive to life on any associated planet. He reaD MaDe – singular – is “often represented as one Further, Sirius B’s orbit is not symmetrical but then as an example of his kind: many around Sirius A, so any such planet(s) HiM MaD.” Nommo people the waters. Nommo is would have an unstable orbit, such is the feared as none other….” Van Beek notes nature of celestial mechanics – and that’s Bernard Shaw that “The Dogon know no proper creation not favourable to the emergence of life myth; neither the version of Ogotemmeli either: the state of any water would be nor that of the Renard pâle is recognisable unstable too, and might well be entirely to informants... That Sirius is a double boiled away. (There is an excellent, because it’s the number of seven-day star is unknown; astronomy is of very detailed summary of all these difficulties weeks in a lunar year. Well, maybe. We little importance in religion. Dogon by Prof Liam McDaid at www.skeptic. are treated to the histories of various society has no initiatory secrets beyond com/eskeptic/10-01-13/#feature.) Various mythical personages’ 50-strong progeny, the complete mastery of publicly known well-informed persons pointed out these the sowing of dragons’ teeth (“And teeth texts.” He goes on: “Is Sirius a double star problems not long after Temple’s first are bone!” Temple exclaims triumphantly, [to the Dogon]? The ethnographic facts edition, but they seem mysteriously to inconsequentially, and quite wrongly) are quite straightforward. The Dogon, of have escaped his attention for the second. and all manner of other stuff involving course, know Sirius as a star (it is after The Dogon, Temple says, also have the ‘sacred 50’. One of the more startling all the brightest in the sky)… Knowledge a tradition of a third star (‘Sirius C’) conclusions Temple reaches through his of the stars is not important either in in the system. Of this, he says, there backwards reasoning is that Jason and daily life or in ritual. The position of the is now “scientific proof”, basing this his 50 Argonauts, of Golden Fleece fame, sun and the phases of the moon are more absolutist statement on a 1995 paper by landed up in Egypt and made their way pertinent for Dogon reckoning. No Dogon Daniel Benest and JL Duvent, who more to Mali, and are the true ancestors of the outside the circle of Griaule’s informants cautiously framed the results of their Dogon. Not a lot of people know that, had ever heard of sigu tolo or po tolo, nor gravitational studies with the title “Is and it would no doubt surprise those had any Dogon even heard of erne ya tolo Sirius a Triple Star?” Their hypothetical respectable tribespersons no end. (according to Griaule… Dogon names candidate was a brown dwarf, and it Now, back to the original sources. for Sirius and its star companions). Most remained (and remains) undetected. This is where Temple really comes important, no one, even within the circle Temple had predicted a red dwarf, but unstuck. Anthropologists have been, of Griaule informants, had ever heard let’s not be picky: he had his ‘proof’. Other let’s say, bemused that following the or understood that Sirius was a double astronomers later ran the numbers again, publication of Griaule’s 1948 paper on the star (or… even a triple one, with B and C and questioned Benest and Duvent’s Dogon and their secret lore, in 1965 he orbiting A). Consequently, the purported conclusions. In 2013, an analysis was (posthumously) with his student Germaine knowledge of the mass of Sirius B or the published of a visual search and produced Dieterlen published Le Renard Pâle, which orbiting time was absent.” the conclusion that the likelihood of without explanation presented an entirely In other words, not a trace of the Sirius C being present is extremely different account of Dogon creation myths ‘secret lore’ on which Temple builds his low (just so you know). This upsets the and associated legends, based this time on exhausting argument. How come, we may idea that the Dogon possessed esoteric four further informants. Temple does not ask? Van Beek provides ample evidence knowledge about the Sirius system. notice the discrepancy. Most remarkable that Griaule created narratives out of In his quest for how the Dogon acquired about these accounts, however, was that confused notes, specialised in combining their alleged knowledge, Temple trawls every facet of Dogon life was shot through leading questions with a bullying mode, through every legend and language he can with these myths and legends – making and besides was well-versed in astronomy. think of in and around the ancient Middle Dogon culture unique, indeed anomalous, Possibly without realising it, but perhaps East and at some points wanders as far as in Africa. Naturally, this raised questions not, he gave his Dogon informants all the China. Much obsessed by Sirius B’s 50- – more bluntly, suspicions – among information they needed about Sirius. year orbit, he devotes an entire lengthy anthropologists. The Dogon are obsessively polite and chapter to instances of the number 50, In 1978, Walter van Beek began what non-confrontational, and happily fed which does indeed crop up all over the started as an investigation into the him whatever they thought he wanted ancient world, and in which he sees signs relation between religion and survival to hear. It’s worth mentioning too that, and token of Sirius B. Our take on this strategies among the Dogon. He visited being human, they don’t lack humour. was to recall the non-literal biblical habit the tribe for up to three months at a time Van Beek, for instance, recounts how he of referring to a shortish long time as over the next 11 years. “For this theme, showed a 400-panel colour chart to some 40 days (e.g. Jesus in the wilderness), an evaluation of the work of Griaule was informants, who obligingly (and to his and a very long time as 40 years (e.g. the a necessity,” he wrote in 1991 (“Dogon surprise) gave a name for all of them. Hebrews in the desert), and the modern Restudied”, Current Anthropology 32:2), They then confessed they’d made most of Greek expressions ‘Avrio meth’ ávrio’ several years before Temple’s second them up, but had fun doing it. – literally, the day after tomorrow, but edition. “As it developed, it increasingly Which naturally does make one wonder which everyone understands as ‘Sometime became an integrated restudy of the if Robert Temple’s barely readable opus this week – maybe’; and ‘S’eíkosi ’méres’– Dogon.” Far from being central to all isn’t a whopping spoof as well. literally, in 20 days’ time, but understood aspects of Dogon life, van Beek found as ‘No idea when, really, just keep asking.’ that “Dogon religion emerged as elusive It’s been suggested that the number 50 and complicated but within the range of Robert Temple, The Sirius Mystery: New is so common for large sets of things known African religions. It has limited Scientific Evidence of Alien Contact 5000 or people in the ancient Middle East relevance for everyday life: for example, years ago, Century Random House, 1998.

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that this story is completely fictional. Alien Dawn Patrol Besides the Fokker triplane error, the flying ace Peter Waitzrik would seem to be an invented character. A picture of him NIGEL WATSON asks if the Red Baron really shot down a UFO 100 years ago... with his fellow flying officers in front of an Albatross D.III aircraft, as used in the Weekly World News story, is real enough NIGEL WATSON is a veteran and was taken around 23 April 1917; but UFO reseacher and author of the person circled as Peter Waitzrik was UFOs of the First World War: Phantom Airships, Balloons, really Erich Lowenhardt (or Otto Brauneck Aircraft and Other Mysterious according to some websites). Either way, Aerial Phenomena (2015). there was no known German WWI pilot with the name Peter Waitzrik. 2 Aviation expert Dave Homewood also erman flying ace Manfred von demolishes the ‘secret US aircraft’ idea, Richtofen, the notorious Red pointing out that: “In the Spring of 1917 GBaron, is alleged to have shot the US had no aircraft in the war, nor down a UFO whilst on an early were they even at the front.The American morning mission over western Belgium Expeditionary Force was not even in the spring of 1917. According to fellow formed till July 5, 1917, and the very few German Air Force ace Peter Waitzrik, who Americans who’d actually made it to the was flying in an accompanying Fokker Dr.1 front lines before then as mercenaries flew triplane at the time, the craft resembled French aeroplanes.”3 an upside-down, silver-coloured saucer Despite these facts indicating that the about 136ft (40m) in diameter and bore story was either totally made-up or the undulating orange lights. It appeared product of (the probably non-existent) suddenly out of a clear blue sky. Waitzrik Waitzrik’s imagination, it has since been recalled: “We were terrified because we’d repeated as fact in numerous books and on never seen anything like it before.The US various UFO websites. As a consequence, had just entered the war, so we assumed it there continues to be a belief that the was something they’d sent up. The Baron Red Baron was the first man to shoot immediately opened fire and the thing that he had nothing to lose by going public, NOTES down an alien spaceship, and the event went down like a rock, shearing off tree 80 years after the event, and concluded: 1 http://www. has even been re-created in a Spanish limbs as it crashed in the woods.” “So there’s no doubt in my mind now that ufosightingsdaily. youtube video, which has attracted several It was astonishing that the Baron was that was no US reconnaissance plane the com/2016/08/ thousand viewers. 4 able to shoot down a highly advanced Baron shot down – that was some kind of germany-reports- Oddly enough, a website called ‘John spacecraft; things got even weirder when spacecraft from another planet and those that-red-baron-shot. Kettler Investigates’ – where “the truth html‘ two bruised and battered occupants got little guys who ran off into the woods is earnestly sought and answers are 2 http://ufologie. out of the crashed ship and ran off into weren’t Americans, they were space aliens patrickgross.org/ relentlessly hunted down” – changes some nearby woods. Indefatigable alien- of some kind.” ce3/1917-belgium- some details of the story. Kettler claims hunter Scott C Waring explains the Baron’s The main problem with this incredible westernbelgium. the craft was 125ft in diameter, not remarkable feat on his UFO Sightings story is that it first appeared on page htm 136, and gives the date of the event as Daily website: “It’s possible that the Red 4 of the 31 Aug 1999 edition of the 3 www.facebook. 13 March 1917. He is also touchingly Baron’s two front machineguns could have Weekly World News, better known for its com/groups/47874 concerned about the impact of the damaged not the UFO, but the… antenna sensational headlines than its accurate 9618970394/ incident on our alien visitors, adding: on the top centre of the craft. Not all craft factual reporting. Another flaw in the ystor 4 www.youtube. “I get the impression that losing such a have this antenna... it controls steering... If is that Fokker Dr.1 triplanes, as illustrated com/watch?v= powerful craft to a veritable peashooter bZbLG1gBN1Y this antenna was hit by the Baron, then yes, in the news story, were not put into was so upsetting and confounding a UFO would lose control and be forced to operational service until August 1917.We 5 https://john as to be almost incomprehensible. 1 kettler.com/ land to make repairs.” might also wonder what happened to the ufo-downed-by- Additionally, there is a view emerging Waitzrik said that on the return from crashed vehicle and its crew, which would world-war1- that this case may be unknown because their patrol: “The Baron and I gave a full have been conspicuous even in the middle machine-gun/ a cover-up was performed over this report on the incident back at headquarters of a battle zone. Perhaps, as Scott Waring incident.” 5 and they told us not to ever mention suggests, they were able to conduct repairs Even Mr Kettler has to admit the it again. And except for my wife and and make their getaway. Sadly, they were Red Baron could not have been flying a grandkids, I never told a soul.” Waitzrik not so lucky exactly 30 years later when Fokker Dr.1, but he does seem to think continued to believe that what they had they crashed again, this time at Roswell. the mysterious saucer was being operated seen must have been a top-secret US At least the Red Baron can’t be blamed for by the infamous Grey aliens, who aircraft until the late 1940s when flying that one. believed their craft invulnerable and saucer reports hit the headlines. By 1999, On his ‘UFO Related Entities Catalog’ didn’t bother to “switch on the shields”. the 105-year-old retired airline pilot felt (URECAT) website, Patrick Gross notes Pride goes before a fall, after all. FT

FT352 55 www.forteantimes.com forum delusions

Clones, psychics and the Antichrist

MARK GReeneR asks what light delusional misidentification syndromes might shed on fortean phenomena

MARK GREENER is a Cambridge-based medical writer and clinical editor of Pharmacy Magazine. He writes regularly for a wide variety of magazines, including Fortean Times.

