sign in sign up
<<
Home , British big cats, Calderstones Park, Daphne Oram, Fortean Times, Hellmouth, Oldest people

THE 'IT' FACTOR REVOLUTION IN THE HEAD INSIDE PUTIN'S VIRTUAL RUSSIA SINISTER CLOWNS SPREAD GOING UNDERGROUND UNCOVERING A TUNNEL TO HADES TERROR ACROSS THE USA CRYING WOLF CHILDREN ABDUCTED BY ANIMALS

FT346 NOVEMBER 2016 £4.25

CELLULOID HITLER'S THE DEVIL INFERNO HELLMOUTH IN STEREO BRINGING TO THE DARK SECRETS THE AMAZING ART THE SILVER SCREEN OF HRAD HOUSKA OF THE DIABLERIES

Fortean Times 346

strange days

Rains of meat, catfish from the sky, creepy clowns, attack of the sea potatoes, world’s oldest people, signals from space, self-immolating ancients, EU aliens, pioneer potheads and CONTENTS early brewers, the lost city that wasn’t – and much more. 05 THE CONSPIRASPHERE 22 NECROLOG 14 ARCHAEOLOGY 23 FAIRIES & FORTEANA the world of strange phenomena 15 CLASSICAL CORNER 24 FLYING SORCERY 16 SCIENCE 25 UFO CASEBOOK features

COVER STORY 26 DIABLERIES: THE DEVIL IN 3-D In the 19th century, Paris was overtaken by a new sensation – stereoscopic cards in which the Devil and all his works were shown in astonishing, and often humourously satirical, detail. BRIAN MAY tells how he fell under their diabolical spell and with fellow fi ends DENIS PELLERIN & PAULA FLEMING explores the technological and cultural background of these hellish creations. 32 A VISIT TO THE UNDERWORLD MIKE DASH examines the unsolved mystery of the tunnels at Baia. Did ancient priests fool visitors to a sulphurous

NDON STEREOSCOPIC COMPANY subterranean stream into believing that they had crossed LO 26 THE DEVIL IN 3-D the River Styx and entered Hades? The diabolical pleasures of the ‘Diableries’ stereoscopic cards 38 DARKNESS VISIBLE: HELL IN THE CINEMA Ever since the silent era, fi lmmakers have been putting their visions of Hell on the silver screen, and much of their inspiration derives from a 14th century Italian poet and a 19th century French artist. PETER LAWS descends to the fi ery pits in search of the template for this celluloid inferno. forum

51 Spirits of Place by FR Maher 52 There will be dragons by Jerome Clark reports 38 DARKNESS VISIBLE 32 A VISIT TO THE UNDERWORLD Dante’s Inferno on the cinema screen Excavating an entrance to Hades 44 STRANGE STATESMEN No 14. All the world’s a stage: Putin’s virtual Russia 48 BUILDING A FORTEAN LIBRARY No 14. The Mothman Prophecies 70 FORTEAN TRAVELLER No 108. Hrad Houska, 74 STORIES FROM THE ILLUSTRATED POLICE NEWS No 51. Help! My baby was taken by a... regulars WSE TO 02 EDITORIAL 69 IT HAPPENED TO ME MARK OWENN RICHARDSON 70 HITLER’S HELLMOUTH 8 CLOWNS FROM HELL 55 REVIEWS 79 PHENOMENOMIX The Satanic secrets of Hrad Houska Men with outsize feet spread fear 65 LETTERS 80 STRANGE DEATHS

COVER: LONDON STEREOSCOPIC COMPANY FT346 1 TOP FLASH: CLOWN ILLUSTRATION - OWEN RICHARDSON www.forteantimes.com

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 A hell of an issue... SUbScriptioN eNqUirieS ANd bAck iSSUeS www.subsinfo.co.uk [email protected] hEll oN EArth No lAuGhiNG mAttEr? FORTEAN TIMES is produced for by Wild Talents Ltd. Postal address: Fortean Times, Welcome to our Hallowe’en issue, where we Coulrophobes should perhaps skip a few pages PO BOX 71602, London E17 0QD. turn our attention to the spookier end of the this issue or face their own personal Hell. While You can manage your existing subscription through fortean spectrum.This year, however, we avoid the annual ‘Clown Service’ in East London (p6) is http://www.subsinfo.co.uk/ – this should be your first port the usual trick-or-treaters – , ghouls, an innocent affair, the activities of sinister clowns of call if you have any queries about your subscription. witches and werewolves – and focus instead on elsewhere – specifically the states of North and Change your address, renew your subscription or report problems a place: Hell. Satan’s infernal realm might not South Carolina – has been cause for concern. UK subscriptions: 0844 844 0049 be an actual place, of course, but a theological We’ve been reporting on similar ‘creepy clown’ USA & subscriptions: (+1) 800-428-3003 (toll free) conceit, a powerful metaphor, an existential panics for some time now, but this year’s outbreak Fax (+1) 757-428-6253 email [email protected] Other overseas subscriptions: +44 (0)1795 592 909 state, or just other people; nonetheless, it seems not only to show no sign of abating but is, Fax: +44 (0)1795 414 555 has been searched for and as we go to press, spreading sometimes found.The further afield.While the licENSiNG & SYNDicAtioN Fortean times IS AvAILABLE FOR ancients believed Hades South Carolina incidents INTERNATIONAL LICENSINg AND SYNDICATION – CONTACT: could be entered in the continued – from Lexington, Syndication Senior Manager ANj DOSAj-HALAI TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 6132 sulphurous environs of SC, came a report of a clown [email protected] Lake Avernus, and – as and someone dressed as a Licensing Manager CARLOTTA SERANTONI TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 6550 Mike Dash explains (p32) bear (!) attempting to entice [email protected] – a controversial find made children into their car – news Licensing & Syndication Assistant NICOLE ADAMS TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 6134 in the 1950s revealed a arrived of clown sightings [email protected] mysterious system of tunnels across the southern States, You cAN rEAch Ft oN thE iNtErNEt that might have been the in Louisiana, Kentucky, www.forteantimes.com setting for a ritualistic Maryland, Mississippi, journey across the Styx. Alabama and Georgia; there © Copyright Dennis Publishing Limited There are other candidates was even one weird outlier for the title of Gateway as far north as Pennsylvania. pUbliSHed bY prodUctioN execUtiVe to Hell (see FT260:46-48, Some of these incidents were lAwreNce brookeS deNNiS pUbliSHiNg, 020 7907 6062 307:20-21) and Mark Towse accompanied by threatening 30 cleveland Street lawrence_brookes@ IN ROSS

