Darkness visible the cock lane haunting scratching fanny exposed real-life encounters nightmares before christmas strange disappearances with the shadow people squirrels go nuts booze-fuelled rodent rampages crop circle drone rage • nefertiti's secret tomb • mass fainting • tripping witches

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Nefertiti’s secret burial chamber, false fl ag operations, the amazing world of MC Escher, tapeworms in the brain, crop circle drone rage, more school faintings, mysteries of Pluto, CONTENTS Norwich ghost photos, little blue men – and much more. 05 THE CONSPIRASPHERE 18 GHOSTWATCH 14 SCIENCE 21 ALIEN ZOO the world of strange phenomena 16 ARCHAEOLOGY 23 MYTHCONCEPTIONS 17 CLASSICAL CORNER 24 NECROLOG features

COVER STORY 28 THE MOST HAUNTED HOUSE IN LONDON According to its Wikipedia entry, it is the most haunted property in London – but have the garbled tales of ghost- hunters and the advent of the Internet added too many layers of legend to the real story? JAN BONDESON goes in search of the truth about 50 Berkeley Square. 36 A HAUNTING ON SCANDAL STREET: THE © 2015 THE MC ESCHER COMPANY -THE HETHERALNDS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 6 BLOWING YOUR MIND’S EYE COCK LANE GHOST REVISITED The amazing world of MC Escher ROGER CLARKE delves into the background of a notorious 18th-century haunting and fi nds that with its emphasis on sex, the supernatural and the seamy side of London life, the story of the Cock Lane ghost was in many ways a precursor to every tabloid sensation since… 42 NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS: THE STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF OLIVER LERCH On Christmas Eve 1889, Oliver Lerch went out to fetch some water from the well and was never seen again, his cries of terror echoing in the night skies... THEO PAIJMANS and CHRIS AUBECK turn literary detectives and attempt to trace this enduring weird tale back to its ultimate source. reports

48 BUILDING A FORTEAN LIBRARY No 6. Dying to know more 74 FORTEAN TRAVELLER No 105. A death road in Kyoto RON / GETTY IMAGES BA ETIENNE GILFILLAN 4ATOMB FIT FOR A QUEEN? 72 IT HAPPENED TO ME Nefertiti’s secret burial chamber Encounters with the shadow people forum

51 Well, they would, wouldn’t they? by Stu Neville 52 Visions of the inner eye by Ted Harrison 54 They came from the shadows by Nick Parkins regulars

02 EDITORIAL 72 IT HAPPENED TO ME TED WEST / CENTRAL PRESS / GETTY IMAGES JOHN BILLINGSLEY 74 A DEATH ROAD IN KYOTO 36 SCRATCHING FANNY OF COCK LANE 57 REVIEWS 79 PHENOMENOMIX Pilgrims and portals to the Underworld Sex, scandal and the supernatural 69 LETTERS 80 STRANGE DEATHS

COVER: ETIENNE GILFILLAN FT335 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 Bookshop ghosts and library angels SUbScriptioN eNqUirieS ANd bAck iSSUeS www.subsinfo.co.uk [email protected] thE hAuntinG SEASon and Alice Rowell, who shared their memories FORTEAN TIMES is produced for Dennis Publishing by Wild Talents Ltd. Postal address: Fortean Times, For our Christmas issue this year we bring you, with us (p34).We have to report, with heavy PO BOX 71602, London E17 0QD. as is traditional, ghosts. In his regular column hearts, that no manifestations took place during You can manage your existing subscription through (p18), Alan Murdie takes a look at the latest our evening visit – although we did manage http://www.subsinfo.co.uk/ – this should be your first port examples of phantoms appearing in photos – to capture the atmospheric image that adorns of call if you have any queries about your subscription. two impressive examples from Norwich, a city our cover this month: the actual window of a Change your address, renew your subscription or report problems whose spooks are perhaps not as celebrated genuine fake “haunted house”. UK subscriptions: 0844 844 0049 as they might be – and wonders whether We wish Maggs Bros all the best in their new USA & Canada subscriptions: (+1) 800-428-3003 (toll free) suggestions of plague victims and deceased home – it would, of course, be pleasingly ironic Fax (+1) 757-428-6253 email [email protected] Other overseas subscriptions: +44 (0)1795 592 909 bishops are convincing identities for these if this one turned out to be really haunted… Fax: +44 (0)1795 414 555 seemingly supernatural snaps. We also re-examine two Maggs Bros new premises licEnSinG & SyndicAtion Fortean times IS AvAILABLE FOR classic London hauntings: at 46 Curzon Street, W1J INTERNATIONAL LICENSINg AND SYNDICATION – CONTACT: Roger Clarke revisits the 7UH, are now open Monday Syndication Senior Manager ANj DOSAj-HALAI TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 6132 case of the Cock Lane ghost to Friday 10am-7pm and [email protected] (pp36-41), an 18th century Saturday 10am-5pm. Licensing Manager CARLOTTA SERANTONI TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 6550 sensation that was satirised [email protected] by Hogarth and that drew buildinG A fortEAn Licensing & Syndication Assistant NICOLE ADAMS TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 6134 luminaries such as the librAry [email protected] Duke ofYork and Horace If there’s someone out there you cAn rEAch ft on thE intErnEt Walpole to the cramped looking to start an instant www.forteantimes.com London backstreet where Fortean Times collection, ‘Scratching Fanny’ was then we may be able to help. © Copyright Dennis Publishing Limited supposedly communicating London-based reader John with the dead. It was, Rowe is offering – for free, no Roger notes, “a bit like less – an almost complete run SeNior prodUctioN pUbliSHed bY Prince Charles and Gore of issues from 63 to 301, but deNNiS pUbliSHiNg, execUtiVe dANiel StArk Vidal visiting a famous you must be able to collect 30 cleveland Street 020 7907 6053 haunted Enfield council them in person. london w1t 4Jd, Uk [email protected] "jUST STICK WITH THE MYRRH" house in 1977 and sitting on Another public-spirited tel: 020 7907 6000 AdVertiSiNg director SteVe NicolAoU the bed of Janet Hodgson.” There are further offer comes from Laurence Stockdale of groUp pUbliSHer 020 7907 6633 similarities between the two cases – such as the Kidlington, Oxfordshire, who writes: “I found iAN weStwood steve_nicolaou@ accusations of hoaxing, pretty undeniable in the article regarding building a fortean library 020 7907 6000 dennis.co.uk Cock Lane – but what’s particularly fascinating particularly interesting (FT331:48-49) as I have circUlAtioN mANAger SAleS execUtiVe JAmeS mANgAN brAdleY beAVer in this instance is the rich background of sex a complete set of The Unexplained languishing james.mangan@ and scandal underlying the 18th century events: in a storage cupboard.The issues still have seymour.co.uk 020 7907 6701 bradley_beaver@ the ghost was in some senses a particular, their covers, so the readers’ letters are there export circUlAtioN dennis.co.uk mANAger supernatural manifestation of a culture to read, but I did not get around to buying the gerAldiNe grobler expressed in the Bartholomew Fairs, gay romps folders.They all seem to be in good condition geraldine.grobler@ seymour.co.uk and numerous drinking dens that gave the area so if anyone would like them they are welcome its carnivalesque character. to them.They gave me many hours of pleasure PrintEd BY POLESTAR BICESTER Across town, in upmarket Mayfair, ghost and I would like someone else to have that diStribution stories of a better class have long circulated opportunity rather than consign them to the distributed in uK, ireland and worldwide concerning the elegant Georgian townhouse local recycling centre. I also have 20 or 30 by Seymour Distribution Ltd. at 50 Berkeley Square, which, according to its 2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT issues of Omni magazine from April 1979 till Tel: 020 7429 4000 / Fax: 020 7429 4001 Wikipedia entry, remains “the most haunted November 1983.” Queries on overseas availability should be emailed to house in London”. Jan Bondeson traces the If you are interested in taking John or [email protected] Speciality store distribution by Worldwide Magazine evolution of this famous haunting (pp28-35) and Laurence up on their generous offers, please Distribution Ltd, Tel: 0121 788 3112 Fax: 0121 788 1272 finds that there’s somewhat less to it than meets email us at [email protected] and StAndArd SubScriPtion rAtES the eye: more a case of literary myth-making we’ll put you in touch. 12 issues: UK £39.98; EU £47.50 – much of it courtesy of celebrated author and fortean times (USPS 023-226) is published every four weeks by Dennis Publishing Ltd, 30 Cleveland Street, London, W1P 4JD, United Kingdom. ghost hunter Elliot O’Donnell in a series of The US annual subscription price is $89.99. books – growing out of local gossip when the Airfreight and mailing in the USA is by Agent named Air Business, daVid r SUTToN C/O Worldnet Shipping USA Inc., 149-35 177th Street, Jamaica, house stood empty for a lengthy period. New York, 11434. Since 1939, the five-storey house, once the Periodical postage paid at Jamaica, NY 11431, USA. residence of Britain’s shortest-serving Prime bob rickard US Postmaster: Send address changes to: Fortean Times, Minister, George Canning, has been home to the 3330 Pacific Avenue, Suite 500, Virginia Beach, VA, 23451-2983, USA. PaUL SiEVEkiNG REST OF THE WORLD £55; US $89.99 ($161.98 for 24 issues) antiquarian booksellers Maggs Bros, founded by dEnniS PubliShinG liMitEd Uriah Maggs in 1853 and still going strong. For GrouP finAncE dirEctor IAN LEggETT years, Ed Maggs and his staff have had to deal finAncE dirEctor BRETT REYNOLDS ExEcutivE dirEctor KERIN O’CONNOR with a steady stream of would-be ghost hunters Why fortean? chiEf ExEcutivE jAMES TYE coMPAny foundEr FELIX DENNIS turning up on their doorstep in search of spooks. Everything you always wanted to Now, the venerable firm has upped sticks and Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations. know about Fortean Times but Circulation 17,024 (jan-Dec 2011) relocated to new premises round the corner at were too paranoid to ask! Printed in the UK. ISSN: 0308 5899 46 Curzon Street.We were fortunate to get a © Fortean Times: DECEMBER 2015 tour of no 50 just before the move – thanks to Ed SEE PAGE 78

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rather than kings. A tomb fit for a queen? Noting that the bigger of the two supposed doorways aligns perfectly with both sides of the tomb’s entrance chamber, Is British Egyptologist on the verge of uncovering Nefertiti’s burial chamber? Reeves thinks it could conceal a corridor continuing along the same axis, in the scale and shape of other nearby royal tombs. All this, as well as evidence that the tomb’s decoration and construction were executed at different stages, suggests that the corridor leads to the burial chamber of a queen, or perhaps several princesses. Among the tombs and mummies from Tutankhamun’s dynasty (the 18th) identified so far, there remains the gaping absence of Nefertiti, the wife of Tutankhamun’s father Akhenaten, who served as co-regent and possibly also as pharaoh in her own right after Akhenaten’s death, meaning that Nefertiti’s tomb and its contents might well outshine her stepson’s. Indeed, if Reeves is right, what Tutankhamun got were her leftovers; even his facemask might originally have been intended for a queen. s: KhALED DEsoUKI / AFp / GETTy ImAGEs

To In early November, Egypt’s pho antiquities minister Mamdouh al- Nicholas Reeves, a British ABOVE: Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves Damaty announced that a survey Egyptologist at the University stands before the gold, ochre and of the tomb’s walls using infrared of Arizona who co-discovered white frescos of Tutankhamun’s tomb thermography had shown an undisturbed Egyptian tomb (right), while telling the assembled “differences in the temperatures in 2000, might be on the verge press about his theory that Nefertiti is registered on different parts of the greatest find ever made buried in a secret chamber. of the northern wall”, raising in the Nile valley. His evidence hopes of a hidden chamber is photographs by Factum Arte, or chambers. Rather than a specialist in art replication bigger possible doorway in the Nefertiti, the minister thinks that recently created a life-sized north wall of Tutankhamun’s it more likely that Kia, thought facsimile of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber suggests to be Tutankhamun’s biological tomb, intended for tourists to something much more exciting. mother, lies within. Economist, 8 visit without endangering the Tutankhamun died in about Aug; D.Mail, 12 Aug; Sciencealert. original. What Reeves found 1323 BC aged 19. There are com, 30 Sept; Guardian online, 8 in these ultra-high-resolution several oddities about his tomb Nov 2015. images, which reveal the texture in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings: it of walls beneath layers of paint, is small compared with others; (Incidentally, the world famous were fissures and cracks that the funerary objects found on bust of Nefertiti, allegedly suggest the presence of two 26 November 1922 were indeed discovered in 1912 and now on passages blocked and plastered “wonderful” as Howard Carter show in Berlin, may be a 20th to conceal their existence. One said, but were haphazardly century fake. It is reminiscent of of these probably leads to a strewn around as if in a junk those fresco reconstructions at storeroom – its position and shop and were largely second- pierced ears. The tomb’s main Knossos in Crete that, according small size mirror that of an hand; and even the boy-king’s axis is angled to the right of the to Evelyn Waugh, look like already-uncovered storeroom gilded funerary mask sports the entrance shaft, an arrangement illustrations for Vogue. See inside the tomb. The other, strangely unmanly feature of typical of Egyptian queens FT263:9.)

4 FT335 www.forteantimes.com Pluto the carrY oN uP the little PraNkster the coNgo blue maN New Horizons New expedition Is this the best probe reveals planned in search extraterrestrial new oddities of of mysterious contact hoax of the ninth planet Mokele-Mbembe all time? Page 14 Page 21 Page 26

The Conspirasphere Extra! Extra!

It didn’t take long for ‘false flag’ conspiracy accusations to appear in the FT’s FavourITE hEadlINEs wake of the Paris attacks. Noel rooNeY ticks the pre-prepared boxes. From arouNd ThE world

The horrible events in (either because they paris on 13 November lack the creativity, provoked the expected or because they are response from the contemptuous of public New Zealand Times –– Nov 2014. conspiracy community: scepticism at such this was not a terrorist flagrantly mechanical attack, but a false and inept methods flag operation, carried of deception), and out by (a) the French, which succeeds every to justify deeper time. This inference

ThIERRy ChEsNoT / GETTy ImAGEs involvement in syria; presumes that all (b) the Americans, to terrorist organisations goad the French into deeper involvement are actually part of the deep state, or in syria; (c) any name from a droplist of closely allied to it, and are happy to stage Irish Times, 11 Nov 2014 European powers, to stem the flow of their attacks at a convenient time for the immigrants from countries such as syria, relevant government. how plausible is the or more mundanely to steal the media Identikit theory of terror? I’d argue, not very. thunder from Russia in syria. The second inference that might be The false flag operation meme is drawn is that the conspiracy theory of Sunday Times, 9 Nov 2014. beginning to display a set of standard state terror and false flag attacks is characteristics. The state security itself beginning to solidify into a codified apparatus of the country attacked was response. The conspiracy observer is the holding an exercise designed to simulate one with the prepared droplist: security a terrorist attack on the day of the actual exercise, check; passport found nearby, attack. The ID of at least one of the check; media Johnny-on-the-spot, check; attackers is found close to the scene, and so on. This seems to me rather more and alerts security to the identity of the plausible; I suspect it is evidence that D.Telegraph, 31 Oct 2014. terrorists involved. The media are on the the originally reactive and pattern-seeking scene too quickly, and give the official theorising is morphing over time into a account of the event without questioning grand narrative of deep state terror. their source or asking pertinent, This is not to say that there is no such investigative questions. thing as deep state terror; there is some some theorists go further. The alleged pretty good (that is to say, pretty damning) victims include actors pretending to evidence for false flag attacks (Gladio, Economist, 25 Oct 2014. be injured. The attackers have strong the Grey Wolves etc) and for governments connections to state security, or are indulging in nefarious activities that do not actually working for state security. The have the best interests of their citizens initial images of the event are doctored, in mind. people have every right to be MSN News, ––Oct 2014. and amateur footage discloses anomalies, sceptical of official narratives, even when or inconsistencies in the official narrative. those narratives are about events as tragic There is a compulsory Jewish element to as the paris attacks. But it would be a the backstory (in this case, the Jewish curious (and implausibly orderly) world in owner of the concert hall had sold it two which all terrorist incidents were in fact months before the attack, an apparently lethal hoaxes played out of the same D.Telegraph, 7 Nov 2014. obvious sign of guilt). textbook. A disinterested observer might draw one of two conclusions from this. First, http://beforeitsnews.com/eu/2015/11/ the deep state is working from a standard the-paris-false-flag-latest-news-you- menu, a menu from which no one deviates wont-believe-it-2593410.html; www.

Newser.com, ––Oct 2014.

FT335 5 www.forteantimes.com strangedays sPECiAl rEPorT ThE AmAzing World of mC EsChEr

dAVid V BArrETT navigates a new exhibition charting the career of an artist who expanded the minds of science fiction fans and students the world over with his ‘impossible’ creations

ow many of us discovered the weird and wonderful Hcreations of MC Escher when we were students, and someone had a print of one on their wall? He was eye-twisting and mind-expanding; he took our imaginations to places we knew reality couldn’t reach. He drew impossibilities, and made us want to visit them. MC Escher (1898-1972) was born in the Netherlands, but spent 10 years in Rome (1925-35), then a few years in Switzerland and Belgium before moving back to the Netherlands in 1941. He left Rome because he didn’t want his children to wear Fascist uniforms to school, and he didn’t like Switzerland because the snow blurred all the lines. Escher had a problem throughout his career: the art establishment saw him as a ABOVE: Reptiles, 1943. FACING PAGE, TOP: Relativity, 1953. FACING PAGE, BOTTOM: Bond of Union, 1956. graphic artist, not as a “real” artist; there’s only one piece of any art movements. He was a going up from inside to outside; his work on display in the whole master of unusual and extreme Escher was sitting on a bench is a man holding of Britain. But he was loved by perspective, especially in his early a framework of a cube similar to print makers, by mathematicians, landscapes, and of tesselation a master Penrose’s tri-bar. Penrose and his by musicians, by students – and – repeated geometric patterns, father also sent Escher a photo by science fiction writers. A 1982 especially where the patterns of unusual of a model they had made of a Doctor Who story, Castrovalva, gradually turn into fish or birds, continuous flight of steps, hwhic used both the title of one of his or angels and demons fold into perspective inspired Escher to create his lithographs of a vertiginous each other. His woodcuts and classic lithograph Ascending and Italian landscape, and the concept lithographs play with the deepest Descending (1960) – hooded figures of the recursive architecture of of concepts, with movement, that included a circular diagram endlessly walking up or down four Ascending and Descending to trap with reality and illusion, with the with a repeated pattern getting flights of steps around the topof a the groggy new Doctor (Peter eternity of time and the infinity smaller and smaller towards the building. Davison) and his companions of space. circumference.This inspired Escher printed individual in the city. Christopher Hodder- A hand holding a pencil draws Escher’s Circle Limit series of copies of his work himself, Williams used Bond of Union a hand holding a pencil, which is woodcuts (1958-60) with amazingly painstakingly pressing the paper (1956), Escher and his wife’s heads drawing the first hand.The hands intricate patterns. Roger Penrose onto the inked original plate with in one interwoven bandage, for appear to stand out above the wrote a paper that included an an egg spoon. It was such a time- the cover of his 1976 novel about paper they’re drawing on. image of a “tri-bar”, a three- consuming process that he became the meeting of schizophrenia and Two British mathematicians, dimensional triangle which looks annoyed when people wanted metaphysics, The Prayer Machine. intrigued by Escher’s work, sent logical until you try following more copies, so put his prices up Escher is impossible to him drawings – displayed in the its sides, when you realise it’s to discourage potential buyers – pigeonhole. His work is surreal, exhibition – which provided him impossible. Escher sent him a at which point, ironically, the art but he wasn’t a surrealist; he with inspiration. HSM Coxeter copy of Belvedere (1958), with its world finally began to notice him refused to join or identify with sent him a copy of a 1957 lecture interlocking columns and a ladder – and to demand more.

6 FT335 www.forteantimes.com This exhibition, which comes to London from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, contains archive material never seen before and covers Escher’s career chronologically. As well as his most iconic work – the perpetual motion waterwheel of Waterfall (1961), the triangle of upside-down staircases of Relativity (1953), the confusing ladders and pillars of Belvedere (1958), the hooded men tramping on the stairs in Ascending and Descending (1960) – it includes a lot of his early work, including portraits in his versions of Art Nouveau and Cubist styles. He began experimenting with tessellations as early as 1920, and became enthused with them, partly through seeing Moorish art at the Alhambra in southern Spain and partly through his half- brother giving him articles on crystallography. But it’s his landscapes which are perhaps the greatest revelation – from the early stark towers of San Gimignano (1923) seen from ground level to the Tower of Babel (1928) seen from a bird’s eye view, to the Corsican town of Bonifacio (1928) perched on rocks above the sea to Castrovalva (1930) above a steep mountainside with another village far below. The unusual use of perspective in these early works led him into the tricks of perspective in his later work, perhaps most especially in Other World (1947), three views of a strange bird-man perched in an archway, beyond which is the cratered surface of a planet – looking straight at it in the centre of the picture, or from below at the bottom, or from above at the top, each view rendering the other two impossible. In Still Life and Street (1937) a tabletop with a pack of cards, a pipe in an ashtray and piled books blend seamlessly into a street scene; the foreground and the background are equally clear, equally real, but you can only focus your attention on one or the other. This astonishing exhibition is a must-see for anyone who has ever had their mind wonderfully confused by an Escher print.

The Amazing World of MC Escher, Dulwich Picture Gallery until 17 January 2016 All M.C. EsChEr works © 2015 ThE M.C. EsChEr CoMpAny-ThE nEThErlAnds. All righTs rEsErvEd. www.MCEsChEr.CoM

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SIDELINES... Fainting in the aisles ALL-PURPOSE PROTEST Kay Bishop glued her bottom to the window of a Deben- More outbreaks of mass psychogenic illness in schools hams store in Croydon, south London. She was wearing next to nothing – besides a sash saying “World’s grumpiest old woman”. Before being moved on by police, she said she was protesting because she was “fed up with everything”. (Sydney) D.Telegraph, 26 Sept 2015. HOLY FRACAS Jesus faced court in Sydney on 9 July charged with attempted murder of an Angel. Steven Jay Jesus, 40, repeatedly stabbed Christopher John Angel, 38, in a boarding house, leaving him with critical injuries and on life support. Adelaide Advertiser, 10 July 2015. PARIS MARSUPIALS Up to 150 Bennett’s wallabies have been found roaming Rambouillet woods near Paris, the descendants of a handful that escaped from a park near Emancé some 40 years ago through holes in the fenc- ing caused by vandalism or A RIPPLE IN RIPON ABOVE: Outwood Academy, Ripon, storms. The animals can live Around 40 pupils simultaneously “After someone where 40 students fell ill in a probable for 15 years. D.Telegraph, 27 fell ill at a Remembrance Day example of mass psychogenic illness. July 2015. service on 11 November. The fainted, it BOUNCING BACK 11am assembly was interrupted schools in Afghanistan were Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams at Outwood Academy in Ripon, was a bit of a taken to hospital complaining enjoys trampolining naked, he North Yorkshire, as about a dozen of nausea, pain and shortness told the radio station Newstalk. children began to feel faint domino effect” of breath. The cause was “Yeah, I do it naked,” he said. and sick during the two-minute undetermined; officials believed “The dog does it with me. It silence. Firemen, hazardous the girls might have inhaled saves me taking him for a materials specialist officers and people started leaving the hall to a toxic gas, but no evidence walk.” 16 Feb 2015. paramedics were sent to the get fresh air. One of the boys who of this was found. As with the school amid initial fears that a fell was a bit concussed and had Yorkshire children, the incident gas leak or hazardous substance a big lump on his head. After that appears to be an example of had triggered the illness, but they ushered us out quickly and a mass psychogenic illness (“mass following an investigation fire couple of girls had panic attacks.” hysteria”). None of the students brigade officer veDa Winspear The pupil said lessons went ahead died, with most being sent home declared the incident was caused as normal during the afternoon, after check-ups and hospital by pupils “overheating”. He said: but more students complained treatment. No group claimed to “We are of the view that the of headaches and nausea. Five be behind the incidents. Because children just fainted and there ambulances remained parked of their opposition to women’s was a ripple effect throughout the outside as well as at least four education, Taliban jihadists were school. More children felt anxiety fire engines with their blue lights blamed for several suspected and started to feel concerned and flashing. Outwood Academy has poisonings at girls’ schools in the thing has escalated.” 635 students, aged from 11 to 18. 2009-2010 [FT266:24, 268:23], One pupil said: “When the first BBC News, dailymail.co.uk, 11 Nov; but they consistently denied boy was sick we thought it was a D.Telegraph, 12 Nov 2015. responsibility. BBC News, 8 Sept MARTIN ROSS one-off, but then there was a big 2015. (For a general feature on slap on the floor and someone TALIBAN TOxINS mass psychogenic illness, see had fainted. After that it was a In the last week of August and the “Dazed and Confused” by Robert bit of a domino effect, another first week of September this year, Bartholomew and Bob Rickard, three or four collapsed and then about 600 students from different FT316:36-40.)

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Squirrels go nuts... SIDELINES... JUST NOT HIS DAY Brock Leach, 13, slipped on some lichen and fell 100ft Riotous rodents run amok in booze-fuelled rampages (30m) down a cliff at Trebar- with Strand near Tintagel, • An “aggressive” squirrel around all over the place Cornwall, on 19 July, bouncing was arrested in July after a and moving a bit slowly. I’ve off outcroppings. His brother woman complained it was never seen a drunk squirrel Josh, 16, scrambled down stalking her. Police in North before. He looked a bit the cliff and found him on a Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, worse for wear. We managed ledge. The tide was coming in received the bizarre to corner him in the toilets so Josh helped him climb to a emergency call on 16 July after we chased him around higher ledge – where he was from a woman who claimed for an hour. I used the waste bitten by an adder, Britain’s the rodent was chasing her paper bin to trap him and only venomous snake. Brock through a park. Officers then I flung him out of the was hospitalised with a broken said it was suffering from window. I think we lost about pelvis, severe bruising – and snake bite. D.Telegraph, D.Mail, exhaustion. It subsequently £300 worth of stock but it 23 July 2015. became an Internet hit was just one of those once in after they posted a video of a lifetime things – I hope.” THUNDERBIRD? them feeding it. (London) Western Daily Press, D.Mail, A man called Stephen from D.Telegraph, 17 July; (Sydney) 17 July 2015. Kentucky called Coast To Coast D.Telegraph, 18 July 2015. AM Radio on 9 July. “I was hog • In 1983 a drunken squirrel hunting a few weeks back out • The Gang of Fort has long named Scrumpy kept its in California, when I saw a very taken note of aggressive owner barricaded in his large bird-like creature,” he squirrels. In 1991, an elderly bedroom for two hours after said. “It swooped down and

STAN HONDA / AFP / GETTY IMAGES woman was bitten on the consuming cider. Steve picked up a piglet. From the knee by one that ran up her repeatedly filmed the animals Wroot was finally forced to distance I was at, I couldn’t skirt in Edinburgh’s Princes dining on flower heads. “I’ve jump from his bedroom window give you a definitive wingspan, Street Gardens [FT60:19]. In been going in [the crematorium] [FT43:44]. In 1998, squirrels at but it had to be at least 15 to October 1996, a woman and for 12 years and I have never the Moors Valley Country Park in 20 feet [4.6-6m]. It didn’t have her two children were attacked seen the squirrels eating the Dorset appeared to have become many feathers, it almost looked by a horde of squirrels, which funeral flowers until this year,” addicted to tobacco from reptilian.” Jamie Brian blogspot, bombarded them with horse he said. “I’ve seen tributes put discarded cigarette ends; they 3 Oct 2015. chestnuts in Chingford, north- down on the Friday morning and were seen ripping the weed from FAR FLUNG east London [FT100:55]. In by the Friday afternoon they old butts [FT116:21]. A driver whose car rolled over July 1997 a squirrel ran amok are in pieces because of the several times on a Los Angeles in Hampstead, north London, squirrels.” Eastern Daily Press, 8 • Back in 2005, several UK freeway was thrown so far that requiring several of its victims Aug 2015. dailies carried news of crack- his body landed on a road sign to seek hospital treatment addicted squirrels terrorising at least 20ft (6m) above the [FT104:11]. Later that year, a • When Sam Boulter, 62, Brixton, south London ground. The unnamed victim colony of 15 squirrels conducted opened up the bar at the [FT207:10, 208:57]. The rodents was a 20-year-old man. The car a reign of terror on a high-rise Honeybourne Railway Club were allegedly digging up came to rest under the sign. housing estate in Wapping, east near Evesham, Worcestershire, stashes buried in gardens by [AP] 30 Oct 2015. London – scratching people, he was confronted by a scene dealers following a police stealing from shopping bags and of chaos. “It was absolutely crackdown (ha ha). The whole infiltrating bedrooms [FT111:7]. ransacked,” said Mr Boulter, story stemmed from a single the branch secretary of the unnamed witness, reported in • Squirrels are chomping their private members’ club. “At first the South London Press, a small way through floral tributes I thought we’d been burgled but local paper, and a joke made at Earlham Crematorium I realised it was all still locked on a Brixton-based website. in Norwich. The munching up and that’s when we saw the However, Fox News carried the mammals have become such a squirrel [which emerged from story across the pond, adding: problem that bosses at Dignity, a box of crisps]. I’d never seen “So-called ‘crack squirrels’ which runs the crematorium, anything like it before – he are already acknowledged as put up signs warning mourners had run around the shelves a problem in American cities about the problem. They said and across the bar. There were such as Washington, DC, and that squirrels were particularly bottles and money scattered New York.” Actually, the topic of partial to eating fresh spray around, and he had obviously crack-crazed squirrels attacking carnations and chrysanthemums run across the bar’s pumps and people in New York’s Central because of their high sugar managed to turn on the Caffrey’s Park had appeared in the

content, adding that a harmless [ale] tap. He must have flung International Herald Tribune and MARTIN ROSS repellent spray was available. himself on the handle and drunk the Guardian way back in 1991 George Barrett, 67, has some as he was staggering [FT60:19].

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SIDELINES... Tapeworm in the brain, unborn twin fathers Worms fromchild the and the myster skiesy of the missing teeth GOOD STORY MATERIAL MEDICAL BAG Lizzie Valverde, 35, and Katy Olson, 34, enrolled on a creative writing course at Co- lumbia University in New York in January 2013. On the first day of class, Olson realised Valverde could be her sister – as indeed she was. They had been born in Florida to Leslie Parker, a troubled mother who gave them up for adoption. D.Telegraph, 19 May 2015. BIG FEAR Amy Carson, 33, a photogra- pher from Liverpool, suffers from megalophobia – a terror of oversized objects. She risks fainting at the sight of ships, planes, and even clouds. If she stares at them too long, they appear to have faces. “My phobia makes me feel they could chase me,” she said. Her condition com- pels her to torment herself by looking at images of what she fears. Her boyfriend often catches her late at night TOS PHO

browsing the web for pictures PA of cruise ships. D.Mail, Sun, LEFT: Luis Ortiz thought he was suffering from a bad headache, but turned out to have a tapeworm larva living deep in his brain. 25 July 2015. NEW PARTICLE Scientists at the Large SOMETHING ON HIS MIND major surgery after accidentally Hadron Collider (LHC) have Last September, Luis Ortiz The tapeworm ramming a chopstick so far up announced the discovery of a sought medical treatment for a his nose that it got stuck 7.5cm new particle – actually a new terrible headache and nausea. He larva was still (2.8in) into his brain. Huang form of matter – called the slipped into a coma and when he Zichang, two, spent four hours pentaquark, first predicted woke up he was told a tapeworm wiggling and on the operating table. Surgeons to exist in the 1960s. It con- larva was living deep in his managed to remove the stick and sists of four quarks and an brain. (For the case of a British moving around the boy was expected to make a anti-quark. The LHC powered man with the same problem, full recovery. MX News (Sydney), up again in April following a see FT324:8-9.) Ortiz, 26, from 24 Sept 2015. two-year shutdown for repairs Napa, California, said doctors His neurosurgeon, Dr Soren and upgrades. BBC News, 14 told him he needed immediate Singel, said he was lucky he HUMAN CHIMæRAS July 2015. surgery. Once extracted, it was arrived at the hospital when When a 34-year-old man from still wiggling and moving around. he did. The worm was forming Washington failed a paternity Ortiz, who was released from in a cyst that was blocking the test, doctors discovered that his hospital before Hallowe’en, said flow of water to chambers in his dead twin, whose DNA the man his recovery had been a difficult brain; another 30 minutes and absorbed in the womb, was the and long-drawn-out process. “he would have been dead,” genetic father of his child. This He had suffered some memory Singel said. “It was a close call.” (we are told) is the first ever loss and been forced to stop Tapeworm eggs had probably reported case of a paternity attending Sacramento State entered Ortiz’s intestine from test being fooled by a human University, where he was something he ate and eventually chimæra, someone with extra a student, and move back the single larva made it into his genes absorbed from a twin home with his parents. For brain. The condition of larval lost in early pregnancy. Around now, he can’t drive or work. cysts in the brain is called one in eight single childbirths Despite the ongoing ordeal, neurocysticercosis. [AP] BBC are thought to start as multiple Ortiz said he’s just grateful to News, 5 Nov; Huffington Post, 6 pregnancies and cells from the be alive. “My memory is like a Nov 2015. miscarried siblings are sometimes work in progress,” he said. A Chinese toddler needed absorbed in the womb by a MARTIN ROSS

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surviving twin. The Washington chimærism may become more millions of bacteria into the air SIDELINES... couple took a paternity test after common, as fertility treatments around us, and that cloud can be their son’s blood type didn’t match are more likely to lead to multiple traced back to us via laboratory SLEEP DIP that of either parent. After having births. ABC News, 15 Aug 2006; tests. This discovery, published in Marie Lord, 39, got out of a child with the help of fertility independent.co.uk, 25 Oct 2015. the journal PeerJ, may help explain bed at 1.30am and sleep- clinic procedures, they feared that the mechanisms involved in the walked half a mile to the sperm donors might have been GOING DENTAL spread of infectious diseases in beach in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. After waking with mixed up. After the initial failed Clare Jones, 47, from Clayton, buildings and also enable forensic the taste of salt and grit in fertility test, they took a genetic Staffordshire, came round from a scientists to identify or determine her mouth as waves crashed ancestry test, which suggested hysterectomy operation at Royal where a person has been. “We around her, she managed to that the man was actually his Stoke University Hospital on expected that we would be able to crawl up the beach and cry son’s uncle. The father’s sperm 15 July to find two of her front detect the human microbiome in for help as she attempted was found to have 10 per cent of teeth missing. She realised what the air around a person,” said Dr to scale rocks. Lee Searle, a genetic match to the infant. The had happened when she tried James Meadow of the University a night porter at a nearby genes in his sperm were different to replace her denture, which of Oregon, “but we were surprised hotel, ran to her rescue. from that in his saliva, indicating was held in place by a bracket to find that we could identify D.Telegraph, D.Mail, 4 July that the father of the boy is supported by the two teeth. She most of the occupants [of a room] 2015. effectively the man’s own unborn had to remove the denture for just by sampling their microbial twin. the operation. The hospital could cloud.” ARMADILLO HAZARD There are precedents. One not explain what had happened The individual clouds were When a Georgia man fired at chimæra case was written up in and the mother of two (who dominated by several groups of an armadillo in April, the bullet the British Medical Journal in 1953 is herself a nurse) was told an bacteria ubiquitous on and in hu- ricocheted off the shell, hit a and another in the New England investigation could take two mans, such as streptoccus, common- fence, went through the back Journal of Medicine in 2002. The months. “I’ve completely lost ly found in the mouth, and propi- door of his mother-in-law’s mo- latter was about Karen Keegan my confidence because I tcan’ onibacterium and corynebacterium, bile home, through a recliner she was sitting in, and into from Boston, who found that her smile,” she said. “Nobody seems both common skin residents. Dif- her back. The armadillo was blood cells had one set of genes to have any recollection of the ferent combinations of these were killed. An unnamed man from and her ovaries held distinctly teeth being taken out. It’s just the key to identifying individuals. Marietta, East Texas, went different ones. Those ovaries unbelievable.” D.Telegraph, Sun, The findings emerged fromo tw outside his home at around had produced the eggs that led Metro, 31 July 2015. studies and more than 14 million 3am on 30 July and took to two of her three sons holding sequences representing thousands three shots at an armadillo. genes different from her own. The UNDER A CLOUD of different types of bacteria One bullet ricocheted off the true genetic mother was a twin We are all surrounded by our found in the 312 samples from shell and hit him in the jaw, sister that she had unknowingly own ‘germ cloud’ as unique as a air and dust in the experimental which was then wired shut at absorbed. (See FT188:30 and fingerprint. Each of usve gi s off chamber. D.Telegraph, 23 Sept 2015. a nearby hospital. “We didn’t FT254:18, where Keegan is known find the armadillo,” said the as “Jane”). local sheriff. [R] 31 July 2015. In 2002, Lydia Fairchild was BBC News, 1 Aug 2015. denied public assistance in SERIAL POOPER Washington State when DNA evidence showed that she was not Someone has been defecat- related to her children. She even ing in the holes of Norway’s Stavanger Golf Club since risked having her children taken 2005. He leaves behind toilet away from her, but thankfully her paper and bicycle tracks in the lawyers were alerted to the report dew, and has disabled spot- on the Keegan case and were able lights installed to catch him. to show that Fairchild was also a “He has a couple of favourite chimæra with two sets of DNA. holes,” said greenskeeper There are only about 30 Kenneth Tennfjord, “and we documented cases of chimærism know it is a man because worldwide. (The Chimæra the poos are too massive in Greek mythology was a to be from a woman.” The monstrous fire-breathing creature, stools are only deposited on comprising parts of different weekdays. The club has been animals. It was conventionally denied a permit to install depicted as a lion with a goat’s surveillance videos. The Local head arising from its back and (Norway), 23 July; Sun, 28 July a tail ending in a snake’s head.) 2015. Searches for human chimæras SECRET SERVICE are incredibly complicated as the Last summer, someone in genes only feature in detectable Iowa was stealing dirty dogs amounts in very few organs. As SWNS.COM and returning them to their more people turn to fertility ABOVE: Clare Jones shows off the gaps where her teeth used to be. owners washed and clipped. clinics to help them have children, Sun, 10 July 2015.