he clones, operating under the influence of the psychics, wanted T to chase him from his apartment. The psychics had even replaced the three people who ran the building with clones. So, he stabbed them to death. Another man was admitted to a psychiatric unit upset because other people couldn’t accept that he was the Antichrist – but the government knew. Then there’s the case of the 44-year- old man who, following a brain injury, became convinced that substitutes had replaced his wife and five children. All these are manifestations of the so-called ‘delusional misidentification familiarity. In June 1918, a woman ABOVE: Quick- or relative. Even blind people can syndromes’ (DMS), a psychiatric who insisted on being called ‘Mathilde change artist suffer from Capgras: a woman believed classification that might help explain de Rio-Branco’ (not her real name) Leopoldo Fregoli her ‘real’ husband was heavier and some possessions, doppelgängers was admitted to a shelter for the playing multiple smelt different. Similarly, a German and even alien abductions. And these mentally disturbed in Paris. She roles. woman believed her daughter, who dramatic, poorly understood and claimed that bandits had kidnapped had emigrated to the USA, had been enigmatic conditions are more common several children, which they were replaced, based on telephone calls than you might expect. Fregoli and holding prisoner in her cellar, where alone. Although his book reflects the Capgras syndromes are the best studied she could hear them whimpering. rampant paranoia that gripped the DMS. Fregoli is, essentially, a delusion The following year, she told her USA during the 1950s, Jack Finney of over-familiarity. People with Fregoli psychiatrist Joseph Capgras that evokes Capgras syndrome perfectly in syndrome typically believe that someone doppelgängers had replaced her his Invasion of the Body Snatchers: “She else changes his or her appearance or husband and daughter. She filed for was perfectly sure her husband wasn’t is in disguise.The syndrome’s name divorce, although ‘de Rio-Branco’ also her husband at all… he looked, talked, commemorates Leopoldo Fregoli, claimed her marriage documents and acted exactly the way her husband a famous quick-change artist who were forged. ‘Madam de Rio-Branco’ always had” but “it simply wasn’t him”. performed around the turn of the 20th had a long history of delusions. For Psychiatrists now recognise century. Fregoli could switch costumes example, she said her mother was a numerous other DMS, some of which and characters so rapidly that people descendent of Henri IV. She also said seem to overlap and might evolve claimed that there were several ‘Fregolis’. that her father had told her on his into each other. 2 Indeed, one in 10 In 1927, two clinicians, Courbon deathbed that he had stolen her from patients have Capgras and Fregoli and Fail, reported that a 27-year-old a wealthy family when she was 15 simultaneously and about a third woman believed that the actresses months old. She was the heir to mines experience delusions about a person Sarah Bernhardt and Robine, whom in Argentina, all of Rio de Janeiro, and a place. For example, people she often saw at the theatre, “pursued and 75 houses in France. But these experiencing a type of DMS called her closely”.1 Bernhardt and Robine had been stolen from her. She saw “environmental reduplication” insist used numerous disguises and took the doppelgängers all around her – nurses, that an unfamiliar environment (such appearance of “people she knows or patients, doctors – but only of people as a hospital room) is really in or near meets”. She believed, for example, that she already knew, never strangers. In a place that is important to them, often Robine regularly pretended to be her other words, she recognised, but could their home.3 In other cases, a person neighbour. The woman was admitted to not identify, the people and assumed with DMS can feel the house has been hospital after attacking a person in the they were doppelgängers. replaced. An elderly woman who street. But she believed that Bernhardt Capgras and his assistant Reboul- survived a stroke clung to a delusion and Robine, disguised as nurses, forced Lachaux described the condition that her house was not her ‘real’ home. her to masturbate. in 1923 as l’illusion des sosies (the Sometimes she packed her belongings Capgras syndrome (see FT123:14, illusion of doubles). People with to set off for her ‘real’ house.4 133:16 and this month’s Necrolog, p24) Capgras syndrome believe that an DMS seem to be relatively common, is the converse: a delusion of under- imposter has replaced a close friend at least among some patients. One

56 FT352 www.forteantimes.com forum delusions

study estimated that about one person Capgras patients often regard the to duplication. Several researchers in every 1,000 experiences Capgras misidentified person with suspicion, linked DMS to brain damage that syndrome, for example.The rate is which might evolve into paranoia generates ‘faulty information’. especially high in patients with certain and aggression. In one study, three in Other parts of the brain attempt to psychiatric and neurological conditions five (61 per cent) DMS patients had interpret this faulty information.The including schizophrenia, where 15 attacked someone else. 10 discordance between the two leads to per cent seem to experience a DMS, Although there are numerous DMS. For example, when an injured Alzheimer’s disease (20-30 per cent) examples in the medical literature, area cannot produce the appropriate and Lewy body dementia (17 per cent).5 DMS has proved difficult to explain. emotional response to a patient’s DMS also go some way to accounting Some delusions seem to be defensive: spouse, the other part concludes there for fortean phenomena – although they the person projects negative aspects is an imposter. Essentially, the damage are not the only explanation, of course of themselves onto an external ‘other’. allows an abnormal perception to go – including certain cases of lycanthropy (I wonder if the original case of unchallenged by another brain area.12 and possession. In 1978, a 56-year-old Fregoli syndrome was projecting her Until recently, many researchers woman “behaved like a wild dog” and frustrated and repressed sexuality.) believed that damage to two parts later developed Capgras syndrome.6 In other cases, a person may replace a of the brain was needed to account A 49-year-old man was admitted to stressful environment – a hospital, for for DMS: one to generate the error a US psychiatric hospital “feeling example – with a safe place, such as and one to allow the delusion to pass despondent” because others did not their place of work or home. unchallenged. But each part of the acknowledge that he was the Antichrist. Arguably, this aspect of DMS brain connects to many others. A recent At 36 years old, “he ‘realised’ that he could help account for some alien study found that a single hit in an was the Antichrist and began to recall abductions. Perhaps some abductees area that is linked to regions involved his previously forgotten psychological project something they dislike – their in familiarity is enough to generate identity”.The man also “believed frustration and anxieties, for example DMS.13 This study found that pattern that the government feared his power – onto an external environment, of connectivity was consistent across as the Antichrist” and implanted an creating the delusion of the UFO. cases of Fregoli and Capgras, as well as electronic monitoring device in his Interestingly, ‘Madam de Rio-Branco’ misidentifications voin lving different head. His doctors felt that the delusion believed that people in a network categories of objects (e.g. people versus was “consistent with a DMS.” 7 of underground operating theatres places).This might explain why the Closer to home, doctors from under Paris were mutilating the city’s same person can develop different Northern Ireland reported a 44-year- inhabitants: replace cellars with forms of DMS. old man who presented with Fregoli UFOs and mutilation for implants, Finally, the findings can help syndrome and believed that he and a and this sounds familiar. Indeed, in understand human behaviour – female friend shared the same body some cases of Capgras the person is including how we interpret reality. – a type of DMS called delusional under the delusion that a robot or an Fregoli and Capgras are devastating hermaphroditism.8 DMS patients alien has replaced the loved one. One and dramatic diseases. But what who develop a condition called person in Missouri believed an alien happens when one part of the brain ‘asomatognosia’ lose their recognition had replaced his stepfather, so he generates a less dramatic error that or awareness of parts of their body. So, beheaded him to search for batteries passes unchallenged? Would we even they might believe that the doctor owns and microfilm.11 notice? Someone who can really feel one of their limbs or speak of ‘‘my dead Another suggestion proposed that a that their home isn’t their home or that husband’s hand’’. 9 person with DMS might not be able to their loved ones have been replaced An outsider, without the benefit integrate memories and experiences. is, perhaps, at one end of a spectrum. of modern psychiatric insights, could So, they don’t recognise when What if this happens in more subtle easily conclude that a person who something is familiar and, in response, ways with less marked damage? DMS believes that they are the Antichrist, generate delusional doubles.Yet show, too, that memory isn’t as infallible shares a body or has a replaced body another explanation held that the as we like to think.What does this say part, is possessed. A person with parts of the brain that process and about the relationship between our Capgras believes ‘something’ has store memory become disconnected, internal mental state and the outside replaced a loved one, which again could so new information is not linked to world? DMS show just how fragile our be interpreted as possession. Indeed, previous memories.This, in turn, leads grip on reality really is. FT

noTes Neuropsychiatry and Clinical connectivity of lesions causing European Culture, Reaktion Psychiatric Clinics of North 1 K Atta, N Forlenza, M Neurosciences, 2016, 28:217- delusional misidentifications”, Books, 2013. America, 2005, 28:665-683 Gujski et al, “Delusional 222. Brain, 2017;doi:10.1093/ 7 Ruff and Volpe, op cit. 10 Klein and Hirachan, op cit. brain/aww288. misidentification syndromes: 3 R Ruff and BT Volpe, 8 C Mulholland and AG 11 For the above cases see: Separate disorders or unusual “Environmental reduplication 5 CA Klein and S Hirachan, O’Hara, “A n Unusual D Draaisma, Disturbances of presentations of existing DSM- associated with right frontal “The masks of identities: Case of Delusional the Mind, Cambridge University IV categories?”, Psychiatry, and parietal lobe injury”, Who’s who? Delusional Misidentification: ‘Delusional Press, 2009. 2006, 3:56-61. Journal of Neurology, misidentification syndromes”, Hermaphroditism’”, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, Journal of the American 12 Darby, Laganiere, Pascual- 2 R Darby R and S Prasad, Psychopathology, 1999, Leone, op cit. “Lesion-related delusional 1981, 44:382-386. Academy of Psychiatry and the 32:220-224. Law 2014, 42:369-378. 13 Ibid. misidentification syndromes: 4 R Darby, S Laganiere, 9 TE Feinberg and DM Roane, A comprehensive review of A Pascual-Leone et al, 6 M Beresford, The White “Delusional misidentification”, reported cases”, Journal of “Finding the imposter: Brain Devil: The Werewolf in

FT352 57 www.forteantimes.com

SEND REVIEW COPIES OF BOOKS TO: BOOK REVIEWS, FORTEAN TIMES, PO BOX 2409, LONDON NW5 4NP, UK. Thisreviews month’s books, films and games Unpredictable novelties The natural world is a hierarchy consisting of several layers beginning with subatomic particles and ending in the ecosystem, according to new thinking

chemistry. Darwin’s theory of and make technological advances. evolution rested intellectually on “In other words, But true coherence between, for elements drawn from deep-space the implications example, the physics of how a astronomy, deep-time geology, laser plays a CD and why I chose palæontology, anthropology, of convergence to listen to Slayer’s ‘Repentless’ geography and biology. And while I wrote this, won’t, I suspect, Watson brings the discussion up to go far beyond the happen in the foreseeable date with cutting-edge examples. laboratory bench” future. Some fundamental issues Convergence Convergence, for example, withstand both reductionism and The Deepest Idea in the Universe eloquently examines the tension emergence. We can’t, for example, and inter-relationship between understand consciousness Peter Watson reductionism and emergence. break the laws of physics. Rather from the interaction of nerves Simon & Schuster 2017 Reductionists break emergence adds layers that are as and chemicals, let alone Hb, £25 ind, refs, £25.00, ISBN 9781471129001 complex phenomena into more fundamental as those below in the fundamental particles. Indeed, Convergence is profoundly simple fundamental constituents. hierarchy. Paul Verschure commented and simply profound – and Reductionism, for example, Increasingly, however, recently that “understanding possibly the most important allows physicists to characterise understanding individual layers the nature of consciousness is book you’ll read this year. On the Higgs Boson and other – let alone the interactions one of the grand outstanding one level, Watson eloquently elementary particles, and between them – involves some scientific challenges”. One demonstrates how the sciences offers molecular biologists an fairly sophisticated mathematics. fundamental problem, he notes, overlap, converge and support unprecedented understanding Analogies (such as visualising the is developing a verifiable means each other, so “discoveries in of the pathways inside our curve of space-time as the skin of for observers to assess someone one science can quickly lead cells that are essential for our a balloon) can aid understanding. else’s subjective experiences to advances elsewhere”. More health and wellbeing. It allowed But, sadly, the increasing reliance (Philosophical Transactions of the fundamentally, he argues that pharmacologists to develop on mathematics will increase Royal Society B: Biological Sciences there is “an emerging order – a important new drugs for cancer the divide between science and 2016;371:20150448). I’m sure convergence, even a kind of and other serious diseases. the public – as well as, I suspect, we’ll soon model consciousness unity – between the sciences” and Yet reductionism doesn’t tell between disciplines. I can, in an analogous way to how that “this order or unity” gives the whole story. As Srdjan Kesic usually, cope with the statistics we model life and be able to science “an authority unrivalled comments in an insightful recent and mathematical models used define consciousness and life in among other forms” of knowledge. paper (Saudi Journal of Biological in my discipline, biology, but operational terms. We won’t, I Despite the seeming complexity Sciences 2016;23:584–591): I don’t pretend to grasp the suspect, capture the essence of and chaos of the world around “It would be impossible to mathematical basis of quantum consciousness and life – and reach us, the “deep order” revealed explain the functioning of a mechanics. That’s one reason accepted definitive definitions of by science is “so strong” and “so biological organism using only why accessible books such as either – in my lifetime. coherent” that it is beginning to physicochemical principles”. Convergence are so important to Meanwhile, science is attacking impinge on philosophy, morality, The newer idea of ‘emergence’ the general public and for other bastions that were once preserves history, culture and politics. In aims to addresses these concerns scientists. of philosophy, religions and poetry, other words, the implications of by assuming that the natural Fundamentally, I suspect a which raises important ethical convergence go far beyond the world is a hierarchy consisting convergence forged through concerns. Genetic advances raise laboratory bench. of several levels beginning with reductionism and emergence will the prospect of parents choosing Watson marshals examples from subatomic particles and ending in eventually emerge across the their child’s characteristics – disciplines as diverse as quantum the ecosystem, biosphere and so sciences – but it will be a long- which could involve traits that are mechanics, dendrochronology and on. Each level, Watson notes, has time coming. As Watson notes, passed on to future generations. child psychology. For instance, certain “unpredictable novelties” some critics suggest that certain Watson notes that such advances the principle of conservation – such as mental functions, sciences (electronics and cultural raise important questions. What of energy – a foundation of consciousness and life – that do anthropology, for example) are too will this do to our sense of being? modern physics proposed in the not appear in, and cannot be far apart to allow any meaningful Will people become things rather 1850s – brought together insights predicted from, the lower levels. convergence. Of course, scientists than beings? Will this challenge from heat, optics, electricity, It’s important to recognise that will be able to use emergence magnetism, food and blood these emergent properties do not and reductionism to gain insights Continued on page 62