visited one such in the Czech messages posted on social RT dennis.co.uk london w1t 4Jd, Uk Republic (p70): a spooky media, others appeared to MA tel: 020 7907 6000 AdVertiSiNg director SteVe NicolAoU castle full of dark secrets, "Reverend green! Fancy seeing you here, have been fabricated by groUp pUbliSHer 020 7907 6633 built, say the stories, over a you dark horse!" children, perhaps as pranks, iAN weStwood steve_nicolaou@ gaping, abysmal pit whence malicious or otherwise. A full 020 7907 6000 dennis.co.uk emerged winged monsters and men driven mad. follow-up report will appear next issue. circUlAtioN mANAger SAleS execUtiVe In the 14th century, Dante made an imaginary Perhaps the increasingly visible figure of the JAmeS mANgAN brAdleY beAVer james.mangan@ 020 7907 6701 descent into the titular Inferno of his poem, creepy clown is set to displace more traditional seymour.co.uk bradley_beaver@ inspiring the epic visual treatment of Hell in Hallowe’en bogeymen (and women): around this export circUlAtioN dennis.co.uk Doré’s celebrated 19th century illustrations, time last year, Tonbridge in was gripped by mANAger SAleS execUtiVe gerAldiNe grobler imogeN williAmS which in turn reverberated through the whole of its own clown panic when a masked female figure geraldine.grobler@ 020 7907 6247 the 20th century as filmmakers translated this was seen approaching young schoolchildren. seymour.co.uk imogen_williams@ rich seam of imagery into their own popcorn- Teachers issued warnings, the police investigated dennis.co.uk fuelled visions of the abode of the damned, as and parents fretted. The culprit turned out to PriNtED BY WYNDEHAM BICESTER Rev Peter Laws explains (p38). Cinema might be an 18-year-old girl who was “helping police DiStriButioN have been the ultimate expression of 19th with their enquiries”.The cops suggested Distributed in uK, ireland and worldwide century optical technology, morphing into the that the run-up to Hallowe’en was probably to by Seymour Distribution Ltd. 2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT dominant entertainment form of the 20th, but blame for her activities, and that there was no Tel: 020 7429 4000 / Fax: 020 7429 4001 between Dante and DeMille there were all sorts connection with “a number of different reports Queries on overseas availability should be emailed to [email protected] of fascinating, if shorter-lived, media equally in recent weeks, involving people travelling in Speciality store distribution by Worldwide Magazine obsessed with the Devil and all his works. vans and approaching children”; which might Distribution Ltd, Tel: 0121 788 3112 Fax: 0121 788 1272 One of the most fascinating and bewitching have been reassuring… aside from the fact that StANDArD SuBScriPtioN rAtES 12 issues: UK £39.98; EU £47.50 of all remains the ‘Diableries’ – stereoscopic these mystery van drivers were also described as cards looked at through a special viewer that clowns… (Kent Online, 9 + 23 Oct; D.Mirror, 17 Oct Fortean times (USPS 023-226) is published every four weeks by Dennis Publishing Ltd, 30 Cleveland Street, London, W1P 4JD, . brought the exquisitely-wrought images to 2015). The US annual subscription price is $89.99. glorious three-dimensional life.These late-19th Airfreight and mailing in the USA is by Agent named Air Business, C/O Worldnet Shipping USA Inc., 149-35 177th Street, , century creations drew on peculiarly French

New York, 11434. traditions of satirical literature and cartoons daVid r SUTToN Periodical postage paid at Jamaica, NY 11431, USA. to mock both contemporary Parisian life and US Postmaster: Send address changes to: Fortean Times, 3330 Pacific Avenue, Suite 500, Virginia Beach, VA, 23451-2983, USA. the old-fashioned Satan of the Church. Hell, in bob rickard PaUL SiEVEkiNG REST OF THE WORLD £55; US $89.99 ($161.98 for 24 issues) many of these remarkable images, looks a lot DENNiS PuBliShiNG limitED like ordinary life – and a lot like fun, to boot. GrouP cFo/coo BRETT REYNOLDS Celebrated musician Brian May, and fellow ExEcutivE DirEctor KERIN O’CONNOR chiEF ExEcutivE jAMES TYE members of the London Stereoscopic Company Why fortean? comPANY FouNDEr Denis Pellerin and Pauline Fleming, share some Everything you always wanted to of the gems of their collections and provide Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations. know about Fortean Times but Circulation 14,320 (jan-Dec 2015) some historical background to these playful were too paranoid to ask! Printed in the UK. ISSN: 0308 5899 visions of Hell on Earth (p26). © Fortean Times: SEPTEMBER 2016 SEE PAGE 78