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SIDELINES... The church sign of Guilderland, New York MOUNTAIN ENCOUNTER Brothers James and Alex Robbie spent a week on 4,409ft (1,344m) Ben Nevis in Scotland to raise money for charity. They were camping near the ruined observatory at the summit on 7 August when a stranger appeared and turned over a stone that semed to be a headstone with the words “Wilson 1810”. He then disappeared into the fog. “It was by far the most spooky element of our stay,” said the brothers. Dundee Courier and Advertiser, 22 Aug 2015. IT’S IN THE NAMES In 2008, Fred Cragg, a 60-year-old fertiliser sales- man, placed 50p on an accumulator bet on eight dif- ferent horse races, collecting £1 million in winnings when they all came in. Two of the horses he picked were named ‘A Dream Come True’ and ‘Isn’t That Lucky’. D.Telegraph, 29 Aug 2015. PARROT POTPOURRI Alec Guinness had a parrot called Percy, who used to recite: “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I” from Hamlet; Stalin killed his pet parrot when it started copying his pipe-sucking noises; and in order to suck up to Napoleon III, Baron Rothschild disguised his parrots as pheasants so that when each bird was shot it would fall to the ground crying “Vive L’ Empereur!” Craig Brown in D.Mail, 8 Sept 2015. S: STEVE MARSHALL INTO THIN AIR TO PHO At about 12.40pm on 16 June 1990, Trevaline Evans, 52, left her shop, Attic Antiques, Like so many small New England invisible. Mostly used to advertise new message. Some were in Llangollen, north-east towns, Guilderland, New York, has rather dull-sounding events, the disappointingly prosaic, but when Wales, leaving a note saying endless rows of affluent wooden signs rarely carry religious or they were good they were very, she would be back in two houses, each painted a uniform philosophical messages; humour very good and the sign became minutes. The last confirmed white, with a closely trimmed is even rarer. The people of the main focus of the trip. The sighting was near her home at front lawn, a motorhome and a Guilderland are fortunate indeed. excitement would mount as, 2.30pm. boat. Unremarkable in almost Whilst living for a few camera at the ready, we drove Two years later, the police- every way, Guilderland has all but snowbound months in a rural part through Guilderland towards the man heading the investigation become a suburb of the city of of upstate New York, my weekly sign. Would it have changed? said: “How a happily married Albany; its only unique feature shopping trip to Albany involved What would it say this week? I woman could vanish without is the wonderfully eccentric driving past the Helderberg only regret that my camera was trace on a sunny Saturday in sign outside the Helderberg Reformed Church’s sign. It not to hand when the sign read: a busy town centre is totally Reformed Church. Church signs brightened my winter. Almost “PUT DOWN THE FACEBOOK AND baffling.” The case remains are so ubiquitous in the USA every Tuesday the delightfully PICK UP THE FAITH BOOK”. open. D.Telegraph, that they have become almost wonky sign would display a STEVE MARSHALL 18 June 2015.

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TTINSON

PA sCIenCe MATT

There are plenty of other PLUTO, PLaneT Of mysTery mountains on Pluto, floating ones. On the western edge of the Sputnik Plain there are It’s always been the joker of the solar system, and now, as DAVID HAMBLING explains, jumbled chains of mountainous nasa’s new Horizons probe is revealing new forms of weirdness on the ninth planet. terrain composed of blocks. Some of these are 25 miles Pluto is the furthest planet in (40km) across and three miles the Solar System – or minor, or (4.8km) high. They appear to be dwarf planet for the pedantic – comparatively recent, perhaps 10 and the most mysterious. While million years old, again suggesting Mars is close enough to map that the planet is geologically with telescopes and invade with active. Researchers suspect the a stream of robot explorers, mountains are not anchored in Pluto is remote and enigmatic. bedrock but are actually made of Gratifyingly, after the recent fly- ice and are floating on a hidden past by the New Horizons probe, sea of denser nitrogen slush, the little planet is baffling the making them less mountains than scientists with new unexplained icebergs. phenomena. High above, Pluto’s four main Pluto has always been moons are moving in mysterious something of a joker. It was not ways. discovered by chance but by “This system is not just science, after astronomer Percival chaos, but pandemonium,” Lowell calculated that the orbits Mark Showalter of the New of Neptune and Uranus were Horizons team told the American disturbed by a ninth, unknown Astronomical Society. “We planet. When discovered, Pluto honestly have not seen anything was a surprise. Astronomers like this before, and we still don’t expected a gas giant like the know what to make of it.” other four outer planets, but Elsewhere in the Solar System, they found a tiny, rocky world ABOVE AND RIGHT: Pluto and Charon, moons tend to be in stable orbits like the inner worlds, barely a as pictured using New Horizons data. around their parent planets, third the size of our Moon. It locked so that – like Earth’s Moon did not appear to have enough on from similar observations – they always show the same mass to affect the other planets. of patterns on Mars (which face. Pluto’s moons are spinning, This anomaly was only resolved turned out to be seasonal dust some of them rapidly. If Hydra decades later when Pluto was storms) nobody was suggesting spun any faster, objects would be found to have a collection of lichen forests or Plutonian flung off the surface, while Nix is moons making up the missing agriculture. The colour changes spinning backwards. S: NASA

mass. The main moon, Charon, were tentatively assumed to be Of course, it is in NASA’s TO

is so large that Pluto and Charon caused by Pluto’s atmosphere interests to play up the wondrous PHO orbit their combined centre of condensing into brown stains effects. The ever-changing light nature of the discoveries. It mass, so it is technically a double and then evaporating again, but and dark patches are there, is refreshing though to see planet. this was not based on anything as the entire atmosphere scientists intrigued and excited by Pluto’s orbit also turned out very substantial. “It’s baffling,” solidifies at intervals, but there strange new phenomena rather to be eccentric. It follows an dwarf planet expert Mike Brown is more. For a start there are than seeking to dismiss them as elliptical path, between 30 and of Caltech told NASA news. “For what appear to be volcanoes artefacts or misinterpretations. 50 times as far from the Sun now, we can only guess.” made of ice. “Whatever they This is how real science starts, as the Earth, taking it inside the Brown’s great hope was the are, they are definitely weird,” with the attempt to understand orbit of Neptune – so you might New Horizons probe, which would New Horizons team member the unexplained. And New say Pluto alternates between map Pluto in far greater detail. Oliver White told a meeting of Horizons has revealed much being eighth and ninth planet. The fly-by went as planned earlier the American Astronomical about Pluto that is unexplained at Astronomers believe that Pluto this year, and New Horizons is Society in November. “Volcanoes present. was formed by the collision of two gradually sending back data. At are probably the least weird “Pluto and its system of moons smaller objects, which accounts this distance, the communication explanation at the moment.” have really outsmarted us,” says for the unusual orbit, though this speed is about a thousand bits Like volcanoes on Earth, Picard New Horizons team leader Alan is speculation. per second – the speed of a Mons and Wright Mons are cone- Stern. “It’s sort of a graduate Until a few years ago the best 1980s modem, about 500 times shaped mountains with a pit at course in planetary science.” telescopes could only produce too slow to be legally described the top. They resemble the shield It looks like being an interesting blocky, indistinct images of as broadband – so the images volcanoes of Hawaii built up by course – and it also ought to be Pluto. The whole planet was emerge painfully slowly. layers of magma being ejected a highly instructive one. Once the about 10 pixels across with You might expect that any over time; the difference is that New Horizons data have all finally the best resolution available. planet so far from the Sun the ‘magma’ is a slurry of water been beamed back, decoded In 2010 Hubble revealed, still would be completely inert, as ice and nitrogen which freezes and analysed, and theories rather blurrily, a world of huge astronomically boring as our own after it emerges. One big question formulated to explain all the new light and dark patches that unchanging Moon. But Pluto turns is how the slurry is being heated observations, scientists still won’t proved to be changing over time. out to have been designed by in the first place, as scientists have all the answers about Pluto. There was one very bright spot an exuberant cosmic Hollywood had no idea that Pluto had a hot, In fact, they literally haven’t begun close to the equator. A century director with the latest special tectonically active core. to scratch the surface.

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(1986), 16 Sa ‘Judicial cf Macmillan, Crixus; fellow-leader his of funeral fo CORNER CLASS w questions: two pr – p981 usefulness” Books, of phenomenon a is modern, sla of is that “Everything FO iaesms rcfxos ohcnesl be can easily ans Both the crucifixions? came mass whence finale’s And Spartacus”? am “I cry talteams. otball prau’ arfc f30pioesatthe 300 prisoners of sacrifice Spartacus’s r ovo cetnmnin Ho mentions Screeton Also Pa Th l nCinema in rld RT we re Ko 4: lSreo nhscommendabl his in Screeton ul Wa imdcmnay(2007) documentary film e lnm of name al cati re AAFO H NIN OL COMPILED WORLD ANCIENT THE FROM EANA Th , Th estler’s h aeSatcshsbeen has Spartacus name the d. rs, fo rcfxosare crucifixions e ve ere DA h oe” n ctmnLewis Scotsman and money”, the r bk1 fo ssthese asks [FT332:58-9] article we ayisac etl Brecht’ Bertolt instance easy r Wh very Th ch Jo . re ESPAR VE Ja Tr by 2de. 01 5) also p53), 2001, ed., (2nd 120. Complete e wo necame ence e eleMitchell. 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ALAN MURDIE wonders whether spooky snaps show deceased bishops and plague victims...

NORWICH GHOST pHOTOS in marked contrast to the particularly noisy everyone started treating the hunt a lot more Ghosts in the historic city of Norwich have phantoms of rural Norfolk, like the screaming seriously as they realised we had caught usually kept a low profile across the years. lady of the Shrieking Pits at Aylmerton, near some very clear evidence.There are lots It’s that sort of ancient place. Whilst it is Cromer, that led Eric Maple to declare in of pictures that appear of ghosts, many of true that Norwich – like many other towns Supernatural England (1977): “Norfolk ghosts debatable quality, but I think a photo like and cities – can claim its own ghost walk are an admittedly noisy species” – but oddly, this is exceptionally rare, to get a clear shot, and a small volume devoted exclusively to not in Norwich. with nobody near it, completely untampered local tales, its phantoms have not received Yet this restrained and low-key with.” a fraction of the attention lavished upon approach concerning manifestations in In contrast to many claimed ghost those of London,York, Cambridge, Lincoln the city recently suffered a rude assault photographs, this one is interesting for or Edinburgh – or even smaller places like with a battery of national attention on being taken in circumstances when the Farnborough, Prestbury or Rye. As the the publication of two separate ghost photographer actually believed that writer Bernard Dorman put it four decades photographs taken in historic parts in July something paranormal was occurring at ago, “The charm of Norwich lies in the city 2015.The first was claimed to show the “eerie the time, rather than it being an image enclosed by the mediæval walls, and its figure of a man”, obtained on the night of only identified at a later time in what was treasures have to be looked for, for it is part 18 July, inside an old community hall by a expected to be a routine photograph (often at of the temperament not to advertise.”(In member of a paranormal research group. a location not known for any haunting). Norfolk, 1972). Although the Norwich-based The second image was identified on a picture A fellow member of Norfolk Ghost publishing company Jarrolds issued many snapped by a visitor to Norwich Cathedral, Hunters, Chris Hudson, a poultry farmer by books about UK ghosts over the years, few with the photographer suggesting it was the day, endorsed the picture, averring that the of its titles made any mention of hauntings apparition of a bishop. building is “situated on a mass grave where within a skull’s throw of their offices.Though The image from the community hall – its they dumped bodies of plague victims and various monarchs visited the city over the precise location is not being revealed – was bones have been known to surface when it centuries, no regal phantoms are recalled taken by a Ms Jodie Carman during the rains”.Though the exact location remains within its boundaries. Norwich Castle, an course of an overnight investigation by the confidential, from detail in the various impressive stone building dating from around group Norfolk Ghost Hunters. Ms Carman reports it is described as “a former place 1160, seems relatively ghost-free as British stated: “We knew there was something there of worship”, narrowing it down to one of 32 castles go. It served as a prison and execution with us that night; we could hear it moving mediæval churches and two non-conformist site from 1290 until 1887, two years after the around the hall around us.” After a series chapels in central Norwich, a number of incompetent hangman Berry spectacularly of bumps and noises in the darkness, Ms which have been converted to secular use decapitated murderer Robert Goodale during Carman took her photograph, although there since the Reformation.The existence of a a botched execution in November 1885. was nothing unusual visible at the time.The plague pit is certainly a possibility, if it dates Nonetheless, reliable reports of apparitions resulting image shows what has been readily from the Black Death of 1348-49 when the remain hard to come by; claims of Goodale’s and understandably interpreted as the head city suffered as much as many other places. spectral head floating around the keep being and shoulders of a man, appearing above Much rebuilding of Norwich churches took local nonsense, a scarcely needed puff for seats a few rows in front of where Ms Carman place afterwards during the 15th century, so what is now a fine ovpr incial museum. was positioned. Not surprisingly, it made an there is a noticeable lack of Early English Altogether, shades of deceased Norwich immediate impact on the rest of the group. and Decorated churches in the city. folk haunting other ancient buildings “When everyone saw it they were at first The reason for the Norfolk Ghost Hunters seem to have “kept the noiseless tenor of stunned into silence, as everyone had seen being ‘sworn to secrecy’ is because the their way” (to quote Gray’s Elegy), avoiding me take the picture and knew there was no location is now used for children’s events exposing themselves to outside attention. one in front of me,” she said. “Once people and “the owner fears if word gets out about Interestingly, this urban spectral reticence is calmed down they were just amazed and a ‘ghost’ then it will scare away young families”, though the thought of human remains emerging during wet weather – if correct – would certainly be more off-putting than most phantoms. (Sunday Express, D.Mail, 4 Aug 2015, and many others.) Could a plague pit generate apparitions? Usually churchyards and burial grounds in Britain are largely spectre-free zones (in contrast to the United States) with a few exceptions such as Highgate Cemetery, so there is no reason to presume any other mass grave site would necessarily be haunted. However, a tantalising case reportedly

eNCy occurred in London in the late 1970s where ag residents of a house awoke during the night and saw figures in antique costumes carrying wrapped bundles passing through Ters News

Ca their bedroom.Terrified, they fled the house and dialed 999.The police duly arrived and, thinking the account of figures carrying bundles involved burglars on the premises,

merCury press / immediately attempted to apprehend the ABOVE: The photograph taken by Jodie Carman during an overnight investigation in a Norwich community hall. perpetrators. A young police constable entered the property and emerged whey-

18 FT335 www.forteantimes.com faced after seeing the apparitions for himself. A police dog was then deployed, but the dog refused all commands and coaxing and eventually turned and bit its handler. On entering the property in force, the police found no evidence of any intruders.The terrified family eventually re-entered their home and all was quiet. Baffled, the police withdrew, advising they contacted the Church for help. Still troubled, the family duly brought their experience to the attention of the Church of England Deliverance Study Group (the term deliverance ministry is often used in preference to ‘exorcism’ these days). On enquiry, members of the group learned that three weeks before their experience the family in question had suffered a cot death. The house was also identified as standing on a plague burial site. It was speculated that the grief and trauma of the family had served as a catalyst, reviving place memories derived from centuries-old trauma on the same site, Kerry LauNders / swNs.Com which then manifested as apparitions.The ABOVE: Kerry Launders captured this striking image of what looks like a phantom bishop in Norwich Cathedral. bundles carried by the apparitional figures were dead infants wrapped in cloth being penitent from Spain and other Mediterranean the Queen’s House, who found a very similar carried to the communal grave. The house was countries – not to be confused with the hoods image was obtainable by a person walking up blessed and the family received bereavement worn by the Klu Klux Klan) She told the the stairs with a camera set on a short time- counselling. Frustratingly, the records of this Mirror: “I wasn’t scared when I saw it though, exposure. (See Gazetteer of British Ghosts, incident have been lost. (Sources: Deliverance: because I believe in this sort of stuff.” 1971, by Peter Underwood; In Search of Ghosts, Psychic Disturbance and Occult Involvement, Mediæval bishops are buried inside, 1995, by Ian Wilson). 1996, edited by Michael Perry, 2 nd edition; including Herbert de Losinga (d. 1119), Aside from mediæval Catholic ghost lecture to the Ghost Club 14 July 1996 by responsible for beginning the building of stories, there are a few cases of phantom Revd Dominic Walker). the Cathedral dedicated to the Holy and bishops recorded, almost always with an There are scattered stories of plague Undivided Trinity in 1096, within an area of identity given to them. Bishop Edward victims returning as ghosts, most famously the city known appropriately as ‘Tombland’. Bonner (d.1569) is said to walk the grounds at the underground structures at Mary The Mirror claimed that “builders working of Fulham Palace in London according to King’s Close in Edinburgh where fears of 17th on surrounding building sites have reported the Fulham Chronicle of 16 February 1968. century plague escaping persisted for many objects moving on their own.” (This appears Archbishop Simon of Sudbury (d.1381) haunts years (See Haunted Edinburgh, 2007, by Alan to be a reference to incidents in a solicitor’s St Gregory’s Church in Sudbury, which holds Murdie). I have also heard contemporary office near the cathedral in 1997) and that his skull, as well as at Canterbury Cathedral, folklore of cadaverous plague victims “visitors to the cathedral have also reported which houses the rest of him (see Haunted haunting buildings at Eyam in Derbyshire seeing ghostly figures”, but further details Britain by Anthony Hippesley Coxe). Bishop (famous for putting itself in a sacrificial were not given. (D.Mirror, 13 Aug; Huffington Lacy (d.1455) returns to the Bishop Lacy pub quarantine in 1665) and at Mortlake in Post, 14 Aug 2015.) at Chudleigh in Devon and Bishop Morley London, supposedly giving rise to the name Neither photograph should be considered (d.1684) haunts the Fox Tower at Farnham of the original area ‘mort’ meaning ‘dead’ as proof of an afterlife, but merely as Castle (see The Haunted Inns of England, 1972, in Latin. But on the whole it seems plague interesting examples of instances where by Jack Hallam; The Ghost Hunter’s Guide, victims do not return; modern hospitals tend cameras might have recorded some image 1984, by Peter Underwood). to generate far more reports than mass burial unseen by the camera operator at the time. Personally, I think it far more likely that sites of any kind. Regrettably, none of the newspapers or in Norwich the deceased bishops, clerics and Less than two weeks after Ms Carman’s media reproducing these pictures has been plague victims all sleep peacefully, especially photo was reported, a second ghost image prepared to invest in more detailed analysis so if there are people out there trying to obtained in Norwich made headlines. Also of the images before racing to publish. With snap pictures of them. As the great Norwich taken in July, it was picked up on a mobile the image obtained by Kerry Launders, scholar, antiquarian and divine Sir Thomas phone camera carried by a visitor from one wonders if the same cause was at work Browne (1605-1682) declared in his classic Manchester. Kerry Launders was on her first as proposed to explain a strange image treatise on mortality and funeral customs, visit to the cathedral with her partner Simon at Hampton Court in February 2015 [see Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, or, a Discourse of Tobb and her young children, and set about FT326:16-18], a panoramic shot in low light the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk taking a large number of photographs inside where the camera takes a sequence of photos (1658): “To be gnawed out of our graves, to the mediæval building. On returning home, and then stitches them together into a single have our skulls made drinking-bowls, and our Kerry reviewed her pictures and was amazed image. I was also reminded of the famous bones turned into pipes to delight and sport to see a “shadowy figure in one of the images, photograph taken at the Queen’s House in our enemies, are tragic abominations”. If staring down from an upper floor” beneath an 1966 by a Canadian clergyman, the Revd. Sir Thomas’s marvellous prose reflects local archway. Kerry believes the form is the ghost Hardy. He maintained there was no one philosophy and antique sensitivities about of a mitred bishop in trailing robes, stating visible on a spiral stair at the time he took his one’s treatment after death, spirits of the “It looks like a bishop – and there are a lot of photograph, but the resulting picture seemed dead in Norwich would doubtless view being those buried there – with the long clothing to show two hooded and monk-like figures captured on camera and publicised in our and the tall hat” (though the headgear looks ascending it. However, the striking picture popular newspapers as a post-mortem fate to more like a pointed capirote of a mediæval was explained by the official photographer to be similarly avoided at all costs.

FT335 19 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

Father-and-son team come clean about their circlemaking, the circle game plus fisticuffs in the fields and a warning from the aliens

crop artists Father and son Terry (46) and Jack (20) from Salisbury are the Doug Bower and Dave Chorley [FT69:38] de nos jours: they claim to have spent the last 15 years making crop glyphs overnight.They first awdr their designs before briefing a team of enthusiasts and heading out into the fields.They use surveyors’ tape measures, markers and boards, spending up to five hours on each design.The two men (who declined to give their surname) have made more than 20 crop circles across Wiltshire, with designs ranging from 250ft (75m) to 1,600ft (500m) in size. “I have never copied or used

computers to construct my ideas STEVE ALEXANDER / REX SHUTTERSTOCK as it would not be at all fulfilling ABOVE: One of the formations created by father-and-son team Terry and Jack: this one is from Alton Barnes, Wiltshire, 2015. or meaningful,” said Terry. “I BELOW: A diagram showing that the crop glyph found in Argentina is actually a warning about a meteor impact. definitely feel as though there is some kind of channelling which is important.” Jack added: “I do November is actually a diagram him sitting in a crop glyph at police were called and arrested the physical work mostly. Some warning about a meteor impact, Monument Hill near Devizes in King for common assault. He nights there is a lot of energy according to Scott C Waring Wiltshire.Williams, 44, claimed received a formal caution. that doesn’t feel normal. Usually of ufosightingsdaily.com.This he was just recording the crop The pair then continued their at the end of a circle there is a “writer, teacher, UFOlogist”, patterns. King stood up and argument in a series of tit-for-tat definite presence that seems to unfettered by evidence (or hurled a wellington boot at the video statements on YouTube. entangle inside of you. It’s very spelling), comments: “Crop drone – an action caught on In November 2000,Williams, electric.” They’re evidently both circle [sic] have been around the drone’s camera.The wellie who lives in Devizes, became mystics. for thousands of years, recorded missed its target and Williams the first man in Britain to Terry had long been interested in ancient literature, paintings flew his expensive equipment be convicted of making crop in crop glyphs, but only started and walls. Its [sic] been long away from the scene. glyphs. He was fined £100 after making them himself after believed that the circles are The two men later had a admitting damaging a farmer’s suffering a brain hæmorrhage messages sent from the heavens violent confrontation in a crops near Marlborough to make in 2000. He explained: “In the to humans.Today we believe they nearby car park.Williams a seven-pointed star. He later first few months [after the are messages from the aliens. Not filmed the altercation on his gave up flattening crops because hæmorrhage] a friend at the all crop formations are real, only phone and can be heard telling of his hay fever, but still posts time turned up at my door and about 10-15% are real.This one King: “You throw boots at YouTube videos on the subject. insisted on taking me out to looks real and seems to contain people’s quadcopters.You are a King shot to prominence after create our first crop circle.That a message.To me, it looks like a tantrummy little b––––.” King, a witnessing and filming what was the beginning of my journey warning about a meteor impact martial arts expert from London appeared to be the instant as a circle maker.” Jack was only coming. Its [sic] showing an orbit now living in Bradford-on- formation of a crop glyph in the five when Terry began designing around Earth, and then it shows Avon, then lost his temper and celebrated East Field in Alton formations but did not actively the location where it will hit in repeatedly kicked and punched Barnes in July 2007. Croppies participate until he was 11. He the north western hemisphere… Williams, whom he accused of held a press conference and said the process was exciting but but no date.” Metro online, 18 Nov endangering him and another presented his evidence to the exhausting. “I usually feel done 2015. croppie by flying the drone yonl media. BBC News, 8 Oct 2002; by the time I’ve walked into the five feet (1.5m) above their D.Telegraph, 10 Sept; Western field, but once you get a couple drone rage heads, a claim strongly denied Daily Press, 11 Sept 2015. of hours in you start to feel the Two of the most prominent by Williams. “I felt we were adrenaline pumping,” he said. figures in Wiltshire’s “crop circle being intimidated,” said D.Mail online, 4 Sept 2015. community” came to blows King. “I kicked him in the on 4 August in the first known nuts and chinned him and useless warning case of drone rage.The fracas chinned him again. I knew A huge crop glyph that appeared began when Gary King, 49, took exactly what I was doing in a wheat field in Malabrigo, exception to Matthew Williams’s and was prepared to take Santa Fe, Argentina, on 7 use of a drone to photograph the consequences.” The

20 FT335 www.forteantimes.com Karl shuKer presents his regular round-up from the ALIEN ZOO cryptozoological garden

LEFT: The HMS Daedalus sea serpent encounter. BELOW: The name of the new giant tortoise subspecies honours Galapagos National Park ranger Fausto Llerina Sánchez, who devoted 43 years of his life to the care of endangered tortoises in captivity there. BOTTOM: The statue of a mystery animal purchased by explorer Michel Ballot in Cameroon. OS AG RQUE NACIONAL GALAP PA DIRECCION DEL

DAEDALUS SEA SERPENT it was – so why did none of them do so on A GIANT GALAPAGOS SURPRISE DENOUéMENT? this particular occasion? The Galapagos Islands are famous for their One of the most famous sea serpents http://www.csicop.org/news/press_releases/ giant tortoises, with at least 11 of the on record is the mystifying marine beast show/mystery_of_the_daedalus_sea_ islands each formerly having its very own observed swimming alongside the British serpent_solved_in_skeptical_inquirer 28 Aug subspecies – which some authors elevate to frigate HMS Daedalus for a while on 6 August 2015. species in their own right. Tragically, however, 1848 by several members of this vessel’s some of them are now extinct after having crew, including Captain P McQuhae (who later NEW MOKELE-MBEMBE EXPEDITION been killed for their tasty meat in earlier ages provided a written account), while they were French explorer Michel Ballot has conducted or dying out when their habitat was destroyed journeying between the Cape of Good Hope several expeditions to Cameroon in search by introduced species. Consequently, it came and the island of St Helena. The huge sea of this country’s morphological counterpart as a great surprise recently when scientists serpent was seen with its head reputedly to the Congo’s famous dinosaur-like aquatic revealed that a hitherto unknown subspecies out of the water and also with a visible back cryptid known as the mokele-mbembe, and of Galapagos giant tortoise had been hiding fin. The head was described as being “long, on one occasion he purchased a very striking in plain sight. It has long been known that pointed, and flattened at the top, perhaps ten locally made wooden statue depicting a the Galapagos island of Santa Cruz has feet [3m] in length, the upper jaw projecting mysterious horned quadrupedal beast with a giant tortoises living on its eastern side in a considerably”. McQuhae was convinced long heavy tail that seems to be Cameroon’s locality called Cerro Fatal, and on its western that the creature was an enormous snake. equivalent to a second Congolese cryptid, side in a region known as La Reserva. Yet However, in his sea serpent classification the emela-ntouka. He has now announced although the two groups display minor system published during the 1960s, veteran that in mid-January 2016 he plans to return morphological differences from one another, cryptozoologist Dr Bernard Heuvelmans to Cameroon, accompanied by fellow explorer they have traditionally been categorised as categorised it as a giant seal. Serge Martin, once again seeking its mokele- one and the same subspecies, Chelonoidis Now, after studying the case in detail, mbembe cryptid. They will be searching for it (nigra) porteri. Following DNA analyses and evolutionary biologist Dr Gary J Galbreath in the Nki Falls area and the Lobéké National comparisons of samples taken from eastern has proposed a new identification: namely, Park, and will be spending a fortnight there and western specimens, however, a scientific a sei whale Balaeonoptera borealis (a after having first met up on site in extreme team led by Yale University evolutionary baleen species up to 64ft/20m long). southern Cameroon with the local team of research biologist Dr Adalgisa Caccone has This, he suggests, was seen feeding in the helpers and guides that they will be using. now announced that the eastern specimens traditional manner for its species – with its http://mokelembembeexpeditions.blogspot. are sufficiently distinct genetically from their long, flattened, pointed head and upperw ja co.uk/2015/10/nki-mokele-mbembe-expedition- western brethren to require classification as extending upwards above the water surface janvier.html 21 Oct 2015. a subspecies in their own right. Indeed, they while the lower jaw remains entirely hidden are actually genetically closer to the giant below the surface, thus enabling the whale tortoises on other Galapagos islands than to skim small surface-dwelling organisms they are to the western Santa Cruz giant inside its capacious mouth. There is no doubt tortoises. Consequently, the eastern Santa that a sei whale behaving in this manner Cruz giant tortoise has now been formally does provide a close visual correspondence separated from the latter taxonomically, with the mystery beast as described by the and has been dubbed C. (n.) donfaustoi Daedalus observers. My concern with it as a in honour of Fausto Llerena Sanchez’s 43 conclusive explanation, however, is that as years of work in Galapagos giant tortoise

the latter persons were experienced seamen, conservation. OT LL

surely they would have witnessed this activity www.livescience.com/52545-new-species- BA before, and would have recognised it for what galapagos-tortoise.html 21 Oct 2015. MICHEL

FT335 21 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

Ex-Labour councillor saves the world from Large fortean follow-ups Hadron Collider, plus more weird news updates

SIMON SAYS [FT288:4, in Worcestershire was accused 330:23] of attempting to take the infant from a home in Derby on 21 September. She knocked on the door of a 19-year-old mother and asked to hold her baby before later handing the child back (not a very determined kidnap, then). Another 17-year-old woman, from Simon Parkes, who resigned as Wolverhampton, was arrested in Labour town councillor for Whitby connection with the incident. in North Yorkshire last April, has Now here’s a variant – BPOs entertained us by claiming his (bogus police officers). In the mother was a 9ft (2.7m) alien small hours (1.15am) of 17 and that he had experienced September, two BPOs, a man numerous extraterrestrial and a woman, knocked on a cern encounters, including one in woman’s door in Claypiece which he lost his virginity to an as a pentaquark, the New World equipment because the law courts Road, Withywood, Bristol, and alien when he was five. He had Order baddies were poised to do not believe it is possible.” tried to persuade her to go with also met “shadow-beings” and strike. “I have not said the LHC The LHC came back on, but them in a car. A genuine police other creatures taking the form can break the divine link between was again thwarted. “All over spokesperson said: “They told of cats, owls, circus clowns and all good humans on this plane the globe good people started to her that she needed to come with policemen. and divine consciousness,” said meditate for five to six minutes. them because a family member Parkes, who has lectured at Parkes, “but that was their plan.” After the meditation it failed had been in an accident. When the Natural History Museum, Parkes had sources who told him again, but we did take some she refused, thy left and got into a was recently a key speaker at a what was about to unfold, so damage. One person lost hearing car described as a new-shape blue conference organised by the UFO he set about arranging a global in an ear for three weeks and Ford Fiesta.” The male BPO was Academy at High Elms Manor in “mind warp” to defeat the plan. others had ringing in the ears white, in his 40s, clean-shaven, Watford, Hertfordshire. Before an “We couldn’t just do nothing. because there was an attack by about 6ft (183cm) tall, and “very enraptured audience of hundreds, There is much you could do those psychically protecting it.” slim”. The female BPO was white, he related how he had stopped without sticking your head above The mass meditation caused a between 5ft 1in and 5ft 6in (155- the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) the parapet. I created a global thunderstorm over Switzerland, 168cm) tall and of “medium to in Switzerland opening a portal meditation group connecting forcing the LHC onto a back- heavy build”, with long blonde to another dimension that would consciousness and most countries up power system that only hair in a ponytail. She was have destroyed mankind. Parkes now have two or three people. gave a third of its full capacity. wearing hooped earrings, a nose explained that the Illuminati (who Places like the US and UK have “Gaia came to our rescue and stud and dark eye make-up. Both run the world from behind the got hundreds. We really can affect a thunderstorm took out the spoke with local accents. Western scenes) were hell-bent on using matters with our mind.” power,” said Parkes. “With just Daily Press, 19+30 Sept 2015. the huge atom colliding machine Parkes planned to get everyone a third of the power it created a to open a vortex that would allow to take part in a “combined 0.8mm hole between the third VEXING HEXES [FT279:22] them complete control over all of meditation” at lunchtime on 15 and fourth frequency, but that Tourists who us. According to inquisitr.com and August, but the Illuminati became was not enough to bring anything took relics from prophecy.news, the plan was even aware of this and decided to through.” So we can breathe a Pompeii have been more dastardly: “To destroy all switch the LHC on at 3am that sigh of relief. express.co.uk, 24 Oct returning them to life on Earth and possibly in the day to outwit him. But Parkes 2015. the ruined Roman Universe” by opening the gates of was on the ball: “A number of city, claiming they Hell. (Presumably, “life on Earth” people who associate with me BOGUS SOCAL WORKERS are cursed. Massimo doesn’t include the Illuminati made me aware that someone had [FT315:24] Osanna, Pompeii’s archæological themselves, unless this was a activated it in the early hours and At the end of superintendent, said he had suicide mission.) Parkes explained placed Satanic black magicians, September, a received up to 100 packages that the LHC was developed by who were remotely viewing teenager was from across the world in recent Illuminati scientists using alien the installation on the inside.” charged with years containing items from technology from another planet to The good guys sent a telepathic attempted baby the site – amphora fragments, “interfere with time, open portals wave of “positive energy” kidnap following pieces of fresco, small statues to other dimensions and sever the which stopped the portal from reports of a and so on – often accompanied by link between good humans and completely opening and damaged young woman impersonating a letters explaining the relics had the spiritual plane and divine the LHC. In a statement that social worker. The Gang of Fort brought them bad luck. One man consciousness.” should be enshrined in the annals believes this is the first time one wrote from Latin America saying A month after the of jurisprudence, Parkes pointed of these elusive BSWs (bogus that he and his entire family announcement that the LHC had out that “it is not illegal to social workers) has been caught. had experienced “trauma after discovered a new particle known psychically damage government The 17-year-old from Evesham trauma” after he purloined a

22 FT335 www.forteantimes.com Mythconceptions by Mat Coward 95: arIse, sIr fortean! The myth When you get your piece of stone. A Canadian woman hop, cucumber and grapevine.” knighthood, for who had taken away a decorative The researchers believe that the Services to reading terracotta tile while on her shroud may have been originally the Fortean Times, honeymoon during the Seventies produced in India before making the Queen will say to wrote asking for forgiveness for its way to several countries you “A rise, Sir Insert- “an error I made in my youth”. including Italy, Turkey and even name-Here”, and Another parcel contained a the Americas. It is also possible that is the point at beautiful piece of fresco from that the samples of pollen found which you are officially named, or “dubbed”, the Casa del Frutteto, which had on it may have come from visitors a knight. been discovered missing during its who had travelled long distances reconstruction in Germany. to view the relic in person. Carbon The “curse of Pompeii” is an dating of fi bres taken from the old story that says the eruption shroud in 1988 gave a date of AD of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 was 1260 to 1390, but several scholars punishment inflicted by the have contended that the dating gods after legionaries destroyed samples may not have been holy buildings. “At a certain representative of the whole relic point, people started believing [FT301:6]. in this story again,” said Osanna. Citing work by a 19th century “Even proper thieves have French historian, Antonio returned things to us.” In one Lombatti of the Università The “truth” instance, fi ve packages were sent Popolare in Parma has pointed out Of course, not everybody wants a knighthood. every year, a large to Pompeii containing stolen that the shroud was only one of at number of men and women turn down all manner of gongs, and for items, including a bronze statue least 40 “burial cloths of Jesus” all sorts of reasons – the best of which surely must be that of the that had disappeared in 1987. circulating in Christendom in physicist Paul Dirac, who supposedly declined a knighting because The accompanying letter was the Middle Ages. “Most of them he couldn’t abide being addressed by his fi rst name. But if you’re sent from Spain and the writer were destroyed during the French unfashionable enough to accept your Sir, you may be disappointed complained the statue had Revolution,” he said. “Some had to discover that there is no “A rise” moment. You will be required to brought a “curse on my entire images, others had blood-like kneel before the monarch on a special “knighting-stool” while she family”. Osanna is considering stains, and others were completely lays the blade of her sword on fi rst your right, and then your left, setting up an exhibition of all the white.” He believes that the shoulder; that’s the “dubbing”. You stand up, and Herself presents letters he has received, calling Turin shroud itself was probably you with the insignia or badge of the order of knighthood to which it “What I brought back from given to Geoffroy de Charney you have been appointed. Perhaps she will then chat to you for a Pompeii”. D.Telegraph, 15 Oct as a memento from a crusade to few moments about the weather, or the football, or how you were 2015. For other ‘cursed’ stones and Smyrna in 1346. D.Mail, 11 June nearly late because of roadworks on the A303, but the “A rise, Sir” relics returned, see FT28:42, 70:17, 2012; [AP] 21 Oct 2015. bit is purely mythical. Incidentally, the reason why posthumously 76:57, 106:120, 121:9, 219:44-48, disgraced knights can’t be formally stripped of their Sirs is because a 230:22, 256:10-11. CROWS BEARING GIFTS knighthood automatically expires with the knight; technically, there are [FT329:22-23] no dead knights. SHROUDED IN MYSTERY Eight-year-old Gabi [FT324:24, ETC] Mann from Seattle, The Turin shroud, famous for feeding Sources believed by many a murder of crows http://www.royal.gov.uk/MonarchUK/Honours/Knighthoods.aspx; www. to be the actual and collecting small dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1240909/The-extraordinary-love-affair- burial cloth of Jesus, objects they brought British-scientist-Paul-Dirac-chatterbox-divorcee.html; www.theguardian. has long been the to her as gifts, was com/media/2012/oct/09/jimmy-savile-knighthood subject of intense sued last August for $200,000 controversy. Scientists (£130,500) for causing a nuisance. have now conducted a DNA Two neighbours in Seattle’s posh Disclaimer analysis on particles of dust and Portage Bay neighbourhood said All FT staff are descended from the ruling clans of Venus, so pollen collected from its surface she drew in dozens of birds to her we know little of your earth customs. Please send corrections in an attempt to determine its backyard. “Birds swarm in daily, of our errors, by royal herald, to the letters page. travels over the last two millennia. leaving behind dirt, feathers and The results suggested that it had urine on surrounding properties” been on a world tour. “Among the claimed the lawsuit. It also alleged Mythchaser plant species of the New World, that the peanut shells and other black locust, a tree of the family food left over after the birds had A Tweeting reader has brought a lovely bit of odd to our Fabaceæ native to Appalachia fi nished eating was drawing rats attention; apparently, some real ale pubs refuse to have in the Eastern United States, is and other vermin, a claim denied vinegar on the premises in case it somehow spoils their prized brews. can anyone uncover the origins of this notable,” said Dr Gianni Barcaccia. by Gaby’s parents, Lisa and Gary. pickle-uliar prohibition? “In addition, we identified The case is scheduled to go to trial crop species largely grown by in August 2016, unless the parties tHe BooK farmers and common in many reach an out-of-court settlement tHConCeptIons agriculture systems of the Old beforehand. Metro, 14 Aug; D.Mail Don’t MIss MY World, including chicory, common online, 20 Oct 2015. BooKsHops out now onlIne anD In all GooD