FT352 59 www.forteantimes.com reviews BOOKS

Satanism Fail again. Fail better. A Social History Massimo Introvigne

Aries Book (Book 21) A non-scientist’s book on science’s forgotten cul-de-sacs attacks BIB STUFF €197 / $255 ISBN 978-9004288287 straw men and fails to note the path from failure to discovery Satanism: A Social History is an (intentionally?) humanists”, an amorphous group social progress, Tucker’s other pet 666-page long located somewhere to the left of hate is immortality. He sees the text by Massimo centre. There is plenty of heat, but idea that it may be possible as Introvigne, professor little light. Tucker has fun with a myth peddled by the religion of Sociology of Religions at the many eccentricities of Soviet, of science, and seems genuinely Pontifical Salesian veUni rsity Nazi, Islamic and even feminist disturbed that anyone might in Turin, and the founder of the science (“Still, what do you achieve it. Some of this fire is city’s Centre for Studies on New expect from a woman?” he quips directed at those who wish to Religions. Here, Introvigne traces daringly). In spite of these lessons upload their brains to computers. the often ambiguous history Forgotten Science in how the political distortion of Again, he gives no indication of of Satanism and anti-Satanism Strange Ideas from the Scrapheap science breeds monsters, Tucker why their ideas are wrong, beyond from its arguable – and unclear of History denies that liberal democracy the fact that previous attempts – beginnings in 17th century SD Tucker may produce better science. As at immortality have failed. It France to the similarly vague post- Amberley Publishing 2016 evidence, he advances the fact would be unfair to observe that everything iterations of our era. Hb, 320pp, ISBN 9781445648378 that North Korea has atom bombs there were many failures before The lack of clarity is not the fault and liberal Scandinavia does not. success was eventually achieved of the author, whose research Tucker’s previous book was on The book weaves around with powered flight, because is authoritative and meticulous Great British Eccentrics, and this uncertainly, often with no very this would imply some sort of (though his prose frequently one is really Great (Vaguely) obvious connection to science. progress. Tucker gives approving undermines its titillating and Scientific Eccentrics. Science The stranger ideas of mystics, mentions to pseudoscientist often dark content); rather, it is presented as a freak show in Creationists, homeopaths, Rupert Sheldrake, mainly because is the result of the history of which we are invited to ridicule Wilhelm Reich and even Sheldrake annoys scientists. Satanism itself. absurd beliefs. The problem is that Strindberg are aired, however He does not look too closely at Satanic practices take place absurd beliefs often turn out to be unscientific they mightve ha been Sheldrake’s own, widely-rejected away from the prying eyes of true. “We are all agreed that your considered when first expressed. work. He describes Russian the public and especially of theory is crazy,” physicist Neils The section on hoaxes perpetrated biologist Paul Kammerer’s the clergy, who comprised the Bohr famously told his colleague by Brass Eye show the public theory of Seriality as “basically majority of the literate populace Wolfgang Pauli. “The question ignorance of science, but has little incomprehensible”, when it able to record history in its early that divides us is whether it is to do with science, forgotten or resembles Sheldrake’s idea of stages. Introvigne attempts to crazy enough to have a chance of otherwise. morphic resonance, that nature define what Satanism is (the being correct.” Modern science comes in for has a memory. worship of Lucifer by organised Tucker mocks 18th century ‘cow numerous attacks: if science from Tucker is not a scientist, groups using ritualistic practices, house therapy’ with the patient centuries ago turned out to be and many of his statements do which Introvigne describes living alongside cows, but later wrong, so may our present ideas. not stand up to scrutiny; for as occult Satanism) and what admits that harmless cowpox from Tucker does not deny climate example, how is harnessing insect it isn’t (‘Romantic’ Satanism cows turned out to be an effective change – unlike every other topic, power perpetual motion? He that uses Satanic imagery for inoculation against smallpox. He it is “beyond the capacity of criticises Tesla for believing that largely political, literary or laughs at Galvin’s followers for laymen” so he cannot comment. lighting can cause downpours, artistic purposes, which he seeking to revive corpses with He is suspicious of climate change when this is widely accepted calls rationalist Satanism). For electric shocks, but mentions scientists. He scorns the idea by meteorologists. A section on rationalists, Lucifer evokes an that defibrillators restart that methane from cows may Paligenesis that looked good individualist spirit that has hearts with the same effect. cause global warming without was largely borrowed from FT. thrown away the shackles of Early experiments with blood explaining why and spends half Science is a bizarre and wonderful moral and religious dogma (think transfusion between humans a page on a joke story from the field. Scientistsve ha strange Milton’s French Revolution- and animals were ridiculous… Sport newspaper about climate ideas about some things, just like inspiring Satan in Paradise Lost or but paved the way for life-saving change making breasts bigger, everyone else. But an openness the idealist of Blake’s ‘Marriage of transfusion. suggesting that this is on the same to new and crazy ideas is a rich Heaven and Hell’). Occultists view The conventional view of level as research on the effects source of discovery, and this book Satan as a living entity whose science is that it progresses, and of methane from livestock. He does a disservice to science and powers can be harnessed through mistaken ideas are replaced declares that science is a modern scientists, especially those on ritual or magic for earthly by new theories backed by religion, an idea that is hardly the further and more interesting influence or hedonism. These experimental data. Tucker is original and given no new support. shores. rituals often involve perversions having none of this: he attacks the Even Tucker has to admit that it is David Hambling of Christian – usually Catholic ‘myth of progress’. This frequently self-correcting, though it may take – rites, frequently committed shades into attacks on the idea of a while. Fortean Times Verdict by men of the cloth, who were social progress, which he sees as a Apart from liberal humanists AmUSIng BUT UnFAIr TO familiar with religious practices delusion perpetrated by “liberal and their insidious belief in SCIenCe AnD SCIenTISTS 6 and whose authority allowed them

60 FT352 www.forteantimes.com reviews BOOKS

to perpetrate these (typically sexual) crimes undetected. Introvigne structures his Sonic youth, London book around a “three-stage pendulum model”, tracing Three decades’ worth of idiocyncratic images of David Tibet Satanist movements from their occult beginnings, when secret and his fellow underground explorers are infused with affection practices were made known to the larger culture that repressed this perversion of religious and then holding hands,” she You can see her point: practices in order to retain social recalls. As author Michel (Under idiosyncrasies vary from Rose – and largely religious-based the Skin) Faber notes in his MacDowell’s red rubber and black – cohesion. He comments on introduction, these two pioneers beehive combo to a tweedy Tiny similar contemporary responses of experimental industrial music Tim wielding a ukulele, but her to Satanists’ perceived threat to here resemble tired children subjects can never be mundane. social cohesion. resting after an afternoon in the Ruth cites one of her inspirations Introvigne’s tripartite playground. as Billy Name, the photographer structure encompasses the There are further, arresting and lighting designer who ‘Proto-Satanism’ events of 17th Skipping to shots of the remaining axis of captured and catalogued Andy and 18th century Europe and Armageddon Keenan’s Esoteric Undergound: Warhol’s inner sanctum. Her Russia. The second part also Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson and shots of Annie Anxiety, a fellow addresses the ‘Classical Satanist’ photographs of Current 93 and John Balance of Coil, emerging aficionado, were deliberate nods Friends period, which he dates between from their dressing room to to his work. 1821 and 1952, ending with Jack Ruth Bayer take to the Royal Festival Hall “The one of her wearing a Parsons and Scientology founder Strange Attractor Press 2016 stage looking, as Ruth puts it: silver outfit is a reference to L Ron Hubbard’s Aleister £25, ISBN 9781907222450 BIB DEETS “like some extraordinary Apollo when Billy Name wallpapered Crowley-inspired attempt to astronauts on their way to the the Factory in silver foil; and the conjure up the Thelemic goddess Mystic, visionary and sonic moon!” Now that both have one taken of Annie on the bed Babalon. (It is a testament to pioneer David Tibet has been departed this mortal plane, the was in homage to Edie Sedgwick, Introvigne’s lacklustre prose that charting a distinctive path through humour and affection of these with the hairstyle and really big these events are drained of their British music for the past three candid shots feel particularly eyes made up with eyeliner. I peculiar humanity). decades with his band Current 93 moving. have actually photographed Billy Finally, Introvigne gives us and its offshoots; a body of work There is a timeless quality to Name. They always say never ‘contemporary Satanism’ from recently given critical evaluation the collection that reflects its meet your heroes, but I got on 1952 to the present, which in David Keenan’s England’s subjects’ interest in mystical very well with him.” has the merit of making sense Hidden Reverse: A Secret History matters and Ruth’s understanding Perhaps the most iconic is the of a chaotic era. Satanism of the Esoteric Underground, also of that. shot which graces the front cover has splintered into factions, published by Strange Attractor. The largest group shots, taken of Skipping To Armageddon, in ideologies, and sociocultural For nearly all of that time, on Hampstead Heath for the which Tibet sits surrounded by expressions and interpretations, Austrian-born photographer Ruth cover of Current 93’s Earth Covers his enormous Noddy collection. from Anton LaVey’s Church of Bayer has been carefully watching Earth on a long summer’s day in Infamously the result of an acid Satan, the Great Satanist Scare him through her lens. 1988, depict a renegade bunch, trip in which he saw Enid Blyton’s and alleged ritual sexual abuse They first met in 1987, when perhaps a band of travelling cheery wooden tot crucified in the in the United Kingdom and the David took over Ruth’s old room minstrels or a circus troupe who sky surrounded by mocking elves, United States in the 1980s and in a house in Tufnell Park, north could have wandered in through this obsession was something that 1990s that provided endless London. She had just begun a portal in time. Similarly, the initially left Ruth nonplussed. talk show and tabloid fodder, to to study photography and “the intimate shots of Coil/Cyclobe’s “Since I come from Austria, I current cultural expressions such young man in leather trousers Stephen Thrower and Ossian had no idea what Noddy is, what as Black Metal. and sunglasses” she met as the Brown, taken in their seaside he represented, or that he was Introvigne is a painstaking new tenant became an enduring cottage in Sussex, could represent from a children’s TV programme. researcher; there are dozens subject. This beautifully produced a scene that awaited Ralph Because Tibet is quite an of fascinating and obscure volume is a tender testament to Vaughan Williams when he eccentric character anyway, I just events in these pages. A 61-page their friendship that chronicles went in search of sea shanties thought it was him collecting bibliography and two indexes are the relationships forged between in East Anglia, a century before. strange figures with blue hats included. The lack of illustrations Tibet and his kindred spirits ever Although none of this appears at on!” Endearing, unsettling, and is a disappointment, especially since. all stage-managed. enigmatic, it captures the essence considering the numerous Subjects include Steven “None of them were taken in a of their collaboration. “He is very examples of ritualistic practices Stapleton of Nurse With Wound, studio environment,” Ruth says. trusting in letting me photograph and the intriguing characters and depicted lying companionably “They all were either in my space him the way I do,” Ruth surmises. events described. At $255, the with Tibet on the floor of Ruth’s or in theirs inside, in my garden “There don’t tend to be any exclusion is even less forgivable. bedroom. She was in the midst or theirs or in parks; and I think boundaries between us.” Eric Hoffman of some interior decorating, so the people themselves are sort of Cathi Unsworth it seemed the easiest place to timeless. They dress in their own Fortean Times Verdict shoot them: “Then it just became alternative way and have their Fortean Times Verdict gOOD reSeArCH LeT DOwn By something else, them upside own style, I think that’s why I’m THe eSOTerIC UnDergrOUnD LeADen prOSe – AnD IT’S prICy 6 down, lying next to each other so fascinated by them.” meeT THeIr nICO 9