2 FT346 www.forteantimes.com

a digest of the worldwide weird strangedays

it might have been head, face and neck, because I smelled so bad Falls of flesh and fish afterwards,” she said. At first, she thought there were fish guts on her face, but it turned out to be a cut near her left eye. Later, her Blood and meat on the roof, plus a plummeting catfish in Philadelphia face started swelling. Witnesses reported seeing a bird flying raiN of Meat away – a vulture or hawk or eagle, On 6 September 2016, a woman maybe.The catfish was about in Puente Picún Leufú, a 16in (40cm) long, and weighed hamlet of 540 inhabitants in about 5lb (2.3kg). Based on the the Argentinean province of height of the trees in the locality, Neuquén, heard several bangs Lobree said, the fish probably coming from her roof. Her fell at least 50ft (15m), striking neighbour thought it must be branches along the way. “It’s hail, although the sky was clear. a crazy, crazy thing,” she said. When he went out to investigate, That afternoon, she developed however, he found dozens of a 101-degree fever, which she pieces of torn flesh and traces said was rare for her. Her doctor ebook of blood. When the woman’s prescribed antibiotics, but the fac husband returned from working fever went away on its own. It

bree / in the fields, it was decided to might have just been from the Lo report the incident to the police trauma, the doctor suggested.

Lisa in Zapala. Blood and meat was Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 Sept; found in a radius of 50m (164ft). kcbd.com, 12 Sept 2016. The meat was fresh, lean and had ABOVE: Lisa Lobree and the offending, no bones. It was said to be animal At first, she descending catfish. fishfall iN BaNff meat (rather than human?), but Kevin Bain from Banff, no more specific identification thought there species of vulture are found in , asked for help has been given so far. No one had Kentucky – the black vulture in identifying 75 small fish, 2in heard any aircraft or helicopters were fish guts Coragyps atratus and the turkey (5cm) long, that appeared in his in the vicinity. Contexto (San vulture Cathartes aura – both of back garden on 11 August. He Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina), on her face which are known to expel their lives about 500m (1,640ft) from losandes.com, 9 Sept 2016. stomach contents as either a the sea and believed the fish defence mechanism or to make were sand eels deposited by a • Flesh and blood fell at from 2x2in (5x5cm) to 4x4in themselves light enough for waterspout. BBC News, 12 Aug Chatillon-sur-Seine in (10x10cm) – were “perfectly flight. wevHo er, the witnesses 2016. on 17 March 1669 (Records of fresh”. He ate some and found to the meat rain saw neither Fish falls, of course, are a French Academy); on Santa Clara they tasted like “mutton or vultures nor any other birds. fortean favourite. Many have County, California, in about June venison”. Analysis appearing in Sources: Fort, Book of the occurred without accompanying 1869 and in Los Nietos Township, the publication Medical Record Damned (1919), chap.4; NewYork wind, and fish veha sometimes California, on 1 August 1869 (San identified some samples as lung Times, 10 Mar 1876; Scientific fallen on the same spot for such Francisco Evening Bulletin, 9 tissue from either a horse or a American, Dec 2014; list of extended periods of time (up Aug 1869). Unspecified “animal human infant. Further analysis ‘fafrotskies’ (things that FAll to 10 minutes) that constantly matter” fell in Genoa, , in also found some kind of animal FROm The SKIES) compiled moving whirlwinds would seem 1870 (Comptes Rendus 56-972). cartilage. However, a local by Marion L Fawcett for Ivan to be ruled out. For five tove se n minutes on 27 hunter, BF Ellington, confidently T Sanderson’s Investigating the Scores of small fish fell in August 1968, flesh and blood identified it as “bear meat”. An Unexplained, 1972; Michell & the Chilaw district of west Sri fell on an area of one square actual sample can be viewed Rickard, Phenomena, 1977, p.15.] Lanka on 5 May 2014.They were kilometre between Cocpava and today at the Monroe Moosnick 3in to 5in (5-8cm) long with a São José dos Campos in Medical and Science Museum Catfish assaUlt total weight of 110lb (50kg). (São Paulo papers, 30 Aug 1968). at Transylvania University in At about 9am on 5 September Those that were still alive were Flakes of flesh fell from a Lexington, Kentucky. Perhaps 2016, Lisa Lobree was walking to put in buckets of water and clear sky on Allen Crouch’s the most feasible explanation a Labor Day exercise class near later eaten [FT315:5]. Paul farm near Olympian Springs, was given in an 1876 edition of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Cropper has recently suggested Kentucky, on 3 March 1876, the Louisville Medical News by when she heard a “rustling” in an earthbound explanation for covering an area of 300ft by a Dr LD Kastenbine. He said the trees, and was smacked in some of the sudden appearances 150ft (91x46m). A witness it was a coordinated bout of the face by a plummeting catfish. of spangled perch in the arid found that the meat flakes – projectile vulture vomit.Two She collapsed screaming. “I think Australian outback [FT345:24].