FT335 23 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

The “Jesus Man” of Bradford meets his maker, the palæontologist who argued for the NECROLOG survival of the luckiest goes extinct, and a quantum physicist peers beyond the veil...

accommodation in his house in marked by arbitrary catastrophic test new ideas dispassionately, Baildon, a Bradford suburb, after events (volcanic eruptions, and he did not regard himself as he found him sleeping in a hostel comet strikes, magnetic fi eld an exception to the rule. His other 25 years ago. He said: “[Geoffrey] reversals etc), in which whole publications include Principles of lived very modestly. He didn’t have species have been wiped out Palaeontology (1971, with Stephen any money. He used to go into on an unimaginable scale. He Stanley), which has become a shops and pick things off the shelf calculated that over 3.5 billion standard textbook. and then look at the shopkeeper years of organic life, Earth had David Malcolm Raup, statistical or cashier who would give him the been home to perhaps fi ve to 50 palæontologist, born Boston, nod and tell him to go on and take billion species of which, at the Massachusetts 24 April 1933; died it for free.” most, only 5 to 50 million are living Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin 9 July In 2012 an online campaign now – a 99.9 per cent failure rate. 2015, aged 82. calling for Brindley to become This “truly lousy survival record”, an Olympic torch-bearer was he argued, has little to do with BERNARD D’ESPAGNAT supported by 23,000 people, but evolutionary “fitness”. The rate In 2009, this French physicist he declined. Regarding his daily of extinction is so overwhelming and philosopher of science won routine, he was once asked: “Why that the causes must be almost the £1 million Templeton Prize, do you do it?’ – to which he replied: random – survival of the luckiest, awarded annually to individuals “I just like walking.” Asked what he not necessarily the fi ttest. He who “affirm life’s spiritual did when it rained, he said: “I get claimed that 60 per cent of all dimension”, for his work on the wet.” To others he would explain extinctions had been caused by philosophical implications of he was “looking for an answer”. random “outside” events rather quantum mechanics. Unlike the GEOFFREY BRINDLEY Brindley died in hospital 11 days than Darwinian evolutionary forces. cause-and-effect of our everyday In 1960 Geoffrey Brindley, 33, after suffering a stroke at home in In 1983, while doing a computer physical world, subatomic particles walked out of his job in Bradford Baildon. Within hours, the Internet analysis of 27,000 marine species behave in ways that appear to defy as a machinist at the International was fl ooded with hundreds of that died off during the past 250 the traditional laws of physics, Harvester tractor factory, tributes and personal anecdotes million years, Raup and a colleague undermining materialist accounts announcing that God had told and campaigns launched for a identified a cycle of catastrophic of the nature of reality. Photons, for him the world was about to end. statue to be erected and £2,000 mass extinctions occurring every example, spin in many ways, such He retreated to a nearby cave in raised to give him a fi tting funeral in 26 million years. At a lower level as ‘up’ and ‘down’, at the same the Yorkshire Dales, where he the cathedral. Local rapper Leejay they found that pulses of extinction time. Ever more mysteriously, it meditated for 12 days, after which Roberts composed a special had occurred on average every is only when they are observed he returned to Bradford wearing a musical tribute. Michael Fryer said: million years. Extinction periodicity, that they fi x into particular states dark robe and sandals, an outfit “More than anyone else [Brindley] as it became known, provoked of spin. Quantum theory also he wore for the next half-century united Bradfordians through the the wrath of Darwinists, but Raup predicts ‘entanglement’, whereby as he walked the city streets in simplicity of his life.” observed that “Darwin is like tiny particles such as electrons, all weathers with a satchel round Geoffrey Brindley, Christian ascetic, Scripture, you can fi nd anything which have interacted in the past his neck, spreading good cheer born Buston, Derbyshire 1927; you want in it”, and he was unfazed then moved apart, possibly billions with a wave and a warm smile. died Baildon, West Yorkshire 24 by the prospect that one day his of miles apart, will change their He appeared to possess nothing Aug 2015, aged 88. theories might be proved wrong. polarisation simultaneously when but the clothes he stood up in. His 26-million-year extinction the property of one of the pair is A “gentle and spiritual man”, he DAVID RAUP cycle fi tted in with the controversial measured, implying some form became known as the “J esus Classical Darwinism implies theory that the dinosaurs died after of communication between them Man” of Bradford. There were that species go extinct because a “death star” known as Nemesis rumours of a wife and children they cannot compete with more knocked comets out of their paths abandoned long ago or lost in successful species, or because 65 million years ago and sent some unspecified agtr edy. conditions change and they are them crashing to Earth. In his In his early days he was a bit of a then less fi tted for survival. In book The Nemesis Affair: A Story Christian hothead. He was arrested the 1980s, however, this was of the Death of Dinosaurs and the for causing a breach of the peace challenged by scientists including Ways of Science (1986), Raup outside a bingo club and preaching Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard and admitted that the Nemesis theory about the evils of gambling. David Raup of the University of was “a matter of fairly abstruse He also spent a brief spell in Chicago. statistical inference with rather custody during the early 1960s Though Raup seldom got his messy data” which could turn out for protesting against a Beatles hands dirty digging for fossils, to be “a major step forward in gig at the Alhambra Theatre. He Gould once described him our understanding of the natural had many friends around the city as “the world’s most brilliant world or an embarrassing period and regular addresses where he palæontologist”. In books such of near-insanity in scholarship”. would be welcomed and given a as Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad The book showed how, time after cooked meal. His friend George Luck (1991) Raup argued that the time, scientists’ belief systems Armstrong offered him free history of life on Earth has been impair their ability to evaluate and

24 FT335 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

faster than the speed of light. Einstein dismissed entanglement as “spooky actions at a distance” and argued that if quantum theory predicted such nonsense, conflicting with the accepted laws of physics, then the theory itself had to be questioned. In 1964, however, by which time quantum theory was proving its validity across a range of practical applications, CERN physicist John Stewart Bell showed that the theory required entanglement, and experimental proof of its existence was provided in the early 1970s by John Clauser and Stuart Freedman, and confirmed in the 1980s by Alain Aspect and others. D’Espagnat, a professor at the University of Paris-Sud who had meet Clauser and Freeman during a sabbatical in the United States, was the first to point out the Fairies, Folklore and Forteana philosophical issues underlying the phenomenon of entanglement. In a series of papers and in “The Quantum Simon Young FiLES A nEW REPoRT FRom THE inTERFACE oF STRAngE PHEnomEnA AnD FoLK BELiEF Theory of Reality”, a widely read 1979 article in Scientific American, d’Espagnat argued that materialist Dominican to see a witch fly seems something doctrines which claim that the TrippingwiTches like opening a Bar Mitzvah to the Gestapo, world is made up of objects whose Since scientific writing on European but anyway... Then, a century later, in 1558, existence is independent of human witchcraft began in the late 19th century Giambattista della Porta wrote of his similar consciousness, and that objects there has been a suspicion that witches did experiences in Italy. Of these three accounts, widely separated in space cannot drugs. As far back as 1889, EB Tylor suggested only Della Porta was an actual eyewitness, effect each other simultaneously, is that witches ‘flew’ to the but the similarities are fascinating. In all not only in conflict with the predictions sabbat and enjoyed orgies three, the woman entered a of quantum mechanics, but with facts there after having taken trance and in two cases the established by experiment. hallucinogens: the witch would he covered the woman proved completely D’Espagnat’s magnum opus, apply an ointment, fall asleep woman from head to insensible to pain; in the third, Conceptual Foundations of Quantum and travel mentally rather than the sleeper only woke up when Mechanics (1976), went into three physically. As the years have toe in the ointment she fell from a tub in which she editions. His ideas led to a resurgence gone by, this explanation has and she fell into an had placed herself, banging of interest in quantum theory and become increasingly popular her head. In all three cases a new field of quantum information – to the point now where we open-eyed trance for the women described, upon science, which has spurred the have the silly meme (silly 36 hours waking, their flight to bba sa at development of quantum cryptography because it is not evidence- (though of course the women and quantum computers as well based) that witches used their are unlikely to have thought as deeper speculations about the broomsticks as drug-coated of their trip in these terms): nature of space-time. He coined the dildos. in two cases the women were sure they had term “veiled reality” to describe an Yet though the existence of a flying been there physically. The most interesting elusive world beyond what is visible ointment is accepted by scholars – a flying experiment of all, though, was that of Andrés or detectable, which science can only ointment is frequently mentioned in Laguna who in 1545, while resident in Metz, glimpse through study of quantum witch sources – there is still an argument got his hands on some flying ointment. He behaviour and which, he argued, could over whether this was just a nonsensical took a woman who suffered from chronic be compatible with “higher forms concoction (blood of bat etc) or a potent insomnia. He covered her from head to toe of spirituality” glimpsed in ordinary pharmacopeia. in the ointment – sorry to be all ‘Blue Peter’ life through such experiences as There are four sources that suggest that but please don’t try this at home – and she fell listening to Mozart. Since science there really was a witch intoxicant: all four into an open-eyed trance for 36 hours. When cannot reveal anything certain about describe a woman being ‘anointed’ with a she was finally beaten awake she was furious the nature of being, he concluded, it flying cream. The first of these comes from because she had been snatched away from cannot tell us with certainty what it early 15th-century Spain, where Alfonso wonderful visions and a phantom lover. is not. Tostato described a woman putting on On the basis of evidence like this, the best Bernard d’Espagnat, apostle for ointment and falling into a trance. In 1437 question is surely not ‘Did witches use drugs?’ quantum mysteries, born Fourmagnac, or 1438 Johannes Nider wrote, in Germany, but ‘What drugs did witches use to fly?’ southern France 22 Aug 1921; died about a Dominican being invited to watch Simon Young writes on folklore and history Paris 1 Aug 2015, aged 93. a woman put on flying ointment: inviting a and runs www.fairyist.com

FT335 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]

ANDY ROBERTS & DR DAVID CLARKE PRESENT FLYINGSAUCERY THEIR REGULAR SURVEY OF THE LATEST FADS AND FLAPS FROM THE WORLD OF UFOLOGY

scanning Antarctica using Google Earth quotes were originated from me”. Yet these when he noticed a “d“darkark area”. He zoomed are the same questionable stories spread by in, and to his amazement saw something Robert Hastings and his group of former USAF he believed wawass a crashed fl yingying saucer. “I contacts who claim aliens have interfered think there is veveryry large disc-shaped fl yingying with nuclear missiles (FT270:30). Mitchell machine among the frozen ice,” mused is an exemplar of the ‘credible expert’. Degterev, basing his assumption on the fact By this term we mean someone people that what he had seen showed the “c“classiclassic tend to believe because of their status, fl ying saucer shape”. That the “c“classiclassic qualifications, experience or other skills and fl ying saucer shape” is based on hoaxes qualities. Mitchell may know his onions when such as Adamski’s VeVenusiannusian scout-ship it comes to manning a spaceship, but when has clearly not penetrated the tatters of the it comes to determining whether aliens have IT’S A BONNY DAY FOR UFOS! Iron Curtain. But this didn’t deter Degterev, been intervening in global politics we’re less The town of Bonnybridge in Scotland (above) who gave the media the exact coordinates of convinced… to put it mildly. Mirror online, 11 has been declared the best place to spot his fi nd and invited people to look. Enter the August: http://tinyurl.com/pofdl69; Huffington a UFO in Britain, according to the travel experts. The British Antarctic Survey fi elded Post, 27 August: http://tinyurl.com/ok6e33b magazine Wanderlust. Despite attempts to Andrew Fleming, who downgraded Degterev’s revive the fortunes of Warminster in Wiltshire, fi nd from cosmic Holy Grail to mundane ice IT’S THE LITTLE BLUE MAN! that celebrated its 50th anniversary as the crevasse. Degterev wasn’t impressed and In October, a contributor country’s fi rst UFO hotspot (see FT331:40- fought back: “It seems this is a man-made to the Boing Boing 47) with a skywatch at the August bank object from the distant cosmos”. Flying website nominated a holiday, it was beaten into fourth place by Saucery isn’t quite sure where the ‘distant little known alien scare the sheer number of reports emanating from cosmos’ is located exactly but understands from 1958 as “best the so-called Falkirk Triangle. Bonnybridge, how easy it is for the devoted saucer fancier extraterrestrial hoax Midlothian, fi rst came to the attention of to fall into the trap of radical misperception. ever” (although we the national media in 1992 and since that Sometimes a crevasse is just a crevasse! suspect there might be time claims have been made that more than Daily Mail online 16 June 2015: http://tinyurl. quite a few other contenders). Early in that 300 sightings are logged each year. Since com/q27b8kk year, motorists in Michigan began reporting that time, local councillor and UFO believer a weird glowing fi gure, which resembled a Billy Buchanan has written to three prime SHEER LUNACY? spaceman from a science fi ction movie and ministers, including David Cameron, asking Edgar Mitchell (below) became the sixth that appeared and disappeared on roads the Ministry of Defence to investigate. But man to walk on the Moon in 1971 and, on across the state. As the mystery grew so did each time he has been told that the usual his return, became ‘the mystic astronaut’ the fabulous nature of the descriptions that explanations for UFOs apply. Wanderlust note who embraced all sorts of New Age ideas, reached the press. Some observers said there is no obvious explanation why this area including UFOs. Now 84, the Apollo 14 veteran the alien was 10ft (3m) tall, others that he should be so attractive for the space people, is making headlines of a different kind. In May was just two feet (660cm) in height, while “although police have suggested alcohol may he was one of the big names touted by Jaime another claimed he could run “faster than be a contributing factor”. Number two on Maussan as a speaker at the Roswell any human”. Eventually, the police were called the magazine’s list is the Broad Haven Slides circus in Mexico City (FT329:26- in and three young men confessed. UFO triangle in mid-Wales, which was the 27). In August, he was quoted by stories in the newspapers gave them the idea focus of a UFO fl ap in 1977-78, the Daily Mirror as claiming that for a prank and they created a ‘spaceman’ with stories of tall humanoids in aliens had intervened to prevent costume (pictured right) from long underwear, silver suits stalking remote farms. atomic war between Russia and gloves, combat boots Rendlesham is pushed into third the USA. Mitchell said UFOs seen and a football helmet place, so we conclude that the UFO over Mexico’s White Sands nuclear to which they attached public are as fi ckle as any other, and testing grounds in 1945 were blinking lights. The

STEVEN A HENRY / GETTY IMAGES that precisely what constitutes ‘Britain’s evidence that ET is interested in the costume was spray- Roswell’ is a moveable feast. Wanderlust, US atomic weapons programme, adding: painted with luminous 18 September 2015: http://tinyurl.com/pctt5x5 “My own experience talking to people has blue paint, inspired made it clear the ETs had been attempting by a popular song on THE CRACKS ARE SHOWING to keep us from going to war and help create the radio at the time: The Internet may be the world’s greatest peace on Earth”. So: stories he’s been told The Little Blue Man, invention, but it’s also the world’s greatest by other people who believe something none by Betty Johnson. Rorschach blot test, a digital scrying mirror of them can actually prove. As it turned out, http://boingboing. into which the hopeful peer for clues. One even this item of hearsay proved worthless. net/2015/10/01/ such was Russian UFO enthusiast Valentin When Huffington Post’s Lee Spiegel followed best-alien-hoax-ever. Degterev who, for reasons unknown, was up the story, Mitchell told him: “None of those html.

26 FT335 www.forteantimes.com JENNY RANDLES WONDERS WHETHER TIME IS THE UFO CASEBOOK LINK BETWEEN DISPARATE FORTEAN PHENOMENA

TIME AND A WORD hospital in Birkenhead for a thrombosis, (OR TWO) but he reacted badly to an injection I have long been interested in time of heparin and one lung became travel, in terms of human experience blocked. At that point, he had been and scientific possibility, and have left alone, as he showed no immediate written several books on this theme. symptoms. He found himself fl oating in We are living in the very year to which mid-air above his bed where he could the celebrated 1985 movie Back to the see his struggling body about fi ve feet Future travelled – and fi nd it sadly bereft (1.5m) below. Up there, he was in a of hoverboards – so it seems appropriate very different state of consciousness to look at how time is an unexpected key and said: “There was no sense of time to the UFO mystery, and how it weaves passing and no fear or pain. In front of seemingly diverse phenomena together me was a shimmering haze of silvery in a very fortean way. light”. He watched as the man in the My immediate inspiration came when next bed scrambled out and brought a sceptical academic discovered a medical staff to urgently seek to revive time anomaly case that he suggested him. As they did so this man returned I might like to investigate. It involved to life and immediately told staff what a young woman and her brother in an had just happened. The man in the next old building in a small Polish town who bed confirmed these events and the both experienced the scene shifting attending nurse who reported this case from its modern appearance to a much to me told me similar things happened ADRI BERGER / GETTY IMAGES older one as they looked on. These on her ward several times a year. shifts were profound and seemed dependent This story has no obvious connection with on their exact location – something reported He was floating a UFO event – it is what we would call an OBE in previous cases. The woman was clearly (out-of-body experience) or NDE (near-death shaken by seeing the world shift from one above his bed experience). Similar cases have mirrored alien reality to another in front of her eyes: of abductions sufficiently closely that several course, this is what happens in many UFO and could see researchers, such as Dr Ken Ring, have in the sightings. past suspected some link could exist. British Time slip researcher Joan Forman Cases of this nature reveal the same recognised some key facts in the 1970s when his body below witness perceptions of time losing its meaning she recorded what witnesses had told her and a silvery light or glow; and it should be no of their temporal excursions. Their words are real surprise that they turn up in yet another, very interesting when we compare them with my recent columns about the November 1980 seemingly quite different kind of experience – comments from people who have experienced Alan Godfrey ‘UFO abduction’ in Todmorden, encounters with fairies. Here, the ‘enchanted other, supposedly quite different, paranormal West Yorkshire, you will recall that a heavy state’ that witnesses describe on meeting events. One timeslip witness in Cornwall told weather pressure system was passing through these beings seems very reminiscent of the Oz Forman: “I passed over a threshold into a at the time. Curiously, there were also reports Factor; it’s a form of temporal detachment that world of utter silence surrounded by a sort of of several cows wandering agitatedly in the has even given rise to a phrase in common silvery light”. Others spoke of the passage of area that night, leading to the policeman being parlance today. When someone seems to have time being “non-existent”’ when experiencing in the right place to see his UFO. Their erratic lost touch with reality and lost the passage of their time slip and of the “absence of noise” or behaviour resulted in these animals being time we say they are “away with the fairies”, “noticeable quietness”. subsequently discovered in a muddy fi eld because that is what was really claimed to Readers of my previous columns will across a river and main road with no indication explain such a state in past centuries. In my recognise how closely these comments of how they had made this unexpected journey. research on the Isle of Man (see FT213:28- resemble those of UFO close encounter So we can see how time anomalies and UFO 29), where fairy lore remains strong, I even witnesses. They also describe the encounters mirror one another with innocuous found examples where such sensations timelessness and unearthly quiet – symptoms side effects that may actually be a key to our accompanied sightings of glowing lights or in that I call the Oz Factor – while being immersed understanding. Look back at my Christmas atmospheres full of humidity and electricity. in silvery light, which is almost integral to many story (FT322:22-23) in which one house So what does this all mean? It certainly UFO sightings. Another common denominator experienced a catalogue of UFO sightings, suggests that we ought not to be so focused in timeslips is reference to an unusual time slips (past events seemingly replayed on our desire to separate one mystery heaviness of the atmosphere or presence of on an audio/video loop) and numerous Oz from another or assume that they all have electrical charge during the event. One case Factor states described by the occupant. independent explanations. If various, involved two touring British families staying Again, there were various electrical anomalies apparently different, phenomena reported in a hotel in the South of France with quaint that hit the old building and left the power across hundreds of years actually involve old features that disappeared on their return company scratching their heads as to what the same atmospheric forces that can instil journey as if displaced in time. A thundery was happening. some consistent state of consciousness in atmosphere was reported that strange night. This pattern seems significant. Time witnesses nearby, what does it tell us? Why is As readers will know, I have my reservations anomalies and UFO phenomena share the fl ow of time so vividly disrupted? Are the about the origin of the famous image of a quite surprising features in both ambient same effects caused by a time slip, or UFO, or ‘spaceman’ that appeared on a photo taken conditions and the way witnesses feel during NDE, or fairy? How and why might that be the in the Cumbrian Burgh marshes in May 1964 their experiences. Instead of treating them case? Perhaps we need to look at things the by fi reman Jim Templeton (see FT196:29, as separate mysteries with their own unique other way around and ask if some undefined 286:28–9, 305:28). But after meeting his explanations, perhaps it would be better – and phenomenon is occurring that creates a family I was persuaded that he was sincere, more fortean – to instead seek reasons for this state of consciousness that in turn might be and his account of how he took the photo coherence. open to interpretation in a variety of different shares that same spontaneous reference to But this pattern can be seen within other ways depending on circumstance or personal a heavy, electrically charged atmosphere that surprising areas of fortean research too. belief. If so, then maybe the one common caused local cows to behave oddly. Again, in A man in his 50s was being treated in denominator in all of this is time itself.

FT335 27 www.forteantimes.com The Most Haunted House In London

According to its Wikipedia entry, it is the most haunted property in London – but have the garbled tales of ghost-hunters and the advent of the Internet added too many layers of legend to the real story? JAN BONDESON goes in search of the truth about the Berkeley Square ghost house...

“First, there was a house with a room in LEFT: The haunted house at Berkeley Square, from which a series of people insisted on passing a Charles G Harper’s Haunted Houses. night; and each of them in the morning was found kneeling in a corner, and had just about she was found stark raving mad and time to say ‘I’ve seen it,’ and died.” never recovered. A gentleman, who was a “Wasn’t that the house in Berkeley Square?” disbeliever in ghosts, demanded to stay the MR James, A School Story. night in the haunted room; he was found dead in the middle of the fl oor, after having erkeley Square is one of the frantically but vainly rung the bell for rescue most historic garden squares in from some supernatural menace. the City of Westminster. It was There was much interest in London’s Bnamed after the Berkeley family spectral world in the 1870s, and the story of Gloucestershire, whose London of this extraordinary haunted house spread house once stood nearby. Berkeley Square far and wide in the newspapers. It was no was laid out in the mid-18th century by the secret in the neighbourhood that the ghost architect William Kent: the building of the house was 50 Berkeley Square, situated tall, high quality terraced houses continued near the southern extreme of the western apace, and Berkeley Square soon became terrace, since the place was of a very one of the most sought-after residential neglected and dilapidated appearance. squares in London. Admiral Byng, Robert The correspondents to Notes & Queries, a Clive and Horace Walpole all lived here.The weekly magazine devoted to antiquarian eastern and southern sides have suffered and scholarly pursuits, took an immediate badly from developers, with unsightly interest in this singular Mayfair ghost story. modern blocks and hotels dominating the The sceptics sneered, saying that they would square, but a number of original Georgian not believe in the Ghost of Berkeley Square houses remain in the southern part of the until the lunacy documents for the girl, and western terrace. the police investigation into the death of the gentleman, had been made public.The THE GHOST HOUSE pro-ghost lobby soon made headway in the In 1879, there was a sensational article debate, however, by pointing out that the in Mayfair magazine concerning one of house’s reputation for being haunted had London’s most notorious haunted houses the ghost houseat been established at least as early as 1872 – – which was situated in Berkeley Square.1 seven years before the Mayfair article.2 Long-abandoned due to the persistent 50 berkeley square As the Notes & Queries correspondents haunting, the house presented a woeful pondered the history of 50 Berkeley Square, appearance to the world: it had not seen a was ofa neglected they found that from 1770 until 1827 the lick of paint for decades, and the area was house had been home to Prime Minister full of rubbish and thrown-away handbills. and dilapidated George Canning. It was later purchased by The Mayfair journalist claimed that a girl Lord Curzon, and inhabited by his daughter, had once stayed in the ‘ghost room’ of the the Hon. Miss Elizabeth Curzon, who died : ETIENNE GILFILLAN appearance TO haunted house: the following morning, in the house in 1859. During her residence, PHO

28 FT335 www.forteantimes.com the house appears to have been free of ghosts. made ready for another tenant.5 This tenant gunshot was heard from the room.The major Her former manservant GeorgeVincent, who may well have been a certain Major Du Pré, was found in bed, stone dead from fright and had since become Head Porter at Brasenose who was later stated to have lived there with clutching a smoking revolver. According to College, Oxford, wrote to inform the Notes his wife, albeit not for very long. In June 1884, the second version, two sailors took refuge & Queries correspondents that: “I entered it was reported that Lord Selkirk had just in the haunted house one night.There was a the house, 50 Berkeley Square, London, on taken the house; in 1915, the Daily Mirror dull thud at the door, through which came a March 20, 1851, in the service of the late Miss stated that Lady Selkirk was still living there shapeless creature of so horrifying an aspect Curzon, who died in May, 1859. During the in peace and comfort; according to a 1924 that one sailor died from fright on the spot; nine years I was in the house, and I have been account, the elderly noblewoman had died in the other was found wandering about the in it at all hours alone, I saw no greater ghost the house, undisturbed by any ghost. In 1928, basement, a raving lunatic.7 than myself.” 3 the haunted house was inhabited by Sir Philip In his 1923 book Ghosts Helpful and Harmful, The Notes & Queries ghost hunters found Grey-Egerton, Bart.6 Since 1938, 50 Berkeley O’Donnell put the malignant Berkeley Square that not long after the death of Miss Curzon, Square has been the headquarters of Maggs spook fi rmly in the ‘Harmful’ cathegory. the lease had been purchased by a certain Bros, antiquarian booksellers, who have He quoted the original Mayfair magazine Mr Myers, who was supposed to be very reported that there were no indications that article, which he misdated to 1872, about eccentric.There was a story that he was once the house was haunted during their tenure; I the girl who went mad and the gentleman engaged to be married, only to be jilted at visited this elegant upmarket bookshop back found dead in the house after vainly ringing the very last minute.This dismal experience in 1999 to purchase an old French book about for help. Although it was fashionable among made him into a recluse, who never left the premature burials, having a good look at the his rationalist contemporaries to scoff at house, or maintained it in any way. According house but not seeing any trace of a ghost. London’s historic ghost stories, O’Donnell to Lord de la Zouche, the nephew of Miss declared himself a fi rm believer in the Ghost Curzon, the house was reputed to be haunted ENTER THE GHOST-HUNTER of Berkeley Square. A lady had told him that as early as 1863 or 1864. A correspondent to Elliott O’Donnell was a celebrated ghost- a certain ‘Captain B’ had once come to stay at Notes & Queries stated that during the years hunter of the 1920s and 1930s, who No 50, where his fi ancée and her family lived. the ‘eccentric gentleman’ lived there, soap, wrote copiously on various aspects of the Rather recklessly, considering the fearsome paint or whitewash was never used. He was supernatural. A highly-strung, nervous reputation of the haunted room, he decided occasionally visited by a sister, and had two Irishman, he literally saw ghosts everywhere, to spend the night there. At 12 o’clock, and on resident maidservants in the house. By degree even when they were none. O’Donnell could each succeeding hour, he would ring the bell began the ghost stories: ‘insanity’, ‘murder’, not, of course, stay away from the Ghost of once if all was well, and twice if he needed ‘walls saturated with electric horror’, and so Berkeley Square; the two were clearly made assistance.The fi ancée and her family would on. After the ‘eccentric gentleman’ died, his for one another, and O’Donnell many times be sitting in the hall to reply to his signals. At sister sent in an estate agent to see whether discussed the celebrated London spook. In a midnight, and again at one, the bell sounded it would be worthwhile to put the property in 1908 lecture, he mentioned two versions of the only once, but at two o clock, it rang twice. order for the remainder of the lease. He found haunting, leaving it to the audience to decide The fi ancée and her family ran up the stairs; the house in hideous disrepair, and asked the which one to believe. According to one story, as they gained the landing, a solitary shot maidservants if they had ever seen any ghosts; every person who stayed in a certain room of was heard. As they burst open the door to the the answer was “We never seed any!” 4 No 50 at a certain time died of fright. In about haunted room, they discovered Captain B In December 1880, another correspondent the year 1880, a reckless major, who cared sitting bolt upright in the bed, holding a still to Notes & Queries could report that 50 little for ghosts, decided to spend the night smoking revolver. Like the reckless Major of Berkeley Square had just been repainted and in the haunted room. In the dead of night, a the earlier version, he was stone dead, and the

ABOVE: A postcard stamped and posted in 1905, showing the south-western corner of Berkeley Square; No 50 is the second house from the left.

30 FT335 www.forteantimes.com ABOVE: The haunting of 50 Berkeley Square featured in a number of books by ghost-hunter Elliott O’Donnell; the details would vary from one telling to another. expression on his face was so terrible that no ghost stories more interesting.The damage person could look at it twice. outside the door done by his many rehashes of the Berkeley As some light relief after these horrors, Square ghost story has been permanent, Elliott O’Donnell then told the story of the two stooda shadowy since a number of Internet plagiarists have cockney sailors Bert and Charlie, who decided swallowed his yarns hook, line and sinker. The to enter the empty house at 50 Berkeley military officer may well have died from fright Square after being stranded in Mayfair spectre that in O’Donnell’s yarn, and one of the sailors may without a penny. But the Ghost did not approve well have leapt headlong through a window, of these two uninvited guests, and decided to resembled nothing but both are alive and well on the Internet, in give them a proper fright. In the middle of the a multitude of versions. night, the two sailors heard muffled footsteps human oranimal walking up the stairs, and the door slowly THE NAMELESS HORROR opened. Outside stood a tall, shadowy spectre In 1907, the ghost hunter Charles Harper that resembled nothing human or animal. As late as 1956, O’Donnell retold the wrote that, according to his friend Mr Stuart The terrified Bert ran to the window and slid Berkeley Square ghost story in his book Wortley, the secret of the house in Berkeley down the water-pipe, but Charlie was found Phantoms of the Night.Various attempts had Square was that Mr Du Pré of Wilton Park the following day, wandering round Berkeley been made to discount the haunting, by had shut his insane brother in one of the Square in an insane condition. Bert eventually claiming that the story had been invented by rooms; the lunatic’s strange groans and cries managed to tell the tale, and it was reported a caretaker who did not want the house to be had given the house its sinister reputation. to Elliott O’Donnell’s aunt, the wife of Colonel rented out. Another story was that the house In 1928, a correspondent to the Daily Mirror JohnVise O’Donnell, a very truthful lady had once been inhabited by an eccentric corroborated this yarn, which has since been who had fi rst-hand authority for it.The ghost recluse and misogynist who used only one ‘improved’ further on the Internet: it was an was clearly an elemental spirit, O’Donnell room and allowed the rest to go to wrack and unnamed young man who was kept prisoner in pontificated, possibly attracted to the house by ruin. He used to wander the house at night, the house, fed through a hole in the door, until a crime or series of crimes committed on the with a lighted candle in his hand, and this he went mad and died.11 The Grey Ghost Book spot, or else by a pool of stagnant water that led to the report that the house was haunted. added that according to Mr Ralph Nevill, a once stood on the site.8 Elliott O’Donnell remained a fi rm believer relation of the elusive Mr Myers, the haunting In his 1933 book Ghosts of London, Elliott in the Berkeley Square ghost, however, and dated back to the 18th century; the house was O’Donnell wrote that when he had visited he again quoted the story of the sailors also haunted by a child who had been tortured the city as a schoolboy in the early 1890s, he stranded in central London at some time in to death in the nursery, and by a man who soon made his way to 50 Berkeley Square the 1870s.This time, the ending is that after had gone mad waiting for ghostly messages to to admire London’s most haunted house. encountering the Ghost of Berkeley Square, appear on the walls.12 The celebrated ghost Although the late Lord Curzon of Kedleston Mick leapt headlong from a front window and hunter Harry Price discussed the ‘Electric had told him that the house was in fact not broke his neck, whereas Bill was found on the Horror’ of Berkeley Square at length, hoping haunted, O’Donnell remained unconvinced. pavement in a swoon.10 that if the poltergeists on the premises were He retold the Mayfair story, which he this There is no question, for a close student of up to any further mischief, Maggs Bros would time dated correctly to 1879, and then gave a O’Donnell’s Edinburgh ghost stories, that this send for him to investigate.13 lengthy account, with much invented cockney once-famous ghost-hunter made many of his R Thurston Hopkins, another authority on dialogue, of the two sailors (here called Bill spooky tales up. A study of his writings on the the spectral world, quoted Elliott O’ Donnell’s and Mick) who entered the empty house. After Ghost of Berkeley Square does not change story of the two sailors at length, and added a hearing the ghostly footsteps approaching, that impression in the slightest. Neither the ghost of his own: when a certain Mr Bentley and seeing the intensely horrible shape in the foolhardy major turned captain, nor the pair had inhabited the house, his eldest daughter’s doorway, Mick jumped headlong from a rear of protean, house-invading sailors, have any boyfriend had been frightened to death in window into the back yard and broke his neck, part to play in the original records of the the haunted room after fi rst taking a shot at but Bill ran away and told a police constable haunted house, and it must be suspected that the ‘Nameless Horror’ of Berkeley Square about the haunting.9 O’Donnell invented these yarns to make his with his army pistol.14 In 1985, Richard

FT335 31 www.forteantimes.com ABOVE: A not particularly amusing take on the Ghost of Berkeley Square, from Judy magazine, 10 January 1883.