FT352 61 www.forteantimes.com reviews BOOKS

Continued from page 59 explain certain mental states – the Haunted Skies stride, when it covers another people I love and those I loathe, preserving the Social History of FSR report about a tennis-ball- our conceptions of autonomy and my passion for music as diverse as UFO research; Vol 1, 1939–1959 sized globe of light seen by a freedom? Should we intervene in Cat Stevens and Darkthrone, or John Hanson & Dawn Holloway. teenaged Thomas Hills Harrison evolution or leave it to nature? interest in robust science as well in 1919. Like most of the cases Moreover, some scientists as the outer reaches of forteana. Haunted Skies Publishing,2016, that follow, the authors have 621 pages, paperback. believe that mental states will And I am not sure I want them spoken to the witnesses and/or eventually be explained by to. But those who adhere to the This “revised prime researchers, and include lower level neurophysiological strong view would condemn my and expanded photographs of them and any processes. Strong advocates of response as hopelessly emotional, edition” takes a other relevant images and this perspective believe that sentimental and unscientific. visual journey documentation. concepts such as “‘intend’, ‘love’ Such discussions could have through British There is even a 1929 case, and ‘consciousness’ do not refer to been heavy-going, but Watson UFO sightings from investigated by Ron West, anything real and will eventually makes obtuse science accessible. 1901 to the end of the 1950s. It involving an alleged abduction in be replaced as neuroscience He does a remarkable job of includes a sprinkling of important Yorkshire. Merchant Navy officer progresses”. I’m reminded of explaining relativity. His eye for US cases and looks at how John William Anderson saw a ball of Samuel Johnson’s reaction to telling detail brings the story and Dawn got involved, following light that led him to a domed Bishop Berkeley’s “ingenious to life and often reminded me the sighting of a huge saucer- craft that had landed in some sophistry” (matter doesn’t exist (and I mean this as high praise) shaped UFO over a suburb of open farmland. He went inside and everything is an idea). James of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Birmingham in January 1995. the craft where he undressed Boswell observed that the idea Nearly Everything. Convergence Feeling that the subject was and after a memory lapse found was “impossible to refute”. “I is up there with the classics of often met with derision, they himself on an examination table. never shall forget the alacrity popular science. A brief review decided to track down retired He was telepathically told that with which Johnson answered,” can scarcely do justice to this UFO investigators to gain they were always around if he Boswell wrote, “striking his foot essential book. accurate information from their needed any help. The next thing with mighty force against a large Mark Greener files and from the witnesses. he knew was waking up in his bed stone, till he rebounded from it – This research eventually became the next morning. “I refute it thus.” I feel the same Fortean Times Verdict the basis for their Haunted Skies Extensive coverage is given about the idea that lower level A SImpLe, prOFOUnD AnD series of UFO histories. As John to the story of Cathie Connelly neurophysiological processes will pArADIgm-SHIFTIng wOrK 9 puts it, “Our books are not wild who had a close encounter in unsubstantiated fairy stories Warwickshire in 1940, which had – but the real thing! These are intriguing similarities to the Betty unique experiences from so many and Barney Hill case. people who just want to tell it The book provides a wonderful Fever-dreams how it was.” review of sightings in WWII, Many of the sources are many by RAF and military gleaned from Flying Saucer Review personnel, and then goes on to A guide to the oddly unfamiliar European- (FSR), such as the first 20th the ‘proper’ flying saucera er flavoured Gothic cinema is very welcome century sighting in Bournbrook, that began in June 1947. Here near Birmingham. An anonymous the multitude of British cases are witness recalled that in 1901, put in the context of milestone Cinecittà. Rigby’s insight will be aged 10, he came across a strange US incidents, and again there familiar to readers of his earlier building near his home. Two small are several close encounters with works and viewers of the series military-looking entities emerged UFOs and entities. Horror Europa (2012, BBC4) he and when they re-entered it, One of the stand-out cases is and Mark Gatiss created. it shot into the sky; 78 years that of Cynthia Appleton, who The end result is another afterwards, he thought he might met spacemen in her living room, absorbing chronicle of one of have seen a UFO. The authors and attended a packed lecture in euro gothic cinema’s most enduring but tried tracking down his family for Birmingham by the (in)famous Classics of Continental Horror misunderstood genres, ranging more information, but have so far US contactee. A month later, Cinema here from the silent films of the failed. They were more successful Cynthia said she was expecting a Jonathan Rigby early 20th century to the video in finding a relative of Agatha Venusian’s baby. Even Adamski

Signum Books 2016 revolution of the Eighties. Many Whiteland, who witnessed a flying could not have come up with such Hb, 344pp, illus, £24.99, ISBN 9780957648159 readers will be less familiar with platform carrying another set a far-fetched story. the 100+ films here than with of military-looking occupants at With its wealth of newspaper Jonathan Rigby is the author those in Rigby’s previous texts, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, during WWI. clippings, the tales of ancient of the acclaimed film histories making it arguably less intriguing The information about British ufologists and images of long- English Gothic and American and a more difficult read, but the UFO sightings before and during defunct UFO magazines, you do Gothic. Euro Gothic continues excellent design – and Rigby’s WWI cover the basics, as they get a real feeling for the period the series with a study of horror infectious enthusiasm – make it only mention a few 1909 cases when ufology was in its innocent fantasies ranging from Weimar enjoyable. and ignore the 1912–13 airship infancy. Where did it all go wrong! Germany’s Expressionist reveries Richard Thomas scare completely. In my biased Nigel Watson to the transgressive nightmares opinion, readers can best find smuggled past Franco’s regime Fortean Times Verdict these details in my book UFOs of Fortean Times Verdict via surrealist Gallic fever-dreams mUST-reAD FOr FAnS OF One OF the First World War – just saying! AH, THe LOST InnOCenCe OF THe and psychedelic shockers from CInemA’S LeAST FAmILIAr genreS 8 Haunted Skies gets fully in its BrITISH UFOLOgy SCene… 9

62 FT352 www.forteantimes.com reviews BookS

We leaf through a small selection of the dozens of books that ALSo RECEIVED have arrived at Fortean Towers in recent months...

Atlantis in the Caribbean hospital whose struggle with iatro- have very experienced researchers and omissions” and dumping his Andrew Collins genic complications of treatment in the field giving their considered system of misleading footnotes, Bear & Co. 2016 for cancer led to a series of surgi- views on how it has, historically, Greer and Mikituk have succeeded Pb, 488pp, illus, plates, notes, bib, ind, $20.00, ISBN cal interventions and a depend- been hijacked by “the misinforma- in re-establishing Lévi’s grand 9781591432654 ency upon pain relief medications tion, distortion, and derision by trans-cultural synthesis in a form It is difficult to see where there and anti-depressants. debunkers, government agencies more relevant to and understand- might be room for a new book on During a near-fatal crisis at and conspiracy conmen”; conse- able for the modern occultist. Atlantis but Collins has done just Christmas 2010, he was once quently there is much new com- that, re-examining all the most again on an operating table mentary on the old cases. Strange Tales from Illinois ancient and authentic records and when, 20 minutes in, he became This is likely to go way over the Luke Scriven distilling a (relatively) new theory. conscious that his body was head of any readers new to the Self-published, Amazon/Kindle, 2015 To locate the legendary island- floating near the ceiling and was subject, but old hands are sure to Pb, 99pp, £3.49, ISBN 9781537340593 continent in mid-Atlantic, as so fully aware of the actions and appreciate the behind-the-scenes many of the older writers have conversation of the theatre staff chapters on such key figures as FT heartily approves of the small- done, is clearly ruled out by below him. In an instant, he Donald Menzel, Philip Klass, Dr press tradition of anthologies of modern studies of the tectonic found himself in a frightening, Condon, and others. They end local tales, in this case, going plates that form the ocean’s floor. dark place and crying for help. A with yet another (but no less ear- direct to digital distribution. This Instead Collins marshals consider- figure appeared, whom he took nest) plea for the full disclosure of slender volume for the author’s able evidence that the Caribbean to be his long-dead father¸ now government archives. home state focuses upon modern is a better prospect, arguing that looking younger and confident, manifestations of mysterious and Plato’s reported account was a who calmed him and took him The Doctrine and Ritual of frightening clowns; the 1944 ‘mad memory of a cataclysm that struck through a tunnel. The doctor then High Magic gasser of Matoon’ panic; phantom this area at the end of the last experienced two past lives which, Eliphas Lévi; trans J M Greer & M A hitchhikers; and one new to us, Ice Age, some 13,000 years ago he says, put his present predica- Mikituk concerning the Devil incarnating when a cometary impact devas- ment, his arrogance and cruelty, Tarcher Pedigree 2017 into a baby born to an atheist in tated Cuba and submerged parts into a perspective. Attending Pb, $17.10, 480pp, ind, ISBN 9780143111030 Chicago in 1889. of the Bermuda landmass. angels then tutored him, telepathi- The author then shows how This is a revised and expanded cally, in spiritual health, giving him This new translation of Lévi’s variants of this old theme (of the edition of his 2000 book Gateway the mission to teach it to others. 1854 classic – a personal project atheist or blasphemer ‘getting to Atlantis, published when, Dr Parti awoke a changed man, by Greer and Mikituk – provides a what he asked for’) has cropped he admits, “very little scientific giving away his material wealth significant opportunity for a fresh up in other countries and other evidence was available”. Since and mending bridges with his re-evaluation of Levi’s legacy for times, going back to the folkloric then, he has trawled libraries family. This engaging book – co- the philosophies underlying and trope of ‘changelings’ substituted and travelled the world seeking written by Paul Perry – is Parti’s interpretations of, for example, for new-born babies. evidence of the Younger Dryas testament. psychical research, spiritualism, comet impact, finding it in six and modern New Age movements. You Might Be a Zombie continents among the remains of Fact, Fiction and Flying There is no doubt that this was Editors of Cracked ancient cultures in the Old and Saucers one of the founding manifestos of Michael O’Mara 2014 New Worlds. The theory is clearly Stanton T Friedman & Kathleen Marden the modern Western occult tradi- Pb, 295pp, illus, £9.99, ISBN 9781782433200 explained and the evidence well New Page Books 2016 tion, considering that it preceded laid out. It is refreshing to see PB 288pp, notes, bib, index, $16.99. ISBN 9781632650658 important works by Manly Hall and Hundreds of witty collections of the way Collins has matured as a Helena Blavatsky, and the main facts, factoids, rumours of the writer and historian; this must be You’d think that with shelves magical movements (including the urban legend type, organised his best book yet. crammed with books examining or Golden Dawn, the Rosicrucians, in familiar Internet-style listings indulging in the UFO phenomenon Theosophy, etc) that flowered in around 40 topics such as: ‘Five Dying to Wake Up from practically every known angle their wake. A graphic example stories about Jesus’ childhood Dr Rajiv Parti there would be no room – or, of this ‘transmission’, say the they had to cut from the Bible’; Hay House 2016 indeed, enthusiasm – for another translators, is Lévi’s illustration ‘Six insane things Science might Pb, 222pp, £10.99, ISBN 9781781807262 one. The two veteran ufologists, of Baphomet – the cross-legged do with your cadaver’; ‘The grue- Standing out from the glut of Friedman and Marden, have transgendered goat-demon sur- some origins of five popular fairy autobiographical accounts of cooperated before on at least rounded by occult symbols – that, tales’; ‘Three colors you don’t near-death experiences (NDEs) is three well-received books on well- while borrowing from the ancient realise are controlling your brain’; this from Dr Parti, a self-confessed rehearsed UFO topics. Knights Templar, presented the and ‘The five most frequently rich materialist who had heaped Even though the cases dis- modern world with a revised quoted bullshit statistics’, etc. psychological abuse upon his son cussed here all-too-familiar for the representation of the Devil as Compiled from the contributions for not being as successful as well-read follower of the subject, the prime-evil. In eliminating the of 35 of the satirical website’s himself. the authors have come up with an “pompous and turgid” tone of writers and amusingly illustrated, Parti was a respected Chief of important new angle. For the first Arthur Waite’s original 1896 trans- this makes a perfect addition to Anaesthesiology at a California time (in general print at least) we lation, correcting his many “errors your toilet library.