4 fT346 www.forteantimes.com haviNg the i waNt to take Me to ‘it’ faCtor live forever yoUr leader Creepy clowns The world’s super- Jean-Claude spread fear and and Juncker says that loathing across their tips for a ET is keeping an the Carolinas long, happy life eye on the EU. Page 8 Page 18 Page 24

The Conspirasphere Extra! Extra!

Noel rooNey wonders what millennials make of 9/11, and finds that the 15th anniversary of FT’s FavouriTe headlines the fall of the twin towers wasn’t always marked in the best possible taste... From around The world it is 15 years since the borrow and slightly wrench a attack on the twin towers of term from slavoj Žižek) the the World Trade center and parallax pantheon, and acts the Pentagon, the biggest as a shibboleth betraying terrorist attack in modern one’s entire attitude to the history, which heralded the legitimacy, or otherwise, of infamous War on Terror, and the received view of recent, triggered more conspiracy and indeed all, history. You theories than any event either believe that 19 islamic since the assassination of terrorists, inspired if not John f kennedy and perhaps commissioned by osama bin beyond. it was the first such Laden, pulled off the crime of event to be broadcast live the century, or you believe that Guardian, 25 July 2015. across 24-hour media, and the first of that the whole event was some form of false flag scale to occur during the age of the internet; and that mainstream explanations are fatally so its treatment in both the mainstream flawed. There is no middle position on 9/11, and contrarian communities served as and both default positions are nothing more templates for much of what has followed. or less than articles of faith. Looking at how the anniversary is being in the light of all this, some of the treated in various media environments, anniversary phenomena appearing online Sun, 18 July 2015. a number of things occurred to me. all of are puzzling and even bizarre. The weirdest them hinge on how 9/11 has entered the came from the world of advertising, dubious category of ‘historical events’, real and otherwise. first, there was the and the position it now occupies in the folk Walmart tribute feature laid on by coca memory of millions of people, by no means cola, featuring twin towers of, yes, coke all of them american. Whatever your opinion bottles, in a florida store. Then there was on the events of 9/11, there is no doubt the 9/11 Twin Towers promotion by about its uniquely important place in recent Mattress in Texas, a video ad featuring D.Telegraph, 13 July 2015. history. twin towers of mattresses flown into by or is there? i was intrigued by a number smiling salespeople, with the breathtakingly of articles and videos recording the views of tasteless ‘We will never forget’ strapline younger americans; a whole generation has spoken in all sincerity, apparently. finally, emerged that is too young to have had the there was the hoax subway advert posted visceral experience of the tragedy shared by venerable satirical magazine The Onion, by most of this article’s readers. The vague offering two foot-long subs for $9.11, awareness those young people display, and featuring a flying consumer about to ABC News (), 2 July 2015. and their lack of factual knowledge about demolish the towering snacks. the event, shocked me. an era-defining Would any other human tragedy on a event that occurred only 15 years ago has similar scale provoke such unsubtle slabs become, for many, no more than a vague, of post-modernist humour? i doubt it, and ominous shape in the miasma that is the i wonder what that says about 9/11, and historical past. about us. for those who do remember, often with Palm Beach (FL) Post, 20 June 2015. a strange, dream-like clarity, where they https://sputniknews.com/art_ were and what they were doing when the living/20160909/1045151206/911- first plane struck the North tower, a very millennials-mark-dice.html; www.cnet.com/ different 9/11 looms over almost all other news/mattress-stores-911-ad-appalls-the- recent historical and political events, one web/; www.cnet.com/news/coca-cola-takes- which shapes and defines opinions and down-walmart-display-in-shape-of-911-twin- attitudes, particularly in the conspirasphere. towers/subway-honors-the-onions-offensive- D.Mirror (online), 20 June 2015. it occupies a canonical position in (to 9-11-coupon-1324655816

fT346 5 www.forteantimes.com send in the clowns

On 7 February 2016, clowns gathered at All Saints Church in Haggerston, London, for the 70th service commemorating celebrated English clown Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837). An annual tradition since 1946, the service has seen a steady decline in the number of clowns in attendance, perhaps a sign of our coulrophobic times. For the Anglican Church’s own clown priest, see p22; and for clowns of a distinctly creepy variety, turn the page. PHOTOS: DAN kiTwOOD/GETTy imAGES FT199 7 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