Whittington-Egan again discussed the Ghost not far from Berkeley Square, staffed with of Berkeley Square, quoting O’Donnell’s yarns according to its half-starved parish apprentice girls. She beat but maintain a healthily sceptical attitude.15 and fl ogged the girls for every misdemeanour, The same cannot be said for the present- wikipediaentry, 50 and one of them, Anne Naylor, died after being day Internet chroniclers of London’s ghosts, on the receiving end of a brutal beating. Sarah who regurgitate garbled versions of Elliott berkeley square is Metyard and her daughter dismembered the O’Donnell’s tales from Berkeley Square with corpse and burnt some body parts, throwing enthusiasm: another room in this house of the remainder of the body into an open horrors was haunted by the ghost of a little the most haunted sewer. When Anne Naylor’s sister suspected girl who had been murdered by a sadistic that her sibling had been done away with, servant, and yet another by the spirit of a property in london the two Metyards murdered her as well, young woman who had thrown herself from and got rid of the body in the same manner. a top fl oor window after being abused by Four years went by, with the Bruton Street her wicked uncle; a large number of people THE INHABITANTS OF NO 50 murderess fl ourishing, but then Sally the had died from fright after encountering this It is curious that in 1876, before the debate daughter informed on her mother after she formidable army of ghosts, from the time of on the Ghost of Berkeley Square, there was a had been mistreated herself. Both mother and George Canning until the present era. newspaper story claiming that the spectre was daughter were hanged and then dissected Clearly, the time has come to shed some the ghost of the daughter of the celebrated at Surgeon’s Hall.The 1876 newspaper story new light on this extraordinary property – the murderess Sarah Metyard, active in the 1750s. has Sally Metyard going into service in the most haunted in London according to its Sarah Metyard was a Mayfair harridan who house at Berkeley Square, and then haunting Wikipedia entry. kept a small knitting factory in Bruton Street, the premises after having perished on the

32 FT335 www.forteantimes.com HOUSEHOLDERS OF NO. 50 BERKELEY SQUARE, 1842-2015 TIME NAME REPUTED TO BE HAUNTED? 1842-1859 Hon. Miss Curzon No 1861-1881 not listed Yes 1882 unoccupied Yes 1883-1884 Miss Myers ? 1885-1886 Earl of Selkirk No 1887-1920 Countess of Selkirk No 1921-1937 Sir Philip Grey-Egerton Bart. No 1938-2015 Maggs Bros. No

scaffold, but in real life, she was living in sin preferred anonymity. After the haunted his alleged tenure some time in the early with an admirer at the time she informed on years, there was a brief interregnum 1880s. Moreover, although Colonel William her mother.16 when Miss Myers was listed as the Baring Du Pré had two brothers, both Major Making use of the relevant Post Office householder, before the Earl and Countess Francis James Du Pré and Captain Charles directories, it was not difficult to make a list of Selkirk helped 50 Berkeley Square Hinton Du Pré were fully sane, showing no of the inhabitants of 50 Berkeley Square. back to respectability during their lengthy predilection for chewing the carpets and The earliest directory is that of 1842, and residence. No Mr Bentley is ever listed as foaming at the mouth in a locked garret in we see that after the death of the Hon. Miss the householder, so the tale of R Thurston Berkeley Square. Curzon in 1859, the house was not listed until Hopkins must be a falsification. Nor is The next mystery to address is that of 1882, when it is described as unoccupied . Major Du Pré on the list of householders, the ‘eccentric gentleman’, Mr Myers. In Clearly, at a time when most householders in casting doubt upon his involvement with her Reminiscences, Lady Dorothy Nevill salubrious parts of London felt proud to be the haunted house; we also know that the claims that a certain Mr Myers married listed in the directories, the elusive Mr Myers house was reputed to be haunted long before her kinswoman Lady Mary Nevill, and that their offspring were the key players in the Berkeley Square mystery. 17 Some research shows that this statement is nothing but the truth: on 2 January 1802, the East India Company clerk Thomas Myers married Lady Mary Catherine Nevill, the daughter of the second Earl of Abergavenny. Thomas Myers was born in 1764, the son of the Rev. Thomas Myers and his wife Anne Wordsworth. He was a clever, industrious man, who sought patrimony to enter the House of Commons, but the Earl of Abergavenny did not like him; the snobbish nobleman thought his daughter had married beneath her, and wanted nothing to do with Myers and his family. Before the premature death of Lady Mary in 1807, aged just 24, she had given birth to two children,Thomas and Mary Myers. Thomas Myers Sr served as MP forYarmouth from 1810 until 1812, before sinking back into obscurity. He died in 1835, leaving a handsome fortune to his two children. Mary Myers became an old maid: a quaint old- world fi gure, of a very retiring disposition, she was well-known to Lady Dorothy Nevill, and told the memoir-writing noblewoman many stories about the haunted house at 50 Berkeley Square. Miss Myers used to say that her brother, Thomas Jr, was very eccentric, to a degree that bordered upon lunacy. He had taken the house with the intention of living there together with his wife, for, at the time, he was engaged to be married. He furnished the house, and made every preparation to receive his bride there, but a few days before the wedding she jilted him for another man. Poor Mr Myers became even more deranged after this incident: he entrenched himself at 50 Berkeley Square and never left the ABOVE: The Berkeley Square haunting as pictured in the Illustrated Police News, 23 December 1874. house. He kept two live-in domestics, but

FT335 33 www.forteantimes.com INSIDE 50 BERKELEY SQUARE TODAY S: ETIENNE GILFILLAN TO PHO

ABOVE LEFT: 50 Berkeley Square today. TOP RIGHT: The Defence Regulations warning about the top two fl oors of the building, rendered unsafe by wartime bombing rather than paranormal activity. ABOVE RIGHT: The door to what is, according to legend, the most haunted room in London’s “most haunted house”.

Since 1938, 50 Berkeley Square has been On rare occasions, though, Alice Ed Maggs fi nds the unwavering faith home to Maggs Bros Ltd, established in does allow a ghost hunter to explore the of the ghost hunters a testament to the 1853 by Uriah Maggs and today one of the premises. “I did recently give in and show human imagination and its myth-making world’s largest antiquarian booksellers. a young boy and his family around. He had faculty as much as anything else. The fame of the supposedly haunted done a school report on the building and Pointing to a photo of a wartime Air house, though, has meant that, as well as proudly professed to know everything about Raid warning advising the fi rm not to use collectors and bibliophiles, a steady stream it and the ghost. I tried to explain that the the building’s top two fl oors because of of tourists, curiosity seekers and ghost ghost stories had no basis in fact – that bomb damage to the house next door, hunters makes its way to the door of no 50. they had likely grown up around the fact the he recalls “a unique moment, where I Maggs’s Alice Rowell told FT about the house had been empty for a period – but was privileged to see the birth of another frustrations of dealing with these persistent his faith was unwavering. Given that he was layer of myth. Two young American women visitors: “No matter how much evidence so passionate about the subject I relented came in, asking about the ghost, and I we produce to the contrary, ghost hunters and took him and his family to the attic, gave them my normal polite rigmarole. have a very fi xed view – that the ghost thinking how disappointed he would be to One stiffened when she saw the sign and exists – and no logical conversation, in see how benign-looking that part of the excitedly pointed it out to her friend. This our experience, is likely to sway them. Ed building is – it’s where the photography and became the ‘even today the top two fl oors [Maggs, the fi rm’s managing director] likes accounts departments are. of the building are forbidden to the staff on to make them an offer: if they can produce “When I showed him the supposedly account of its danger’ story.” a single fi rst-hand account of one of the haunted room, however, his aunt knocked a In the end, such prosaic explanations for numerous haunting stories, we will let them book off the side with her backpack and the ghostly legends cut little ice with the ghost bring their psychical research equipment boy was so terrified he burst into tears and hunters. “One of the things that baffles me and set up overnight – even on Hallowe’en couldn’t move for fear. He left believing in about them,” Ed adds, “is that they don’t if they like – and have free reign over the the ghost more than ever, and I went back seem to see the absence of evidence as place. Of course, they can’t produce any to work bemused by the ghost hunter’s any hindrance at all. Especially with the evidence and to date this offer has only deafness to reason and willingness to see Internet, people are terribly happy just to met with rather blank looks.” the supernatural in the everyday.” accept un-evidenced nonsense.”

34 FT335 www.forteantimes.com he made no exertions to keep the LEFT: Lady Dorothy Nevill, the society memoir writer place in order, and it soon became who had a few things to say about the Ghost of very dilapidated.There is nothing to Berkeley Square. suggest that Thomas Myers Jr ever left 50 Berkeley Square: he remained Temple Bar magazine for February 1868; at the house until the end, staying in this story is virtually identical to that of his bedroom during daylight hours, the Berkeley Square house, except that the but sometime taking a stroll through insane housemaid is taken to the doctor’s the empty rooms at night. In 1873, he home instead of to the hospital.20 When a was prosecuted at the Marlborough correspondent to Notes & Queries wrote to Street Police Court for neglecting to Rhoda Broughton, asking if she had based pay taxes that were due, and a warrant her story on the Berkeley Square haunting, was issued against him.18 His death her reply was that she had in fact heard it certificate says “30th November 1874, from informants in the country. 21 Thus it 50 Berkeley Square,Thomas Myers, would seem as if life imitated art rather than Male, 71 Years, Gentleman, Paralysis the other way around: the wagging tongues agitans, Diseased heart certified, of Mayfair transposed the elements of Rhoda Jane Long present at the Death.” Broughton’s ghost story to the dilapidated ‘Paralysis agitans’ is an archaic term house inhabited by the ailing recluse Thomas for Parkinson’s disease, and it is Myers, in Berkeley Square. understandable that an individual The story of the Ghost of Berkeley Square afflicted with this disagreeable, is really a cautionary tale about Internet and at the time quite untreatable, historiography: the online repositories disorder, would be inclined to stay are full of imaginative disinformation indoors.Thomas Myers Jr was clearly about the spectres of No 50, with various a ‘gentleman’ without professional charlatans ‘improving on’ the bogus ghost occupation, probably as a result of stories of Elliott O’Donnell.The sad tale of a substantial inheritance from his a hermitical outcast from society, crippled father. Jane Long, the witness on his by Parkinson’s disease, has conjured up a death certificate, may well have been dozen formidable spectres, fl itting round one of his maidservants. the dilapidated rooms of 50 Berkeley Square, ready for any mischief. Credulous THE WHOLE TRUTH a similarly neglected house at 19 Queen’s people once tended to believe whatever To my mind, there is no doubt that the legend Gate, Kensington. Richard Whittington-Egan they read in a book; today, they are lured of the haunting of 50 Berkeley Square is once investigated a Liverpool legend about a into gullibility by various online fantasies, linked to the very untidy and dilapidated badly maintained house at 1 Mulgrave Street, based upon decades of piling untruth upon look of the house during the residence of reputed to have been the home of a ‘Miss exaggeration. In the ghostly Internet gloom, Thomas Myers. In elegant Berkeley Square, Havisham’ character; the truth turned out to no nightingale sings in Berkeley Square – but the property stood out like a sore thumb, be that it had been deserted for many years the malevolent ghosts of No 50 have attained and this set the tongues wagging: although after its owner had died in 1906, since his online immortality and are clearly looking the ailing Myers was still living there, there maiden sister thought it harboured too many forward to a long and eventful existence on were rumours that the house had been painful memories.19 the margins of London history. FT deserted due to the persistent haunting. It What is the source of the original Berkeley is not uncommon that people believe badly Square ghost story? According to an account AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY neglected houses to be shunned because in Notes & Queries, there was suspicious a notorious murder took place there, but resemblance between the Berkeley Square JAN BONDESON is a senior not a single house in Berkeley Square is ghost story and a spooky tale published lecturer at Cardiff University, included among the Murder Houses of in a collection called Twilight Stories, or a regular contributor to London. Alternatively, the dilapidated look perhaps Tales for Christmas Eve. It turns Fortean Times and the author of the house might inspire a ‘Miss Havisham’ out that this anthology is the work of the of numerous books, including or ‘Dirty Dick’ legend about some tragic once-famous literary lady Rhoda Broughton, Queen Victoria’s Stalker recluse who had once been crossed in and that it contains a ghost story entitled (2010), Amazing Dogs love. One example is Nathaniel Bentley’s ‘The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing (2011) and Murder Houses old house in Leadenhall Street, another but the Truth’, originally published in of London (2014) and its two sequels (2015).

FOOTNOTES pp151-2. 8 Elliott O’Donnell, Ghosts 13 Harry Price, Poltergeist Dorothy Nevill, London, Helpful and Harmful, London, over England, London, 1945, 1906, pp301-5. 1 Mayfair, 10 May 1879. 4 Notes and Queries 6s. 2, 1924, pp182-81. pp192-203. On Berkeley Square, see M 1880, p435. 18 Morning Post, 29 Apr Cathcart Borer, A History of 5 Notes and Queries 6s. 2, 9 Elliott O’Donnell, Ghosts 14 R Thurston Hopkins, 1873. Berkeley Square, London, 1880, p516. of London, New York, 1933, Cavalcade of Ghosts, 19 Jan Bondeson, Murder 1977. pp26-33. London, 1956, pp21-7. 6 Dundee Evening Houses of South London, 2 WE Howlett, Notes and Telegraph, 25 June 1884; 10 Elliott O’Donnell, 15 R Whittington-Egan, Leicester, 2015, pp303-5; R Queries 5s. 12, 1879, pp87- Daily Mirror, 29 July 1915; Phantoms of the Night, Weekend Book of Ghosts No Whittington-Egan, Liverpool 8; T Westwood, Notes and Dundee Courier 28 Apr London, 1956, pp 98-101. 5, London, 1985, pp29-36. Ghosts and Ghouls, Queries 6s. 2, 1880, p417; 1924. According to JA 11 CG Harper, Haunted 16 North Wales Chronicle, 2 Liverpool, 1986, pp54-6. Notes and Queries 6s. 2, Middleton, The Grey Ghost Houses, London, 1907, Dec 1876, Illustrated Police 20 R Broughton, Temple Bar 1880, pp452, 471-2 and Book, 1912, pp16-50, Lady pp106-9; Daily Mirror, 29 News, 23 Dec 1874; GT 22, 1867-88, pp340-8. 514-6. Selkirk never believed that Sept 1928. Crook (Ed.), The Complete 21 CFS Warren, Notes 3 G Vincent, Notes and there was any ghost on the 12 JA Middleton, The Grey Newgate Calendar, London, and Queries 6s. 3, 1881, Queries 6s. 3, 1881, p30; premises. Ghost Book, London, 1912, 1925, Vol. 4, pp59-63. pp151-2. see also CFS Warren, Notes 7 Cornishman, 28 May pp16-50. 17 R Nevill (Ed.), The and Queries 6s. 3, 1881, 1908. Reminiscences of Lady

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© ChroniCle / AlAmy StoCk Photo insalubrious, guilt-wracked reputation. In the 14th century it was the London red light district, sited just outside the western city walls, and during the St Bartholomew Fair held every summer in the district, it still hosts courtesans who advertise their services with the sign ‘soiled doves’. The name is Cock. Cock Lane. Some commentators, aghast at the slatternly slash of it, the porno moniker, preferred to call it ‘Cooke’s Lane’. Drunken crowds bumpered with gin, their feet spattered with dung, spume and a morbid fl ux of warm animal grease from the Smithfield abattoirs have occupied this tight little street, gathering, most probably, late in the afternoon and certainly staying until the small hours. The second fl oor window of one house, number 20, has their fi xed attention. A single tallow candle burns. Inside, a child is talking to the dead. It’s important talk. She’s giving evidence that a former lodger in this building has murdered his wife, and that this same lodger, a gentleman from Norfolk, so the line of thinking goes, has consequently ABOVE: ‘english Credulity, or the invisible Ghost’, a contemporary view of the media circus around Cock lane, defrauded her family out of a small fortune. depicted a crowd of sensation-seeking visitors to the ‘haunted’ house. It’s late, before midnight, and the rubbernecking crowds only reluctantly part to allow through a hackney carriage recording that George II had “implicit faith that has just driven up from Charing Cross. itwould have in the German notion of vampires”. One Inside is the brother of the King himself, the can imagine the Duke of York thinking on Duke of York, who has come to judge the been like prince the superstitious fears of his grandfather “reigning fashion”, egged on, it seems, by during the excursion. As to what he had that homosexual æsthete and creator of the charles visiting witnessed in Cock Lane, Walpole thought ‘gothick’, Horace Walpole. It’s worth pointing it was a “pantomime” which “a drunken out that up until August that year, Edward a famous haunted parish clerk set… on foot out of revenge”. Duke of York was the ‘heir presumptive’ to He also thought the Methodist church was the British throne. behind it, and this newly formed and rapidly It would have been – to make a modern council house expanding religion had in its earliest days analogy – a bit like Prince Charles and Gore a keen interest in the supernatural thanks Vidal visiting a famous haunted Enfield to the childhood experiences of its founder council house in 1977 and sitting on the bed in such insufferable heat and stench”’. The John Wesley in Epworth Rectory. “The of Janet Hodgson. Here though, instead of royal party leaves at 1.30am on Sunday Methodists,” Walpole observes tartly, “have the David Soul posters, Walpole is disgusted morning. promised them contributions”. The Anglican to see washing lines above the beds of the Walpole, writing two days later to his Church, in one of its cyclical declines with girls, which reminds him of the strings used childhood friend George Montagu, was dwindling congregations, had every reason to manipulate puppets, or even a kind of under no illusions that the whole affair to fear this popular and rapidly growing noose, since he describes the fate of the little was a hoax. He was also well aware of the evangelical movement within and without its girl Betty at the centre of the ghost-mania, historic susceptibility of the royal family own churches. “whom they are murdering there by inches to the subject of the supernatural, once Perhaps Walpole had a secondary reason to go to Cock Lane on that stormy night, and, as the hackney cab turned on Pye Corner from Giltspur St into Cock Lane, he gazed quickly at the public house that stood on the corner. Mere months earlier, the landlord of the Fortune of War (with some deliciousness formerly known as “The Naked Boy”) had been convicted of sodomy and sentenced to death, a sentence quickly revoked, with a royal pardon given by the Duke of York’s brother George III. Horace Walpole, a discreet gay man, well aware of the dangers of his core identity, would have known all about the trial and the sentence. Perhaps it was even discussed in the carriage as fl ashes of light danced off the small golden statue of a naked boy that stood also on the corner, a memorial set up to mark the furthest limits of the 1666 fi re of London. “Look,” says the Duke, pointing at the pub. “My brother has recently pardoned that ABOVE: the Duke of york (left) and horace Walpole (right) paid a visit to Cock lane in January 1762. pitiful sodomite.” “Scratching Fanny makes theatre only four doors down,” responds

38 Ft335 www.forteantimes.com GUilDhAll liBrAry & Art GAllery / heritAGe imAGeS / Getty imAGeS fteghost. the of BV LEFT: ABOVE Th ch clandestine a in origins re its has time, the at “Scratching SC Wa stor Betty wa or Elizabeth one, and daughters, two he assuming incorrectly this to shine a took sho Pa through. carriage the let to parts hl ne shall ear wife but decline, of period his to him asked habitable, h deal the hundred few a house re wa the party other re the tenant thought both each that lodger is and – story whole running the element through comedic a is there and but gone, long is upeetlsasaogiehsdrunken his alongside scams supplemental dail he booze of longer amount no now could he and lationship etyhkdtetxo his on tax the hiked cently neither spectable: ur Th rs ar” steCc aeGhost Lane Cock the as eatre”, hnae 0 It 10. aged then s eln h ic;tego the pinch; the feeling s lpole, ly we RA ey y. ch n,teceko tSplhes the Sepulchre’s, St of clerk the ons, ch wa lotcmdceeett this to element comedic almost e onn service. morning He ow ete opet hi pew their to couple genteel a d ur os na rajs neiginto entering just area an in house htams ak noCc Lane, Cock onto backs almost that TC s ve ch wa os nCc Lane. Cock in house n ex ch wa kno r the wa , fo TO HING etn ba a pecting nigtesbet stecr the as subject, the anging done. s Pa . einn oidlein indulge to beginning s Fa dieo lodgings. on advice r nOtbr15,Richar 1759, October In P: s rs ‘h n” r“Miss or nny”, ke w, h elmna tSepulchre St at man Bell the utd os t2 okln na1t etr illustration. century 19th a in lane Cock 20 at house aunted’ ons Pa nt oet em,and terms, to come to en h man, the FA rs ch wa wa wa wa n sho ons ya ur Wi nachlcwho alcoholic an s NNY Fo sdt drinking to used s oetthree- modest a s .Dsiehsjbat job his Despite s. rd by ch wa lliam some r s , fca,and official, Wi n whose and s awa re ve we re fa Fa lliam lyafr the afford ally Ke spectable, nethad rnment vo y h couple the d Pa n’ Ne nny’s re wa t whose nt, rt tipple urite Th wa rs ason Ke not s n had ons house e d known s fo ow nt, – ow we an r ’s w n ye a hrh utofCc ae paigamntr od opioeso their on prisoners to words admonitory speaking lane, Cock off just Church, , d t ncnnlwo h iewihprohibited which time the of law canon in down-lo hnrnofwt e sister her with off run then i ba his rmtheir from a sae rmNrokt oca an conceal illegal to Norfolk from escaped had ev had, He apple. bad a of bit a behaviour enosueyin obscurely been l-idd aemi etrcmag onl three campaign letter mail hate ill-minded’ oen utofCc Lane. Cock off just someone nmridt i ‘wife’ his to married en Wi lliam ye by re w, r earlier ars ainhpwt i sister-in-la his with lationship o and son . agtout caught re Ke He specti to h te hand other the on nt wa fi loagossip a also s vo BV RIGHT: ABOVE , rs ve in vdi mlcosand ‘malicious a in lved ieEiaehand Elizabeth wife t vo by fa vn h et of death the lving iis edburied He’d milies. nosuequir obscure an Fa Fr nny fo ne.O the On ances. h 72engr 1762 the r , ex tattletale, a Ly ample, wa e,and nes, not s w k y av n teCc aeUra’to yia iwo h story the of view cynical a took Uproar’ lane Cock ‘the ing nuht anhr(huhIbelie I (though her damn usuall to is enough that mediums, judging of rule ey emo be eeirt.In deteriorate. under currently is notion this handedly l ihsalo ntesxhmnho her of month sixth pregnanc the in smallpox with ill rto Street. Britton not Wi circles). parapsychological lr h ohrt-ei e eiaestate. delicate It her in mother-to-be the alarm other et and Betty disturbed and saga? the sorry in whole point some at activity poltergeist there possible it Is subsequent imposture? the to precursor poltergeist or a on, added got that legend violent the wracking most noises the of complained she night girl a shared seemed At in. moving of days within aeo the the of in care wife pregnant his leaving business, the mlcti h iptho w ilnsadso endlessly and the siblings up two set of dispatch the in implicit certain conditions, under sister-in-law a to marriage wa s ihteone-strike-and-you’re-out the with es, Th Ke lliam fa Ly fo nyltrta Betty that later only s e , nt rmCc ae f hti no is what off Lane, Cock from r compan r ve n tsesulkl h girl the unlikely seems it and wa nes fo fo fi d Ke to y rmer ro y, ne. lsl leant olishly fa fo fa Fa mwt h little the with om Pa tadRichard and nt n it and Ke igi;to it; king e ofr oBrlt’ Court, Bartlett’s to comfort her r mil exe nny ly Ke rs nt by Ke uini nengr an in cution y, y. ons Ja cordial nt wa Ly n ti adta one that said is it and t yalacut little accounts all By it. thdbuh h house the bought had nt wa nu Fa wa nes fa s ro reve ar ag s nny ab mily; often s re om. ,Fa y, Pa we re u obecome to out osls modern morseless re brtn rt of wrath rberating wa rs ainhpbetween lationship re dta h should she that ed Wa Pa n fell nny n 2guineas 12 ons Fa wa frightened s fi fo wa Pa awa rs av n often nny hsalater a this s re rs caught s www.forteantimes do eac of nd wa n ea to began ons n f1785. of ing it s rs t iwin view on y ev ons genuine s gr re erything ve wa all ave Ft w that y tto nt 335 re y h ly d- .c 39 om earlier, but delays in the restoration of the the middle of this ‘dead period’ there was building are what had forced him into the another eruption in Cock Lane. The Fortune Cock Lane lodgings. of War used to stand on the corner of Cock Lane. The landlord was Thomas Andrews. On PHASMOPHOBIA Saturday 18 April 1761, a friend of his sister’s, Just before Fanny’s death, Parsons refused one John Finnimore, a man we know almost to begin paying back the loan. He’d worked nothing about, begged shelter for the night, out, or had been told by Kent, that Fanny and Finnimore obliged after remembering was not legally his wife. He felt safe to defy that his wife was out of town and said they him. Kent impulsively put the matter in the could share his marital bed (a practice not hands of a solicitor. In late January 1760, as uncommon at the time). Finnimore was Fanny lay dying elsewhere, the Cock Lane already drunk when he arrived that evening, poltergeist seemed to unfold itself again like and carried on drinking at the Fortune. a spider from a ball; the noises it was making They both went to bed. Some hours later, were so loud that the neighbours began to Finnimore was awoken from his stupor by complain, including a man who is crucial a sharp pain – “and found Andrew’s yard in to this story – the publican of the next-door his body”. Finnimore later claimed he woke, drinking house known as the Wheat Sheaf. objected, was unable to leave since the door His name was James Franzen, and he had a was locked, and was fi nally persuaded by very interesting affliction: a pathological and Andrews to come back to bed. No sooner had disabling fear of the supernatural. It’s called he dozed off than Andrews tried to bugger ‘phasmophobia’, and Franzen is interesting him again. This time, Finnimore insisted in this regard, as he’s one of the fi rst people on being let out of the room and then the we come across in modern England with building. On Monday, Andrews received a this clear psychological condition. Even visit from the constable, and was arrested later, during the court case, after the affair and detained. The matter went to trial and seemed taken quite clearly to be a fraud, parsons puta Andrews was condemned to death, but had Franzen was almost paralysed with fear in his sentence commuted by George III and the witness box and could hardly be heard as was later pardoned entirely. he whispered his account through pale lips. It sheet over his Parsons would have known both Andrews may seem ludicrous to us now that someone and Finnimore, who had stayed at Mrs could die from a fear of seeing ghosts, but headand scared Meade’s house in Cock Lane, possibly there are actually historical cases of this as a servant. Mrs Meade is of interest to happening. In 1857, a farm servant called the poor man out historians because she’s the mother-in-law John Percival spent three months in prison of John Wilkes, who stayed in her house in after impersonating a ghost and frightening of his wits Red Court, Cock Lane, until his marriage a 15-year-old to death. Percival was acquitted broke down in 1756. Wilkes was a libertine, in part because the law could not decide if a member of the Hellfire Club and a posing as a ghost was actually a criminal crucially, the largest brandy that the publican magnificent anti-establishment fi gure. As an offence. could provide. MP at the time, and knowing Finnimore, it One night, Parsons lured Franzen next door Between January 1760 and December seems possible that he made a representation and staged a fake apparition for the poor 1761, the world of 20 Cock Lane drifts to the King over the case, which is important man to see, claiming it was a ghost related to somewhat out of focus from the records. for being one of the earliest instances in William Kent – in fact his fi rst wife, Elizabeth There’s no evidence of this, but it’s a safe which a gay man was shown clemency by a Lynes (Fanny was not yet dead). Having put a assumption that Richard Parsons was happy previously pitiless executive. sheet over his head and scared the poor man to let this situation continue – who knows How does this affect the Cock Lane out of his wits, Parsons, sheetless but three- how many free glasses of brandy he managed ghost? Well, it provides a further sense of sheets-to-the-wind, pursued the landlord to scam off Franzen, who must have been Cock Lane as an interzone, a great furnace back to his pub, demanding entry and, most living in a state of perpetual fear. But in of the Saturnalian, a place of misrule and exception where regular laws were somehow suspended. This is an area where the cries of slaughtered animals and the patients in Barts Hospital never left the soundscape, belled onwards by St Sepulchre, which tolled a tocsin every time a Newgate prisoner was prepared for execution. This is the place where the four-week August revelries of the Bartholomew Fair was the Burning Man of its day – all clowning, drinking and eating, full of pantomimes and mad animal shows; indeed, it was considered so libidinous and bawdy that it seems to have caused the death of Baptist preacher John Bunyan, who expired at the bottom of Cock Lane in 1688 when the fair was being celebrated. The Fortune of War scandal began to fade. The summer 1761 fair passed by. On 31 August we fi nd William Kent married for a second time to one Bathsheba Bowers; he didn’t waste much time, and it didn’t look very good. He must have been aware that the Lynes family were preparing to move against TOP: the wooden board used by Betty to create the supposedly supernatural raps. him in the courts, outraged that the will of ABOVE: the room on the second fl oor of 20 Cock lane where the drama played out. Fanny had so favoured him. And so it proved.

40 Ft335 www.forteantimes.com continued. At the Lord Mayor’s insistence, Aldrich moved decisively to get Betty removed from Cock Lane and tested elsewhere, with a committee including Lord Dartmouth (who was incidentally connected by family to the Hinton Ampner haunting; see FT309:28-32) and Dr Johnson, to decide on her truthfulness. Walpole and York then visited on 31 January. The next day, Monday 1 February, members of this committee found themselves in a church crypt where the ghost of Fanny Lynes had promised to knock on her own coffin lid. On 7 February, Aldrich began his testing of Betty, fi rst in nearby Hosier Lane and then in Covent Garden, where she was eventually unmasked, having smuggled a wooden board into her bed on which to knock. In July 1762, Moore and Parsons were two of the fi ve people put on trial and convicted. Parsons was put in the stocks at the bottom of Cock Lane, where he was treated kindly by his neighbours. Moore died only six years later, aged only 35. The haunted house survived until the 1980s, when it was TOP: the Golden Boy above the Fortune of War pub at Pye Corner, the junction of Giltspur Street and Cock lane. demolished. Cock Lane is a small, forgotten street A Bill of Complaint was submitted to the In January 1762, Parsons organised a these days, for several years not important Lord Chancellor on 31 October by Fanny’s séance for Moore at Cock Lane. Moore enough for Google Earth even to cover. brother. Hallowe’en was about to come quickly became convinced of the reality It’s dingy and dark, sprawling with ugly calling. of the haunting, and that it really was the 1980s developments. It’s surprising to see We get to December. After a visit from ghost of Fanny Lynes. This had incredible how much of it was still standing in 1965 an investigator, Parsons fi nally learns of the theological implications, and if somehow the when Dougas Grant wrote his book on the Lynes family lawsuit against William Kent, Methodist church could be at the forefront story: he photographed it emerging like a against whom he still nurses a keen sense of proving it, they would gain an authority white skull with dirty teeth from a fog, with of grievance. Parsons used this knowledge and a power that would leave the Anglicans ‘Peter’s Refreshments’ beside it, the lineal to put more pressure on his phasmophobic in the dust. It was a high-stakes gamble. By descendent of The Wheaf Sheaf (which landlord friend James Franzen, inviting him the time he left the house at midnight there records seem to indicate was never formally round for what turns out to be the fi rst Cock were a dozen or so people standing outside to a public house). The Fortune of War is long Lane séance. Franzen was seated upstairs hear the knocking noises that the ghost was gone too, though in later years achieved when he heard scratching and knocking making. It had begun. new notoriety for being a Resurrectionist’s sounds. “The ghost has returned,” said Mrs At another séance, bigger and bolder than haunt, also an official morgue for bodies Parsons solemnly. “Elizabeth Lynes?” before, on 5 January, the knocks explicitly of the drowned north of the Thames. It was “This time we think it is Fanny Lynes who accused Kent of murder. The Public Ledger demolished in 1910. But the Golden Boy still comes to revenge her murder”. began fi elding the story. Kent read it and stands on the corner, offering a warning from Franzen fl ed the house in his usual abject decided to approach Reverend Moore. Kent the upper fl oor – for it was on the upper panic, probably failing to hear the laughter agreed to attend a séance on 12 January. At fl oors of Cock Lane where all the trouble behind him. one point Parsons cried out: “Kent! Ask the started, and in the streets below where it was ghost if you are to be hanged!” all played out. FT TESTING BETTY On 18 January, Kent returned once again Intriguingly, the fi rst Methodist foray into the to Cock Lane, and this time he brought FURTHER READING world of the Cock Lane ghost, an immensely allies, including a lawyer, his own clergyman, Charles mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and damaging one that the Church would live Reverend Stephen Aldrich, and Fanny’s the Madness of Crowds, 1841. to regret, involved two African students at apothecary. Andrew lang, Cock Lane and Common Sense, 1896. the Charity School, which stood opposite 20 “Are you Fanny Lynes?” Douglas Grant, The Cock Lane Ghost, 1965. Cock Lane. These two young men, part of a One knock for yes. Sarah Bakewell, “Scratching Fanny”, FT150:30-33, tiny African elite being educated in London, The next day, Moore was summoned to 2001. had approached Reverend John Moore about the Lord Mayor’s office, where he boldly Paul Chambers, “enthusiasm Defined”, FT202:38-44, the ghostly noises from across the street, asked for the arrest of William Kent. That 2005; The Cock Lane Ghost: Murder, Sex & Haunting and after enquiries Moore realised that this evening there was another séance. Kent in Dr Johnson’s London, 2006. house belonged to the officiating clerk of St again attended. Further accusations were The Cock-Lane ghost; being an authentic account Sepulchre’s, where Moore had preached. hurled, but the ‘ghost’ was beginning to make of that extraordinary affair, which happened in the The Methodists of this era were ghost- mistakes. These two séances really gave the beginning of the year 1762, to the great terror and believers, something that has since rather story legs – the Public Ledger began to vie surprise of all London, printed by J Dean... for J ker; fallen off the Church’s agenda. Its founder for coverage with the Daily Gazetteer. By 21 sold also by Champante and Whitrow... and others, c. 1805. John Wesley had the famous Epworth January, nearly all the London papers were poltergeist bother his family in his youth, running the story: the St James Chronicle, the AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY though he wasn’t at home in Lincolnshire London Chronicle and Lloyd’s Evening Post. On ROGER CLARKE is a former when it took place. Wesley made no secret 23 January, Reverend Aldridge published a writer and fi lm critic at the of his belief. Like the Neo-Platonist, ghost- takedown of the Moore/Parsons position. Independent. his book A Natural hunting vicar Joseph Glanville, he believed Such was the growing public disorder History of Ghosts is widely that ghosts might be proof of supernatural in the locality that Betty was taken out available from Penguin and power, and thus proof of God – minor proof, of of 20 Cock Lane and moved round some has recently been published in an inferior light-show variety, but still proof. neighbouring houses, where the séances Germany and Spain.