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A Cure for Wellness thing he always seems to get right jumping from scene to scene. here it is thankfully used spar- are the stunning visuals. Among Naturally, the mere fact that a ingly, sprinkled on at intervals, Dir Gore Verbinski, Germany/USA 2016 his better work was the 2002 horror film is this long will be ensuring that the film remains On UK release American remake of The Ring, reason enough for some moviego- truly unpleasant without turning After receiving a strange letter which showed that not only does ers to give it a miss, but if you into another gratuitous torture from CEO Roland Pembroke he know how to make a film that are willing to keep an open mind porn extravaganza. But make no (Harry Groener), the board mem- looks good, but also how to create as you go along for the leisurely mistake, despite such restraint, bers of his company order the mesmerisingly unnerving imagery ride, there is a good chance that this film is not for the squeamish. young executive Lockhart (Dane – and there is plenty of nightmare you will be enthralled by the A Cure for Wellness is one of DeHaan) to bring Pembroke fuel in A Cure for Wellness. With storytelling. By allowing the film those movies that splits both back from a wellness centre in this latest effort,Verbinski has to linger on seemingly insignifi- critics and audiences down the the Swiss Alps to sign off the made an original piece of gothic cant elements, a greater sense of middle. Whether you love it or final paperwork on an important horror and, despite its dark sub- mystery is achieved, which in turn hate it, the fact that the film merger. Arriving at the wellness ject matter, another stunningly makes the film that much more dares to be so deliriously differ- centre, the callously ambitious beautiful film. The cinematogra- unsettling, even when Lockhart is ent is commendable in the cur- Lockhart is unimpressed by the phy, editing and colour grading all doing something as simple as hob- rent cinematic climate, where idyllic scenery; he simply wants help to create lusciously serene bling around on his crutches. originality tends to be shunned to find Pembroke and get back to visuals in deceptively soothing Even though the film does in favour of the financial rewards business: but the businessman is shades of blue, and the excel- an impressive job of building a promised by reviving past suc- nowhere to be found. Increasingly lent sound design matches the tremendously sinister and mys- cesses. While the film goes places frustrated by the centre’s staff imagery so well that it can almost terious atmosphere, the final act with its Lovecraftian brand of being seemingly unwilling to be considered a character in its is ever so slightly disappointing. gothic horror that many people help, Lockhart begins to suspect own right. The story struggles towards the will find deeply disturbing, it that something is terribly wrong Just as the visuals have a beau- end, although this may in part be never stoops to the tired horror with this place. When he wakes tiful, dreamlike quality, the hefty because the film wants to take the movie tricks of jump scares and with a broken leg after a freak runtime of 2 hours and 26 minutes audience, thematically, to certain gore solely for the sake of shock accident, he continues his search is used to further create the sense places that many people do not value. This strange piece of for Pembroke, but his quest of being inside a waking night- care to visit – even in the name of cinema has all the makings of a is soon overshadowed by the mare; not only does the film’s horror. However, it should be said, cult classic. increasingly sinister discoveries length provide the opportunity this is not due to the body horror Leyla Mikkelsen he makes around the facility. to drag the viewer ever deeper shown in the film; that particular Gore Verbinski can hardly be down the disturbingly dark rabbit brand of horror was perfected by considered a consistent film- hole that is its story, it also cre- filmmakers such as David Cronen- Fortean Times Verdict maker, with flops such as The Lone ates a sense of time being warped berg, and while lesser filmmakers unconVentIonaL horror Ranger on his résumé, but some- because we are not constantly have overused it in recent years, won’t be to aLL tastes 8

64 FT352 www.forteantimes.com reviews FILM & DVD

Charles, Logan and Laura set off Logan on a journey north to the Canadian shorTs Dir James Mangold, US 2017 border in search of a fabled ‘Eden’ where mutants can supposedly On UK release tower oF LonDon dwell in safety. The bearded Logan After last year’s extremely disap- acts as an increasingly bloody and Arrow Video, £14.99 (Blu-ray) pointing Apocalypse (where to beleaguered Moses figure on the Vincent Price was always a fan of the theatre, so it’s start?), it’s encouraging to see that trek to this ‘promised land’, and no surprise to see him devour his role as a Shake- Fox appear to have some fresh ideas Jackman imbues the role with suf- spearean king in Roger Corman’s horror makeover for their X-properties: the recent ficient world-weary nuance to make of Richard III. Desperate for power, he murders any man, woman or child who gets in his way; in TV co-production deal with Marvel this easily his finest assumption of a fact, he kills so often that the film feels like a proto- has yielded the mind-bendingly role he has played across nine films slasher movie. It’s also got its share of poster-worthy exploitation good Legion and, in cinemas, Logan and nearly two decades. Stewart – like the child minder who gets her bones cracked on the rack in proves to be the best X-Men film in nearly steals the show, though, in a scene that feels a little brutal, even today – but there’s poetry 15 years, and that by a comfortable a poignant performance (F-bombs here too, as when when Price throws out lines like “When we distance. and all!) that must rank as one of his were children, there was no such thing as death”. The black and James Mangold, who helmed the very best.The young Dafne Keen is white cinematography looks lovely too. rev Peter Laws 7/ 10 nearly excellent The Wolverine back also splendid as the virtually feral in 2013, here delivers what promises Laura, and I wouldn’t be surprised to be – after the actor’s public state- to see her turn up again in the part. beYonD the Gates ment that he is, after 17 years, hang- Richard E Grant is, well, Richard E Precious Pictures, £8.99 (DVD) ing up his adamantium claws – Hugh Grant, but Boyd Holbrook (Narcos) Remember in the late 1980s, when board games Jackman’s final outing as the scrap- as Pierce makes for a superbly started ‘enhancing the fun’ with a bundled VHS piest of mutants. And it proves to swaggering villain, full of arrogant Tape? Like Atmosfear, where a hooded Gate be a fine and unexpectedly moving menace. Keeper glared out of the TV, screaming “YOU send-off. With its dusty landscapes, mel- MAGGOT!” at petrified players. Beyond the Gates At some point in the not-too- ancholy tone and themes of ageing, takes the VHS board game idea and uses it to distant future we find a crumpled, mortality and family ties, Logan is open a portal to a hellish world of death, mayhem... and lots of weary, booze-soaked Logan scrap- a very different kind of superhero pink light. Starring horror legend Barbara Crampton, the film’s ing a living as a limo driver on movie that stands out in an increas- a little slow and not exactly inspired, but it’s still an interesting the Mexican border; his healing ingly crowded field, and its obses- attempt to recapture some of the fears and loves of our youth. Try factor is waning and he’s caring sion with borders and migrations, it, you maggot! PL 7/ 10 for a nonagenarian Charles Xavier safe havens and dangerous crossings (Patrick Stewart) who is slipping marks it out as strangely prescient knIGht rIDer: the coMPLete coLLectIon into dementia and unable to control and powerfully resonant for our Fabulous Films, £99.99 (Blu-ray) his powers. In a world where most times. In the end, it’s not the furi- Today self-parking, sat-navving cars that talk are mutants are dead and no new ones ous, bloody violence that makes this pretty standard, but there’s one piece of tech that are being born, they hide out in an R-rated entry in the X-Men canon modern motors have not yet attained: the Turbo old water tower with Stephen Mer- feel special – satisfying though it Boost. Oh, and Ski Mode. Actually there’s a whole chant’s goggle-eyed albino Caliban is to see Jackman finally go full bunch of things supercar KITT can do which modern (I expected to dislike him, but he’s beserker – but the quieter, charac- cars still can’t – like analyse chemicals or jam the rather good), playing out scenarios ter-driven moments that linger in controls of a baddie’s helicopter, which makes this delightful of familial frustration reminiscent the memory after the credits roll on 1980s series still feel fun and fresh. David Hasselhoff and Wil- of Beckett by way of Steptoe and Son: this valedictory chapter in the Wol- liam Daniels are perfectly cast as, respectively, the long-legged it’s darkly funny, but there are hints verine saga. crusader against crime and the stuffy, neurotic car. All four sea- of a terrible tragedy that has driven David Sutton sons are here, sparkling on Blu-ray, so you get everything: KARR, them to this current dead end.The the evil version of KITT; Goliath, the evil truck version of KITT; and status quo is only upset when the Fortean Times Verdict GARTH KNIGHT the evil version of Michael Knight. Watch out for surprise appearance of a young a resonant anD MoVInG the bizarre Hallowe’en episode from Season 3, in which bouncy- mutant named Laura (Dafne Keen) suPerhero DraMa 9 haired KITT mechanic Bonnie is haunted by paranormal activity seeking protection from the sinister, after seeing a woman strangled by a man in a gorilla suit. This is quasi-official forces pursuing her. The Void TV nostalgia of the highest order. PL 8/10 Reluctantly, Logan is forced to come out of retirement and confront his Dir Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski, Canada 2016 wILLIe DYnaMIte own past. On UK release from 31 March Arrow Video, £14.99 (Blu-ray) If it sounds a lot like a late-period Western, then you won’t be sur- In features like The Beyond and City Meet Willie D: a streetwise, finger pistol shootin’ prised to find echoes of The Shootist of the Living Dead, notorious Ital- pimp who struts through the city dressed like E.T. and Unforgiven, while the classic ian director Lucio Fulci succeeded in that drag scene we all try to forget. He’s all floppy Shane becomes an explicit point of in spite of himself in creating two hats and fur, looking sharp even when he’s slapping his girls on money collection day. The film’s keen to reference as the film develops; Man- genuinely nightmarish and fractured paint pimping as a genuine business – it’s the Wall gold’s previous experience as writer/ horror films. I say in spite of himself Street of pimp movies and, as the great wacka-wacka soundtrack director of the Johnny Cash biopic because his customary lack of nar- proudly shouts: “It’s no different from any other industry”. I beg Walk the Line pays off in the sound- rative sense actually worked to his to differ. I’ve never, ever seen my plumber turn up in a bright pink track too. This is also a road movie of advantage here: the films are like a pant suit with matching feather boa and platforms. PL 7/ 10 sorts – a mutant Alice in the Cities? series of disjointed, hallucinatory – in which the unlikely ‘family’ of sequences that by some miracle