SIDELINES... Creepy clowns return TINY DISASTER After weeks of intricate work, Willard Wigan, 58, had almost finished a minuscule Men in oversized shoes spread fear across the Carolinas sculpture of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, small enough to LEFT: Fleetwood Manor, where be displayed in the eye of a clowns were reportedly luring local needle, when he breathed in children into nearby woods. and swallowed it. Sun, 7 July BELOW: The letter warning residents 2016. about the creepy clowns. GOD’S PUNISHMENT Christian lobbyist Tony Perkins, the woods flashing green laser 53, president of the Family lights” before running away. The Research Council, said last year following night, at around 10pm, that God sends natural disasters the woman said that her elder as punishment for abortion son heard “chains and banging” and gay marriage, and that at their front door. Around 2pm pædophilia is a “homosexual on 20 August, another resident problem”. On 13 August 2016 he fled his Louisiana house in said she came across “a large- a canoe when it was inundated figured clown with blinking with floodwater 10ft (3m) deep. nose”, standing under a street Independent online, 18 Aug light near the garbage dumpster 2016. area.” The clown waved at her so she waved back and kept HOOKED BY THE Residents of the small South police chief, who cited a state law walking. Police also interviewed JOHNSON Carolina town of Greenville were banning residents over 16 from children who told them clowns Nudist swimmer ‘Herbert on high alert for sightings of wearing a mask or anything else tried “to persuade them into Fendt’ (pseudonym) felt a sinister clowns following reports that hides their identity in public, the woods further by displaying sharp pain, found a fishing line that men with luminous noses unless for means of employment. large amounts of money.” A and realised an angler had and oversized shoes might be The sightings began on 19 12-year-old told them they had hooked his penis. The incident trying to lure children into nearby August when an unnamed seen two clowns in their garden. happened at the Kaisersee, woods.There had been “a lot of resident told the police that her One had red hair and the other a lake in Augsburg, Bavaria. complaints to the office regarding son had seen clowns “whispering a white mask and body suit.The Fendt cried out “Do not pull! a clown or a person dressed in and making strange noises” in the children said they believed the Do not pull!” The angler cut clown clothing taking children nearby woods.The resident said clowns lived in a house near a the line and the hook was removed in hospital. D.Mirror or trying to lure children in the she later saw “several clowns in pond at the end of a trail in the (online), 23 Aug 2016. woods,” administrators woods. Police found of Fleetwood Manor the house, but no NO LAUGHING MATTER Apartments wrote to clowns or any signs of Stuart Price, 36, was cycling residents on 24 August. suspicious activity. through Gordano Valley near Police began daily One motorist when he saw a hyena patrols of the town and caught a fleeting running wild. “People are go- the apartment complex, glimpse of a figure ing to laugh at this,” he said, where parents said their standing by the “but I heard it and saw it.” He children had come home side of the road reported it to the police and with stories of speaking wearing a “clown was told: “It was not the first”. to clowns. Resident mask” and a clear However, Avon and Donna Arnold said she rain poncho before Police had no record of any called the police after disappearing into the hyena sightings. Sun, 19 Aug one of her sons told her woods. On 30 August, 2016. he had seen a clown children chased OUT OF LUCK behind the basketball two clowns through Mr Zou, a Chinese motorist, court.The next day the Shemwood paid more than £100,000 for about 30 children came Apartments complex. a ‘lucky 88888 licence plate, up to her and told her One had a red nose believing he would be blessed that there were clowns and red hair but by good fortune. However, po- in the woods. “It’s no face paint.The lice stopped him eight times illegal. It’s dangerous. clowns broke through in one day, not believing it was It’s inappropriate, and a wooden fence to authentic. Mr Zou concluded it’s creating community get away. A third it was “just too much trouble”. concern so it needs to clown was waiting D.Telegraph, 30 June 2016. stop,” said Greenville’s in a car – said to be