Ft335 41 www.forteantimes.com NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS THE STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF OLIVER LERCH

On Christmas Eve 1889, young Oliver Lerch went out to fetch some water from the well and was never seen again, his cries of terror echoing in the night skies over Indiana... THEO PAIJMANS and CHRIS AUBECK turn literary detectives and attempt to trace this enduring weird tale back to its ultimate source.

f all the stories of mysterious vanishings, none strikes a greater chord than that of the disappearance of Oliver Morton OLerch. On Christmas Eve 1889, a party of well-to-do farmers and their families were gathered in the Lerch house near South Bend, Indiana. At about 11.30pm, 20-year-old Oliver Lerch was asked by his father to fetch water from a well some 75 yards to the rear of the house. Snow had been falling all evening, but the night was clear with a full moon. Braving the cold, he picked up the bucket and went outside. Five minutes later, the guests heard him shout for help. Led by the boy’s father, they all rushed through the door, where they found his tracks in the snow. Strangely, the young man’s footprints stopped short of the well, as if he had disappeared suddenly. The guests swore they heard a faint voice, far up in the pitch-black night sky, exclaiming: “Help, it has got me!” Oliver Lerch was never seen again. Over the years, this story has been retold in countless books and articles, to the point that even today a Google search for it produces thousands of results in several languages. There is something universally disturbing about tales of missing children, especially when their ultimate fate remains a mystery. But what exactly is the story of Lerch? Was it fi ction, folklore or a genuine incident? Judging by its continuing popularity, we could say it has gained the status of a folk legend, kept alive through the decades by newspapers, magazines and eventually, compilations of strange and 1

fortean tales. Tracing the story through NNISTER CORP / GETTY IMAGES countless incarnations in the press, we BA met with a few interesting variations: a writer of fortean potboilers in the 1960s, for CONSTANCE

42 FT335 www.forteantimes.com ABOVE: The story of Oliver Lerch’s disappearance was told in FATE magazine of September 1950 and again by Frank Edwards in his 1956 book Strangest of All. instance, simply switched the story to Wales, Farjeon was asked to crack the Lerch riddle; renaming the boy “Oliver Thomas.” 2 Going the guests heard his ingenious solution involved murder further back, we found even more confusing most foul and an act of ventriloquism. 8 We versions, and possibly the answer to the a faintvoice far searched deeper still and found that Lerch’s riddle at the heart of the story. story was repeated even further back in time, in 1921, 9 in 1914, 10, in an Australian THE FATE VERSION up in the night sky newspaper in 1913, 11 in several American For a long time, it was assumed the Lerch and New Zealand newspapers in 1907, 12 story originated in the pages of FATE, an exclaiming: “help, and in a number of American, Australian American magazine devoted to UFOs and and New Zealand newspapers in December the paranormal, with the publication of it has got me!” 1906. 13 It seemed that the harder we looked, “What Happened to Oliver Lerch?” in the older the story became. We felt like September 1950. geologists, peeling back dusty strata in our It appeared to be a full account, with GOING BACK IN TIME search for the elusive original source. The details such as the time and date of the As historians of forteana, our search for story and its reach had evidently been far event and several named witnesses among tales of the weird and uncanny takes us greater than anyone thought. Rather than a the 20 guests: Tom Lerch, head of the down many obscure byways, to books and fringe topic that had spread from the pages family; Oliver’s unnamed mother and articles published at the turn of the 19th of FATE to a niche audience interested elder brother Jim, aged 23; Oliver’s pretty century and beyond. This is necessary since in the paranormal, it had captivated the girlfriend, Lillian Hirsch; and Methodist iconic fortean tales were often born in the imagination of generations of readers on minister Reverend Samuel Mallalieu. Its pages of long forgotten turn-of-the-century a global scale. We still had to fi nd out who writer, Joseph Rosenberger, threw in some publications. These stories caused ripple wrote it, however. theories for good measure. Did the grapnel effects. They were picked up, embellished of a passing balloon drag off Oliver? Did an and distributed further by yet other THE SCRAP BOOK eagle carry him away? Did one of the guests, newspapers and magazines, until the public The fi rst breakthrough came when we jealous of the attentions of Lillian, murder wearied of reading them and they were came across an article published in the the lad and stash his body somewhere? fi nally allowed to die. But then, after any New York magazine The Scrap Book in Rosenberger’s article was influential number of years, they could just as easily November 1906, entitled “Stories of Strange among early fortean and UFO writers, spring back to life at the hands of another Disappearances”. It was an unremarkable who were quick to suggest yet another writer who might stumble across them in compilation of people who had gone theory: Lerch had been one of the fi rst UFO a library and claim they were “exclusive missing, except for the last account, titled abductees. 3 scoops”. In our research we have observed “Vanished Into Space”. 14 This was the It was taken seriously enough to this process countless times, and it turns Oliver Lerch story, over 40 years before be mentioned in a list of mysterious out that the story of Oliver Lerch was no Rosenberger sold it – almost word for word disappearances compiled by the then Vice- different: Rosenberger lied! – to FATE. It was advertised as an “original President of the Pennsylvania Folklore Before 1950, the Oliver Lerch story article written for the Scrap Book”, but Society who located the event in Indiana had already gained the attention of the unfortunately the author was anonymous County. 4 However, when Rosenberger was international press. In 1947, an Australian and there was not a single source or asked years later whether the tale was true newspaper published the story a few reference. Before we could determine at all, he confessed: “There is not a single bit days before Christmas as “a weird, true whether anything truly happened that of truth to the Oliver Lerch tale. Every single Christmas story”, 6 and the trail did not stop frightful Christmas Eve, we needed to be bit is fi ction. I wrote the damn piece way there. The LA Times repeated the tale in sure of the details. back when, during the lean days…” 5 1939, 7 and in 1937 the English newspaper Taking a second look at the clippings This would have been the end of the line Lancashire Evening Post retold the story as we had collected, we noticed a small and for Oliver Lerch if, a few years ago, we had the second in what it advertised as “a new puzzling reference among the newspapers not come across evidence that the story was series of real-life puzzles with solutions recounting the Lerch story in 1907. The much older. offered by famous authors”. J Jefferson Elkhart Review, a small newspaper

FT335 43 www.forteantimes.com TOP: The earliest version of the Lerch story, by Irving Lewis, published on Christmas Day 1904. BELOW: Writer Ambrose Bierce – Lewis’s inspiration for the tale? published in Elkhart, Indiana, entire upper half of the page. It was mentioned how a “Mishawaka wonderfully illustrated, signed by correspondent” had provided its author and contained enough a story about the apparition information to enable us to assess of a slain woman seen in the whether the tale was truthful or a house where she was brutally yarn. murdered. It continued: “The The article was entitled ‘The Man same correspondent is the one Who Disappeared’ and written by who gave the hair-raising story of Irving Lewis. This version, we can the ‘transcension’ of Oliver Lerch, now confirm, is the earliest telling of near Mishawaka, on Christmas the story: Irving Lewis brought Oliver night, 1889”. 15 Mishawaka is Lerch into the world on Christmas a city on the St Joseph River, Day, 1904. in the South Bend-Mishawaka This original account differs little Metropolitan area, but what from later retellings, but it contains really piqued our interest was details found nowhere else. Irving the implication that the identity writes that he was prompted to of the author of the Oliver Lerch discuss the tragedy by the recent story was known. death of Bradley J Lerch, Oliver’s Focusing on this particular father. The event took place on newspaper, we found an even Christmas Eve 1889 at the Lerch earlier source. In early January home, a house on a hill four miles 1905, the Elkhart Review from South Bend, Indiana, near commented that: “A telegraph liar the old Elkhart to Chicago road. who seems to be the grandfather The family consisted of Mr and of them all has sent a story from Mrs Lerch and their fi ve children, Mishawaka…” Following this, including Oliver Morton Lerch, who the Lerch story was repeated in was named after the Hoosier State’s full. 16 It felt as though, at last, we war governor, a distant relative. The were getting close to the ultimate disappearance occurred at 10.30pm. source, and we burrowed through After Lerch vanished, his voice countless online and offline could be heard in the air, fainter and newspaper archives with renewed vigour. It THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED fainter, as if he were being carried away. still took us several more years to crack the On 25 December 1904, almost two years Scientists, investigators and 50 journalists case, but crack it we did: not only did we fi nd before the story was printed in the Scrap visited the scene, but nothing was ever seen the very fi rst publication of the Oliver Lerch Book, it appeared in the New York Sunday of the young man again. story, but we also discovered who wrote it. Telegraph. The Lerch story occupied the The most important addition in this

44 FT335 www.forteantimes.com version is not the date or the details addresses. 18 According to census records, he Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842–1914) concerning the house, but the inclusion of was born in March 1860 in Concord, Ohio. was an American journalist and short story a sworn statement at the end of the story He and his three brothers originally studied writer, best known perhaps for his satirical signed by 10 individual witnesses to the to become lawyers, to the point where they lexicon The Devil’s Dictionary. Some regard incident. We immediately recognised that put up a sign in Cleveland, Ohio, that read him as a proto-fortean for his interest in this was crucial to our investigation. If the “Lewis, Lewis, Lewis & Co”, but the fi rm ghosts and supernatural occurrences. 20 witnesses turned out to be fi ctional, the never made any money. They all ended up In 1888, he composed an article for the story could fi nally be laid to rest. becoming journalists at the Chicago Times, San Francisco Examiner titled “Whither? The fi rst name on the list was Reverend where Irving was an “all-round man”. 19 Some Strange Instances of Mysterious Samuel Asbury Mallalieu. Mallalieu, it He would later become the managing and Disappearance”. 21 Here he gathered said, was a retired, somewhat ill Methodist dramatic editor at the Telegraph, where his three short tales about people who had minister born and raised in Richmond, brother WE Lewis was already the general inexplicably vanished from the face of the Indiana, “a descendant of the old Huguenot editor. Earth: Mr Williamson, who disappeared families which settled in that section”. Lewis was not known for writing fantastic suddenly while crossing an open pasture; Census records show that no man of this fi ction. Either the Lerch story was a one-off James Worson, who stumbled and fell on the name lived in the 19th or 20th centuries. or he habitually used a nom de plume for road before witnesses yet “vanished before There were, however, two clergymen any other work in the genre. From where touching it”; and Charles Ashmore. named Mallalieu alive at the time, one in did he get his inspiration? The answer is This latter tale, the longest of the three, Pennsylvania named Richard Mallalieu (as surprisingly simple: he adapted it from a concerned a family of fi ve who lived in Troy, per the 1900 census), and Willard Francis story by Ambrose Bierce, a man who, as New York, until they moved to Richmond, Mallalieu (1828-1911), an American Bishop it happens, also disappeared in strange Indiana, and thence to a farm in Quincy, of the Methodist Episcopal Church. This circumstances (see FT194:43-44, 269:30-31). Illinois. Bierce’s story begins on the evening second man was undoubtedly the inspiration of 9 November 1878 at a farmhouse near for the character in the story. According to a Quincy. At about nine o’clock, young Charles reliable biography, he was “descended from bierce gathered Ashmore walks out of his family’s farmhouse French Huguenot stock.” 17 with a bucket to get water from a spring Mallalieu, therefore, was a three stories a short distance away. He doesn’t return, disappointment. Our hopes were raised and his family becomes uneasy and starts momentarily by name two on the list, a search. Charles’s father Christian and his William HH Noakes. This man actually about people who sister Martha are able to follow his trail of existed, and was indeed a farmer in Indiana. footsteps in the snow for about 75 yards… Unfortunately, census records give his date vanished from the when the trail abruptly ends. of death as 25 December 1878. By 1889 his Charles has vanished into thin air – but mortal remains had lain in Iola Cemetery, face ofthe earth there’s an even stranger epilogue to Bierce’s Allen County, Kansas, for 11 years. The captivating tale: that four days later, his next witness, Mrs Lucy Goode Cabell, wife of Henry, is a mystery. There was no Lucy Cabell in Elkhart or anywhere else, and the only Henry Cabell alive in 1889 was a 15-year-old African American cook living in Marion, Indiana. We next sought the farmer, A Hunsicker, who turned out to be Indiana resident Alva R Hunsicker, born in 1878. We got the distinct impression that Lewis had based his characters on people from Indiana that he had met, perhaps as an in-joke at Christmas time. This would be the case with another man in the list, Gotlieb Orth. Orth lived in Lafayette, Indiana, according to the City Directory of 1903, but the Naturalisation Records Index stated he arrived in the United States from Switzerland in 1892, aged four. We soon found the remaining people in the list simply did not exist: Owen B Hicks, Johnstone Williams, Channing Ramford, Anderson McKenzie. By this point we began to imagine Oliver’s eerie call of “Help me! They’ve got me!” was intended for us. CHARLES ASHMORE’S TRAIL In its modern rendition, the boy’s father was called Thomas Lerch. In the Sunday Telegraph’s version, he is named Bradley. Genealogical records prove that neither of these men existed. The true father of Oliver Lerch was the tale’s author, Irving Lewis, who was immediately traceable. Irving J Lewis is listed in the New York City Directory of 1897 as a resident at 483 9th Street, Brooklyn, with the occupation of ABOVE: Writer and editor Irving Lewis, photographed in 1915, 11 years after his story “The Man who Disap- editor. He appears in later editions at other peared” was printed in the New York Sunday Telegraph.

FT335 45 www.forteantimes.com PAUL SIEVEKING considers the notoriously VANISHING IN PLAIN SIGHT slippery subject of mysterious disappearances

egarding the book Colorado River gorge. Or was Phenomena (Thames he seen alive in the 1930s and Hudson 1977), as the king of an Amazonian Rwhich he had just tribe? Or did he re-surface written with John Michell, Bob as the reclusive novelist B Rickard commented: “Several Traven, author of The Treasure people have expressed their of the Sierra Madre? As surprise that we should include with Col. Percy Fawcett (who one of the more notorious vanished in Brazil in 1925), disappearance stories, that of the possibilities are legion the boy Oliver Thomas in 1909, and speculation open-ended. on the authority of Brad Steiger In truth, there is no hard [Strange Disappearances, evidence that Bierce ever went 1972]… Our interest in to Mexico – or that he didn’t. the story was in the way it On 2 December 1919, fi ve contained all the elements years after he disappeared, a of ‘phenomenal reality’ that rich businessman who owned make a story meaningful in a the Toronto Opera House – one mythological and psychological Ambrose Small – also vanished sense – and it is for this mysteriously, prompting Charles reason that we wish to keep Fort to ask: “Was somebody it in the book. We point out collecting Ambroses?” [Books, that we did indeed qualify this p.847] inclusion by saying that there In Lo! (1931), Fort wrote: “A ABOVE: The story of the vanishing of David Lang was told in Fate in July 1953 are no references to original and retold in December 1956, while that of Isaac Martin appears in the New fi eld, somewhere near Salem, sources. We know that, as fact, York Sun of 25 April 1885. Va., in the year 1885–and the Oliver Thomas story was that in this fi eld there was a suspect, but until recently we basic elements seen in, for Charles Ashmore, Charlotte suction. In the New York Sun, didn’t know just how much. example, the kidnappings in Ashton and James Settles – April 25, 1885, it is said that Informally we’ve heard that the fairy tradition.” [FT24:39ff, can be traced back to Ambrose Isaac Martin, a young farmer, Steiger probably got the story Winter 1977]. Bierce, whose compelling living near Salem, Va., had from one of John Macklin’s The story of David Lang tales were recycled by hacks gone into a fi eld, to work, and books – which gives it the kiss vanishing in September 1880 and early fortean anthologists that he had disappeared. It is of death as Macklin is notorious in Gallatin, Tennessee, in full as genuine occurrences. said that in this region there for fi ctionalising events and view of his wife and children, The wonderful irony, of had been other mysterious rarely giving sources. was allegedly cooked up by course, is that Bierce himself disappearances.” [Books, p. “Kevin Randle, writing in a travelling salesman named disappeared. In 1913, at the 687]. Tantalisingly, the Sage the APRO Bulletin 25:3, Sept Joe McHatten trapped in a age of 71, he allegedly joined of Albany offers no more 1976, identifies the story as Gallatin hotel in 1889 during Pancho Villa’s revolutionary detail. Michael T Shoemaker a re-written version of the a snowstorm with nothing to army in Mexico as an observer, investigated and found a disappearance of Oliver Lerch do except drink and concoct witnessed the Battle of Tierra telegraphic dispatch from mentioned by John Keel, Otto a tall story. McHatten had Blanca, and accompanied Villa’s Lynchburg, published in the Binder and Morris Jessup, who a reputation for taking part army as far as Chihuahua. His Richmond (VA) Dispatch on the in turn got the story from FATE in ‘liars’ contests’. Though last known communication was same day as the New York Sun Sept 1950. Loren Gross (APRO nothing in the story can be said to be a letter he wrote report. This said that Martin Bulletin Nov 1976) shows confirmed in contemporary there to Blanche Partington “left his home” on 22 April that Harold T Wilkins tried to news reports, it was retold dated 26 December 1913, 1885 “and went into the fi elds investigate the story in 1932 uncritically by Nandor Fodor in which ended: “A s to me, to work, and nothing had been but could discover nothing FATE (Dec 1956), by Harold T I leave here tomorrow for heard of him since.” He was to substantiate it. Randle Wilkins in Strange Mysteries of an unknown destination.” simply a missing person. Huge summarises the story elements Time and Space (1958), and Sceptical researcher Joe Nickell numbers of people had been (most of them contradictory) by Frank Edwards in Stranger states that the letter has never emigrating from West Virginia like this: “Oliver Lerch/Larch/ Than Science (1959). Fodor been found; all that exists is following a terrible drought and Thomas, aged either 11 or 20, in turn got it from ‘How lost a notebook belonging to his harsh winter. The most likely disappeared from either South was my Father’, an article by secretary and companion, explanation is that Isaac Martin Bend, Indiana, or Rhayader, Stuart Palmer in an earlier Carrie Christiansen, had abandoned his farm and Wales, on either Christmas Eve FATE (July 1953). It was later containing a rough summary headed west in the ‘exodus 1889, Christmas Day 1889, proved that Palmer had forged of a purported letter and her fever’ [FT49:52]. Christmas Eve 1890 or 1909. documents in support of his statement that the originals For more on this subject, He got either 50ft, 76ft or 225ft account [‘Forteana corrigenda’ had been destroyed. see Among the Missing by before ‘They got him’.” Wilkins FT18:6-7, Oct 1976; ‘Vanishing Some suspect that Bierce Jay Robert Nash (Simon and dates the South Bend incident Vanishings’ by T Peter Park, was killed at the siege of Schuster, 1978); Into Thin Air as Christmas Eve 1900... Our Anomalist #7, 1998; Chambers Ojinega on 11 January 1914; by Paul Begg (Sphere 1979), conclusion is that factually the Dictionary of the Unexplained, Gordon Stein (Encyclopedia chap.4, ‘They vanished in story is as bogus as the David 2007, p.167]. of Hoaxes) suggests he faked front of witnesses’, pp.29-38; Lang non-event, and its only Many of these stories of his disappearance in Mexico and ‘The Disappearance of value is its mythical content, mysterious disappearance – to cover up his intention of Benjamin Bathurst’ by Mike which seems to involve the including Orion Williamson, committing suicide in the Dash [FT44:40-44], 1990.

46 FT335 www.forteantimes.com grief-stricken mother goes to the spring for took the two Bierce disappearance stories the Lerch story, was, according to a letter to water where she hears her son calling to her. of Williamson and Ashmore, presented the South Bend chief of police, one Richard For months afterward, the voice is heard these as factual accounts, but tagged other Norman: “a bachelor, 58 years old, with large “at irregular intervals of several days… locations onto them – in both cases, obscure farms in New Zealand and stores in Milton, a by various members of the family and by towns in England. 25 Why this occurred city of 15,000. Efforts to fi nd the missing lad others”. Although they are able to identify is anyone’s guess, other than that one of have been under way for several years. No the voice as that of Charles Ashmore, they Bierce’s disappearance stories, but not information as to whether he was a relative neither can make out words nor are able those of Williamson or Ashmore, is situated of the missing lad was given, although he to discern where it comes from, only that in England. The republication in various intimated that part of his fortune will go it sounds as if it is coming from a great newspapers of Ashmore’s disappearance, but to the lad if he is found. He declares in his distance. “The intervals of silence grew with the locale switched to England, lasted letter that he will spend a large part of it to longer and longer, the voice fainter, and by well into 1904. 26 There is no doubt Irving unravel the mystery.” 27 midsummer it was heard no more,” writes Lewis’s ‘remake’ that same year drew from We do not know if the farmer did spend Bierce. Bierce’s original, although Lewis may never his fortune on searching for a man who This is the classic Lerch story, and it even have been aware of its original author. wasn’t there in the fi rst place. And, as the even ends with the boy’s disembodied voice nursery rhyme goes, he wasn’t there again lingering in the sky. “If anybody knows the THE DISAPPEARING today, and, with this investigation concluded fate of Charles Ashmore it is probably his DISAPPEARANCE we wish he’d go away. mother,” writes Bierce. “She is dead.” Many people wondered over the years what Finally, the story of Oliver Lerch can be “Whither?” contained no indication as to happened to Oliver Lerch. Not a few delved laid to rest. We now know who wrote it, what the veracity of the three tales. 22 Needless into the matter, wrote letters, ransacked his source of inspiration was, and where this to say, Bierce made them up himself. He newspaper archives and libraries, but came tale fi rst appeared. 28 One of the world’s most did this so convincingly that his fi ctional up empty-handed. There was even a wealthy puzzling mystery disappearances, a story tales quickly began to be republished as farmer from New Zealand willing to spend that has spooked countless of readers over factual accounts, as they are even to this a fortune in trying to fi nd him. He wrote to more than a century, is no more. FT day. This started just a year later when the South Bend News in 1914, and the paper William S Walsh wrote a long article in published an account on its front page, AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY the Philadelphia Times entitled “Stories stating: “A world-wide quest has been begun Of The Missing”, ended with a retelling of to fi nd Oliver Milton Lerch, a South Bend CHRIS AUBECK founded Charles Ashmore’s tale, which he regarded boy, said to have mysteriously disappeared the Magonia Exchange as “apparently well-authenticated”. 23 Other from his home here in 1889, by Richard project and has co- newspapers would follow, introducing the Norman, a wealthy New Zealand farmer authored three fortean books to date in English Ashmore story as “new to all spoken to, but and merchant who has a fortune laid aside and Spanish, his latest may be remembered by those living in the for the boy, and South Bend police have being Return To Magonia. THEO PAIJMANS neighbourhood” and again vouching for its been requested to send details that will contributes regularly to Fortean Times and veracity. 24 lead to fi nding him”. The wealthy farmer, other publications. His book Free Energy In 1901, several American newspapers the newspaper continued, after rehashing Pioneer was recently published in Japan.

NOTES Suggested by J Jefferson Farjeon. Disappearances”, The Scrap Book, The Missing. A Brief Chapter of The Man Who Vanished”, Lancashire Nov 1906, pp361-367, where the Mysterious Disappearances. Lost 1. An overview of the various Evening Post, 30 July 1937. Lerch story appears on the last two To Mortal Eye. Famous Cases of newspapers and magazines, fortean pages. the Past Recalled. Poe and the literature, as well as the search 9. Dallas Morning News, 7 May Mystery of Mary Rogers”, The Times, attempts up to the 1990s is found in 1921, mentions the publication 15. “Seeing Things”, Elkhart Daily Philadelphia, 17 Nov 1889. Walsh T Peter Park, ‘Vanishing vanishings’, of the Lerch story in The Sunday Review, Indiana, 2 + 5 Jan 1907. had been editor of Lippincott’s The Anomalist 7, Winter 1998/1999, Magazine. 16. “Neighborhood News”, Elkhart Magazine and the president of the pp166-173. 10. “Seek Youth Who Has Been Daily Review, Indiana, 9 Jan 1905; Journalists’ Club. He cofounded American Notes and Queries in 2. John Macklin, “Ordeal At Missing For Years. New Zealander “Neighborhood News”, Elkhart 1888. Christmas”, The Gleaner, Kingston, Writes for Trace of Minister’s Son Weekly Review, 11 Jan 1905. Jamaica, 15 Nov 1964. Who Disappeared Strangely From 17. Minutes of the 57th Annual 24. “Who Remembers The Case?”, South Bend”, South Bend News, 17 Quincy Weekly Whig, Illinois, 22 + 28 3. The fi rst was Morris K Jessup Conference of the Central Illinois Jan 1914. May 1890. in The Case for the UFO (1955), Conference of the Methodist followed by Frank Edwards in his 11. “A Weird Disappearance. The Episcopal Church, Sept 1911. We 25. “Strange Disappearances”, book Strangest of All (1956). Case Of Oliver Morton Lerch”, assume Lewis added ‘A sbury’ in Denver Post, 28 Feb 1901, citing the Northern Star, Lismore, NSW, honour of Francis Asbury (1745– Chicago Tribune. 4. “A ll Kinds Of Weird Things Happen Australia, 30 Sept 1913. 1816), the founding bishop of In PA”, Portville Review, New York, American Methodism. 26. “Many Thousand people Lost In 10 Jan 1952; “Historians Compile 12. “A Strange Disappearance. London In A Year”, Boston Herald, 26 List Of Strange Disappearances”, Oliver Lerch Who Simply Vanished 18. Ancestry.com, US City directories, June 1904; “Many Lost In London”, Lebanon Daily News, 17 Jan 1952. from Human Sight”, Grand Rapids 1822-1989. Tri-City Star, Davenport, Iowa, 19 Also in McKean County Democrat, 31 Press, Michigan, 22 July 1907; 19. “These Men Deal in Scoops”, Los Sept 1904; “People Lost In London”, Jan 1952. “Vanished Into Space”, Star, New Angeles Herald, 29 Jan 1894. Deaf-Mutes Journal, Mexico, New Zealand, 3 Jan 1907; “A Strange York, 3 Nov 1904. 5. Joe Nickel, “The Oliver Lerch Disappearance”, Wairarapa Daily 20. https://marzaat.wordpress. Disappearance: A Postmortem”, Times, New Zealand, 12 Jan 1907. com/2014/12/11/reading-bitter- 27. “Seek Youth Who Has Been FATE, March 1980. bierce-was-he-a-proto-fortean/) Missing Score Of Years”, South Bend 13. “Vanished Into Space”, Daily News, Indiana, 17 Jan 1914. 6. “A Weird, True Christmas Story: News, Perth, Australia, 1 Dec 1906; 21. Ambrose Bierce, “Whither?”, San The Boy Who Vanished In The Sky”, “Strange Disappearance”, Arizona Francisco Examiner, 14 Oct 1888. 28. Irving Lewis, “The Man Who Queensland Times, Ipswich, Qld., Republican, Phoenix, 25 Dec 1906; Disappeared”, Morning Telegram, Australia, 20 Dec 1947. “Strange Disappearance On Night 22. See also Marianne Kensler, New York, 25 Dec 1904. before Christmas”, Indiana Progress, “The Farmer Vanishes”, 12 May 7. Ursus Major, “Odds And Ends Of Pennsylvania, 26 Dec 1906; 2008: http://www.strangehorizons. Life”, LA Times, 5 Mar 1939. “Vanished Into Space”, New Zealand com/2008/20080512/kensler-a. 8. “Unsolved Mysteries. The Strange Herald, 26 Dec 1906. shtml Case Of Oliver Lerch with Solution 14. “Stories of Strange 23. William S Walsh, “Stories Of

FT335 47 www.forteantimes.com THE HIEROPHANT’S APPRENTICE PRESENTS cbUilDinG a c fortean library 6. DYING TO KNOW MORE

of our mortality. Frederic WH Meyers (1843–1901) – one of the founders of the Society In 1882, Frederic Myers, Henry for Psychical Research – made one of his most celebrated remarks Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney and other not while alive, but some time after his death: “Oh, if I could only academic luminaries founded the Society leave you the proof that I continue. Yet another attempt to run the for Psychical Research (SPR). Myers blockade – to strive to get a message through. How can I make your described their motives: “[I]t seemed that hand docile enough – how can I convince them? I am trying, amid no adequate attempt had yet been made unspeakable difficulties. It is impossible for me to know how much even to determine whether anything of what I send reaches you. I feel as if I had presented my credentials – reiterated the could be learnt as to the unseen world proofs of my identity in a wearisomely repetitive manner. The nearest simile I can find or no; for that if anything were knowable to express the difficulty of sending a message is that I appear to be standing behind about such a world in such fashion a sheet of frosted glass, which blurs sight and deadens sound, dictating feebly to a that Science could adopt and maintain reluctant and somewhat obtuse secretary. A feeling of terrible impotence burdens me. that knowledge, it must be discovered Oh it is a dark road.” by no analysis of tradition, and by no manipulation of metaphysics, but simply by experiment and observation – simply his was one of the by the application to phenomena within communications among the us and around us of precisely the same t‘cross correspondences’, an methods of deliberate, dispassionate elaborate jigsaw puzzle of exact inquiry which have built up our messages received through automatic actual knowledge of the world which writing by various mediums over some we can touch and see.” In other words, three decades from the early 1900s. neither religion nor materialism had Despite Myers’s frustration, many have provided satisfactory answers to their taken them to be a more-or-less definitive intellectual puzzlement. And, inevitably, indication that, in some form, we survive one of the first tasks the infant SPR death. That anyone might want to set itself was to investigate what it maintain some kind of existence after called “that large group of debatable physical death is hardly surprising. The phenomena designated by such terms as consensus among religions seems to be mesmeric, psychical, and Spiritualistic” that earthly ills and afflictions will be – the last being periphrasis for the no more, at least for the best-behaved possibility of surviving death. in this life, and rewards allegedly range If you read but one book on this from the challenge of having to learn question, then find a copy of Alan Gauld’s to play the harp to the company of six Mediumship and Survival. Published dozen (presumably compliant) virgins. in 1982 as part of a series marking the The wicked may expect among other SPR’s centenary, it has hardly dated misfortunes to burn, freeze, or be as an overall assessment of the logical, reincarnated as a (presumably, and most philosophical and theoretical problems aggravatingly, conscious) doorpost – this that beset research into the possibility last being one of the many hells envisaged Challenger disaster, the fall of the Berlin of survival. It’s also copiously studded by Buddhists. But one would still be ‘alive’. Wall – and on and on. We weren’t about with case histories, and refreshingly sane Better that, one supposes, than nothing. at the time, or the younger among us analyses of them, plus a reassuring 174 And that is really the nub of it. One weren’t, but we interiorise something references. It’s a fairly dense read, but not suspects that the wish to survive death, of what went before we emerged from a long book. And Gauld is not without dry come what may, is really a pragmatic warmth and darkness into the chill bright humour. And there are other surprises. response to the sheer impossibility of perplexity of earthly existence. But if Received wisdom is that Spiritualism, imagining absolute nothingness. Even our we’re not in thrall to a particular religious or the survivalist movement as we know pre-existent past has some structure to iconography, and we’re honest, we know it, had its origins in the sensation created it: we hear the memories of parents and absolutely nothing about what comes after by the Fox sisters and their mysterious, grandparents of wars, eclipses, good times that. That is what makes death fearsome, er, raps and knockings in their cottage and bad. We can read history, biographies for many. Indeed Harold Bloom opined (in in Hydesville, New York State, in the of ancestors, listen to Churchill’s and The American Religion) that religion was at late 1840s. Gauld gives us the back- Kennedy’s speeches, watch video of the bottom a reaction to the inescapable fact story you’ll find in few other sources.

48 FT335 www.forteantimes.com The vocation (or profession) of ‘psychic percipient; or else she too, marvellous to medium’ evolved from the 18th-century relate, happens to scan by ESP the mind mesmeric movement – which is why tiMe MaCHineS, of the farmer of the photograph of the Mesmerism is conflated with Spiritualism farmer’s mother at just the moment when in the SPR’s brief list of “debatable MaGiC PortalS, the first percipient did the same thing. phenomena”. Gauld explains: “First of all tranSPorterS, Finally the (unconscious) minds of the two there were certain alleged findings that percipients have somehow to make contact had increasingly caught public attention WorM HoleS, with each other to ensure that when, as a in the wake of the mesmeric movement of result of all this ESP, they each construct the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The flyinG CarPetS, an hallucination, the two hallucinations facts (or supposed facts) of Mesmerism are reciprocally adjusted to allow for (or ‘animal magnetism’) were at first reloCation differences of perspective, etc., whilst the sight themselves sufficiently surprising CHarMS— main details of both are kept constant. – striking cures of cases given over by “To say that this is a tall order is a great orthodox medicine, the ‘rapport’ between SUCH tHinGS Do understatement.” mesmeric operator and his subjects, the And this is one of the least complex induction in good subjects of a trance eXiSt. cases Gauld dissects. At the same time, in state in which subjects might ‘perceive’ tHey’re CalleD other instances, he has no problem with the nature of their own ailments, predict the likelihood that information has passed their course and give prescriptions for booKS. telepathically from sitter to medium, so them. Out of happenings of the last kind, he doesn’t heave the baby out with the further peculiar phenomena developed… Richelle E Goodrich bathwater. Not that he’s po-faced about it: Now if the ‘clairvoyant’ vision of these “For instance, Hodgson had one day been ladies could reach inside people, or reach reading with great interest Lockhart’s Life distant people, or predict the course of photographers and fraudulent physical of Scott. Next day a ludicrous Sir Walter diseases, why should it not reach inside mediums.” Like many another intellectual, Scott turned up at a Piper sitting, and other kinds of closed containers, e.g. he defines his case negatively, by taking gave a guided tour of the Solar System, sealed boxes, or reach distant or even on the arguments of those he disagrees stating that there are monkeys in the future scenes and events? Before long, with, making his argument for survival Sun.” He makes clear that whether one entranced clairvoyantes were purportedly of death more implicit than explicit. In favours the ESP or the survivalist case, giving demonstrations of just these particular he takes on parapsychologists’ ESP of some kind is at work. But it has abilities. Some, indeed, believed that proposition that mediums get their its limitations: “If, indeed, the supposed their vision extended beyond this world information from their sitters, via telepathic agent were a deceased cat… I altogether, and regaled admiring wonder- telepathy. Sometimes, though, mediums have no idea what sort of information one seekers with visions of heaven, angels, do produce bits of information of which might glean. I suspect a lot of it would other planets, guardian spirits, and the the sitters were previously unaware, have to do with the smell of food in the souls of deceased human beings.” and this is explained by their ability to kitchen.” All this was hardly a secret by 1848, tap into ‘super-ESP’. Which, as Gauld This commendation of Mediumship when the Fox sisters came into the shows, means either medium or sitter is and Survival has hardly scratched its public eye; by the early 1850s, thanks in somehow (and in his view, implausibly) surface. There is so much more we large part to the Foxes’ road show, the able to sift, unconsciously, through all could have said about it. Gauld makes Spiritualist movement had a quite wide manner of knowledge, recorded in all penetrating observations on shamanism, following throughout the eastern United manner of ways, by all manner of people. spirit controls, ‘drop-in’ communicators, States. “But,” writes Gauld, “the mesmeric The essential problem is that to appeal to xenoglossy, obsession and posses- movement also had its own press and its a hypothetical ‘super-ESP’ is to explain sion, reincarnation, OBEs and NDEs, own supporters, its own operators and one unknown with another. The obvious apparitions, and (especially) memory. its own clairvoyantes. These were very problem (as he shows time and again This last is perhaps the only chapter that readily transferred to or absorbed by the by analysing cases) is the convolutions might need updating, in light of what growing Spiritualist movement. Mesmeric required to elicit the information by ESP, we now know about reconstructive and clairvoyantes, or the type of person who ‘super’ or otherwise. false memory. What marks the book out would previously have become such, now By way of illustration, Gauld relates as exemplary is its relentless honesty. emerged as the first ‘mental mediums’ – the case of Misses Moore and Quilty Gauld, who clearly favours the idea of life mediums whose contact with the spirits who, staying in a Lincolnshire farmhouse after death, says: “If the survivalist theory was through ‘interior’ vision or hearing, in 1871, both saw “a little, ruddy-faced were tenable it would immensely simplify or through the spirits ‘taking over’ and old lady, with a frilled white cap on things. The trouble with the survivalist controlling their bodies or parts thereof, her head, a white handkerchief folded theory is not exactly messiness, but rather especially, of course, the parts required round her neck, and a white apron, as conflict with other areas of our knowledge, for speech and writing.” How many of if she was sitting with her hands folded and an underlying vagueness upon certain us knew that? A parallel evolution, from in her lap.” Was this an hallucination, crucial issues.” And: “Each time I tie up, the Foxes’ knocks and raps, was the mediated by ESP? Gauld expounds how with fumbling fingers, a couple of loose development of ‘physical’ mediumship, this would work: “One of the two (or more) ends, a third one slips free again.” Charles whose high point by the 1870s was the percipients picks up by means of ESP the Fort might have said that, in one of his purported full physical materialisation information that is to be externalised in more solemn moments. FT of the departed besides other (often the form of the hallucination. Let us say literally) bells and whistles, drums and (using the specimen case given above) trumpets. that she telepathically obtains from Mediumship and Survival: A Century of Gauld wisely sidesteps the quagmire the farmer’s mind a picture of his late Investigations, of fraud, claim and counter-claim mother, or that she clairvoyantly perceives Alan Gauld associated with this aspect of mediumship, a photograph of her, shut within the Heinneman, 1982 although “I omit it with regret, for massive covers of the family album. Then much entertainment is to be derived the second percipient picks up all this Also online at: www.esalen.org/ctr-archive/ from studying the methods of psychic information telepathically from the first mediumship.html

FT335 49 www.forteantimes.com

SEND FORUM SUBMISSIONS TO: THE EDITOR, FORTEAN TIMES, PO BOX 71602, LONDON E17 0QD, UK, OR TO [email protected] HAve YOuR SAY forum sdsdsvdsvs Well, they would, wouldn’t they?