FT352 65 www.forteantimes.com reviews FILM & DVD

coincided with exactly what he situation, Gillespie and Kostan- this approach powerful, however, is to buckets o’blood, that makes was trying to accomplish, thereby ski throw the kitchen sink at that these are not your usual racist films fondly remembered and it’s creating a perfect marriage of the screen in terms of blood and caricatures – they are the well- a measure of this film’s enduring atmosphere and theme. In The Void gore. There’s too much, of course, meaning liberal elite, completely appeal that among the special fea- there is a similar lack of narrative but this is where the film does unaware of their own hypocrisy. tures are a cast reunion from 2008 control and a similar patchwork of undoubtedly excel; which should On top of the brilliantly satirical and a lengthy documentary detail- scenes, but in this particular case come as no surprise given the duo’s social commentary, Peele expertly ing just about every aspect of the they do not combine to such a suc- background in graphic design and taps the more conventional unease film’s production and reception. cessful degree. special effects.There’s body horror, associated with horror as the film It’s hard to imagine the same being Our hero is Daniel (Aaron transformations, shootings, stab- progresses, creating effective done in 30 years for the recent, Poole), a patrolman in the Marsh bings, axe attacks, two births and scares while unwrapping the sin- quickly forgotten, remake which County Sheriff’s Department. a broken finger – plenty to keep ister plot at the core of the film. starred the late Anton Yelchin, One quiet night he encounters a gorehounds happy then; just don’t While some of the scares may be Colin Farrell and David Tennant. terrified and blood-soaked young expect any of it to be coherent. conventional, what makes the film This is an excellent package and man crawling along the highway. I don’t usually like to use this something special is not just how the HD transfer is good. Daniel takes him straight to the expression but the film feels like seamlessly it blends satire and Daniel King local hospital, which just so hap- the directors’ calling card to the horror, but the fact that the story pens to be in the process of being industry, a plea to genre producers is told from the perspective of Fortean Times Verdict shut down following a fire, where looking for talent. And the pair do people of colour, a notably under- eIGhtIes cLassIc coMes the young man’s arrival sparks off have talent, but at the moment it represented demographic in terms uP Fresh on bLu-raY 8 a series of increasingly bizarre and is, to say the least, unfocused. of mainstream horror. As a result, bloody events, which see a handful Daniel King Get Out is an original, tense and seoul station of survivors besieged by a horde of sharply satirical horror film that is Dir Sang-ho Yeon, South Korea 2016 hooded cultists without, and even well worth the price of admission. Fortean Times Verdict Studiocanal, £14.99 (blu-ray), £12.99 (DVD) more monstrous terrors within. Leyla Mikkelsen an extreMeLY bLooDY Mess I’ll get the obvious out of the oF a MoVIe 5 Last year’s Train to Busan was way to start with: The Void is one Fortean Times Verdict a smash hit in Asia but left this of the most derivative horror films boLD anD satIrIcaL viewer unmoved [FT345:60]. It you’re ever likely to come across. Get out conteMPorarY horror 9 was basically ‘zombies on a train’ So many plot lines, situations and Dir Jordan Peele, US 2017 and added little to an already individual shots instantly recall On UK release from 17 March Fright Night overcrowded genre. However, its movies we’ve all seen before financial success demanded a Dir Tom Holland, US 1985 that you could almost call this an Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is about follow up, hence Seoul Station. The Eureka Entertainment, £19.99 (Dual format) homage to the genre. In the press to visit his in-laws for the first twist, if you can call it that, is that notes, the directors burble on time, but is extremely anxious A first outing on Blu-ray for the not only is it a prequel rather than about all their influences, citing about meeting them because they original 1985 version of the teen a follow-up but it’s also an ani- five films in the first paragraph are white and his girlfriend Rose horror comedy in which teenager mated feature as opposed to the alone. And they ain’t just whistlin’ (Allison Williams) has yet to tell Charley (William Ragsdale) comes live action original. Naturally for Dixie, for one could add literally them that Chris is black. Upon to believe a vampire has moved a prequel, it explores how events dozens more to that list, each bor- arrival, his feeling of unease only in next door. Sure enough, dead reached the point at which the rowed/ripped off (delete according increases, not just because Rose’s bodies start turning up, but Char- first film began and as all zombie to preference) quite shamelessly. parents inadvertently alienate ley can’t get anyone to believe that pandemics have to start some- This even extends to the cast, him by telling him how much charming Jerry Dandridge (Chris where, this one kicks off at, that’s featuring as it does Canadian they like black people, but also Sarandon) is the undead killer. right, Seoul Station. actor Art Hindle who is probably because something seems to be Only his faithful girlfriend Amy The story centres on a wor- best known as the hero of David terribly wrong with the black staff and geeky pal Evil Ed will give him ried father looking for his escort Cronenberg’s The Brood. The net employed by this white family. the time of day until they enlist the daughter with the help of her effect is that the film feels less like After an intense impromptu aid of local TV horror movie host feckless pimp, but that’s just a a discrete entity than a patchwork therapy session with Rose’s psy- PeterVincent (Roddy McDowall), a vehicle for the running, jumping, of cinematic quotes (and for that chiatrist mother, things get weirder self-proclaimed vampire killer. chomping and chewing. Like its matter bits of video games) from and weirder, and Chris begins to Definitely one for older teens progenitor, this is a bang-ordinary elsewhere. wonder if he should just get the this: there’s a flash or two of example of its genre, and the The other major problem is that hell out of here. nudity, some swearing and some novelty of animated zombies there are at least three separate The film opens with an eerie pretty gruesome horror effects quickly wears off. It does attempt horror movies crammed into the scenario that quickly establishes from the glory days when rubbery some social comment, in that the film’s 90 minutes. One is the siege; a link to the tragic murder of monsters were de rigueur. There’s outbreak seems to begin among one is a doctor with a fondness for African-American teen Trayvon an American Werewolf-style trans- Seoul’s homeless community, unnecessary surgery; and another Martin, and it instantly becomes formation, a Raiders-esque face which is why no-one takes it seri- is a kind of Cthulhu-esque Arma- clear that writer-director Jordan melt and some good old-fashioned ously until it’s too late. Slim pick- geddon scenario. These elements Peele is not afraid to address the vampire bat action. What really ings; unless you thought the origi- are linked, but it’s tenuous, and nature of contemporary racism in makes it work though is that the nal train ride was terrific there’s the directors’ control of the three his directorial debut. As the white characters are likeable and that little reason to catch this one. strands fails them in that each people overcomensate in trying their relationships are nicely Daniel King story reaches a crescendo too soon to reassure Chris that they accept drawn; the budding romance and with fever pitch achieved early him, it only proves that they see between Charley and Amy is Fortean Times Verdict on, the film has nowhere left to him as a skin colour first and a especially sweet and amusing. It’s thIs PartIcuLar traIn Is go. In an attempt to rescue the human being second. What makes elements such as these, as opposed ProbabLY worth MIssInG 5

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Blessing the sea

In an otherwise fascinating survey of Old Calendar Christmas customs [FT349:38-41],Ted Harrison mis- understands the significance of the Blessing of the Sea as practised by the Orthodox Church in Margate on 6 January each year. In the Orthodox Church, Epiphany marks not the visit of the Three Wise Men to the infant Jesus, but the Baptism of Christ as an adult in the River Jordan: it is for this reason that the custom of blessing the sea, lakes and rivers on the Feast of Epiphany has arisen in the various Orthodox Churches.This is not evidence of the confusion of Old Christmas celebrations with the Twelfth Night traditions of the new calendar. His Eminence Archbishop Grego- rios of Thyateira and Great Britain follows the new calendar and is therefore practising an Epiphany tradition with no connection to Old Christmas, beyond its taking place on the 19th century date of Old Christmas. Old Calendar Christ- mas for those Orthodox Churches FT collage Without my knowledge, she spent a few hours still rigorously following the this evening making this collage of pictures from unreformed Julian Calendar now My 12-year-old daughter Holly made me so proud FT349. I just wanted the Gang of Fort to feel falls on 7 January, as Mr Harrison by following her dad into the fortean world, all appreciated and happy that they’ve made a real correctly points out earlier in his thanks to the Fortean Times. We can have end- difference to our lives. article. less discussions about the reality of ghosts. Alex Swan By email Alasdair Cross St Peter Port, Guernsey monster panics that I described, Afro-Americans have their own occurred in the Southern States Exploiting fear a white newspaperman jokingly rich folklore, urban legends and where virulent racism was the confessed how he had started one fascinating forteana. It is vibrant, order of the day. In reply to my article on a series of the monster rumours himself. strong, very much alive and in A few teenagers may indeed of 1930s Afro-American monster Racism was an integral part of many ways different from the fantasise a monster just for the scares [FT337:30-31], James Barnes pre-WWII America. Its influence folklore of white Americans.That heck of it, as Mr Barnes says; but objects to my description of the on the nightmares of the black does not alter the fact that in the for such an imagined creature to influence of racism on these social communities is as unfortunate as it 19th and early 20th centuries white coagulate into a monstrosity that panics. Mr Barnes fi nds such an is undeniable. Another important slave-owners and segregationists terrifies an entire community, it observation ‘politically correct’ book is Medical Apartheid: The waged a constant psychological needs to feed upon an already [FT348:72]. I strongly believe the Dark History of Medical Experimen- warfare by exploiting and nurtur- present, very real fear. In the 1930s contrary: it is historically correct. tation on Black Americans from ing black fears as part of a hideous monster panics I described the Before me others have pointed out Colonial Times to the Present by control system for suppression. cause of that fear was the violent how black superstition and folk Harriet A Washington (2007). Another great book that treats this racism of a segregated America – a fears were exploited by parts of Washington presents the fi rst full is I Heard It Through the Grapevine: segregation that has never gone the white populace in America as a account of the large-scale medical Rumor in African-American Culture away but is, sadly, very much alive. terrible control mechanism. In this experimentation on unwitting by Patricia Turner (1994). In closing I cannot emphasise regard I especially like to mention Afro-American subjects from the As I explained, those 1930s enough that many ghost, monster the book Night Riders In Black Folk era of slavery to the present day. monster sightings could grow from and phantom scares bubble up History by the late Gladys-Marie As I wrote before, in the light of cursory misidentifications and from social stress zones where Fry, Professor Emerita of Folklore this sordid history one may under- vague yarns into full-blown panics misogyny, racism, inequality and and English at the University stand why Barney Hill’s reaction to only because the black popula- ignorance fl ourish and thrive. of Maryland, published in 2001. the alleged UFO abduction was so tions were already living in a state Theo Paijmans Tellingly, in one of the 1930s black markedly different from Betty’s. of fear. These monster panics The Hague, Netherlands

FT352 71 www.forteantimes.com letters

What a gas going haywire.” Her UFO detector apparently After reading Joshua Cutchin’s looked similar to a mobile phone article on paranormal odours charger. The instructions that [FT350:30ff], I discovered from a came with it went as follows: government information web- “Before plugging the power site that exposure to hydrogen pack into the mains insert black sulphide can cause hallucinations. plug on the mains power pack The reference is: www.atsdr.cdc. into the respective socket on the gov/toxprofiles/tp114-c2.pdf detector. Richard George “The device is a sensitive St Albans, Hertfordshire magnetic flux detector capable of resolving down to field strengths of 15 cersteds, pulsing or moving Cutty Wren Dangerous hippos from infinitely fast to one centi- Ireland has a very similar tradition to that of the Cutty Wren metre per second.The magnetic [FT348:74-76]. The Wren Boys are a rare and precious sight now, but Do hippos really kill “almost pick-up coil requires only one at one time they were quite common in rural Ireland as they went 3,000 people a year [in Africa]”? pulse at the above figures to kloc from house to house on St Stephen’s Day (26 December). The young [FT344:19] I mean, that’s eight a up the relay, thus sounding the lads would also blacken up and wear rags and sometimes wicker day and nine on Sundays. And they buzzer. Amplifier gain is approx. masks. They would carry a long pole crowned with holly; in earlier don’t even live in heavily popu- 40 decibels. times a dead wren would be used instead. They would go door- lated areas. I supposed it’s a good “Important. Whenever the to-door singing and playing tin whistles and fiddles, and would be job they aren’t carnivorous. buzzer sounds – i.e. when an rewarded with food and coins. They would sing: Steve Yates unknown magnetic field is present The Wren, the Wren Birmingham, West Midlands – repeat the above steps to reset The King of the Birds the device. If, however, resetting is On Stephen’s Day Editor’s note: It was the Daily ineffective a very strong magnetic He was caught in the furze. Telegraph (6 July 2016) that field is acting on the pick-up coil. Up with the kettle claimed hippos kill “almost 3,000 Check the sky immediately. If And down with the pan people a year”. According to resetting is effective, the UFO is Give us your answer animaldanger.com, hippos “pose probably still some way off, and And let us be gone. the biggest threat to those living you have more time to prepare a In Counties Sligo and Leitrim the wren was associated with the oth- in the continent of Africa”, and kill camera, etc. erworldly Cliona who liked to lure young boys to drown in the ocean. “500+” people per annum. How- “Note: it is not yet known Apparently the Wren Boys once also roamed in the Isle of Man, Wales ever, Wikipedia says that “there is whether all UFOs have a magnetic and France. They could be an eerie sight. “We were never ready for no reliable research to support” field; thus, if you observe a UFO them,” one woman remembered. “They always arrived like an inva- the claim that hippos kill more and the detector does not operate, sion from an outside world.” people in Africa than do lions and please report the occurrence to Paul Whyte, Dublin elephants. the appropriate UFO society.” Candida writes: Candida’s detector “I determinedly plugged my detector into the mains and after I was interested to read the cor- a while forgot all about it, because respondence about ghost detectors the buzzer never went off. [FT350:72]. It brought to mind the “About three years later I went intriguing description of another to see a film with a friend, leaving similar device and its triumphant, Rupert [her husband], who had if alarming, efficacy – namely Can- some work to do, at home.When dida Lycett Green’s UFO detector, we returned he was white as a which she describes in her marvel- sheet. He had heard this violent lous autobiography Over the Hills buzzing sound and had finally and Far Away (Black Swan 2002). tracked it down to the magnetic- She writes: field detector. A thorough sceptic “I had bought the device about UFOs, he had nonetheless through an advert in the Flying thought he had better check the Saucer Review, which I took in the sky. He walked on to our balcony 1960s because my friend John and there, straight ahead, was a Michell took it too. He is a world large light moving horizontally authority on ancient science. and slowly across the sky. It took “He made me realise that it was 10 minutes to cross his line of arrogant not to believe in almost vision. Converted to total belief in everything. All official reports UFOs, he rang the Daily Telegraph, of UFOs, usually from pilots, which published his story. described the presence of a strong “Two years later the buzzer magnetic field resulting in the went off again, at three in the pointers on their control panels morning, when I was alone. I was