8 FT346 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

a new model black Honda.The SIDELINES... other two clowns jumped in and they sped off. Earlier that day, MORE BLOODY TEARS over 600 miles (965km) away in Church-goers at the remote Columbus, Ohio, a 14-year-old venue in Manuripi-Heath Amazo- boy on his way to school at about nian Wildlife National Reserve in 6.15am said a 6ft (1.8m) man in a Bolivia claim a statue of the Vir- clown mask, dressed all in black, gin Mary began weeping blood wearing a glove on his right hand around 12 August. Samples of and a bandage on his left, chased the liquid were taken to medics him with a knife. He was able to at a local beach hut to work out get away by hurling a rock at the if it was human. Meanwhile in menacing figure and running to a Colombia, another BVM statue bus stop. was attracting pilgrims after it On 31 August a particularly reportedly cried a single tear of blood. dailystar.co.uk, 19 Aug observant woman saw a man 2016. dressed as a clown standing and ABOVE: This clown photo went viral but turned out to be a film publicity stunt. starring at her while she was in BAD VIBRATIONS a Greenville laundromat around A hum, first noticed by 5:20pm. He didn’t say anything. Police began Brandon Moody (26) and Rebecca residents near Ponsanooth, She left, but he didn’t follow her. Moody (27) with making separate , in May, was still She said he was 35 to 45 years daily patrols of false reports claiming that unexplained in July. The low old, 5ft10in (178cm) and slightly people dressed as clowns were frequency vibration could overweight (190-210lb/86-95kg). the town and trying to lure children into a be felt through the floor and He was clean-shaven, had dark white van.The police found two even through furniture. Emma eyes, and was wearing a white apartments people in a white van who had Williams said it was present swimmer’s cap with neon or red run out of petrol, but no clown 24 hours a day, every day. Her hair coming out of the sides, and masks or costumes.The Moodies husband couldn’t hear it, but white face paint with a black roaming the streets at night then admitted their calls were a her daughter and other visitors painted line starting between carrying four black balloons. hoax. On 15 September, several could. One sleepless night, his eyebrows and ending at his Photos of the clown went viral, cryptic posts from the Facebook Mrs Williams went driving to upper lip. He was wearing a grey but the whole thing turned out to page of a group known as the see how far the hum could be heard; at 12 miles (19km), it long-sleeve T-shirt, white gloves, be a marketing ploy for a film. ‘Flomo Klowns’ put two southern disappeared. Western Morning and white “balloon” pants. He Around 8.30pm on 4 Alabama schools – Flomaton News, 2 July 2016. smelled of house paint. September, a clown in Winston- High School and Flomaton Around 10.25pm the same Salem, North Carolina – some Elementary School in Atmore RIPE FOR RIBBING day, a woman in Spartanburg 175 miles (280km) northeast of – on lock down until 11.30am. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s in a neighbouring county saw Greenville – tried to lure children Earlier reports said that the new son has been named someone dressed as a clown in into the woods with treats. He was clowns were sighted near the River Rocket Oliver. His older her backyard. She took a photo reportedly seen by two children schools but a police spokesman siblings are Poppy Honey (14), and the person ran off. She called and heard, but not seen, by one said this was inaccurate. Daisy Boo (12), Petal Blossom the police, but her photo was too adult. He was wearing white A 2014 poll by Rasmussen (seven), and Buddy Bear (five). dark to make out any identifying overalls, white gloves, red shoes Reports found that 43 per cent D.Telegraph, 25 Aug 2016. detail. with red bushy hair, a white face of Americans don’t like circus AVIAN GRATITUDE Kelly Montford, owner of Over and a red nose. He fled the area clowns, and millions of Americans There is a well-documented the Top Entertainment, which when police arrived. A second may actually suffer when they case of a woman regularly arranges ordinary clownish clown sighting happened just see one – a condition labelled feeding a robin on the sill of her entertainment, said: “I believe after midnight, two miles from coulrophobia. [CNN] 28 Aug; nbc4. open bedroom window. When there is a chance that [the clown the first.The next day, a clown com, D.Telegraph, 31 Aug; fox6now. she was ill and in bed, unable sightings] could be a big publicity armed with a machete tried com, 1 Sept; nydailynews.com, to feed it, the bird flew into stunt for someone, a haunted (unsuccessfully) to lure a woman newser.com, 2 Sept; [R] 3 Sept; the room and tried to feed her house or some sort of production into woods near Walkertown. [AAP] 4 Sept; myfox8.com, 5+6 some worms. BBC Wildlife, Aug that will be coming in the next Yet another clown was spotted Sept; wnd.com, 6 Sept; Huffington 2016. few months.” One theory was in Greensboro, Guilford County, Post, 7 Sept; NBC News, 8 Sept that the clowns were connected North Carolina, on 6 September. 2016; [AP] al.com (Alabama Media to the release of the independent From his balcony at Oakridge Group), 15 Sept 2016. horror movie 31, by director Apartments near Interstate 73, Rob Zombie. A preview of the Chris Bass saw a man in a white • Waves of creepy clown sightings movie, which features a gang of mask, red curly hair, yellow occur somewhere (especially sadistic clowns, was screened dotted shirt, blue clown pants in the US) almost every year, on 1 September at a Greenville and clown shoes. He gave chase including the last three years cinema. People might have been waving a machete, but the clown [FT307:8, 311:20-21, 321:4, 322:16, thinking of an event a few weeks escaped into woodland. 333:23]. See also “Don’t send in earlier in Green Bay, Wisconsin. On 14 September, police in the clowns” by Tim Weinberg and A dishevelled clown was spotted LaGrange, Georgia, charged Ben Radford [FT226:34-41]. MARTIN ROSS

FT346 9 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

SIDELINES... On ThE mEnu: kniVEs, grAVEL, VinEgAr, hAir, WoOFFBEATrms DIETS fromWAshing the pOWdEr And LEmOn skies curd sAndWichEs ACCIDENTAL REFUGEE A 31-year old backpacker from, Beijing had his wallet • Jarnail Singh, 42, arrived at a stolen in Heidelberg in early hospital in Amritsar, northern July and attempted to find a India, complaining of low appetite, police station, but ended up weight loss and stomach pains.The at an office handling asylum police officer was found to have 40 applications. Speaking knives in his stomach, which were neither German nor English, removed in a five-hour operation he signed an asylum applica- by five surgeons on 19 August. tion form, had his passport “Some were found folded, some confiscated and fingerprints were open, and some had even taken, and was held for 12 started rusting and were broken,” days at a Red Cross hostel at said Dr Jatinder Malhotra. Singh Duelmen near Dortmund. No- had swallowed the knives – some ticing that he was unusually 7in (18cm) long – over two months. well-dressed, staff suspected He had no idea why he started a mistake and sought help from a Mandarin speaker at eating knives but said that he a local Chinese restaurant. “loved” their taste. [CNN] 22 Aug The tourist was released to 24 Aug 2016. continue his European walking tour. BBC News, 8 Aug; [R] • “I love the taste of gravel and eat Sydney Morning Herald, 10 sand with my tea, bread, and even Aug 2016. soup,” stonemason Hans Raj, 45, told reporters in Uttar Pradesh, DELAYED REVENGE India. “I have been eating bricks A retired company director and rocks for around 25 years now, was obliged to pay $4,500 and have never fallen sick. But in costs after destroying his people who eat normal food fall mother’s gravestone with a sick often. I work in the building hammer. Larry Zalcman, 64, trade, and often take out a loose was seen desecrating his brick or the crumbly parts of mother’s grave by a cemetery someone’s house to eat.That’s the attendant in Long Ditton, only way for me to get my regular , in November 2015. dose of rocks. In my opinion, the D.Telegraph, 27 June 2016. minerals in sand give me , BURGLAR as do bits of masonry. My teeth Sarah Nathan, from Hamilton are absolutely fine, and veI ha in New Zealand, was puz- suffered no problems in stomach zled to find “odd pieces” of or mouth.” Last year an Indian men’s clothing in her washing RCROFT IMAGES

woman – Sudama Devi from Kajri BA basket. She then realised Noorpur – claimed that she had that Brigit, a Tonkinese cat, never been ill because she ate 2lb was bringing in the items. In (0.9kg) of sand every day, taking it

two months, her six-year-old like “sugar after a meal”. Metro, 15 DINESH DuBEy / pet had stolen 11 pairs of May 2015; Sun, 10 Feb; Hindustan underpants and 50 socks. Times, 16 Feb 2016. D.Telegraph, 22 Mar 2016. • Ella Ruby Ginn, 19, a make-up artist from Hastings, East , drinks two litre-bottles of vinegar every week. She even carries sachets in her handbag in case she needs a fix while out and about. “I can’t remember when it started but I was very young,” she said. “I just love it. My boyfriend does think it’s weird, but he’s really

righT: Police officer Jarnail Singh had no idea why he started eating knives, but had consumed 40 of them. MARTIN ROSS