Stu Neville ponders the no-win situation of the Establishment when it comes to conspiracy theories

the Establishment cannot the theorists to find. And STU NEVILLE is a teacher and possibly win: because lo and behold – there’s a administrator of the FT online they obviously have all the cornucopia of theories out forum. He believes/ doesn’t facts, they are therefore there, any proof of which believe in a whole range of things, depending on how tired he is. equally obviously obliged will perforce be at best to deny everything. So, any sketchy (because it’s a information they do disclose cover-up), and at worst non- histelblower Edward must be misdirection or existent (because it’s a very Snowden’s recent spin, and any denial clear good cover-up). Wreappearance and the Met’s proof that they’re covering And conspiracies are downscaling of the Assange something up. In some addictive. Like the late Erik vigil have briefly revived interest in the respects, Mandy Rice-Davies Beckjord and his Bigfoot ever waxing-and-waning fortunes of that cast the first stone when, photos, once a theorist has most durable of Fort-ish subjects, the having been told that Lord spotted one conspiracy, Grand Conspiracy Theory. Every small Astor denied having even they soon find another. nugget of anything vaguely deemed to met her (for those who don’t And another. And yet more, be ‘on good authority’ is latched onto know, she was a call-girl, until they start to overlap; and applied to whatever the favoured Astor a cabinet minister), at which point you get to shady deal de jour may be. Of course, she stated: “Well he would, the next level of conspiracy speaking rationally, the problem with wouldn’t he?”This has theories. disclosed intelligence in particular is become the mantra of the This mezzanine level that the ramifications of any leakage conspiracy theorist. Of course is where things have can be appalling. What seems an the Establishment deny it: clearly transcended the

ExpREss / GETTy IMaGEs innocent, throwaway remark can in fact they have to maintain the machinations of domestic screw up an entire ongoing operation, illusion. What illusion, you ask? Ha! ABOvE: Mandy Rice- governments and have moved onto the of which the discloser is unaware owing See? That’s how good an illusion it is Davies shows what puppet-masters that control them: the to compartmentalisation. Hence the – you don’t even know it’s an illusion. she thinks of the Illuminati, (aka “the Establishment”, furore a quarter-century ago about Peter However, the conspiracy theorists British establishment. again.) They might be Masons, Jews, Wright’s Spycatcher: in reality it was do know it’s an illusion, and waste no Templars, Opus Dei, little anally-fixated an extended and quite tedious whinge time pointing this out. Can they show us grey bastards from Zeta Reticuli, the about his pension rights, but there was the trapdoor, the mirror and the smoke G8 leaders, Bilderbergers, the Carlisle nonetheless a genuine risk that he could machine? Well, by and large no, they group… well, the list is endless. Except have jeopardised the lives of those still can’t – but they can cite someone else it isn’t, because they are all part of the working in the field. who can.The very fact that this source Illuminati/Establishment. So, when Ditto David Shayler – or Delores, is regarded as a nutcase by most people a conspiracy theory appears to be on or whatever he’s called today: he/she/ is testament to the effectiveness of the ropes, if an individual government they may well have thought that they the smear campaign designed by the somehow manages to furnish reasonable were doing the right thing, and equally Establishment to discredit said source; proof of its non-involvement in whatever their moral compass may have been better yet, if the Establishment deigns dodgy dealing, that’s when theorists play pointing roughly the right way, too, but to notice and actively dismiss their the Illuminati card. Because, in such a they should have been aware that there claims, that’s proof that they take them case, the individual government needn’t were quite likely operations underway, seriously enough to issue a denial. be party to it at all – they were as duped the mechanics of which they had no Now, no one with more than one as we were. And so on… knowledge. Disclosure of a seemingly brain-cell denies that governments Perhaps uniquely among fortean irrelevant piece of information can have (otherwise known as “the topics of interest, the less tangible serious consequences in other parts of Establishment”) do naughty or morally evidence of conspiracies there is, the service. And if the failure of such questionable things from time to time, the more advocates of conspiracy operations then results in a successful or indeed more often than that.The theories become convinced of their terrorist campaign, of the sort it’s problem with conspiracy theorists is existence. One day, the conspiracy of fairly safe to assume actually do exist that they take this agreed premise silence will attain its own Nirvana: (depending somewhat on how heavily and use it to underlay the entire its own total absence will confirm its you believe the media to be controlled fabric of their theories: because the own omnipresent existence. QED, the by them), who gets the blame? Establishment can do this, then clearly conspiracy theorists will say, and hard The Establishment – that’s who. they must be doing it, and constantly. cheese to the sheeple – that’s you and When you start on conspiracy theories, Therefore there must be something for me, folks. Pass the tinfoil. FT

FT335 51 www.forteantimes.com forum art

health problem, but that damage to his Visions of the inner eye optic nerve had left him with a condition known as Charles Bonnet syndrome. Bonnet was an 18th century Swiss philosopher and writer who described Ted Harrison explores the seemingly oxymoronic world of blind visual artists his grandfather’s experiences after he lost his sight to cataracts and began having ‘visions’. He reported seeing Mann, who died earlier this year, was patterns, people, birds and buildings, TED HARRISON is a former BBC not alone in being a blind painter. There which were not really there (see religious affairs correspondent, regular FT contributor and author are, and have been, several examples, FT98:19, 125:14, 184:46-49, 321:54-55). of books on end-time prophecies, some of whom, unlike Sargy, did not Ellis’s art now consists of creating, Elvis and the cult of Princess Di. even have a memory of vision.The entirely by feel, impressions of the Turkish artist Esref Armagan was born strange shapes and patterns he ‘sees’ argy Mann was a British without sight and has developed a way in his mind. He uses such implements artist and teacher who was of drawing by feel and then applying as stencils and bendy rulers laid out on fascinated by the power of oil paint with his fingers. He builds up paper on a drawing board in shaping his Slight and colour. But in his his pictures slowly, as he has to wait for work. 50s, at the height of his career, one colour to dry completely before One of the most celebrated blind he went blind. On his return home applying another. Yet his works have artists of history was Italian sculptor from hospital, having completely lost visual integrity and perspective and are Giovanni Gonnelli who lived in the his vision and wondering what life had not simply haphazard layers of colour. first half of the 17th century. As a young ahead of him, he went to his studio. He He starts by creating a picture in his man he was apprenticed to a studio in had a picture mapped out in his head mind. He restricts his palette to five Florence and showed great promise. and wondered if he could, without sight, colours, plus black and white, and works But when his sight began to fail, he was somehow put it on canvas. methodically and without help to realise dismissed and returned to his home What happened next astonished him. the picture in his imagination. village of Gambassi.There he retrained As he placed a brush of ultramarine Psychologist John Kennedy, professor himself as a sculptor. He had memories paint on the canvas he saw the canvas of perception and cognition at Toronto of shapes and he found he could use turn blue in his mind’s eye. Next he tried University, has described Armagan as an clay to fashion figurative sculptures. He a magenta, and watched the canvas turn important figure in the history of epictur also created portrait sculptures from a violet red. Seeing the colour was only a making, and in the history of knowledge. life, feeling the features of his subjects brief sensation, he reported, but it was of “His work is remarkable. I was struck by with his hands before shaping them in sufficient duration for him to work. the drawings he has made as much as by clay. If his sitter was someone it would “That’s beautiful,” his daughter said his work with paint.” have been inappropriate to manhandle on seeing his first attempt, and from Portrait painter Arthur Ellis from he worked from a wax mold. Patrons that moment Sargy Mann knew he Kent went blind nine years ago after included dignitaries from Rome, and would have a creative life after suffering contracting meningitis. However, even the Pope was sculpted by the complete blindness. He developed a way instead of entering a world of celebrated blind artist of Gambassi. of working using bluetack stuck on the darkness, he found himself ‘seeing’ BeLoW LeFT: Sargy Sergej Popolsin, a Russian now living canvas to give him points of reference the most extraordinary visions and Mann at work in in Austria, lost his sight completely in and co-ordinates. He could never see a hallucinations. He encountered his studio 1990 as a result of head injury. He has finished painting, but he ‘knew’ what terrifying apparitions and saw weird BeLoW riGHT: devised a way of painting in a world he was doing at the moment he did it. shapes and began to wonder if he was From the Rooftop, of total darkness, working entirely by His pictures were regularly exhibited losing his sanity. Eventually, it was oil on canvas, by touch. He marks areas on his painting and fetched prices of up to £50,000. found that he did not have a mental Sargy Mann. surface with needles to orientate DOGAN CONTEMPORARY CA BOTH PICTURES: COURTESY

52 FT335 www.forteantimes.com forum art

himself and creates shapes by cutting manner to that of a sighted person. out cardboard which he then paints Looking at scans of brain activity it around. He marks the caps of his paint seemed as if he was actually seeing tubes with small knife cuts so that he things as he drew. His brain’s visual can identify their colour by feeling the cortex, normally inactive in the visually patterns of the notches. Some of his impaired, lit up when Esref touched an work is abstract, but he also creates object and began drawing. realistic images and optical illusions. “Regions of the brain normally One British blind artist,Terry associated with the processing of visual Hopwood Jackson, has set up a website information undergo remarkable to encourage other blind people to take dynamic change in response to up art. [1] He describes how he draws blindness,” the researchers reported in using coloured plasticine so that he can a scientific paper. “These neuroplastic feel the shapes he is creating. changes implicate not only processing While some blind artists are carried out by the remaining senses but practising artists who lost their sight, also higher cognitive functions such as others only took up art after having language and memory.” [3] gone blind. Lisa Fittipaldi, who lives Being blind from birth, Esref had no in Panama, started painting in 1995, aBoVe: ‘Stroll in use, in the normal way, for those parts two years after she lost her sight. In He can paint the Rain’ by John of the brain that transmit and process Bramblitt. addition to writing, Lisa began to visual images. However, the brain explore the visual arts as a way of portraits of LeFT: Texan artist adapted itself and found new ways of rediscovering purpose in a life that had, John Bramblitt took employing those redundant areas. For up painting after for her, radically changed.Through her people he has he lost his sight in artists who go blind in late life, those painting she not only relived her visual 2001. brain adaptations can be dramatic, as memories, but also learned a new way never seen Arthur Ellis discovered. of understanding space and how best to The Royal National Institute for the navigate through a world she could no Blind offers advice to those suffering longer see. from Charles Bonnet Syndrome. The website dedicated to her work The visions encountered should be says that her paintings give the viewer understood “as a reaction by the “the visual experience of colour and brain to loss of sight,” the NIB website energy that she sees in her mind’s eye. It explains. “Current research seems to is her way of validating the reality of her suggest that, when you are seeing real inner vision. She entertains herself by things around you, the information trying new textures, by mixing media, received from your eyes actually stops by setting out new artistic and technical the brain from creating its own pictures. problems to solve. Her wide-ranging When you lose your sight, however, choice of subjects and locales are using spectacles and lenses.There your brain is not receiving as much culled from memories of her own past have been several famous artists who information from your eyes as it used experience and travels.” [2] have continued to create art despite to.Your brain can sometimes fill in Texan John Bramblitt, who went fading eyesight. Claude Monet is these gaps by releasing new fantasy blind in 2001, also took up painting to thought to have painted his famous pictures, patterns or old pictures that re-orientate his life and senses. “Art water lily pictures at a time that his it has stored. When this occurs, you reshaped my life,” he has said. He eyes were failing. Some art critics experience these images stored in your discovered how to identify paints of theorise that El Greco’s elongated brain as hallucinations.” [4] In Sargy different colours through their texture. shapes were the result of astigmatism Mann’s case the ‘hallucinations’ were He guides his application of paint using and that Botticelli and Titian might confined to him briefly seeings colour raised lines on the painting surface too have had this defect that distorts on his canvas. and visualises what he creates through shapes in the eye of the beholder. The very existence of blind artists haptic vision – the ability to interpret While astigmatism and even colour- raises questions about what it is the tactile shapes into visual images in blindness, from whichVan Gogh might sighted actually see. Indeed, what is his mind’s eye. He can paint lifelike have suffered, are not impediments visual reality? Does vision provide portraits of people he has never seen in to painting and might possibly help a true representation of the world a conventional way. create innovative and distinctive around us? Does the brain only see That a composer like Delius or a images, how can someone who is what it wants or expects to see? Does poet like Milton can be blind and yet totally blind make visual art? the brain fill in gaps and enable people still create visions of a world beyond In 2008, Amir Amedi and Alvaro to see what isn’t there? Might this be referenceS themselves is comprehendible.To talk of Pascual-Leone from the Department an explanation for ghosts, UFOs or a blind visual artist seems an oxymoron. of Neurology at Harvard Medical [1] myweb.tiscali. phantom animals? Common sense suggests that it must be School examined Esref Armagan in co.uk/theartsight “Paintings are visual metaphors impossible for someone to create art the course of research into the way the [2] lisafittipaldi.com for my experience of reality,” Sargy that can only be appreciated through optical nerve responded and adapted [3] Current Mann once said. And for as long as he the eyes, if they themselves have no to blindness.They monitored his brain Directions in continued to have experiences in life, means of seeing. And yet it is done. activity as he was drawing and were Psychological he continued to paint – despite never It is more readily understood that a surprised to discover that his visual Science, 2005. being able to see his paintings hanging person who is partially sighted can paint cortex responded in a very similar [4] RNIB on a gallery wall. FT

FT335 53 www.forteantimes.com forum encounters

They came from the shadows…

nIcK PArKIns explores the growing number of reported encounters with terrifying, featureless bogeymen that lurk in the darkness and asks who these shadowy entities might be...

Nick ParkiNs holds a master’s “Some shadows seem shocked when soul or demon. Certainly, ETs and degree in philosophy of the humans notice them,” notes Jason demons top the list of contemporary mind and likes to live outside Offutt, “and still others behave much bogeymen with which we populate and the box. If you have a strange or like a residual ghost.” According to make sense of the dark. In fact, how unexplained experience that you Offutt, author of Darkness Walks, many a person ‘chooses’ to interpret such would like to share visit www. nickparkins.co.uk shadows take no notice of people an experience might not be down to around them. Others feed off the fear choice at all, but rather to how they they instill in humans. These shadows are wired, their cultural conditioning, hadow beings define cultures. often possess glowing eyes, piercing their subconscious baggage. This To the Native American red lights that punch holes in the level of the experience is instinctive; sChoctaw, the shadow person night. They rarely communicate; when it also feels very real. Offutt agrees: would take form as the Impa they do, it’s to telepathically convey “I’ve interviewed hundreds of people Shilup, or “soul eater”, that feasted on terrifying messages, often vocalised in that have encountered shadow beings the souls of evil or depressed people. growling undertones. and their opinion on what they saw is They were also thought to represent the Despite credible accounts, sceptics completely based on their world view,” shilombish (the outer shadow) and shilup don’t believe that shadows have he says. “They won’t budge”. (the inner shadow). After death, while form, but that it’s all a question Offutt has interviewed experts the shilup passed on to the Happy Land, of interpretation. They offer the in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, the restless outer-self would remain psychological diagnosis of apophenia, Buddhism, and American Indian Earthbound, attending to unfinished a common condition in which a person shamanism. “Shadow beings are business. draws familiar shapes from random present in all these religions,” he says. Seen from the land of the living, features, as with the subjective So is our interpretation based solely shadow beings often appear to glide and tendency to see faces in clouds and on expectation? In part, perhaps; but vanish into thin air. In 2005, paranormal draw order from chaos. even if we buy this assumption there researcher Rosemary Ellen Guiley set Not everyone sees the same remains a stubborn core of consistency out to collate, and find patterns in, thing. Ufologists might interpret a to shadow encounters. shadow encounters. Witness interviews menacing shadow as an off-world or In fact, both Guiley and Offutt left her in little doubt that these fleeting inter-dimensional traveller, while a refer to the remarkable similarities voyeurs were in vogue: “I receive a large spiritualist might encounter a sentient of particular groups. “Tall shadows, number of emails, all detailing the same 6-8ft (1.8-2.4m), usually appear solo or or similar experiences of sinister figures paired, while shorter ones, 3-5ft (90cm- that appear in bedrooms in the depths 150cm), appear in groups,” says Guiley. of the night.” “The short ones almost always have Many reports describe a bipedal, red eyes, and seem more dangerous pitch-black abyss that absorbs the night. than the tall ones.” Offutt agrees: “The “These blacker-than-black human-like scariest have blazing red eyes. In all forms stand out against the relative categories, the Hat Man behaves as do darkness of the room,” says Guiley. other Hat Men, the red eyes behave Lingering looks from tall dark strangers as other red eyes, and so on.” Can our are often reported like phantom flashers culture, then, prime us to parrot back, in trench coats (minus the tackle). en masse, such intricate and apparently In a personal encounter, author Jeff consistent details? Bennington described a figure made Offutt believes there is more to of midnight and as eerily quiet as the it. “I spoke to people from every morning a man with a hollow, featureless continent (save Antarctica) who have face that hung over Bennington before seen shadow people – the similarities vanishing. The childhood encounter left were astounding.” Aside from the the young writer frozen, shivering; in his possible, as yet unproven, existence of own words, as if he had been dumped in shadow penguins, it would seem that a vat of ice. the intrinsic nature of an encounter The most terrifying, and most remains consistent and cannot be snappily dressed, shadow being is Hat distinguished on the basis of culture or Man, who often wears a fedora and place. “The appearance and behaviour puts other shadows – content to slouch of a shadow being seen by an American around in hooded robes – to shame. Do Cherokee is the same as that witnessed different species of shadow exist? Many by a Catholic from Portugal,” says entities appear to look and behave quite Offutt. When you throw into the mix differently from one another. multiple witness sightings and daylight

54 FT335 www.forteantimes.com forum encounters

encounters, a substance begins to take which it thrives. Those in the shadows shape. may achieve this by taking direct However, this is unlikely to convince possession of people or as masterful the sceptics or, for that matter, help shape-shifters, manipulating the believers sleep soundly at night. human subconscious and how we Perhaps it is apt that the most decode reality. They often masquerade paralysing encounters take place under in human form, or as shadow beings, cover of darkness. snakes and black dogs, even ghosts, One school of thought links such fairies or extraterrestrials. Indeed nocturnal encounters to night terrors, while some may prefer to stay hidden, in which sufferers experience all others show themselves deliberately to manner of grotesque supernatural feed, like vampires, off low-vibrational deviants hags, incubi and shadowy negativity and the fear that they instill intruders – that climb on and crush in their victims. the bed-ridden victim with their Djinn may account for many suffocating weight. Sleep paralysis, shadow encounters, but perhaps not psychologists say, may result in all. “The behaviour of certain types hallucinations that bleed through into a is wildly different,” says Offutt. “I’m semi-conscious state from sleep, a result convinced there are a number of of muscle atonia (a form of paralysis) different entities that simply look that prevents a person from acting out the same, be they ghosts, djinn, or their dreams. Alien abduction scenarios other inter-dimensional beings.” The are further evidence, they say, that apparent rise, says Offutt, could be cultural priming decides the content of down to a social phenomenon that these experiences. reflects an encouraging shift in mood. Guiley, however, offers an unnerving “The Internet has connected the theory that may yet explain the true entire world and when someone sees identity behind these shadow attacks, a post on shadow people they’re no and their disturbing ensemble cast. longer afraid of discussing their own In her book The Djinn Connection, she encounter. Before the Internet, people suggests that shadow beings are in fact didn’t talk about their experience for one of many forms taken by a race of fear of ridicule”. powerful hidden beings – masterful Whatever their true nature, and shape-shifters who exist in an unseen despite their rejection by the sceptical world – in a dimension parallel and mainstream, encounters with shadow invisible to our own (see FT291:16-17, people have come to represent our 138:17, 147:30-33, 281:40-44, 291:16-17, Encounters with darkest mortal fears, representing 324:20-21). demons, or worse, souls trapped in Djinn hide in plain sight in shadow people eternal purgatory. As yet, the very traditional Islamic religion and idea that millions of people across Arabic folklore, popularised in The represent our culture and place share a common One Thousand and One Nights as the delusion is not extraordinarily djinni, or wish-granting genie. In sufficient to shake the sceptical Islamic scripture, they are sandwiched darkest fears mantra that extraordinary claims between angels and man; and like us, require extraordinary evidence. we are told, they are a sentient species Meanwhile, hundreds of people are created by God. Born from smokeless Sitchin and others, Sumerian tablets changed by profound experiences they fire, not all djinn are evil. However describe an off-world race known cannot explain; and as long as Internet they share a potential Achilles heel as the Annunaki that deceived and forums are the only places to discuss with man: free will. In the Qur’an it enslaved mankind; elsewhere, they the phenomenon, the lessons these was chief djinn Iblis who first lost his were known by other names: in encounters teach will remain in the footing, consumed by envy and pride Central America, they are Flyers, and shadows. FT and cast from heaven for refusing to in Africa, the Chitauri. In his Timæus, bow before Adam. The Judeo-Christian Plato’s dialogue describes a demiurge Further reAdIng concept of the Devil and his demons or false creator god that presides Jason Offutt, Darkness Walks: The may refer to Iblis, says Guiley, who with over the material realm. In Gnostic Shadow People Among Us, Anomalist his minions chose to rebel and take tradition, the Archons are its ally in Books, 2009. up horns as the eponymous Shaytan this reality, and subvert souls seeking (Satan). The consequent duping of ascension from it. Rosemary E Guiley, The Djinn Adam by Satan, which led to the Fall Some go so far as to believe Connection: The Hidden Links Between of Man and expulsion from the Garden that this cross-cultural cohort Djinn, Shadow People, ETs, Nephilim, of Eden, was a warning that, rooted has infiltrated, and continues Archons, Reptilians and Other Entities, in mischievous deeds, the schemes of to influence, secret enclaves, Visionary Living, Inc., 2013. djinn are not to be trusted. They are governments and elite institutions. more than capable of manipulating and Aptly, it works from the shadows to For firsthand accounts of encounters misleading us. direct, control and sustain a world with shadow people from FT readers, Similarly, according to Zecharia of suffering, injustice and fear upon see pp72-73 of this issue.

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SEND REVIEW COPIES OF BOOKS TO: BOOK REVIEWS, FORTEAN TIMES, PO BOX 71602, LONDON E17 0QD, UK. Thisreviews month’s books, films and games Mining the Internet archives Fortean and UFO phenomena have existed since long before 1947, as a meticulously researched study kicking off in the mid-17th century demonstrates

century, a small but steadily their local reputations were. Some expanding band of inquirers, “Return to Magonia deeply weird reports survive this some active on Aubeck’s is a model of how to sort of scrutiny. history-focused e-forum Magonia My favourite concerns an Exchange, have taken advantage conduct productive alleged 1873 landing (a relating of the Internet to delve into of which was committed to previously undetected data (in historical UFO and print not long after) in rural Return to Magonia runs of thousands of newspapers, anomalies studies” Zanesville, Ohio. A lantern- among other sources) detailing carrying man in black stepped out Investigating UFOs in History pre-1947 accounts of UFO and of the object, to board a peculiar Chris Aubeck & Martin Shough fortean phenomena. horseless buggy which promptly Anomalist Books 2015 Aubeck realised the Internet’s of alternative explanations zipped out of sight. The named Pb, 367pp, illus, ind, $24.95, ISBN 9781938398544 potential before other UFO (meteors, most prominently), witnesses, it turns out, lived and FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £16.99 researchers. The initial result was Return concludes: “Simply put, breathed as serious, respected Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained this is a modern UFO [case],” members of their community. In an oddly ill-tempered foreword, Aerial Objects from Antiquity one described and published five After eliminating likely counter- Jacques Vallee praises Return to Modern Times (2009), which months before Kenneth Arnold’s explanations, the authors remark to Magonia as a repudiation of he wrote with Vallee. It is an 24 June spotting of similar mildly on the story’s apparent everyone’s favourite bugaboo, important work, but Return, objects brought flying saucers credibility, “fascinating because ‘American ufology’, and a triumph ostensibly a sequel, takes matters into popular awareness. of clear similarities between of ‘European ufology’. This book considerably farther down the Unlike polemical debunking this case and modern UFO is something more significant: road. literature, the judgements on encounters.” the first 21st-century UFO book. The book opens with a sightings are offered in a fashion Though they are hesitant to That achievement owes little discussion of the anonymously that does not insult readers’ or theorise (and given their manifest if anything to geographical compiled Mirabilis Annus witnesses’ intelligence. Chapter intelligence that is not always happenstance. (1661–1662), an encyclopædic 9, about a January 1845 sighting a virtue), Aubeck and Shough Chris Aubeck and Martin treatment of marvels. Some are over the Sea of Sicily from the take issue with the widely held Shough, who reside along prosaic; others “with the same brig Victoria, deduces that three belief that UFOs as currently Europe’s Western edge, are hardly circumstantial character” (the glowing objects were probably understood were not described the only patient, persistent, authors’ phrase) apparently “plumes of glowing gas released prior to the mid-20th century. scientifically sophisticated defy explanation. Aubeck and into the air by a submarine They were, and they included disc ufologists to bless our world. Shough came to one or another volcano.” How Aubeck and shapes – in other words, classic Some smart investigators and conclusion by an excruciatingly Shough get to that identification flying saucers. The implications analysts, not least Vallee himself, thorough probe into surviving makes for an engaging scientific of this, for instance to a modified even have American addresses. records, most now available detective story. version of the extraterrestrial The authors do, however, call to online, examining each Those who have experience hypothesis, are not explored, but mind a wisecrack the late Dave arguably ordinary explanation of old newspaper accounts of the evidence should spur a round Van Ronk offered up on hearing – astronomical, meteorological, ostensible UFOs and anomalies of substantive discussion among his fellow Greenwich Village folk electrical, biographical, fictional – I started hunting for them thoughtful readers. singers boast that, with the right or other. One consequence of on microfilms of weMid stern Return to Magonia is a model connections, they could be as this is that Return reads like a newspapers in the mid-1960s – of how to conduct productive acclaimed as Bob Dylan. “Yeah, scientific monograph. Some of it, learned early on that some ‘news’ historical UFO and anomalies sure you could,” he retorted. “All frankly, makes for slow reading, stories were bogus. On occasion, studies. Other writers will come you have to do is write ‘A Hard however compelling the subject the persons said to have made along with comparable efforts, Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ – for the first may be. the report did not exist. Return’s but this is an instant classic and time.” What will give Return to The book moves chronologically authors take care to establish the likely to remain an enduring one. Magonia its special place is that until it reaches February 1947 and earthly presence of the alleged Jerome Clark it would not have been possible sightings of five flying egg-shaped observers. Even better, they dig without that miraculous invention objects over South Australia. up as much as they can uncover Fortean Times Verdict known as the Internet. After a typically meticulous about who they were, what jobs AN INSTANT ClASSIC ANd THE Since the early years of the examination and rejection and positions they held, what FIRST 21ST CENTURy UFO BOOK 8

FT335 57 www.forteantimes.com reviews BOOKS

The lives of A classical miscellany Prehistoric Monuments in Iron Strange deaths – plus chariot racing and a bit of sex, drugs Age, Roman, and and rock ’n’ roll from the ancient world – make for a lively guide Medieval Europe Eds: Marta Díaz-Guardamino & Leonardo García Sanjuán and the Anglo-French Rosetta killed in battle, not by forced Oxford University Press 2015 Stone decipherers, Young and drinking of molten gold – a Hb, 356pp, illus, ind, £85.00, ISBN 9780198724605 Champollion. Welcome, too, is better story retailed by Dio FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £76.50 Hood’s treatment of Lord Elgin, Cassius 46. 23. 3; emperor Titus’s more sympathetic than customary death – a retread of Nimrod’s Unscrambling the tirades from the Return Them! – from nose-invading mosquito post-completion mob. is merely a Babylonian–Islamic history of ancient Full marks also for her fantasy, and Hood (p118) misses monuments is insistence (p9), unshared by many the lurid detail of its picking at challenging. Studies How to Win a band-waggoneering academics, the royal brain for seven years; tend to ignore their that we learn equally from Aristophanes’s theory of human later history, when earthworks, Roman Chariot ancient-modern differences as origins (p200) is from Plato’s megalithic stone circles, statues Race similarities, something I always Symposium, not one of his own and monoliths were reused – and stress to students. comic plays; Boudicca’s/Boadicea’s sometimes abused. So finding lives, legends and Treasures from the Ancient World Subsidiary compliments to her last battle was probably not near a volume that “transcends recognition (p173) that Atlantis is King’s Cross (p16), a pity since her traditional period and place Jane Hood allegory, not history (cf. FT163:23), supposed burial under Platform 9 constraints” bodes well. Icon Books 2015 and for many unfamiliar nuggets, or 10 can be further romanticised Orwell’s “Who controls the Pb, 224pp, illus, bib, £8.99, ISBN 9781848319462 e.g. Augustine as patron saint by a link with the secret one used past controls the future: who FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £8. of beer (p111), the Macedonian- by the Hogwarts Express. controls the present controls the leaning DNA of Afghanistan’s Hood’s style is a bit breathy past” sets the tone for the theme Initially feared (cue the just- Kalash tribe (p32), and the (quite Angela Brazilian Jolly of appropriation of prehistoric deceased Yogi Berra) déjà lu possibility (p83) that Salem’s Hockey Sticks), but blessedly monuments by political and all over again, following JC witch hysteria was caused by ergot free from academic Newspeak. religious elites. Part II comprises MacKeown’s two classical poisoning, a line of enquiry begun It is also laced with nice flashes case studies, starting with the compendia (FT268:58, 269:59), with Mary Matossian’s Poisons of of wit, my favourite being her Christian formalisation of the plus Philip Matyszak’s (2009). the Past, one that might profitably description of Augustine’s rackety Viking Jelling monuments in Hood’s farrago ranges from be extended to (e.g.) the ancient youth as “Really no different to Denmark, and then deeper into titular chariot-racing to Sex, Abderite mass hysteria described many students away from home the megalithic past. Gabriel Drugs, and Rock and Roll, coyly by Lucian and Eunapius, involving today.” Clooney examines the subtle introduced (p199) as “ At last mobs endlessly quoting from Sometimes quasi-fortean. Her differences implied by the various we reach what everyone really Euripides’s Andromeda. elliptical line (p156) on the Big remakings of Ireland’s iconic cares about,” though her content Organisation is not always Bang Theory, “But what need megalithic tombs, contrasting is more 12A than R18: “This is a Hood’s strong point. Her opening could there possibly be in what- the Roman and early Mediæval miscellany. It includes things that gallimaufry glides disconnectedly is-not?” is worthy of our master offerings and burials in the Brú I find funny, terrible, entertaining through chariot racing, cosmetics himself. na Bóinne complex of Knowth and or important.” (no mention of Cleopatra’s The book is accurately Newgrange, for which he validates And why not? Hood also takes beauty book), Londinium, printed, regularly adorned by a 4,000-year oral tradition that some unusual – and welcome concrete, codes, food, Alexander highlighted definitions from survived a language change, and – tacks, incorporating lengthy the Great, oil lamps (Lucian’s Johnson’s Dictionary (kudos at Tara where the symbolic power extracts from classical literature Lamp City deserved a word), for these), some desultory of the monument made it a nexus and detailed considerations of and the mysterious Antikthera illustrations, interspersed with for the consolidation of a royal modern scholars, notably Liddell Mechanism (as many, Hood rather a few rather pointless quiz-lets power alluded to by the legendary & Scott of Greek Lexicon fame romantically sees it as a proto- (answers supplied), more suitable Tuath Dé. (Thomas Hardy’s poem on its computer – I’m regretfully not for the kiddies, a haphazard Howard Williams examines the completion appended), along with so sure). Subsequent sections, Further Reading List (I fancy ‘straitjacket’ Victorian idea that Liddell’s daughter Alice – yes, though, are more homogeneous, Alan Cameron’s two superlative the Dragon’s Mound in Beowulf THAT Alice! including an FT-style roundup of books on chariot racing would be could have been inspired by a Likewise, papyrus-hunters strange deaths. more congenial to her intended Neolithic chambered tomb and Grenfell & Hunt, latterly Nit-pickings: the Red racing audience than Autenreith’s proposes an alternative from immortalised by Classicist- fan’s suicide is misdated (p8: Homeric Dictionary), and – Roman architecture and Saxon poet Tony Harrison’s musical source, Pliny’s Natural History 6. preposterously – No Index. church crypts built closer in time (which deserved a mention), the 176); the reference to Trimalchio Barry Baldwin to the poem’s writing. This idea Vindolanda letters partly found in and Fortunata (p68) is imaginary; is at odds with David Wheatley’s a lavatory – sheer loo-nacy – near Caracalla (p39) hardly deserves Fortean Times Verdict recognition of the “wealth of Hadrian’s Wall (including the to be dismissed as “just another ClASSICAl STRANgE dEATHS? evidence for Anglo-Saxon use first-ever woman-written text), crazy emperor”; Crassus was HUg THIS HOOd-IE TOdAy 9 and understanding of prehistoric

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mounds and barrows”, for which he cites Wayland’s Smithy and the curious material gap at Wolfman scholarship Avebury between the late Bronze Age and the Anglo-Saxon era, It may not be for newbies and its price is off-putting, but this when a ‘social taboo’ affecting the site apparently lapsed. (This series of essays on lycanthropy is wide-ranging and fascinating absence could hint at a massive caesura in the sociopolitical order at the close of the early a wide range of different aspects as an irritating but basically- Bronze Age.) of werewolf. Some examine the harmless sort of bogeyman. Neolithic and Iron Age werewolf beliefs of a particular The academic perspectives in statue menhirs and stele in the region. For example, Matteo Werewolf Histories are diverse, Channel Islands and Brittany, Duni discusses werewolves ranging from intellectual history and the recycling of figures and or shapeshifting witches in to folklore studies to archæology. standing stones into tombs and 16th-century Italy, while Rolf The papers cite sources ranging alignments are discussed in Schulte covers Germany, Merili from demonological texts to three papers. Excellent maps Metsvahi talks about Estonia, ethnographic interviews and illustrate the complexity of the Werewolf Histories Michèle Simonsen discusses even slander suits – a surprising situation in Brittany, while the Willem de Blécourt werewolf stories from 19th- number of people in early text tidily encapsulates the Palgrave Macmillan 2015 century Denmark and Maja modern Germany insulted their major trends brought to bear Hb, 3260pp, illus, ind, bib, £63.00, ISBN 978113752635 Pasari explores south Slavic neighbours by calling them on the landscapes there by FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £56.70 werewolf folklore. Others deal werewolves. Iron Age attitudes, addressing with related elements of folklore Werewolf Histories is a the question of the degree Although not as ubiquitous as and mythology – so, for example, fascinating look at the diversity of convergence with their vampires, werewolves are one although humans who change into of beliefs about werewolves, megalithic forbears. of Hollywood’s stock monsters wolves in Greek legend aren’t and a valuable reminder of the Mara Vejby discusses the and the core elements of their werewolves per se, they’re close different contexts in which these Romans’ keenness to use Breton legend are well known: the full enough for a paper by Richard beliefs occur. Even if you’re only megalithic tombs, yet how much moon, the silver bullet and the Gordon. Likewise, Christa Agnes interested in one of the periods they were doing this to “control struggle between human and Tuczay deals with human–wolf or subjects included, the other and subjugate a conquered bestial natures. But this Hollywood transformation and hybrids in papers are dense and thought- population” is left open. By werewolf has little connection to Old Norse sagas and poetry, provoking. leaving devotional items and not the werewolf – or, more accurately, while Aleks Pluskowski discusses That’s not to say the book is razing the monuments, were the werewolves – of European folklore, mixtures of human and animal perfect. It’s not an introductory Romans honoring local religions? demonology and legend. As de identities across mediæval north- text, and some background in They had already assimilated Blécourt points out, “there is no western Europe. Others focus on history or folklore will be helpful. so much Greek mythology and werewolf history. At the most particular types of source, such It also carries a high price tag religion; why not also those of there are histories of werewolves, as Johannes Dillinger’s paper – like most academic texts, it’s the Celtic Bretons, less ardently and these are fragmented and on werewolves in demonological intended to be something you and on a more local scale? At discontinuous.” In different places literature or Rita Volmer’s paper pester your librarian to get. Lastly, what time do such customs and at different times, the figure on learned understandings of it could have used another pass become political connivances, of the werewolf appears in a wide shape-shifting. from the copy editor. devotions become expediencies? range of different roles. The range of papers underlines Overall, Werewolf Histories is The reticence in getting to grip Werewolf Histories isn’t an the vast divergence in beliefs packed with fascinating analysis with these questions culminates overview of all those roles; it’s a about werewolves or human–wolf of an under-examined piece in no fewer than 13 scholars collection of scholarly papers on transformation. In some periods of folklore. It’s particularly explaining that in the Eastern different aspects of the werewolf. and places, werewolves were compelling because of the way in Maghreb, where the Romans and Readers looking for a one- diabolical monsters, identical to which it looks at the phenomenon Numidians built hundreds of volume introduction to werewolf or allied with witches; in others, of werewolf belief from several tombs, very little is known about lore will be disappointed – de they were more ambiguous different scholarly perspectives. these monuments. Blécourt argues that popular creatures, cursed humans or even James Holloway The range of subjects and the texts on werewolves include almost-beneficial parts of the high cost of purchase may well false information and leave out supernatural landscape. A set of Fortean Times Verdict put off researchers in specific many aspects of the subject; the interviews cited by de Blécourt SOMETHINg FOR PHIlOSOPHERS periods, but those interested in definitive scholarly work has yet to even portrays the werewolf TO CHEW ON, PERHAPS 6 the longue durée, the political be written. This means that there use of monuments, and the are some areas where a newcomer To order any of these titles – or any other book in print – contact the transitions between eras should to the topic will need to do definitely get down the library additional reading; for example, FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP for this one. several papers mention the 16th- Telephone: 08430600031 Fax: 01326 569555 Email: [email protected] Jerry Glover century case of Peter Stumpp, the Address: Fortean Times Bookshop, PO Box 60, Helston TR13 0TP. ‘Werewolf of Bedburg’, but none We accept all major credit and debit cards including Switch & Amex. Cheques or postal Fortean Times Verdict of them describe it in more than orders should be made payable to the FT Bookshop. delivery is 7–10 days, subject to ACAdEMIC yET ACCESSIBlE passing detail. availability. Postage & packing is free within the UK. STUdy OF ANCIENT MySTERIES 8 The papers in this volume cover

FT335 59 www.forteantimes.com reviews BOOKS

Animal, Vegetable, conservative Christians and found Erewhon 2.0 ways to integrate their belief with Mineral? the experimental evidence. How Eighteenth-Century Science Animal, vegetable, mineral? Useful and very elegant guide to far disrupted the Natural Order is replete with relevance for Susannah Gibson today. After all, from genetically away places of which we know little modified food, to debates about Oxford University Press 2015 environmental policy, to medical Hb, 215pp illus, ind, bib, £16.99, ISBN 9780 198705130 FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £15.29 advances, biology remains central they were independent. Closer to many scientific, political to home was Forvik, a Shetland In a parallel and popular controversies. To island statelet founded by English universe, where I’m a take one example, as in the yachtsman Stuart Hill, whom commissioning editor 18th century, Gibson notes, “a the UK media dubbed Captain for BBC4, I’d snap up philosophical standpoint or Calamity after coastguards had the rights to Gibson’s religious belief can still colour the to rescue him eight times in four new book. Animal, study of reproduction today” – as months. He, too, asked for the vegetable, mineral? has all the illustrated by the regular rows An Atlas of basis of British authority over elements that a popular science over, for example, embryological Countries that his supposedly Norse outcrop documentary needs. Exotic stem cells or innovative assisted and was ignored until he was experiments. Characters. History. reproductive technologies. don’t Exist sued for debt. His independence And a ‘big theme’. Indeed, themes We’re also still uncovering A Compendium of Fifty arguments failed to convince the don’t come much bigger or more the remarkable diversity of Unrecognised and largely genial local Sheriff and he was important than ‘what is life’? the web of life – which is more Unnoticed States declared bankrupt. Gibson includes numerous extensive than the 18th century Nick Middleton A less genial Sheriff rules telling vignettes – such as natural historians could have Macmillan 2015 the roost in Transnistria, a “somersaulting polyps”, frogs dreamed. Increasingly, animals Hb, 232pp, maps, £20.00, ISBN 9781447295273 separatist region of Moldova. “smartly trousered” to prevent that look similar resolve into FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £18.00 Order is maintained in this copulation and “blossoming different species based on genetic “Stalinist backwater and criminal corals” – to illustrate the analysis. A recent study, for As Nick Middleton’s introduction Ruritania” by “a shadowy public transformation of natural history example, split the Plain Wren notes, the political map of the body known only as ‘the Sheriff’”, during the 18th century. Indeed, (Cantorchilus modestus), a central world is not static. The pretty-in- which owns petrol stations, biology – though the term wasn’t American bird, into “multiple pink British territories of elderly supermarkets and the country’s coined until the turn of the 19th biological species” based in part maps have changed colour – and premier football club, FC Sheriff century – was at the heart of the on “deep genetic divergences often name – with independence. Tiraspol. As the country’s website century’s scientific, philosophical in mitochondrial DNA” (Auk The collapse of the Soviet Union boasts, the Sheriff is “Always with and religious discourse. 2015;132:795–807). (Mitochondria, alone led to 15 new states. He you”. A comfort, obvously. Gibson shows just how the cells’ powerhouse, have DNA acknowledges the difficulty of Of course, 50 hardly scrapes rational the ideas were at the distinct from that in the nucleus.) selecting which countries to the surface of unrecognised time, based on the evidence And the big question remains include, largely because of the countries: the utopian Kingdom natural historians had. After all, unresolved. Just how do we difficulty of defining ‘country’: of Enclava adjoins the Free 18th century natural historians explain the “vitality unique to “as soon as you set out to find a Republic of Liberland, a couldn’t rely on the plethora living organisms”? As I noted clear definition you start running Jeffersonian democracy which of high-tech techniques – a few years ago (EMBO Reports into discrepancies, exceptions aims to promote happiness, on such as electron microscopy, 2008;9:1067–9) the precise and anomalies”. the Croatian-Serbian border – it genetic ‘fingerprinting’ and boundary between complex Some of the countries he moved when its original proposed immunochemistry – that are now chemistry and life remains includes are familiar (West location turned out to belong routine in biology labs. As she uncertain. But mapping this Papua); others – such as to Slovenia. The Kingdom of notes, our current approach to, for boundary and defining life – and Murrawarri, an ancient Aborigine Araucania and Patagonia has a example, biological systematics multicellular life in particular homeland and one of the great long-running and bitter battle “only makes sense if we trust the – is of more than ‘academic’ inter-tribal meeting places for succession but no land. The theories of invisible atoms and interest. The definition could of Eastern Australia, and the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the molecules more than we trust our have important implications Principality of Hutt River, Coral Sea Islands (ruler: Emperor own senses”. for numerous legislative and also in Australia (population Dale I) is omitted. However, the Gibson neatly shows how ethical debates. Animal, vegetable, two, following the 2013 death book is handsome, with a cover natural historians’ philosophical mineral? is an excellent, valuable of Princess Shirley – less so. reminiscent of the Saturday and religious perspectives and engaging introduction to the However, the 50 countries Book annuals of the 1940s, good influenced how theywe vie d the intellectual trends that helped Middleton has selected represent typography and clean looking same experimental evidence. shapes the modern scientific a good spread of fluid (and maps. Oh, and it’s properly edited, Some natural historians felt that world, and demonstrates how sometimes barking mad) political which is a pleasant novelty, and investigations into the differences history can inform debates facing geography. nicely written. What’s not to like? between living and inert, between us today. The people of Murawari gave Val Stevenson plant and animal, and between Mark Greener Queen Elizabeth II four weeks to species meant that “God was far prove her right to govern their Fortean Times Verdict less involved in the regulation of Fortean Times Verdict country, but answer came there yES, gEOgRAPHy IS FUN WHEN IT nature than previously believed”. PERFECT REAdINg FOR BRONTITAll none, so they took it as read that ESCAPES THE ClASSROOM 9 But some natural historians were (IF yOU gET THAT, gET OUT MORE!) 9