72 FT352 www.forteantimes.com letters

so terrified that I didn’t dare look during World War II, had worked (starring, I think, Gert Frobe) In the wonderful language of out of the window. I turned the at Bletchley Park. In the story a where as British bombers attacked Lord Coke, the task of the judge in machine off and drew the blankets local man had had a shock after Berlin (?) a spy, identifiable as applying the Mischief Rule must over my head. I felt safe like that hearing a loud voice from a bucket French from his beret, neckerchief be to interpret the law in a way in the still, dark night in the soli- of coal.Well, he wasn’t Robinson and striped shirt, opens a baguette that “shall suppress the mischief, tary bedroom.” Crusoe. From 1943 until the Ger- within which is concealed a radio and advance the remedy, and to I wonder if more of these de- man surrender, Home Guardsmen transmitter, and directs the bomb- suppress subtle inventions and vices still exist, and if their owners heard voices coming from rusty ers to their targets. evasions for continuance of the find them similarly useful. barbed wire entanglements, police I have written about Aspidistra mischief, and pro private com- Merrily Harpur officers heard voices from rusty at more length in an earlier letter modo [for private convenience] Cattistock, Dorset street signs, and housewives heard [FT303:73]. My original source and to add force and life to the voices from gas stoves. Sometimes was volume II of Sefton Delmer’s cure and remedy, according to the Not dragonflies they heard music, but usually it autobiography, Black Boomerang true intent of the makers of the was voices, in German, which made (Secker & Warburg 1962). So Mr Act and pro bono publico [for the I would like to respond to the rath- it more alarming (although some- Hurst’s father was correct in the public benefit].” er condescending letters [‘Drag- times the voices were reported origin of the voice from the bucket, Furthermore, it is a general pre- onflies, maybe?’ FT347:75] telling as just “foreign” which seems to but as for his speculation that a sumption that penal statutes must me what the writers think I ought have been concerning enough). crystal found in coal had detected always be construed narrowly, in to have seen but ignoring what I The clue was that rusty or corroded the radio signal – while iron py- favour of the liberty of the subject actually saw, in reply to my letter metal was involved and all such rites (the crystal mentioned) can (i.e. if there is any ambiguity in about – and sketch of – a strange in- instances were in a particular part act as a diode, in this case it was the law, the accused should not be sect [FT237:77]. I am a country girl of England. If metal has a thin the oxidised metal. convicted). Also, a judge may have born and bred, and still am. I have layer of oxidation and is in contact John Alexander Faulkner recourse to what is written in Han- seen thousands of insects over the with another piece of metal it Sydney, Australia sard (permitted since 1991) as a years and hundreds of dragonflies, will act as a diode, and will detect further aid to finding the intention soaring, flying eating, mating, dy- and demodulate an Amplitude The Mischief Rule of Parliament. ing and in my house. Nothing about Modulated (AM) signal, if the Clearly, Parliament was not them resembled the creature that I signal is sufficiently strong. As As a lover of High Anglican and trying to impose liability upon in- saw in 1960 or 1961, that is forever the current from the diode surges Catholic-style worship involving cense being burned during church seared in my mind. It passed my back and forth in the rhythm of incense, may I offer a potential line services and rituals. In the case head spinning and making a whir- speech, the current will heat and of defence against any arbitrary of the Psychoactive Substances ring sound, which is why at the cool the metal causing enough application of the Psychoactive Act the ‘mischief’ and the ‘subtle time I thought someone had shot expansion to make the metal act as Substances Act 2016 which David inventions and evasions’ were the an arrow at me. It was 6in (15cm) a loudspeaker. Barrett fears criminalises “every activities of certain drug pushers long and shuttlecock-shaped. Of course, it has to be a power- Catholic Church in the land” using providing ‘legal highs’ causing in- I had a good look at it as it ful transmitter and, as Mr Hurst incense [FT350:73]? toxication in users seeking to drug settled on the door. It had a suggests, such a secret transmitter Fortunately, there is more than themselves, and which fell outside round bullet-shaped black head, was nearby. Codenamed “Aspi- one way of reading any Act or reg- existing legislative provisions. with a black shiny ruff around the distra” (after the popular song by ulation. Normally judges apply a And whilst (as Mr Barrett points neck, and about six long ribbon- Gracie Fields, ‘It’s the biggest… in literal interpretation, which might out) the intention of the govern- like tendrils about half an inch the world’) it had been purpose- impose liability on a strict reading ment not to prosecute churches is (13mm) wide.These looked like built by the Radio Corporation of with this Act; but there are two only to be found in guidance, such satin, very shiny, and were alter- America. It consisted of the main alternatives to such literal read- an official declaration of policy nate black and red.There was no transmitter, a 600kw monster and ings, known respectively as the could found the basis for a judicial sign of wings or legs. (I have kept a 500w unmodulated transmit- ‘Golden Rule’ and the ‘Mischief review of any decision to prose- the sketch I made at the time). I ter usually positioned 80km (50 Rule’. Judges may use these two cute a priest or congregation using still thought that it was an arrow miles) away, which would mislead rules when finding the meaning of incense for religious purposes. of some kind until it flew off to the any German direction-finding. an Act and wherever an injustice Alan Murdie back of my house. At this point I A 50kw AM transmitter is often or an absurdity might result from a Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk was completely unnerved and ran called a “clear channel” transmit- literal interpretation. into the house and locked the door. ter in the industry as it will have With respect to the Psycho- I have inquired at museums and a range of hundreds of kilometres active Substances Act 2016, looked at reference books galore, at night. Aspidistra would have the Mischief Rule clearly but have never seen anything been received clearly in Eastern provides a route out of the remotely like it. If I had encoun- Europe, but its target audience dilemma that Mr Barrett tered it yesterday, I would have was in Germany where it would highlights. Dating back to seen it as some sort of drone, but pop up on a legitimate Deutsch- Heydon’s Case (1584) 76 ER of course nothing like that existed esender frequency and provide 637, in applying the Mischief back then. black propaganda or instructions Rule, the court must identify Ruth Summersides to local authorities designed to the harm or ‘mischief’ that By email cause chaos and confusion, and Parliament considered to spread the rumour that Allied should be suppressed and the Aspidistra spies were everywhere. It certainly gap in the existing law, and made itself felt in the popular then proceed to apply the law yLOr TA

Lewis Hurst [FT346:65] passed German imagination. I remember so as to cover the activity that UL on a story told by his father who, seeing a German film of the 1950s Parliament wishes to curb. pA

FT352 73 www.forteantimes.com letters

SIMULACRA CORNER We are always glad to receive pictures of spontaneous forms and figures, or any curious images. Send them (with your postal address) to Fortean Times, pO Box 2409, London NW5 4Np or to [email protected].

A wooden badger on Burke Street in Sydney, Australia, photographed by Tim & Jen Williams came across this ‘lemur’ beech root in Cawdor Adam Norton. Woods, by Cawdor Castle, near Nairn in Scotland.

Juan Hayward saw this… crocodile (?) while out walking the dog near where he A long-necked critter at Stoke Gabriel in Devon, spotted by lives in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. rory Cooper.

74 FT352 www.forteantimes.com Have you had strange experiences that you cannot explain? We are always interested in reading of odd events and occurrences. it happened to me… CONTACT US BY POST: FORTEAN TIMES, BOX 2409, LONDON, NW5 4NP OR E-MAIL TO [email protected] Or post your message on the www.forteantimes.com message board.

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Severed heads This morning I dreamt about two little shops lying side by I don’t know how often you talk side somewhere. One of them about heads impaled on stakes, had a sign saying it was closed, but it’s not often I do. which was pretty irritating since I have recently had a knee it was closed the last time too. (I replacement. The pain relief isn’t ‘remembered’ being there recently, working well so I am spending but the memory could just as a lot of time in the arms of well be fake.) The other shop was Morpheus, via his friends Timmy open, though, so I went in. Some Tramadol and Catherine Codeine, people were blocking a door I so vivid dreams are the norm. wanted to go through, so I rather I got back into bed in the early rudely shunted them aside, only to hours of this morning after a visit find a small, cramped office with to the bathroom and as soon the lights out. As the others were as my head hit the pillow I could getting somewhat hostile I left the see the bed was surrounded by shop. impaled, mediæval-looking heads Standing on the pavement, on stakes in various states of I found that I had forgotten my decay. Oddly enough they just shoes inside. (I never actually seemed natural, not particularly took my shoes off, but I there scary. I was, barefoot all the same.) This morning I had a physio The feeling of the rough ground appointment. There was a major was very unpleasant – probably traffic jam so there was a lot more a memory of the times I’ve gone time than usual to chat, and the barefoot in real life, something I taxi driver, whom we’d never met, intensely dislike. Because of the talked of his time as a lorry driver hostile atmosphere I didn’t want in Eastern Europe. There was one to go back inside, but this is place he’d love to revisit – Vlad where the lucid dreaming kicked the Impaler’s old castle. “you walk in. I thought, “A h well, since I’m up the drawbridge,” he said, “and Maybe even a past life memory. dreaming anyway, I can just dream all around you are these stakes I awoke, stating Some people have suggested some new shoes”. This was of where he used to impale the that I might have heard of the course not expressed in so many heads of his enemies.” in a forceful forthcoming anniversary and words; it was merely a thought- Was it pure coincidence, or a subconsciously noted it, thus form. The interesting thing is that dream foretelling the conversation, way that “you stimulating the dream; but I find it took me a bit of effort to dream or the stranger picking up on my must sign the it hard to believe that such an the new shoes. I had to ‘will’ them dream, and diverting his own insignificant anniversary (bearing in into existence, and it took some thoughts? Magna Carta” mind it was only a day and not a time. Also, the final products were Graeme Kenna year) would have been broadcast strange, rubbery things that were Wallasey, Merseyside prior to the event. somehow part of my legs – clearly Somewhat bemused my wife told Doug Overton a parallel to the accounts of aliens Signing Magna me to go back to sleep and took Hampshire and little people whose hats, great pleasure in reminding me of clothes or footwear seem to be Carta the incident the following morning. part of their bodies. And then I At this time my wife and I A lucid dream woke up. I have lived with my wife now for used to share a drive to work, a Nils Erik Grande many years and she has become 45-minute trip during which we I’ve just woken up from one of Oslo, Norway accustomed to the fact that I would occasionally listen to the my pitifully few lucid dreams. One occasionally ‘wake’ in the night radio. Two days after the sleep- of my recurring dream themes Strange encounter to talk to her, usually about total talking incident we were listening is wandering about foreign nonsense. I have my eyes open to a radio programme in which cities looking for second-hand and appear to be fully lucid, yet the presenter ran through a list bookshops. Over the years I have A man approached me in a local I only have vague memories of of anniversaries for that day – evolved a number of different, park and told me that he was from it the following morning and it is one of which was the signing of recognisable cities I travel to. I Ethiopia, and that he was looking evident that I was doing some kind Magna Carta at runnymede. My don’t know their names, but they for a woman he had seen in a of ‘sleep-talking’. wife and I looked at each other in have a more or less consistent dream. He asked me to pray to In the summer of 1995 an total surprise, having immediately topography from dream to dream, God, with him, for help in finding instance of this occurred that recalled the events of the night two with the same bookshops in the the woman. His request was has left me intrigued ever since. days prior. same places. I never seem to get granted but whether the prayer I awoke sometime after midnight So what was this phenomenon around to buying any books in brought any results I will probably to shake my wife until she awoke, that I experienced? Could it simply these dreams; it’s all about the never know. stating in a forceful way that “you be coincidence, or part of some atmosphere of the streets and the Richard Porter must sign the Magna Carta”. greater synchronistic picture? ambience inside the shops. Denver, Colorado