10 FT346 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

sweet and goes out on vinegar SIDELINES... runs for me. I drink at least a glass a day, and have it on all my food SNAP-1 too. If I have chips, I drown them When Zaphnath-paanneah in it.” She used to favour classic Morley of Shepshed, Leices- malt vinegar, but after loosing 42lb tershire, declared in 1966 that (19kg) last year she switched to no one else had his name, Zaphnath-paanneah Beardsley apple cider vinegar, which can help travelled from Arnold, Notting- to shed further pounds.The British ham, to meet him. It turned Nutrition Foundation warned that out they were both great her habit could cause acid reflux grandsons of Zaphnath-paan- and dental damage. Sun, D.Star, 25 neah Morley of Thringstone, Feb 2016. . Loughborough Echo (“50 years ago”), 15 • Nikki Garber, 19, loves washing June 2016. powder and eats a 500g (17.6oz) tub

SMINE PERCIVAL of Surf every week. At the time of SNAP-2 JA the news report (Sunday Star, 17 Aaron Booth (22) attacked ABOVE: Jasmine Percival’s hairball weighed in at an impressive 3lb (1.4kg). July 2016), she had consumed more Aaron Booth (age not given) in than 100 boxes (50kg/110lb) of the early hours of 12 Decem- powder. “It makes me feel relaxed odd snack. He has never eaten ber 2015 in Barrow-in-Furness, and happy,” she said. “A bit like “I can’t even out at a restaurant. He hopes for Cumbria, biting the left side being on a high.” Her addiction professional help to overcome his of his chin. He was fined started when she was 17 and living bear to look limited diet. D.Express, D.Star, 19 £245 for assault at Furness at a boarding school in Tunbridge April 2016. Magistrates’ Court. Accord- ing to his lawyer, he was too Wells. She now eats Surf while at lemon curd drunk to recall much of what watching TV or doing her media Philip Patrick, 19, from • happened. We are not told studies at Coventry University. The sandwiches” Worcester, eats 12 bowls of whether he knew his victim compulsion to eat earth, baking cereal a day, each topped with 10 shared his name. North-West powder and other non-foods is spoonfuls of sugar. He sticks to Eve. Mail, 28 Jan 2016. known as pica (Latin for magpie, cream. His girlfriend, Beth Hall, one cereal – mainly Weetabix or a bird notorious for eating almost said: “He’s never ill, he has spotless cornflakes – and washes it down AN ARTWORK, anything). Another washing skin, his hair glows, he’s full of with a cup of tea, with six more PERHAPS? powder addict was reported in energy and goes to the gym for two sugars. He gets through six boxes More than 40 dead pigeons 2012: Tempestt [sic] Henderson, hours a day… It is so annoying.” of cereal and 19 pints of milk a were placed, a few hundred 19, a nursing student from Florida Sun, 8 July 2015. week and a 5kg (11lb) bag of sugar yards apart, along the white [FT288:10-11]. every nine days.The bizarre diet lines in the middle of the A35 • John Pearson, 48, an engineer has seen him put on 25kg (56lb) in near Honiton, , on 3 • For 16 years Jodie Brown, 17, of from Etwell, Derbyshire, claims to three years and cost him his August. Nearby was an animal Wolverhampton lived on nothing hate food. He only eats 10 things: job. “I need help to get my life feed bag probably used to but lemon curd sandwiches. Any chips, plain crisps, cereal, chocolate back,” he said. Sun, 1 Feb 2016. transport the birds, and a other food made her gag and she cake, soft cheese, large amount of feathers. In 2015, 16 dead pigeons avoided eating away from home. pudding, nuts, bread, butter – and • When Jasmine Percival was 14, were found in a box in a park She was cured of what is called Marmite, of which he eats 2lb she began to suffer excruciatingly in Southall, London. Both Selective Eating Disorder with (0.9kg) a month. He says the yeasty painful stomach-aches, and one events remain unexplained. hypnotherapy. She can now eat a spread – rich in B vitamins, folic day collapsed at school. She telegraph.co.uk, range of foods including olives, acid and niacin, helping the body was diagnosed with irritable 3 Aug 2016. fajitas and seaweed. “I can’t fight infections – is the only reason bowel syndrome, but the pains even bear to look at lemon curd he stays healthy. He is a black belt continued. She was unable to SECRET LODGER sandwiches any more,” she said. in karate. D.Mail, 21 Feb 2015. hold down most foods and her Trina Hibbert, woken at Also cured by hypnotherapy was weight dropped to 70lb (32kg). 4.30am on 20 June after her Alison McGregor, 23, a call centre • As a toddler, Daniel Pennock, In December 2009 she awoke in table lamp crashed to the worker from Dublin who had eaten now 26, ate a varied diet, but from agony and was rushed to hospital. floor, found a 5m (16ft) scrub nothing but chips, waffles and the age of four he refused almost A giant hairball weighing over python curled around her bed. crisps her entire life. Sun, 21+28 anything except sausage and chips, 3lb (1.4kg) was removed from her It was believed that the snake July; Metro, 28 July 2016. a plate of which he has consumed stomach by Cæsarean section. had been living in the walls every day for the last 22 years. It was one of the largest ever and ceiling of her house, near • Gary Watkinson, 25, a personal The swimming pool lifeguard and recorded. All her life she had Cairns in Australia, for years. trainer from Huddersfield, West father of two from Wakefield, West sucked and chewed on her long, Trina had seen it 15 years Yorkshire, lives on baked beans Yorkshire, says he is physically dark brown hair, a habit she was earlier when it poked its head into the bathroom as she took on toast – the beans have to be sick if virtually any other foods unable to break, despite warnings. a shower. Estimated to weigh Branston. In an emergency, if he go near his mouth. He can only She made a full recovery and no nearly 40kg (88lb), it was can’t get hold of beans, he can just manage bread, crisps, apples, longer chews her hair. Sun on caught and released in the about manage chips, mash, or ice bananas and sausage rolls for the Sunday, 21 Aug 2016. bush. Times, 23 June 2016.