60 FT335 www.forteantimes.com reviews BOOKS Sci-fi and fantasy round-up David V Barrett on a near-future Europe, trouble with fallen angels, supernatural steampunk, all-new Cthulhu, a PKD kids’ story, a mistake and two Tolkien art books

Europe at Midnight the focus is more on exist, c. Al Capone is largely exciting and brave and funny and Dave Hutchinson the pocket Universe mechanical and d. HP Lovecraft a bit scary. Solaris 2015 somehow created in joins Charles Fort’s private Pb, 304pp, £7.99, ISBN 9781781083987 Victorian times, which investigator agency – which means The Seventh Miss Hatfield FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £7.59 overlays parts of Europe. that e. we get some very powerful begins in the 1950s with The House of There are points where you can and dangerous Great Old Ones. 11-year-old Cynthia being cross between the two, and when a You might think that’s at least one drugged and turned Shattered Wings young university professor escapes too many elements of oddness, but into an immortal by the Aliette de Bodard from his world into ours, a complex everything comes together into a sixth Miss Hatfield; this has been Gollancz 2015 train of events is set in motion... gripping tale. going on for some centuries. When Pb, 400pp, £14.99, ISBN 9781473212558 The story unfolds in a series of Cynthia wakes up the next morning FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £13.49 almost novellas set in both worlds, If you’re a Lovecraft she’s a full-grown young woman The Martian Falcon with different viewpoint characters devotee, The Dulwich – and she just accepts this, after – Hutchinson makes the reader Horror & Others is a a few minutes’ confusion. Miss H Alan K Baker work, but it’s worth every moment. collection of stories sends her to steal a painting from a Snowbooks 2015 Europe in Autumn was shortlisted by FT regular David wealthy elderly man half a century Pb, 275pp, £7.99, ISBN 9781909679481 for three major SF awards; Hambling. Most are set, from earlier – and, disguised as his niece, FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £7.59 Europe at Midnight should win at 1927 to 2013, in south London – she falls in love with his son. What The Dulwich Horror least one. It’s possibly the most Dulwich, Norwood and perhaps could have been an interesting believable SF novel I’ve ever read, my favourite, ‘The Monsters in story about serial immortality and & Others and quite unputdownable. the Park’, at Crystal Palace, with time travel becomes a period love David Hambling its underlying political message story, with almost no plot, and PS Publishing 2015 Aliette de Bodard’s The that Fascists are as much monsters poorly written besides. The fact that Hb, 337pp, £20.00, ISBN 9781848639058 House of Shattered Wings as anything darkly supernatural. the author is 17 is no excuse for AVAILABLE VIA WWW.PSPuBLISHING.CO.uK/ is startlingly unusual. Wonderfully disturbing, and each Gollancz publishing something so Nick and the It’s set in a partly ruined is written in a suitable style, from weak, and I’d imagine in five years’ Paris after the Great ‘The Dulwich Horror of 1927’ time an embarrassed Ms Caltabiano Glimmung War – but it’s the Great Magicians’ (a tribute to Lovecraft’s ‘The will wish they hadn’t. Avoid, unless Philip K Dick War, not the one familiar to us. Dunwich Horror’) to ‘The Thing in you’re a Mills & Boon fan. Gollancz 2015 (1988) Competing magical houses live in the Vault’, set in gangster-ridden Pb, 121pp, £9.99, ISBN 9780575132993 a very uneasy truce in Paris, most Chicago of the same year. There Let’s FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £9.99 of them led by Fallen Angels – and are links between some of the finish The Seventh Miss the one of the title was founded stories, suggesting that Hambling with by Morningstar, who we soon is developing a whole new branch two art Hatfield realise was Lucifer. Morningstar of the Cthulhu mythos. books. Anna Caltabiano vanished some years ago and is The Art of the Lord of the Rings is a Gollancz 2015 presumed dead – but he still seems Philip K Dick wrote large-format slip-cased hardback Pb, 293pp, £8.99, ISBN 9781473200418 to have a powerful influence. only one book for young of Tolkien’s artwork. With the FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £8.54 His successor as leader of the readers. On one level exception of his designs for the The Art of the Lord house is one of four viewpoints, Nick and the Glimmung jackets of the three books, and one between them mortals, immortals, is simply the story of a or two others, most of these are of the Rings alchemists and fallen angels, each boy and his cat (and his parents) just rough sketches, some from his JRR Tolkien, Wayne G Hammond, Christina with their own complex character having to leave Earth because manuscript pages, or draft maps or Scull and background, in this novel of pets are no longer allowed. The inscriptions, and never intended HarperCollins 2015 intrigue, treachery and out-of-the- planet they go to as settlers for publication. The few finished Hb, 240pp, £25.00, ISBN 9780008105754 ordinary magic. And it’s beautifully has an assortment of weird and pieces, like Old Man Willow and FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £22.50 written. wonderful creatures; one, the Rivendell, have long been available The Art of Stephen Glimmung, is bringing war and elsewhere. For completists only. Supernatural steampunk destruction – and Nick (via his The Art of Stephen Hickman is much Hickman noir – as close as you’ll cat) becomes caught up in the more fun. Hickman is a Tolkien Titan 2015 get to a category for Alan battle against it. On another illustrator, but has also done Hb, 144pp, £24.99, ISBN 9781783298457 K Baker’s The Martian level, this being PKD, it’s a covers for a wide range of SF and FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £22.49 Falcon. It’s set in 1920s story about the individual being fantasy artists. There’s a plethora of In Dave Hutchinson’s Europe in America where a. we’ve had a crushed under officialdom and dragons – some of them gorgeously Autumn, we encountered a near- manned expedition to Mars, b. bureaucracy, and striking out in coloured – and of well-endowed future Europe fragmented into zombies, poltergeists, shapeshifters rebellion. It’s a slight tale, and ladies, from mermaids to princesses tiny nations; in Europe at Midnight, and the rest of the dark panoply over-priced for its length, but it’s and warriors. Beautiful stuff!

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unheard-of rewards. Royalties and repeat fees, the foundation of the book and record industries, were unheard of in comics. I have always known that many see my dad (Alan Moore – I know, more bias!) as a grumpy upstart, marching off at the first sign of something he doesn’t approve of. Many a comment thread paints him as a bitter old crank shaking his fist at Hollywood and publishers alike, a loon with insanely naive expecta- tions of how he should be treated. This film shows that not only was it not just him, but that he was react- ing to an ideology shared across the board and born out of the very fabric of British comics itself. British comics professionals were unimpressed with their work- ing conditions and the way their employers treated their art (Dave Gibbons talking about full-colour painted art pages being used as cutting mats is enough to make you cry). Much as they loved their medium, and their work, they did not feel valued as creators.The deeply rooted in a desire to push cally tied to the fortunes of comics shift to the US was not just about Future Shock! the back against the twee children’s as an industry and a medium that money; it was about self-respect. Story of 2000AD comics of the 1960s and create watching the film becomes a jour- Future Shock! argues that the Dir Paul Goodwin, UK 2015 something that reflected the times ney into the very belly of the beast. anarchy, innovation and dark Metrodome, £9.99 (DVD + limited cinema release from 4 Dec) they lived in. Watching a newly When you hear from the crea- humour that was the lifeblood of elected Tory government crush the tors that they were forced to sign 2000AD went on to populate first First, I must declare a bit of bias, in power to protest in both industry away their rights at the moment theVertigo imprint, and then the that I crop up in this film a couple and politics, 2000AD gave them a they cashed their pay cheques, and whole comics industry. So 1970s of times. place to vent their dissatisfaction that Kevin O’Neill was employed to Britain begat 2000AD, which begat When I was asked to be in it, I under the cover of a supposedly erase signatures from artwork, and 1980sVertigo, which coloured the was excited. I grew up with DR ****** genre. then you hear the huge numbers medium thereafter, raising the and Quinch as role models, and One of the glories of this film is that ‘Prog 1’ sold in its first week, it bar for what a comic could and Halo Jones as my super-cool, well- that the interviewees, while pulling all paints a pretty grim picture of should be. British comics creators travelled big sister. The artwork of no punches and being completely the British comics establishment of also raised the bar for how writers Dave Gibbons, Kevin O’Neill and candid, all clearly have a huge the time. and artists in the industry were Brian Bolland was as familiar to affection for the title and its char- The world the creators lived remunerated, their contracts, their me as the Paddington Bear cur- acters that goes beyond their own in fired their rebellious side, and integrity, and their self-esteem. tains that hung in my childhood personal experiences. Even those challenged them to shake things Clearly, the industry still has some bedroom. creators who left under a cloud are up. They clearly revelled in being way to go, even now, but the film Future Shock! isn’t a fan film, still enthused when they are talk- able to comment on the politics of provides us with the context of though, nor just a behind-the- ing about the stories they loved. the day or create absurd characters the attitude and behaviour of that scenes documentary for discerning The film leads you from the that could represent a whole state first wave of talent that was head- comic readers. It is an even-handed golden age of Alan Grant, John or country. The science fiction hunted and whisked off to Amer- look at the people and forces that Wagner and Pat Mills to the heady angle meant the artists could run ica, and thus much of the resulting shaped not just 2000AD itself but heights of 1980s popularity, when riot with the visuals of the charac- fallout and controversy of the last the whole comics industry as we careers, friendships and partner- ters and the worlds they inhabited, 30 years. know it today, the careers and ships were forged that would stand and the final product was done Future Shock! is not to be missed. ideas of the creators who brought the test of time. It also continues with so much imagination and A glowing encomium and a searing so much life to it and whose lives the story beyond the boom years wit, it could not help but succeed. indictment, a comprehensive his- were in turn affected by its success. and into the doldrums, the mis- The film shows us how the maga- tory of the medium and a glorious Watching Pat Mills and John takes and tough calls, the decisions zine grew exponentially, with the celebration of one of Britain’s most Wagner talk about what went into that cost 2000AD dearly. contributor list being a who’s-who wonderful exports, its imagination, creating Judge Dredd or Rogue It ought to get dull at some point of comics. 2000AD was clearly a and its punk rock spirit. Trooper or Nemesis the Warlock, – like eavesdropping on a works victim of its own success, and the Leah Moore you really see the motivations reunion you find yourself stuck ensuing stampede towards Ameri- behind the magazine: they weren’t next to in the pub – but it doesn’t. can publishers was inevitable given Fortean times Verdict simply creating stories they The fortunes of 2000AD, its char- the gulf between the working con- celeBrating a Very British wanted to tell, those stories were acters and creators, are so intrinsi- ditions on offer and the promise of comics reVolution 9

62 FT335 www.forteantimes.com reviews Film & DVD

A traveller in time Dir Dorothea Brooking, UK 1978 Simply Media, £19.99 (DVD) The Reverend’s Review Alison Uttley’s novel A Traveller in Time was published in 1939, and FT’s resident man of the cloth reVerenD Peter laWs dons has been a favourite of young fan- his dog collar and faces the flicks that Church forgot! tasy readers ever since.The BBC (www.theflicksthatchurchforgot.com; @revpeterlaws) dramatised it in 1978, but it’s not been available on DVD until now. Recovering from pneumonia, Dr tError’S hoUSE oF films, yet they are roles that teenager Penelope Taberner horrorS showcase the strong, camera- (Sophie Thompson) goes to stay Dir Freddie Francis, UK 1965 grabbing, mature performances with her Aunt Tissie (Elizabeth Odeon Entertainment, £14.99 (Blu-ray) he later became known for. Bradley – Maud Grimes in Corona- In Dr Terror’s House of Horrors tion Street) and Uncle Barnabas thE SKULL (1965), he’s a snooty art critic (veteran character actor Gerald Dir Freddie Francis, UK 1965 who can dish out the insults James) on their farm in Derby- Eureka Entertainment, £12.99 (Blu-ray) but can’t take them. Stalked by shire, and finds herself slipping an artist’s severed hand, it’s back in time to the same house thE MAN Who CoULD a rare chance to watch Lee in the 16th century. Her ancestor ChEAt DEAth play the screaming, gibbering Cicely Taberner (also played by Dir Terence Fisher, UK 1959 victim (turns out, he gibbers Bradley) is the cook/housekeeper Eureka Entertainment, £12.99 (Blu-ray) really well). The rest of the film’s for the Babington family, who are a Daddy-O-1960s treat, with be a little slim, but it’s grip- hatching a plot to release Mary Millions of young movie fans bright young fellas like Donald ping and tense. Lee’s on top Queen of Scots, imprisoned in a don’t even realise Christopher Sutherland and Roy Castle haunted form as an antiques nearby manor house. Penelope Lee played Dracula: for them, hearing their creepy fates from collector buying demonic statues fits into her (on-off) new life as a he was the evil hippy Lord a Tarot-dealing Peter Cushing. at the silent behest of the Skull. servant very quickly, and becomes Saruman in Lord of the Rings, Amicus wound up being famous Yet it’s Cushing playing Russian friends with Francis, younger or the precision-bearded Count for their anthology movies, and Roulette in a bizarre Kafka-esque brother of Anthony Babbington, Dukula – sorry Dooku – in Star while not their best, this was sequence that lingers in the later executed for plotting against Wars. Actors don’t often crack their first. It’s got a good num- memory. Queen Elizabeth. But she makes the longevity problem, but Lee ber of stories too. I like five Finally, we’ve got a lesser an enemy in a jealous visiting did. He didn’t do it by sell- tales in portmanteau horror – it known Hammer film: The cousin who accuses her of being a ing out either, or by becom- means there’s always a new tale Man Who Could Cheat Death spy, because she carelessly men- ing a parody of himself. He round the corner, if the current (1959). Anton Diffring would tions that she knows that Mary even looked dignified in white, one isn’t up to snuff. *Cough – become the movie Nazi in the Queen of Scots will die. wrap-around shades for his “Creeping Vine” – *Cough. following decade; here though, Although the basic story is the part in Howling II: Your Sister is From the same year we he’s a doctor desperate for eter- same as the original novel, the a Werewolf. Lee lasted because get The Skull (1965), in nal life. He guzzles from Jekyll- BBC version has some differences, of something simple: he kept which Lee and Cushing get style beakers and tries to organ- all of which work well. Penelope getting parts – which doesn’t haunted and hypnotised by the ise gland transplants to keep comes to the farmhouse on her happen through charity. It’s Marquis de Sade’s cranium. him looking 35, even though he’s own rather than with her siblings about presence and quality. It’s got a handy float function 104. It’s very talky, almost like a (who are irrelevant to the story Knowing just how long his career too! Some critics say this film stage play, and sometimes tedi- anyway), and the present day of would last makes watching sucks, but maybe they need ous too. Yet its fusion of Dorian the story is sensibly brought up his earlier work that much more their skulls examined. It’s sur- Gray and Mr Hyde still makes to the present day of the 1970s: enjoyable. Lee might not be real and spooky and I likes it. for some interesting philosophis- Uncle Barnabas drives a Land the star of these three early-ish The story, by Robert Bloch, might ing from the cast. Lee plays a Rover rather than a horse and surgeon, reluctant to help, and cart.This was the first TV role, and while his performance is solid, very assured at the age of 15, for he feels wasted. If this had been Sophie Thompson (sister of Emma made a decade later, he’d have and daughter of Eric Thompson bagged the lead. He may already and Phyllida Law), who would go have played Dracula, but his on to play in Four Weddings and stardom wouldn’t really explode a Funeral, Gosford Park, a Harry until its sequel, Dracula: Prince Potter film and Eastenders. It of Darkness, in 1966. From then always adds to TV reissues when on, Christopher Lee would shine they have interviews with the until the day he died. And then actors; unfortunately this has no some. extras at all. David V Barrett Fortean times Verdict Fortean times Verdict three early treasures From the career oF cristoPher lee 7 eXcellent aDaPtation oF a classic timesliP story 7

FT335 63 www.forteantimes.com reviews Film & DVD

Midwinter of the Spirit always chasing Satanists – to get a Dir Richard Clark, UK 2015 better sense of the challenges she ShortS ITV Studios Home Entertainment, £12.99 (DVD) faces as a widowed, single-mum, I once found myself in Hereford bus inner-city female priest parachuted mr holmes station as a strange-looking single- into a weird rural parish. And per- Entertainment One, £12.99 (DVD), £14.99 (Blu-ray) decker hove into view. Instead of haps a bit more humour wouldn’t I’dbeen eagerly anticipating the long-awaited biopic the usual destination blind, it car- have gone amiss (when a vicar friend of breakfast TV presenter Eamonn, so was disap- ried a raggedy piece of cardboard was preparing for her first go at pointed to discover this is in fact a drama about fastened with string and bearing the deliverance ministry, her husband Sherlock (Ian McKellen), now in his 90s and living legend “Much Marcle” – birthplace helpfully whistled ‘Tubular Bells’ out his retirement in a cottage on the south coast. of serial killer, rapist and torturer in the background to get her in the Attended to by his housekeeper (Laura Linney) and Fred West – the characters becoming mood). It’s a well-wrought piece her young son Roger (Milo Parker), Sherlock does increasingly crabbed as they neared of telly, though, with an effective little more than look after his apiary, beset as he is by creeping the arbitrary cut-off point where script, atmospheric locations and a senility. He struggles to recall the incident that led to his retire- the cardboard placard had clearly solid cast. I wasn’t quite convinced ment, although the feelings of guilt it provoked remain. From the been torn from a larger sheet. It was by Anna Maxwell Martin’s central moment the film opens with a shot of a steam train belting through amusing and slightly unnerving, performance: while she’s good at the majestic countryside it’s clear you’re watching a British herit- conjuring up images of a sort of local showing the all-too-human side of age production – the cinematic equivalent of visiting a National Lovecraftian hinterland – Hereford- a woman of God in a man’s world Trust property. Everything is achingly beautiful, nothing ugly is shire’s equivalent of Arkham County (smoking fags and getting a bit allowed to ruin the effect, and it all harks back to an idealised vision of some past England. Events unfold at a glacial pace, with – where unspeakable things went on sweary), her slightly one-note per- McKellen drawing out his lines like Gandalf at half speed. To pep between closely related people living formance didn’t really get across the things up, there are flashbacks to Sherlock’s last case and these in remote villages and farms. faith or the compassion that go with are the best parts of the film. It’s not bad, just offensively bland Phil Rickman’s novels have put the territory. and with BBC Sunday night drama written all over it. DK 5/10 this liminal border region between David Sutton England and Wales, so rich in land- Fortean times Verdict scape, lore and legend, on the literary jonathan strange & mr norell a Damn sight scarier map, mixing ancient supernatural RLJ Entertainment, £14.99 (DVD), £19.99 (Blu-ray) than the Vicar oF DiBley 7 forces with the modern murder mys- There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the BBC tery to compelling effect.The only Iceman television adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan surprise is that his Merrily Watkins Strange & Mr Norrell – much of it is quite impressive Dir Wing-cheong Law, China 2014 series has taken this long to reach – but somehow the magic has sadly gone missing Kaleidoscope, £12.99 (DVD), £15.99 (3D blu-ray) our TV screens, as the genre-bending en route to the screen. Certainly, the BBC deserves proposition of a rural vicar solving Possibly the only film you’ll see this praise for placing this alt-history costume drama in bizarre crimes and fighting the forces year which features a man urinat- the Sunday night ‘heritage’ slot; however, the slow of evil in a world as immediately rec- ing like a firehose, an exploding start and uncertain finale may have done TV fantasy more harm ognisable as Morse’s Oxford seems a toilet and a fossilised penis, Iceman than good, with viewing figures halved by the climax. The middle no-brainer for the medium. is a typically barking Hong Kong instalments of this seven-episode mini-series are where it springs This three-part adaptation, cour- action-comedy. The largely incom- into life, especially in the Napoleonic wars where magic is used tesy of Ghostwatch scribe and some- prehensible plot has something to do as both a defensive and offensive weapon. Elsewhere, things are time FT contributor StevenVolk, with Ming dynasty warriors frozen rather slow and somewhat dull for a drama dealing in magic. Bertie introduces our heroine as she returns in time and thawed out in the 21st Carvel is great as naturally talented magician Jonathan Strange, to her rural parish after undergoing century. They’re all looking for the while a slightly miscast Eddie Marsan gets the short end of the training in what’s nowadays known aforementioned appendage, which stick as the government-approved magician who wants to keep the as ‘Deliverance Ministry’ but which is apparently the key to unlocking secrets of the unexpected magical revival to himself. The warring most people would understand as a time machine. Our hero He Ying pair is surrounded by a colourful supporting cast, featuring such notables as Marc Warren, Paul Kaye, and Sam West. Wallander exorcism. Straight away, she’s called (veteran martial artist/actor Donnie writer Peter Harness faced a tough task in adapting the sprawling on to investigate a crucifixion in Yen) flops around like a fish out of source novel that had already defeated attempts at a film version, some nearby woods and attend a water until ditsy May (Eva Huang) while Sherlock and Doctor Who director Toby Haynes was a safe dying child molester in the hospital is roped in to help him figure out pair of hands. Even so, the material has resisted being brought to – two strands of supernatural and how to use modern stuff like iPads truly magical life on screen. Brian j robb 6/10 worldly evil that turn out to be linked and the Internet. Not much of it in numerous ways as the plot inevi- works and even less makes sense. I tably thickens: we get pagan rites, watched in increasing bewilderment a christmas horror story church desecrations, a fake psychic, as the film lurched from gun battles Entertainment One, £9.99 (DVD) an unhinged Canon and rum goings- to pratfalls to gross sentimentality This seasonal portmanteau horror film from on at Hereford Cathedral. to Matrix-style set pieces. No doubt Canada runs its four different stories in tandem It’s all highly entertaining, and it’s more entertaining in 3D, which is rather than separately, but that’s about its only often quite spooky, if a bit rushed at the only possible explanation for the departure from predictable generic norms. Kram- times. One can’t help but feel that innumerable shots of breaking glass. pus, a haunted high school, a changeling child and an extra episode would have allowed Daniel King a zombie outbreak in Santa’s elven workshop each for a bit more light and shade, a bit offer good moments but swiftly run out of steam. more background. I’d have liked to Fortean times Verdict William Shatner is the radio host in the film’s framing sequence; have seen more of Merrily’s day-to- much less Fun than it he’s clearly only there as a loyal Canadian. Ds 4/10 day vicaring – presumably she’s not sounDs, saDly... 4

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Rapid cooling Minnie Pearl Simulacra corner With reference to Malcolm Chris- David Thrussell wrote an topher’s letter reporting coots and intriguing article on recordings moorhens entombed in a sheet related to the JFK assassination of ice, and SD Tucker’s response [FT333:42-46]. I was surprised to it [FT331:73, 333:67], I am to fi nd that the infamous and reminded of one of the articles in error-riddled Lincoln-Kennedy a New Scientist Daedalus column list of supposed coincidences and from many years ago, in which it connections began as a record, was suggested that the excellent “penned, recited and recorded” preservation of frozen mammoths by Buddy Starcher. However, might be due to a freak naturally when looking for more informa- occurring ‘maser cooling’ effect. tion about the record, I found These columns were written by Dr several references to a certain David EH Jones and were often Minnie Pearl being the author deliberately mischievous and or co-author of the text. Is that fanciful. I think the most plausible Paul Vought noticed this patch of condensation looking like a cherubic true? Her real name was Sarah mechanism for trapping these un- face, which appeared on a window for three mornings in a row. Cannon (1912-96), and she was a fortunate animals in ice is ‘Night We are always glad to receive pictures of spontaneous forms and fi gures, very popular comedian playing on Radiative Cooling’ (neat sum- or any curious images. Send them to the PO box above (with a stamped her southern background. I don’t mary available here: http://www. addressed envelope or international reply coupon) or to know if writing the text in ques- asterism.org/tutorials/tut37%20 [email protected] – and please tell us your address. tion would have been out of char- Radiative%20Cooling.pdf). The acter for her, but it ought to have ‘cold sky’ is a direct view of deep been unusual enough to be worth space, which is at a few degrees verse where Arnold Schwarzeneg- where he was going by the way at least some newspaper coverage. above absolute zero. Heat can in ger was never in the fi lm Total the grass was moving.” So far, I’ve found nothing. principle be rapidly sapped from Recall but Colin Farrell was? If Mark Willis Peter Olausson an object near room temperature you crossed over from one parallel Los Angeles, California Gothenburg, Sweden by radiative cooling in this way – universe into another, how would if atmospheric conditions permit. you know? My theory is that the Self-mummification Editor’s note: The list of Kennedy- Clear skies, low humidity and no changes would be so subtle you Lincoln coincidences fi rst ap- wind can potentially allow a rapid would hardly notice them. It could Your report on the fascinating peared in 1964, only months drop in temperature of several possibly take hundreds or thou- self-mummified Buddhist monk after JFK’s assassination. Wikipe- degrees if conditions are right. sands of alternative universes be- discovered inside a Chinese dia thinks it is “A merican folklore Ian I’Anson fore you would notice that things statue [FT331:12] says that he is of unknown origin”. Minnie Pearl By email were dramatically different. probably an example of Sokush- is credited as co-writer of ‘History Leslie W Hurn inbutsu.The process in mainland Repeats Itself’. It does seem an The ‘ersatz’ Universe Norwich, Norfolk Asia may have been similar, but unusual collaboration for this Sokushinbutsu is Japanese in comedy song specialist and I recently concluded that we Michigan panther origin. I have been to see two such doyenne of the Grand Ole Opry, are all now living in the ‘ersatz’ Sokushinbutsu, in Sakata city, but is perhaps explained by the universe. Let me explain.The most I enjoyed the report about the Yamagata prefecture, northern fact that she was a labelmate of noticeable symptom of this is in painting featuring a black panther Japan, where it was mainly prac- Buddy Starcher’s at Tennessee- the entertainment industry, where [FT333:19]. In my home state of tised.While many over the years based Starday Records. we now have re-makes of fi lms and Michigan there is a long history of attempted self-mummification, television programmes.To put it black panther sightings. Arkansas these are the only two to another way, we have (that dread- folk-rock duo Trout Fishing in have “survived” the pro- ed word) ‘re-imaginings’, most of America memorialised the Michi- cess at the temple.They which are inferior to the original. gan panther in “There’s a Panther both sit, their legs crossed Is this the case of the entertain- in Michigan” on their 1994 album in the Zazen position for ment industry simply running out Who Are These People? meditation, dressed in of ideas, or a case of ‘What goes Sample verse, from the point of fi ne kimono (which, I was around, comes around?’ view of a sheriff investigating a told, are changed regu- It is as if we are all living in a panther sighting: “When a farmer larly – very carefully, I’d laboratory where some clones in Manchester called I was there imagine).To the temple, have escaped.They may look in minutes / Following the trail of the two priests are still OY the same, but they’re not. Have feathers / Through the high grass alive, having achieved we crossed over from our own when he screamed / Thirty-four Buddhahood. “I’m telling you Morty, there’s no such thing universe into a parallel one? For years in law enforcement, I’ve Richard Eccleston as a job for life any more.

example, are we now in the uni- never been so scared / I could see Maruoka, Japan THE SURREAL MCC

FT335 69 www.forteantimes.com letters

Forteana and unpleasant experience of being imagination cursed by the filmmaker/magus. As a member of the London rock Having made the choices she did aristocracy in the 1960s and 1970s, throughout her lifetime, and hav- Faithfull developed a substantial ing written The English Eccentrics relationship with Anger, culminat- (1933), Edith Sitwell certainly ing in her starring role as the set herself up for an article like demon goddess Lilith in Anger’s ‘The Strangest Family in England’ magickal epic Lucifer Rising [FT333:36-41], but SD Tucker’s (1972). However, having penned a article was only a gloss on some purportedly unflattering portrayal unusual personal habits (and per- of the filmmaker in her 1994 haps personal limitations). autobiography Faithfull, a miffed I wish the article had ques- Anger retaliated by sending her tioned and explored what the a rather literal ‘poison-pen letter’ role of being an artist might have (the precise date of this incident had on the choices of the Sitwell was not provided). siblings, especially since even a Faithfull’s description of the cursory study of the lives of many curse is that “visually it was an creative individuals will reveal an astonishing item.Very graphic equally odd set of choices, actions WAYLEN THE and ghastly at the same time, and personal styles, from Edgar ALIEN and as maliciously conceived as Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, only a true Satanist and twisted On a visit to Leek in the Nathaniel Hawthorne and August individual could conjure up. It Staffordshire Moorlands, Strindberg to WBYeats, Carl Jung, was this huge piece of paper with I noticed this little grey Lytton Strachey, Djuna Barnes, threats inscribed in blood – Max alien on the forecourt of a Isak Dinesen, Hilda Doolittle,TS garage on the Ashbourne Factor blood, I’m sure, completely Eliot, Anna Kavan, Jean Cocteau, Road advertising MOTs. If I fake – but as an artefact it looked Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Bowles heard the mechanic right, incredible. It was a big, malign, and his wife Jane Bowles, James he’s nicknamed “Waylen poisonous curse – maybe a bit too Merrill, Denton Welch,Yukio the Alien”. Mike Fryer, wordy, maybe he raged on a bit Mishima and Muriel Spark. And Colchester, Essex too much. I mean, does the Devil that’s a very short list of writers, rant you to death?”While being excluding painters, actors and initially amused by the theatrical- musicians (though Cocteau was ity of the artefact, and Anger’s also a filmmaker and Paul Bowles tomatic writing’ – and the book fruit. Gary Lachman has written anti-Semitic railings against her a composer). that resulted, A Vision (1925) – are extensively on Jung and a number Jewish ancestry – “You Jew!You Most of these artists also took fairly well known. Jane Bowles of 19th century writers, but those Jew, like Kirk Douglas, like DAN- forteana as their subject matter found herself on the wrong end of of the 20th century have been NY KAYE!” – Faithfull quickly at least on occasion, and many North African magical practices largely ignored thus far. Ken- becomes freaked out by “all the had one or more brushes of some before her early death at 56, and neth Macpherson, Iris Murdoch, really vile stuff [that] started to kind with what we think of as the Jung’s long psychic ‘conversa- Kenneth Anger, Nico, Marianne spew out: ‘DIE OF LUNG CAN- paranormal. Many experienced tions’ with his ‘personal daimon’ Faithfull… There’s a lot of ques- CER!’ and all that generic malice severe mental breakdowns or Philemon are familiar to most tions out there just waiting to be right out of The Common Book of some kind of apparent mental forteans. Like Edith Sitwell, Isak asked. Even the stoic, plainspo- Beastly Spells”. illness throughout their adult Dinesen adopted an elaborate ken American painter Grandma Guided by her spiritual intui- lives. Early in her career, Muriel gothic style of dress in later life, Moses reported seeing the ghost tion to do something to counter- Spark stated that one of her goals presenting herself to the world of what she called ‘a sea captain’ act the curse, Faithfull consults was, to paraphrase, “to show that not so much as an elderly woman, in her biography, My Life’s History some esoterically inclined the supernatural is the natural”. but as an archetypal figure, an (1952). friends, who advise her to “take Yeats reported on his own experi- “abbess of the nightingales”; and Joseph Barnes it to the crossroads where there ences as a young man with fairies Eliot wore “green face paint” to By email was a Lady Chapel and burn it near Ben Buben, a fact many of Bloomsbury parties. with salt, rosemary and rue”. his academic biographers like to I believe there’s a crossroads Anger’s curse Having dispelled the hex through ignore or brush aside; while living where the private-personal and this act of white magic, Faithfull in London during World War II, the fortean intersect in many A complement to Kenneth then proceeds to formally rebuke Doolittle held extensive séances lives, so that one’s literal and Anger’s cursing of Led Zeppelin Anger via “a stiff letter” in which and believed she had contacted figurative passions, perspective of guitarist Jimmy Page is presented she reminds him of her long-term the spirits of airmen killed dur- the moment, and character may in singer/actress Marianne Faith- support for his work and person, ing the Battle of Britain; James play a significant role in what one full’s 2007 collection of memoirs, and admonishes him for throwing Merrill transcribed a 640-page experiences of an unusual nature. Memories, Dreams & Reflections “a queenie fit about the book”. poem, ‘The Changing Light at As it relates to creative indi- (Fourth Estate, London). In a A placated Anger replies in turn, Sandover,’ which he ‘received’ via viduals, this is a vein of forteana chapter entitled, appropriately only to end his response with the years of sessions on a Ouija board; rarely explored by forteans, and enough, ‘Looking Back At Anger’, caveat “unfortunately, I can’t take andYeats’s experiences with ‘au- one that I believe can bear a lot of Faithfull relates in detail the the curse back”.

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Faithfull’s explanation of why steam. Most of his contemporar- ing each other’s Cosmic Truths, revelation, leaving those fanciful she refrained from mentioning ies had too. Deep Purple’s Richie the veil lifted and I realised, early dreams in tatters.The glory her purification ritual to Anger Blackmore hit the buffers around regretfully, that I’d been led up has departed, replaced by stern reveals a considerable knowledge Machine Head (1972) and The the garden path! Realism. of magic (her esoteric chops also Who never again reached the Yet I’ve always suspected Fair enough, though: truth is evident in the fact that this col- heights of Quadrophenia (1973). that there was something to preferable to fantasy, and it’s lection of memoirs shares its title The same happened to the prog Adamski’s story, even if not good to keep ones feet firmly on with Jung’s posthumous autobi- rock of Rick Wakeman and Keith literally, physically true. He had the ground. Just as long as we re- ography), along with admirable Emerson. Unless the mercurial experienced something on some tain our capacity for wonder, and taste in classic horror films: “I, of Anger managed to tag all these level, I thought, and his account a realisation that all is not yet course, did not tell Kenneth what rockers into his curse I would was honest, if mistaken. Now, scientifically cut and dried.h Muc I’d done – burning his letter at suggest Page reduced output was suddenly, not only Adamski mystery remains, and it’s my sin- some wayside shrine – because more to do with changing times / but also a whole host of other cere hope we’ll still be scratching in some Harry Potterish way he musical tastes. More contentious- interconnected personages and our heads for centuries to come! could have made a counter curse ly, it could be argued that apart reputed occurrences, taken at Roger Wyld, (very) long time to that, too. It’s quite complicated, from a few crowd pleasers on face value by a naive youngster, reader this whole business. And you have Physical Graffiti (1975), his best have been swept away by a tide of By email to be very careful.What I didn’t work was more or less completed want to do – which in fact you can by Led Zeppelin IV in 1971 – way do – was to send the curse back to before the curse! Kenneth so that it would land on On the other hand, while I him.Within the occult scheme of was listening to a film talk at the things, if you send out that much BFI by Anger many years ago, a hatred against someone and the strange, large, cockroach-looking recipient has enough power to creature seemed to crawl over the hurl it back at you psychically, stage. Maybe it was poor pest con- it can rebound – like the piece trol at the theatre or something of paper with the spell on it that more sinister sent by the Magus? Dana Andrews slips into the magi- James Briggs cian’s pocket at the end of Curse Canterbury, Kent of the Demon. I’m not an expert, needless to say, but it’s a wearying Adamski unmasked and aggravating business”. With the benefit of hindsight, Well, that’s a body blow and no Faithfull muses on the event as a mistake! Marc Hallet’s ‘Appraisal consequence of her youthful dab- of George Adamski’ [FT333:49] bling in the occult under Anger’s has at a stroke demolished what tutelage: “What is quite certain was once, for me, the foundation is that demons will fasten on you of all knowledge. My purchase of when you are at your weakest Flying Saucers Have Landed at the point and by toying with them, impressionable age of 13, back in even in a film, you give them pow- 1953, was the start of an exciting er.” (All quotes from pp.49-54). wild goose chase that was to last On a more trivial note, ‘Ken- for years and set me firmly on neth Anger’ is also the title of a the fortean road. Flying Saucers classic 1985 indie-rock number by Have Landed, Inside the Space- New Zealand group The Explod- ships, and JH Williamson’s Other ing Budgies, although the song’s Tongues, Other Flesh moulded my engagement with Anger is on perception of life, the Universe, the level of emotional metaphor and everything for well over a – “Just like Kenneth Anger” is decade, aided and abetted by the refrain of the chorus – rather innumerable other saucer publi- than direct homage, as in Ozzy cations from the likes of Neville Osbourne’s priceless pæan to Spearman and Amherst Press, It’s behind you! Anger’s mentor, ‘Mr Crowley’. Wisconsin. I lived and breathed Dean Ballinger Adamskian beliefs, certain of Last May, my family and I went for a camping trip at Aberford, near Hamilton, New Zealand their absolute truth in spite of Leeds, West Yorkshire. Before leaving we went for a walk and I took others’ scepticism and ridicule. lots of photographs. On 24 May at about 2pm we walked through the I think a little delve into rock However, the steady unfolding Dark Arch, a 295ft (90m) tunnel built in 1813-14 to shield the inhabit- history is required to balance of astronomical knowledge, and ants of Parlington Hall from traffic passing along Parlington Lane. The Chris Saunders’s article regarding the failure of the various authors’ tunnel felt strange at the time, and on getting home I went through Kenneth Anger’s supposed curs- predictions, caused me niggling the pictures to pop some on Facebook and found the one reproduced ing of Jimmy Page [FT333:51]. doubts that grew steadily with here – one of five I took in the tunnel. I was the last one in the Dark By the mid 1970s, Page was not time.When Adamski and William- Arch, or so I thought! Russell Brooks, Norton, Cleveland alone in running out of creative son fell out and began denounc-

FT335 71 www.forteantimes.com Have you had strange experiences that you cannot explain? We are always interested in reading of odd events and occurrences. CONTACT US BY POST: FORTEAN TIMES, BOX 2409, LONDON, NW5 4NP it happened to me… OR E-MAIL TO [email protected] Or post your message on the http://forum.forteantimes.com.