FT352 75 www.forteantimes.com attendant.The Rettungs- Wecker came to the Museum of Funeral History in the early 1970s, on loan from the Electro-Pathological Museum. When the electro-pathologists FORTEAN wanted their mortuary alarm bell back in 1976, a fully working replica was made by the Schollgruber clock- making firm, and set up at the Museum of Funeral History. The collection of the Electro-Pathological Museum is today part of the Technical Museum of TRAVELLER Vienna, but although this large museum has voluminous display cabinets full of antique vacuum cleaners and other archaic paraphernalia of yesteryear, 110. The Museum of Funeral History the original Rettungs-Wecker is kept in storage and is not on public display. It is said to have been made in 1828, at the order of the prison governor Johan JAN BONDESON pays a visit to one of Vienna’s stranger collections and finds Nepomuk Peter, for use in a small civic it’s the perfect place for anyone worried about being buried alive. mortuary at the cemetery in Währing, which is today a suburb in north-western Vienna. Among the many curious museums times that people fearful of being It is recorded that in 1860, after an ofVienna, the Bestattungsmuseum, entombed alive left a will saying that appeal from the pædiatrician Franz or Museum of Funeral History, is not their arteries should be cut, that they Hügel, a new waiting mortuary was undeserving of mention. It is situated in should be stabbed in the heart or the constructed at the Zentralfriedhof in one of the pavilions at the entrance of throat, or that their heads should be cut Vienna. It was still operational in 1874, the Zentralfriedhof, a large cemetery in off. In their wills, both Hans Christian when it was featured in an illustrated the city’s southern suburbs and houses Andersen and Alfred Nobel directed that magazine. A top-flight, modern hospital displays of model hearses, undertakers’ their arteries should be cut after death. for the dead, it boasted a large corpse- uniforms, coffins and various mourning The legal position of the doctor if blood room full of corpse-beds equipped with paraphernalia. gushed out when an artery was cut, or if electrical contacts and bells of recent It is worth a visit not only by those the apparently dead ‘patient’ groaned manufacture, presumed to be less of a gloomy and funereal frame of loudly with pain after the Herzstich- conducive to false alarms than the earlier mind, but also by historians of the Messer had been applied, does not seem systems.The mortuary attendant could development of cemeteries and to have been considered at the time; sit watching a large frame with little sepulchral culture, and those with an reassuringly, however, there is nothing to electrical bells under indicators for each interest in apparent death and the risk suggest that any person died as a result of the corpse-beds, rather like a hotel of premature burial. Among its exhibits, of their excessive precautions against a porter waiting for one of the guests to the museum boasts a Herzstich-Messer, a premature tomb. ring for room service.There was a smaller sharp knife intended for use by people Interestingly, the Museum of Funeral corpse-room for suicides, conspicuously who did not trust doctors and had History also boasts another very curious lacking the electrical alarm system. made wills to avoid the dreadful fate contraption to detect apparent death Due to its primitive manufacture, it can of being buried prematurely, stating and safeguard against a premature be discounted that the mortuary alarm that the family practitioner should burial, namely a Rettungs-Wecker or bell at the Museum of Funeral History stab them in the heart with this knife mortuary alarm bell.The mechanism has anything to do with the waiting after they had been declared dead. works as follows: a rope is tied around mortuary at the Zentralfriedhof itself, Readers of my book Buried Alive (or the wrist of the presumed deceased however; the story of its manufacture Lebendig Begraben as it is called in the in the mortuary, so that if the ‘corpse’ in 1828, for use at a small provincial German translation) will know that it moves, the alarm is triggered and the mortuary, is to my mind fully credible. was a regular occurrence inVictorian bell rings in the office of the mortuary Moreover, a book from 1834, describing the waiting mortuary in Weimar, features a mechanical alarm system very much resembling theVienna Rettungs-Wecker. Although Germany and Austria once had waiting mortuaries aplenty, most of them equipped with mechanical or electrical systems for the detection of apparent death, the mortuary alarm bell at the Museum of Funeral History is probably unique in the world, along with the original contraption kept in storage at the Technical Museum.The only waiting mortuary that has survived world wars and peacetime ‘development’ is the old Schijndodenhuis [house for the apparently dead] of The Hague, which today houses offices for the funeral administrators.

JAN BONDESON is a regular contributor to FT. His latest book is The Ripper of Waterloo Road: The Murder of Eliza Grimwood in 1838 (History Press, 2017).

76 FT352 www.forteantimes.com TungSmuSeum aT B&F Wien / BeST

FACING PAGE: TOP RIGHT: The Herzstich- The entrance to the Messer. Bestattungsmuseum. ABOVE: The Rettungs-Wecker. TOP LEFT: The corpse-room LEFT: Design of a corpse-bed at of the waiting mortuary of the the waiting mortuary of Weimar, Vienna Zentralfriedhof, from the from Dr Carl Schwalbe’s book Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt of Das Leichenhaus in Weimar 5 October 1874. (Leipzig 1834).

FT352 77 www.forteantimes.com reader info Why Fortean? how to subscribe ANNUAL SUB of 12 issues (inc p&p) UK £39.98; EC £47.50; USA $89.99 ortean Times is a monthly of all apparent phenomena, coined ($161.98 for 24 issues); Rest of World £55. Please see house ads in the latest issue for details of special offers. magazine of news, reviews the term ‘teleportation’, and was F and research on strange perhaps the first to speculate that North America (US & Canada) phenomena and experiences, mysterious lights seen in the sky Subscribers should contact: IMS. 3330 Pacific Avenue, Suite 404, Virginia Beach, VA 23454, USA. Tel: 800-428 3003 (toll free); Fax: 757 428 6253; curiosities, prodigies and portents. might be craft from outer space. Or order online at www.imsnews.com. It was founded by Bob Rickard However, he cut at the very roots of UK, Europe & rest of world in 1973 to continue the work of credulity: “I conceive of nothing, in Major credit cards accepted. Cheques or money orders should be in sterling, Charles Fort (1874–1932). religion, science or philosophy, that preferably drawn on a London bank and made payable to Dennis Publishing. Born of Dutch stock in Albany, is more than the proper thing to Mail to: Fortean Times Dovetail Services, 800 Guillat Avenue, Kent Science New York, Fort spent many years wear, for a while.” Park, Sittingbourne, ME9 8GU, UK. NB: This address should be used for orders and subscriptions only. researching scientific literature in Fort was by no means the first Telephone payments and queries: 0844 844 0049. the New York Public Library and person to collect anomalies and Fax payments and queries: 0844 815 0866. the British Museum Library. He oddities – such collections have E-mail payments and queries: [email protected] marshalled his evidence and set abounded from Greece to China how to submit forth his philosophy in The Book of since ancient times. Fortean Times the Damned (1919), New Lands keeps alive this ancient task of Dennis Publishing reserves all rights to reuse material submitted by FT (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents dispassionate weird-watching, readers and contributors in any medium or format. (1932). exploring the wild frontiers between Illustrations He was sceptical of scientific the known and the unknown. Contact the art director by email ([email protected]) before sending explanations, observing how From the viewpoint of samples of work. We cannot guarantee to respond to unsolicited work, scientists argued according to their mainstream science, its function is though every effort will be made to do so. own beliefs rather than the rules elegantly stated in a line from Enid Article submissions of evidence and that inconvenient Welsford’s book on the mediæval Please send all submissions to David Sutton, Editor, Fortean Times, data were ignored, suppressed, fool: “The Fool does not lead a PO BOX 71602, London E17 0QD, UK or email drsutton@forteantimes. discredited or explained away. revolt against the Law; he lures us com. As we receive a large volume of submissions, a decision may not be immediate. He criticised modern science for into a region of the spirit where... its reductionism, its attempts to the writ does not run.” Letters Letters of comment or about experiences are welcome. Send to PO Box define, divide and separate. Fort’s Besides being a journal of 2409, London NW5 4NP, UK or email [email protected]. We dictum “One measures a circle record, FT is also a forum for reserve the right to edit submissions. beginning anywhere” expresses the discussion of observations Books, periodicals, DVDs and other material for review instead his philosophy of Continuity and ideas, however absurd or Send to: Fortean Times, PO BOX 71602, London E17 0QD, UK. in which everything is in an unpopular, and maintains a position Caveat intermediate and transient state of benevolent scepticism towards FT aims to present the widest range of interpretations to stimulate between extremes. both the orthodox and unorthodox. discussion and welcomes helpful criticism. The opinions of contributors He had ideas of the Universe-as- FT toes no party line. are not necessarily those of the editors. FT can take no responsibility for organism and the transient nature submissions, but will take all reasonable care of material in its possession. Requests for return of material should be accompanied by a stamped addressed envelope or an International Reply Coupon.

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COMING Strange deathS NEXT UNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL

Oliver Park, a 51-year-old German tourist, infections can also result from swimming slipped to his death in the mountaintop in hot springs or improperly chlorinated Inca city of Machu Picchu in the pools. Of the 35 reported cases in the MONTH Peruvian Andes on 29 June 2016. He US between 2005 and 2014, only two had ignored a security cordon and went people survived. Last August, a 19-year- up to a dangerous cliff edge where he old woman died after being infected in asked another visitor to take a picture Maryland. After the amœba enters the of him as he jumped in the air. He lost his body, it heads straight for the brain, where balance and fell 130ft (40m) to his death. It the first areas it destroys are the olfactory took rescue workers 90 minutes to reach him. regions that we use to smell, and parts of the Only the day before, a South Korean tourist frontal lobe, crucial for cognition and controlling died while taking a selfie on the Gocta waterfall behaviour. Abdul Mannan at the Aga Khan in Peru’s northern Amazonian region. He was University in Karachi, Pakistan, suspected the believed to have fallen 1,600ft (488m). Times, amœba might be attracted to a chemical called 2 July 2016. acetylcholine (ACh), which is released in large amounts by cells at the front of the brain. He An unnamed 16-year-old in South India was killed found that one of the amœba proteins has a while trying to take a selfie on 30 January 2016. structure similar to the human receptor for ACh. He walked onto railway tracks in Chennai in the It is this that probably causes the amœbas to hope of getting a good shot of an oncoming head straight for the brain. Metro, 29 Sept 2016. “this eerie weasel” passenger train thundering towards him in the the forgotten origins of background, but he failed to move off the tracks Experts believe a jogger was killed by seaweed in time. D.Telegraph, 2 Feb 2016. fumes. Jean-René Auffray, 50, was found dead in gef the talking mongoose an estuary at Gouessant in Brittany, apparently Ramandeep Singh, 15, died on 29 April 2016 poisoned by sea lettuce, common along the after accidentally shooting himself in the Brittany coast and round the Channel Islands, head while posing for a selfie with his father’s which rots to make hydrogen sulphide. The gas gun. He pulled the trigger instead of pushing has been linked to the death of wild boars and the shutter release button. He was taken to horses. Auffray’s official cause of death was hospital in the Punjab, but died two days later. given as a heart attack, but experts want more D.Telegraph, 2 May 2016. tests. Sun, D.Mirror, 13 Jan 2017.

Carmen Greenway, 41, died following a bicycle Three people were arrested on suspicion of crash moments after she took a smiling selfie manslaughter after a diabetic grandmother died on the way home from a pub dinner celebrating following Chinese ‘slap treatment’ at a country her mother’s birthday on 18 August. The mother retreat. Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, was found of two is believed to have had one hand on dead hours after taking part in the “Self-Healing the bike as she hit a bumpy patch of road and Workshop” at Cleeve House country hotel in victorian horrors lost control. As she wasn’t wearing a helmet, Seend, Wiltshire. The treatment is supposed to she fractured her skull and died six days later eradicate illness-causing toxins from the body the waterloo road ripper in hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest. Her by hard, reaped slapping, fasting and painful and eliza grimwood’s ghost mother was riding behind her when she fell, just stretching on a bench, a technique known as 100 yards from her family home in Isleworth, paida-lajin. Carr-Gomm, who suffered from type 1 west London. D.Telegraph, 5 Oct 2016. diabetes, had a lifelong fear of needles and had briefly stopped taking insulin after undergoing + The number of people who die each year taking previous workshops. D.Telegraph, 14 Nov 2016. selfies is on the rise: 15 in 2014, 39 in2015 jammeh the nut, and 73 in the first eight months of 2016. The Italian vet Luciano Ponzetto, 55, received death werewolf theology, first report (by a reputable news source) of threats and hate mail after posting on Facebook a selfie-taker dying while snapping a picture a snap of himself in Tanzania next to a lion he premature geniuses, was in March 2014. Since then (up to mid- had killed. While out hunting birds in the hills anD muCh more… November 2016), there had been 127 around above Turin in mid-December, he slipped on ice the world – 76 in India, nine in Pakistan, eight and plunged to his death down a 100ft (30m) in the US and six in Russia. The most likely ravine in the Colle delle Oche. His body was cause of death was falling from a great height, recovered by helicopter. Sun, 13 Dec; Metro, 14 with people going to extreme lengths to take a Dec 2016. fortean selfie on cliffs or the top of buildings to impress followers on social media. Instagram users such On 28 January, a family was crushed to death as Drewsssik built a large following online with by the hundreds of pounds of clothes they photos taken on top of tall structures. He died had hoarded in their home. The bodies of the in 2015 after falling from a building. In India, married couple, together with their 12-year-old TIMES there are more selfie deaths related to trains, daughter, were found buried under the mountain due to the belief that posing on or next to train of material. Investigators believe the floor of their tracks with one’s best friend is a sign of never- first floor flat in Alicante, Spain,ve ca d in due to ending friendship. BBC News, 17 Nov 2016. the weight. Rescuers aided by firefighters had to remove a massive amount of clothes and other Brain-eating amœbas can enter an unwitting items to uncover the victims. The freak accident 353 swimmer’s brain via their nose, after which their happened between 8 and 9am, but the victims chances of survival are slim. The organism, were not discovered until 1pm by their older Nægleria fowleri, lurks in fresh water, although daughter, 18. D.Mail, 30 Jan 2017. 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