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on his head and it looked as if he had The hide on some kind of long overcoat. The silhouette had the appearance of the It was the school summer holidays in 1984, images you see if you close your eyes and I was 12 at the time. The weather was and apply pressure to your eyeballs, but clear and bright and it was mid-afternoon. quite dark. I told my mother about him A friend and I had constructed a “hide” (she didn’t see anything) and after that I on a disused railway line in the village used to call him ‘Mister Nobody’. I never of Cullingworth, West Yorkshire. The saw anything like this again, but what embankment had all but a few traces of the stuck in my mind was that this was a railway removed and a footpath made its way strangely two-dimensional figure. through overgrown willow trees and the odd Caroline – bog. It made an excellent place to hang out FTMB during our school holidays. We were in our “hide” when a man carrying Harold and a small girl on his shoulders went past the hat man within a couple of feet without noticing our presence. We watched them move down the I have a close friend named Harold. path until they were out of sight and were We have known each other for about about to speak to each other when a figure 30 years. He and I, at one point, had dropped down from the trees directly in front some very strange encounters with of the hide. the Ouija board; although the following The figure landed half-crouched, facing experience had nothing to do with the direction the man and child had gone. It our Ouija experiences, I mention it as was completely black, like a strong shadow being illustrative of the fact that Harold rather than a solid object, matt black with no and I have had more than one shared reflected light or shadow of its own. I don’t paranormal experience. When we were recall any sound when the figure landed. It first introduced by a mutual friend, it was started to rise from the half crouched position as though we had known each for years. to standing and at the same time turned We have always been very close. The towards us. I remember that as it rose it paranormal encounter that I consider appeared to be shorter than the man that the most frightening of my life was also had passed: I guess around 5ft (1.5m) tall simultaneously experienced by Harold, and definitely humanoid in form. At this point in slightly different form, but with the major we simultaneously turned and ran and didn’t look There was a trilby- elements of the experience coinciding. back or speak until we were home. I remember the About 25 years ago, while I was living at my events so clearly as I was deeply spooked by the style hat on his parents’ house, I awoke one morning to see my encounter. bedroom door opening. Immediately, I thought, P Dale head and it looked with distinct clarity, “My father is coming in to Haworth, W Yorkshire empty the trash can.” As the door opened more as if he had on widely, and I didn’t see my father enter the room, Churchyard shadow-man some kind of long I realised that something else was going on, and I began to panic, thinking someone had broken I was recently taking my 14-month-old daughter overcoat into the house. I believed myself to be fully for a stroll in her buggy through a rather nice, awake, not dreaming. peaceful country graveyard near where I live. It As I became increasingly aware that someone was a bright, sunny afternoon with only a light down the path and out of the churchyard, treading dangerous was about to enter the room, I also breeze blowing. I was rounding the chapel of rest just behind me in a malicious way. I was reminded realised that I was lying on my back and could at the end of the graveyard when I became aware of those stories about the mischievous Puck not move. I then saw a black two-dimensional, of a black figure to my left and slightly behind me, character who used to play with his unsuspecting shadowed outline of a man in what appeared apparently following me. It was what looked like a victims to scare them when alone. I paused once to be a pointy-looking trench coat and pointy, two-dimensional ‘shadow-man’ against the chapel more to look back, but again just seemed to rimmed hat enter the room. wall, with a crooked hat and long, fluttering cloak glimpse a tall black figure, and just as quickly as it I have never been more frightened in my life. or coat. It was very dense black, and resembled was gone again. I certainly walked out faster than I somehow knew, as the figure made its way a silhouette or a cutout. I paused, as it was I came in! towards me in the bed, that it was going to do creepy, and tried to see if it was me making the Elvira something to my neck and kill me. Along with the shadow on the wall – although as it was a warm Fortean Times Message Board paralysis, this thought was excruciatingly horrific. day I wasn’t wearing a hat or coat. The shadow As the figure, the most malevolent-feeling thing I man ‘skipped’ out of my vision when I did this. Mr Nobody have ever experienced, got to the side of my bed, Coincidence or not, a blast of cold, strong wind near my neck, I ‘woke up’. The room, as I looked appeared out of nowhere. I must have been about seven or eight years around, was just as it had looked moments I continued walking, a bit spooked but more old when I was walking with my mother near our before during the ‘dream’, with shadows and curious as to what was making me ‘see’ the home one day. I became aware of a man walking early morning light exactly as I had ‘seen’ them shadow ‘following’ me. I only got a bit more parallel to us on our right, and keeping pace moments before. As bad as the experience was, scared when I left the chapel and carried on with us. The thing was, it wasn’t a man, it was a I filed it under ‘nightmares beyond all nightmares’ walking away; I ‘felt’ that it was still following me silhouette of a man. There was a trilby-style hat and pretty much forgot about it.

72 FT335 www.forteantimes.com About a week later, I went to visit Harold, seemed to have moved right next to me and was striding purposefully along some kind of roadway who had had a string of bad things to endure. generating coldness. I was still convinced I was that paid no attention at all to walls or houses His father had died during the previous year, seeing things, but it didn’t go away even when I (the flat was part of a Victorian terrace). his mother had run over his cat, and he had turned my head to look at ‘it’. After a short period It was a little different from the usual been fired from his job. His older brother, going it moved behind me and cast a shadow over shadowman description in that it wasn’t all black, through a divorce, had moved in with Harold and the area where I was sitting, as if someone was but brownish and black, like a dark, sepia tone his mother. During my visit, Harold mentioned standing over me, between the main light and image. I could make out the outline of face, thick that he’d recently had a horrible dream. He said myself. I kept turning around to look, but it would dark hair, a three-quarter-length coat, possibly that one morning he’d woken up and thought have been impossible for someone to get past a cape, and knee boots. He was about 7ft his brother was coming into his room “to borrow me without me seeing them. After 10 minutes or (2m) tall and big and solid, not thin, angular or some socks”. But he soon realised that it was so it lifted, and the shadow just vanished. I was transparent. not his brother opening the door, but some spooked, but not freaked out. I immediately ‘knew’ that he was aware I malevolent entity determined to kill him. I said, WH had seen him, but he didn’t look around or “Stop, Harold. Was it a shadow type thing with a Dartford, Kent move his head at all. There was a real sense of pointy, trench coat-shaped body?” consciousness, even intelligence to this thing: “Yes,” said Harold, “With a pointy kind of hat Glastonbury Shadow he was aware of me, and aware of me because I on.” Harold had also been unable to move as the had seen him. I did not feel a sense of ‘evil’, but thing came around to the side of the bed, and he Several years ago I used to live on Chilkwell definitely not good either: neutral, but probably had also felt it would do something to his neck. Street in Glastonbury in a very old house. One not very nice. During the discussion, we both remarked how day I walked upstairs to the bedroom. The door I also felt that whatever it was it was NOT the ideas about my father emptying trash and his was open, and as I reached the top of the stairs human. It was not a ghost, a discarnate entity, brother borrowing socks just kind of came into our I saw appear from the corner of the room, as a soul imprint, or projection. Don’t ask me why heads as complete thoughts that were almost too if from nowhere, a person-shaped shadow. It I thought this, it was just my immediate gut placating, especially since my father never came looked exactly like a human being but it had no reaction as I stood there. No logic, no analysis. into my room to empty my trashcan and Harold’s features, as it was as black as the ace of spades. The following night, I had not long got into bed brother never entered his room unbidden, let It seemed to be aware that it had been seen and – a minute at most – and just closed my eyes; alone to borrow some socks. disappeared right in front of my eyes. I saw it there was no chance of my being asleep and I We both agreed that it was terrifying. We’ve again two weeks later, but this time there was a was still settling. I opened my eyes and this thing never talked to anyone else with a similar red tint where its eyes would have been. I’ve done was standing over me, leaning over, lowering his experience although, since then, I’ve come some checking on shadow people and I know that face towards me. across references to the Scandinavian myth others have seen them as well. Some think they Now, I am not a screamer – I’ve had a fair of ‘the Hag’, a succubus-type creature that are ghosts, aliens or demons. I’m not sure. few odd experiences in my life, including seeing somewhat mirrors the paralysis and fear Martin Gidlow some really weird stuff, and I’ve never even been elements of our experiences. FTMB close to screaming. But I leapt onto my then Name and address on file partner and literally screamed the house down. By email Warping shadow God knows what I would have done if I’d been on my own. It is the only time in my life that I have Me and my shadow Years ago, I was living in a two-bedroom ground completely lost it – I was hysterical. floor flat with a friend. One afternoon when my Another odd thing was my cynical sceptic About 10 years ago I had a friend staying for a mate was out working, I picked up a copy of the ex said when the shrieking started to subside: short time. One night he was on the phone to his Tao Te Ching, sat on the large windowsill in the “There was someone standing by the bed wasn’t girlfriend while I was sitting in a chair facing the lounge and began browsing through the book. there?” door to the hall. I saw a 6ft (1.8m) -tall, jet black After a few minutes, I suddenly saw something I’m pretty sure I asked then, but maybe the figure walk past the door. It looked as if someone out of the corner of my eye and looked up to see next morning, if he’d actually seen anything, and had cut a person out of black paper, although it a tall (and very broad), approximately 7ft (2m), he said no; but he knew something was there. walked like a real person. I thought it must be my dark, shadowy and roughly human shape form I felt the thing had come back to check me out then husband going to the bathroom. I got up and entering through the lounge doorway from the because he knew I could see him and there was looked, but he was still asleep in bed and no one hall. While the entity had no visible features, I had a sense of curiosity… but possibly it was just to was in the loo. the distinct impression that it was a male form. try and scare the shit out of me on purpose. It About four years later, something similar As I looked at this thing straight on, it warped succeeded. happened. It was about 11pm on a hot, humid and stretched backwards out of sight; it didn’t My belief about these shadow forms is night when I couldn’t sleep and so was doing odd turn around or move, it just stretched backwards. that they are ‘thought forms’, focused human chores to tire myself out. As I was about to go I immediately searched the flat to see if there was emotion and that if concentrated enough are into the hall I saw what I can only describe as a anyone else but me there… and of course there able to take the form of a conscious entity that figure which appeared to be an outline made up wasn’t. lives just beyond our normal perceptions. They of a white line – as if someone had been outlined John Hope are perhaps also responsible for the atmosphere in tape! It was walking towards the bedroom and Southbourne, Dorset certain places have, particularly those that have my first thought was that someone had got into been inhabited for a long time, or have had really the flat. I searched the place, but there was no Screaming at shadows intense or traumatic things happen in them (or one there. To say it freaked me out would an a history of prayer at religious sites). They’re understatement. This took place in a flat during a period of my life probably the same things that have been labelled Yesterday, I couldn’t sleep and was sitting at many years ago when I had a ridiculous amount as ‘demons’, and possibly ‘angels’ in the case of the computer. It was about 2am and I was wide of weirdness going on. I was in the bedroom, the positive ones, throughout history. awake. Out of the corner of my eye I became the door of which opened straight into the sitting Eve11 aware of a dark figure standing in the hallway. It room. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a very FTMB didn’t have a clear edge to it, and I was convinced tall shadow man walk straight past. I got the that I was just seeing things – but I could feel that impression it came through the wall, past the For more letters about shadow people, see there was someone there and kept looking up doorway, and then straight through the other wall FT274:76; see also Nick Parkins, “They came into the hall. After about 10 minutes, the figure and into the neighbouring property as if it was from the shadows”, pp54-55 this issue.

FT335 73 www.forteantimes.com john billingsley ieto ni tgt otemain the to gets it until direction a in climbs it as Ri the ro ne tpaside. step and stop pedestrians that demanding fHgsij tet usuall Street, Higashioji of this between border h rc o nw sMatsubara- as known now track the To burial old the to mountains traffic. mu narr now: destined as rises to Higashioji of side other the on not Matsubara’s Matsubara. into the throughout Ky a when up listening home. bac agendas on antiquarian be mainstream to seem don’t that culture of ab al there’ – suchlike and shrines mounds, a generally – Ap ido unscripted of kind a inadKymz in Kiyomizu and Gion ove Kiyomizu equally the to approach lined shop- the is district Matsubara from main the Across Gion. of quarter the adjoining and St, Shijo of thoroughfare shopping the narr a of name current the Matsubara-dori, O next... the and world this between passageway a – corpse-bearers BILLINGSLEY JOHN www.forteantimes 74 wa ward e tsoe lgtyuwrsfrom upwards slightly slopes It le. ieo(hc a ha may (which ribeno ve out Ye tsntatgte surprising. altogether not It’s I how that’s So oto fa TRAVELLER FORTEAN r rmtetp fsites of type the from art 0.Adahra in road death A 105. ch the r sa niil nen scanning antenna invisible an ys sti raitself). area this as r guess r FT traditionall t , 335 fmodern of ve fo Ja nae nthe on area an s Th uiste n fragments and curiosities r Kamoga r ow wo a,bgntligme telling began pan, fo susi htayato leisur tr of act any that is issues neo-antiquarian in an interest of side-effects the of ne ow n an en, Te Wi ave r rl tetaltl ot of south little a street .c , yo mple. To om ris oSioand Shijo to traipse d ihtoo with fa hu ninformant an thout nvtbybecomes inevitably l u ribeno iirmxo stones, of mix miliar ye ro ex we mu Ky fo y, ar ughly wa To eso fMatsubar of tension ewa re und oto ch hti Matsubara’ is that , yo re wo rssfo all from urists u few but , fa mu ikn slightl kinking wa va ung olo at look to , sear fo mous rl rme with crammed my ve we st kn the lking 1 are along carried s ch til fthe of othills n h next. the and d olw aaeeruetodnb ohplrm and pilgrims both by trodden route japanese a follows n corpse Any wo nu ex y, self st-east ch traffic, gr we ieso like ve tended geisha mber a in man trip udof ound fa ab ntur visit mous ro yo . ro out s ad e ad u’ y k s d s e a ro dori. cross h cemeter the are rca hehl htspirits that threshold crucial a te rdtosaon the around traditions other oli hspr of part this in soul ri the wo h Kamoga the bridge the at begin should re my tn post, inscribed stone an is temple the outside centur Saifuku-ji, of temple cluttered and small the it. within being rCrossroads), or Corner (Rokudo “Rokudo-no-tsuji” the ev of out ascent the begins one that i ( the six of boundary a treading are they presentati ad, eryday To fe hr itne one distance, short a After rl hlgclRi thological va Buddhist roku) otenx,adaogthe along and next, the to d by Wh ve re nroute en 2 iu mar rious y, a rc h ore fthe of journey the trace en nti neighbourhood this in being r, c fcus ae tadeath a it makes course of ich ntergt ntecorner the On right. the on ro which wo t fpsaefo this from passage of ute fo ab wa y. ve rl ne nteninth the in unded u er al It tall. metre a out oteudrol or – underworld the to ,wiesimultaneousl while d, Ky fteStyx-lik the of Ri re ke ve wa idn passers-b minding ve rs az;fo her from Sanzu; r Ky s identified, as in identified, s re r, fissau:from status: its of oto oto and (do) alms h local the , hn one then, ove wo e re r rl mu aches re wa ,as d, st ads y , e y y oMatsabura. to River the over bridge BELOW: Ka mog The aw a el Now Hell. gr rsmby–myg oesf and sound. safe home go may – presumably paid who those all that called dreamed Genko man a past, the in sometime wa little a Splash blessing. Jizo’s ask headed, be n aso,hopefully on, pass and in O-Bon of start the at ‘welcoming’) and ‘ancestors’, ‘tr seilybetween especially only not confronted is Ja this of whole the like site, steeped, unique a to is portal and Underworld, a the be to considered is, still and Hell! of gates the Rokudochinko-ji). spelt (also Rokudochinno-ji of temple the Matsubara-dori: of side hand this of ro status liminal the of denoter area, parking by later that liminal the narrati in place its has that confection honey a sells It Saifuku-ji. tr bodhisattva ol tr souls psychopomp as also known is Jizo Hermes, tr of god other that Like ve the of one is Saifuku-ji underworld. the six of images include temple the within Mandalas otherworld. the to Rokuhara swe as temples, gi,a again, in n tes sdenoted as others, and this between crossroads a also this in crossroads a being more; maybe three- dimensional, is but crossroads, simple no is body take could re upr wihcudinclude of could bereft (which die support who those of souls to the solace offering in specialises ji Rokuharamitsu- concerns. underworld attenti less no but cramped less ihn100 within unn ih tSiuuj brings Saifuku-ji at right turning Th ave tte fJiz of statues ls ol ihn n otr to turn to one no with Souls alms. pi itrso h omnsof torments the of pictures aphic t sso ocm,o h left- the on come, to soon is ute ave aeefnrr utr stretching culture funerary panese nu Au Ja Wa eunn oRkd-otui this Rokudo-no-tsuji, to Returning Th corpse e ter h nrnet nunder an to entrance the re tshop et pan’s es re lr n h ol of souls the and llers six e ut(e eo) n eeone here and below), (see gust ls n h 0knso the of kings 10 the and alms, wa kn n o’ edistracted be don’t on, lking ln prt’ ri nte sense another in or spirits’, lling ove afk-ihuese house Saifuku-ji ve 3 pcsa afk-i–i hslife, this in – Saifuku-ji at spects ave fo are pMatsubara-dori. up carried s re . r h tte ih candle, a light statue, the r fMtuaa u oeof more but Matsubara; of means six fields, or plains fields, six means re eec otesxBuddhist six the to ference yo nu ln nterfnljourne final their on lling itetemple… little shoro-mukae , wa re ya yo Th we iaoy,opposite Minato-ya, ihaseilitrs in interest special a with what lspret Matsubara. permeate alms Underworld. , nwwhere know u are eospre-modern merous uei hstml stheir as temple this in fuge rd osln n conducting and consoling ossrih n but on, straight goes y ol do could u mu akcnie of confines dark e las ll o, oaohrtemple, another to s mu very ch protecti a Th awa Th by kae Au sit as principal e temple e ls othe to close t,ppit the into pop its, traditional a by ut7-10, gust re meaning by ( ave re shoro wors sue that assured Jiz vera Fo wo hs tw these ch sembles ve fo yo llers, gr at of taste a r o, rl ildren. while r than e might u et or deity wa ound l a ,i is it d, meaning but, ro wa re ve by t,in ute, rrior alm wa s, yo o to u rs y – s ). phoTos: john billingsley hti wh is that centuries, back lotcompletely almost h amniGznOuiifesti Okuribi Gozan Daimonji the off them send to held ar celebrations and dances period the ho guidebooks. hnfive when open them, ove wo ancestors the of (7-16 O-Bon of onanie around mountainsides ocl n’ netr lclykonas o-shorai-san, known (locally ancestors one’s call to re pr of purpose the souls the n ftotmlsin temples two of one festi dead the from back o-shoro) Rokudo- mairi. perform to come that pilgrims of thousands the service to Matsubara Emma-do building wa their to Underworld vo and sound the deceased, name someone the of out calling and gong a beating ar,tedosaecoe and closed are doors the mairi, that one held if tradition old An out. carried is wo the Buddhist as cultures in known (also Emma is left Onthe attendants. their with figures, inside. statues the ha sntconduci not is appearance his and judgement, his esseiial ovstn atemple to visiting specifically fers ice ve wev Th uigOBn tlsaestu along up set are stalls O-Bon, During neigtruhtegtsand gates the through Entering kn pteapoc ah h first the path, approach the up lking rl rl r re n igewt h iig All living. the with mingle and d ftedead, the of d va Ja tde o eni sempty is it mean not does at osun hog oet see to hole a through squint to fo wo lso h ed ops nothe into pass to dead; the of alms we fa er Mairi ,adRkdcin-ii h main the is Rokudochinno-ji and l, a,dne r edt entertain to held are dances pan, hmt enter to them r iydosaelf symbolicall left are doors mily , l ud hmbc rmthe from back them guide uld re yo seilydrn the during especially fo . y, gr xetdrn h Rokudo- the during Except Ya oeto come u hi attendance. their r osadi the in stand to ehp thankfull perhaps eat images of fire are lit on are fire of images eat savstt temple a to visit a is equi 4 a,tefasm odof lord fearsome the ma), ve Au ev re otaqilt nthe in tranquillity to va ay ut,we h souls the when gust), nmlena perhaps millennia; en unt ii this visit to turn Th yo ab ett Saifuku-ji’ to lent r Rokudo-mairi er; fo ha u , r r w main two are ere . etfo tourist from sent Ky ntergt sthe is right, the on Ky , mrhome. rmer Ky n tteedof end the at and t hr this where oto t tefhas itself oto ve t othank to oto ro to fo dhere, ad y, h Bon the r re Fe yo tis it cei fo , sti va u r ve va l, s e l y Underworld the to portal a be to thought is temple The fpol’ onsi h upper the in doings knowledge people’s his of doubt no souls; the of judgement the in secretary as assist and Emma beside sit to Underworld i evcs Emma services, his in occasion, On phenomenon. contemporar uniquely a not certainly wa day’s aesm ol akwt i othe to upper him with back souls some take wa honoured So perception. and wisdom his -o,adplrm aeofrnsto offerings make pilgrims and at O-Bon, opened are view public to statues lsl attended closely less a is Emma- do the of right the On misdeeds. their know who those of minds etr otadsaemnhonoured statesman and poet century re rsnsOono Ono presents useful a s e in he, s wo wo rk rl fa d. tcut ejourne he court, at fo t htatrfnsighis finishing after that ct, re bdigsau,though statue, rbidding Th ore ut-akn is Multi-tasking source. or lsn these closing doors e by Ta wo itedemon. little a aua ninth- a kamura, l let uld Ta ye re ow wo kamur othe to d turn n rl Th d fo y is a fo r r Underworld. the in heard be can peals its – house LEFT: temple. chinno-ji Rokudo- the of hall main ABOVE: h bell The The aecr nteleft the on – care take fa ye the throughout thronged is and 798) h approach the ro main the crosses Matsubara-dori area. the to slope the up body the temple the otyastairw a mostly path, steep thronged equally an to (‘pure Wo door. the beside displa month, each days open is garden the htshould that ar it aware descend or climb who those of Ho ancestors. on tr be to mairi, Rokudo- the course, pilgrim Matsubara’ circular of part is it and slope’), (‘Three-year Sannen-zaka is this length; odhr nthe in here sold slope, ewe the between corpse-bearer course. of sa they so Or con genus h burial the wo re in of sprig a by ilaigt call little to a misleading is It uncertain. is which of ch jigoku Mukae-gane eigd)and demi-gods) h adn n tthe at and garden, the door a in Thro window small of a set to short leads a steps right the to temple, the of As used. himself no Ono that otherworld belief and legend to its in and them, amongst right sits Rokudochinno-ji ihabmo co bamboo a with stone-lined square, a see this (o-shorai-san and calls, Underworld, the in heard be can bell. the sound Th to it and on structure, pull the pilgrims of side the in hole a a here, body; the be immediatel house bell a building, on tothe next passing before figures these na on struck usually ti rung. is it the in but structure, sight the from within enclosed is bell the that in r alms. dadcib;hr,i a become has it here, climbs; and ad ikusho rwt epewoetogt ar thoughts whose people with ar yo Ja Ho n oehr nti iiiythe vicinity this in somewhere And Rokudo Th si yblcgesture, symbolic a is is rl which rl awa ve wo d), ro dteEmma-do. the nd eiaeSt fKiyo-Mizu of Site Heritage d panese g hswindo this ugh elhuei nsa,ntonl not unusual, is house bell e wev ev ya sucran spspr or passport as uncertain) is yo fteipiain ftename: the of implications the of (Hell), wa e iha action an with pe, rl rmteUdrol.But Underworld. the from y shura Th npls h netrsoul ancestor the pulls, en c costethreshold the across nce ildewti three within die will u d. (animals), Ta rtesoul the er ter’) ye Ja ulcmlmn comprises complement full e , gr 5 as auadsedd with descended, kamura yo a nsa occurrence unusual (an w ec,tebl scalled is bell the Hence, aeetml el ar bells temple panese r‘ecmn Bell’. ‘Welcoming or fo ud h precise the ound, y, in wo gaki ( ave ro we Te tml and stumble u koe n h precise the and lklore, asuras, wo ysw by usd h ud books guide the outside ay, Ky rl dt the to ad Au tenjo gr wev pe(one AD (founded mple yo ro rs l ha uld kno ds; ve t ilc)bc to back dialect) oto ud s according is, ounds To ab (hung utfesti gust To dwiemeditating while ed fo epordsfrom protrudes pe u w, ningen r. , nigahammer a inging er wa ieoaburial a ribeno u 150 out wa ye nr ncertain on entry r fa otlt the to portal a w, (Hea ieofunerar ribeno rambi or Th yo yo , fa etemi hall main the ce wg r still are twigs w ugd from judged, s ehp fe perhaps ve are on carried s re Ta ye ry a okinto look can u ilcome will u end r is awa we very est h six the to fers www.forteantimes nanotice a on d ve kamur arri wa fo spirits), tehuman (the l topped ll, va ya n). hsbell this r from y fa va the s popular ve yo ex ,and l, rd lo this on ll ye wa lent at d will u tent a in s FT ars. w y 335 ro s e e e y y ute .c 75 om . y ground, though, as it seems that here known as yureiko-sodate (ghost-child- bodies were left to the elements, rather rearing) candy. 9 than buried – this spot on the edge of There are other hints along the ancient Kyoto was really an excarnation road of Matsubara-dori’s link with mortuary. This practice, in which underworld concepts – shops selling bodies were left for birds or beasts to domestic shrines and memorial incense, pick off the flesh, was once relatively and even a specialist butcher selling widespread across the world, giving beef from Omi province may hint at us customs such as the ‘sky burials’ of a time when contact with butchery, Tibetan or North American culture or undertaking and human corpses was the Towers of Silence of Zoroastrian kegare (spiritual defilement), and the tradition [FT153:27]; the place name preserve of Japan’s outcaste group, the may give us a clue: tori means ‘bird’ burakumin. or ‘taken away’, be ‘place’, no ‘field’). 6 So here we have in Kyoto the classic It largely died out in Japan after the elements of a haunted death road, from importation of Buddhism in the sixth otherworld folklore to real-world sites: century; the new religion preferred a Stygian river, a corpseway, temples of cremation and after it was adopted warning and judgment, an underworld as the de facto State faith in the early portal, with the yew as its passport, a seventh century, burial customs began fatalistic saying and a ghost story. As I to follow Buddhist prescription (even dodged another van, another moped, today, funerary customs in Japan rushing past me in the narrow and noisy are conditioned by Buddhism, while street, the real world suddenly became birth, festivals and other life-affirming more incongruous than the liminal. events fall under the remit of the indigenous ritual system of Shinto). It With thanks to Richard Thornhill for is likely, however, that the old practices helpful comments and kanji assistance. lingered on for a while, even after the introduction of cremation, 7 and it was NOTES in 811 that the Buddhist saint Kobo 1 john h & phyllis g Martin, Kyoto: A Cultural Daishi persuaded Kyoto locals to forego Guide, Tuttle, 2002, p85. excarnation for cremation. 7 By that 2 our current understanding of death or spirit roads owes much to the work of john palmer in time, the place had already established articles for The Ley Hunter and paul Devereux’s its funerary identity. It is not known books; see especially his Haunted Land where the boundaries of the Toribeno (piatkus, 2001), pp58-72, and Fairy Paths & mortuary lay, but at least part of the Spirit Roads (Vega, 2003), pp25-36. old ground today is occupied by the 3 saifuku-ji guidebook (english) also contains massive necropolis of the Nishi-Otani colour reproductions of the paintings. Mausoleum. 4 Another reason may be that death customs are not generally thought to be viable tourist Could it be, however, that Kiyo-Mizu attractions, or that this area, where many Temple, founded less than 15 years residents’ occupations would inevitably before Kobo Daishi’s injunction, was have been connected with death rites, was built upon the main part of the old once stigmatised in the old japanese caste system. Contact with death in japanese excarnation area as part of a Buddhist traditions is strong kegare, a severe religious purification and sanctification of and social pollution. suzanne Marie gay, ground used for the old rites? To one The Moneylenders of Late Medieval Kyoto, side of the mound on which the temple University of hawaii, 1999, p30. sits, a bank of small stone statues – 5 john hart benson, jr., “Kyoto welcomes back mostly small Jizo figures offered to the dear departed”, Japan Times, 9 Aug 2000. th the souls of small children, but also 6 The 12 -century Gaki Zoshi (‘scroll of the hungry ghosts’, in Tokyo’s national Museum) containing some dosojin or couple illustrates, complete with demons and dogs, images – may imply a concentration of excarnation practice in japan. traditional ‘soul power’ at this spot. 7 There was possibly an issue of economic Covering this ground, then, we have status in the choice of disposal, in that trodden the path of countless souls, official buddhist cremation rites would seem likely to confer ‘value-added’ expense, still remembered in religious sites and while excarnation may have been a kind of folklore, but there is more to tell.There communal fly-tipping option. is a fine tale centred on a candy shop however, he found he’d lost her, just TOP: Toribeno 8 http://darumamuseumgallery.blogspot. in Matsubara-dori, and it is a classic as the road reached the edge of the cemetery today, com/2008/01/toribeno-grounds.html. Karen example of what you might expect in cemetery. He stood there, baffled, and with Kiyo-Mizu M gerhart, The Material Culture of Death in such a liminal area. then he heard the sound of a baby Temple in the Medieval Japan, University of hawaii press, 2009. The proprietor of the shop had a crying. He followed the sound, and it background. 9 A Chinese tale thought to date from the surprise customer near midnight one came from within a tomb. He quickly song Dynasty (960-1279), which overlapped night. A distraught and dishevelled alerted cemetery officials, and ythe CEnTRE: jizo with japan’s heian period (794-1185) to which young woman rushed into his shop, opened the vault. It was the last resting figures in Kiyo- much of this article relates, is a close correlate pleading for some honeyed candy place of a young woman who had died of this story. judith T Zeitlin, The Phantom Mizu-Dera. Heroine, University of hawaii press, 2007, p36. because her child was crying, and left – or was thought to have died – while quickly. An occasional customer of this pregnant. She was certainly dead sort might be expected in any live-in now, but her child, born in the tomb, ABOVE: The JOhn BiLLingsLEy has sloping street shop, but this lady came every night was alive and hungry beside her. Her written on the history and of sannen- folklore of West yorkshire, and at about the same time, in the same distraught spirit had hit on a strange zaka, part of japan. he has been closely state of anxiety, and rushed off. After a but effective way to save her child. Matsubara’s involved with the earth mysteries and week of this, the shopkeeper decided to The original sweet shop has gone, but circular pilgrim follow her, keeping a discreet distance Minatoya opposite Saifuku-ji still sells course. antiquarian scene for over 30 years, as she hurried up the street. Suddenly, the candy the mother asked for – now and edits a leading journal in that field.

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

The bodies of Voncile Smith, 77, and her him because she feared he would start two sons, Richard, 49, and John, 47, telling people she was making him ill. Her MONTH were discovered in their Florida home actions were “nothing short of torture,” – 4605 Deerfield Drive, Pensacola she said. Although there was no mention – on 31 July when one of the sons’ of it in the courtroom, this was probably a employers realised he hadn’t shown case of Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy, up for work. Voncile and John both died officially recognised in the US in 2013 as of blunt force trauma from hammer blows “factitious disorder imposed on another” (FDIA and had their throats cut. Richard was shot in or FDIoA). In the UK, it is known as “fabricated the ear as he came into the house, and also or induced illness by carers” (FII). [AP] 2 Mar; had his throat cut. No evidence of a forcible (Queensland) Courier-Mail, 10 April 2015. entry was found and, while police had spoken with a person of interest in the case, no arrests A 77-year-old woman from Lander in Wyoming were made. “It appears that this might be died on 3 October after contracting what is connected to some type of Wiccan ritual killing believed to be the state’s first confirmed human and possibly tied to the blue moon,” said Sgt rabies case. She had contracted the disease in Andrew Hobbes from Escambia County Sheriff’s August after being bitten by a bat, and began Office. (A so-called ‘blue’ moon occurs when showing symptoms a few weeks later. A state there are two full moons in the same calendar health official said there were only one ortwo month.) They had reached this conclusion, he human rabies cases in the US each year. [AP] 7 forbidden fruit said, because of “the injuries to the victims, Oct 2015. GENERAL GORDON’S SEARCH FOR the positions of the bodies – and our person of interest has some ties to a faith or religion that Shortly after a death-by-elephant in Germany THE GARDEN OF EDEN is indicative of that.” The deaths had occurred [FT330:80], Margarita Metallinou, 29, was also three days earlier, on 28 July. [NBC] 4 Aug; Irish killed by an elephant. The American researcher Independent, 7 Aug 2015. was working in the Kafue National Park in Zambia with two male colleagues when the accident A Zimbabwean Christian trying to fast for 40 days happened. Dr Metallinou’s screams alerted her and 40 nights in imitation of Jesus died a month colleagues, who managed to run away. Though into his attempt. Khulu Reinfirst Manyuka, 73, left the circumstances were unclear, bull elephants his home and went into the wilderness to pray, are particularly aggressive when in musth – a echoing Jesus’s actions in Matthew 4:1-11 and condition where levels of reproductive hormones Luke 4:1-13. Manyuka was known by his family rise dramatically. D.Telegraph, 7 July 2015. and local community as “a very spiritual person whose faith could move mountains”. A family Two suicide bombers died in Pakistan’s Punjab member said that he had no history of illness: province after getting into a fight with each “He was a healthy and religious old man who other and triggering one of the explosive did not even look his age.” His body was found devices they were wearing. MX News (Sydney), by a stranger who notified the police. Christian 11 June 2015. round the horns scholars are divided over whether Jesus’s fast THE STORy OF THE ABBOTS was for a literal 40 days or whether this was a James Rogers, 72, from Port Arthur, Texas, died symbolic number, and on whether it involved of heat exhaustion on 8 June inside his 2007 BROMLEy HORN DANCE a total abstinence from all food and water. Chevrolet Corvette, along with his shih-tzu dog christiantoday.com, 14 Aug 2015. Leia, after a battery cable had come loose and he couldn’t open the doors and windows – or sound A teenage gamer died after playing online for the horn. The accident is not uncommon for some + 22 days in a row. The 17-year-old, known only Corvette models, but there is a manual release on as Rustem, collapsed at his keyboard in Uchaly, the driver’s side that allows occupants to bypass alan garner, Russia, as his in-game persona died. He began the battery, according to owners’ manuals. the kibbo kift, the mammoth stint after breaking his leg on Rogers evidently didn’t know about that. The army 8 August, stopping only to eat and sleep for a veteran and grandfather of five had just stopped zombie politics, few hours at a time. He was taken to hospital, in at a Waffle House, where he was a regular. As anD mUch more… but pronounced dead on arrival. It is thought he he got in his luxury car to leave, the doors and died of a blood clot on his leg similar to those windows locked in the 92˚F (33˚C) heat. He had suffered on long-haul flights. Police said that, in accidentally left his phone inside the restaurant, the last 18 months, Rustem had spent 2,000 so he was unable to call for help. Another regular hours online – equal to 83 days – playing the customer and employees tried to rescue him FORTEAN Warcraft game Defence of the Ancients. Sun, 4 but couldn’t get the doors open. A firefighter Sept 2015. eventually broke a window, but Rogers and his dog were already dead. New York Daily News, 11 June; Lacey Spears, 27, of Scottsville, Kentucky, Sun, 12 June 2015. TIMES has been jailed for 20 years for killing her five- year-old son by poisoning him with salt to gain attention online. She fed Garnett-Paul Spears salt through a breathing tube from infancy THE FORTEAN TIMES while writing about his mysterious illness on a BOOK OF STRANGE personal blog – as well as on Facebook, Twitter DEATHS VOL 2 and MySpace – from her apartment in Chestnut ON SALE NOW FROM Ridge, New York. The wretched infant died on 23 336 WH SMITH AND AMAZON.CO.UK January 2014. Assistant District Attorney Patricia TO ORDER DIRECT CALL 0844 844 0053 Murphy suggested that Spears eventually killed ON SALE 7 JAN 2016 By Phil Busby asked to jointhe team,and nowshe WRITING and her husband get expenses paid trips all over the world in exchange for oyou fancy achallenge? What reviews! Dabout thechancetomakesome AJob with AllSorts money,get VIP access to major These are just some of the many sporting and culturalevents, or free inspirational true stories from Writers holidays abroad? Howwouldyou of Opportunitiesfor Bureau students. 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