FT346 11 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

MOST TRAVELLED BIRD An Arctic tern has completed Ocean-borne oddities the longest migration ever recorded, flying 96,000km (59,653 miles) from the Farne Islands off the coast of North- umberland, down the coast of West Africa to the Weddell Sea in Antarctica – and back again. During its lifetime, the tern will complete its journey enough times to clock up around 3,000,000km (1,864,165 miles). D.Telegraph, 7 June 2016. FOXY SABOTEURS A spate of severed brake ca- bles in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, forced car owners to fork out for expensive repairs. Wildlife expert John Bryant, 74 [see FT73:35-37] established that cubs had been chewing through the cables because EBOOK FAC they enjoy the taste of glycol, a

sweet chemical used in brake TKINS /

fluid. Kent police received WA six reports of cable damage MARK between 18 and 31 May, five of which came from the same ABOVE: Not a floating ET visitor but an inflated whale carcass. BELOW: These Cornish finds aren’t alien eggs, just sea potatoes. area. D.Mail, D.Telegraph, 3 June 2016. BLUBBER BALLOON DANGEROUS MENU Fisherman Mark Watkins spotted this weird object about A Jack Russell had his jaw 30 miles (50km) southwest of glued shut for more than Bunbury, Australia, in late July. five hours after chewing on He thought it could be another a takeaway menu that came boat or a balloon, but as he got through the letterbox in Hemel TO closer, a pungent odour revealed Hempstead. The glossy paper of the Domino’s Pizza menu it was a whale carcass. The mixed with 10-year-old Alfie’s species was not identified, but saliva to form a cement-like the texture of its belly suggests substance. A vet couldn’t work it was a humpback or southern out how to prise his mouth right whale. When jostled or

open, but eventually hunger manipulated, such a carcass can DOLFILMS / ALAMy STOCK PHO drove Alfie to force his jaws explode, spewing whale guts and open himself. D.Mail, 28 June emitting a punishing smell. Were they alien eggs, esoteric covered with little spines. They 2016. Scavengers aren’t usually able vegetables, baseballs designed by can grow up to 3in (7.6cm) in to puncture a whale’s thick skin HR Giger, or what? Jess Arnieson diameter and survive in waters and blubber when the carcass is from Newbury, Berkshire, up to 656ft (200m) deep. Mass floating in the sea. Eventually the encountered some on the sand strandings are not usual as the body will naturally deflate and while walking her dog on holiday urchins congregate for breeding, sink, intact, to the seafloor. These in Penzance. “No one knows meaning many can wash up events, known as “whalefalls”, what they are, but everyone is together after a storm. This is provide a staggering amount of worried,” she said. “They are all thought to be the biggest mass resources for deep-sea creatures, over the beach and the dog really mortality of sea potatoes since and entire aquatic communities didn’t like them,” said another May 1995, when hundreds of can thrive on the food a carcass dog walker, who found hundreds them washed up on the south provides. The breakdown of a on the coast at Long Rock, coast of . Back then, dead whale can take up to 30 between Penzance and Marazion. the deaths were caused by years. Sun, 30 July; livescience.com, “I took one home with me, then exceptionally calm waters – 3 Aug 2016. panicked and put it in the bin in which allowed a thick bloom of case it attacked.” plankton to settle on top of the ‘ALIEN’ BEACH INVADERS In fact, they were sea potatoes seabed, and suffocate the urchins. Hundreds of odd-looking orbs (Echinocardium cordatum), a Guardian (online), Sun (online), MARTIN ROSS washed up on beaches in Devon harmless species of sea urchin 19 Aug; Sunday Telegraph, 21 Aug and Cornwall on 17 August. related to starfish and usually 2016.

12 FT346 www.forteantimes.com Discover the relationship between physical reality and the inner workings of consciousness.

Open the doors to perception.

RRP: £10.99

www.watkinspublishing.com

THIS IS YOUR WAKE–UP CALL.

IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIBERTY AND PRIVACY JOIN THE BATTLE TO PROTECT COUNTERCULTURE.

RRP: £12.99 university oF eAst AnGliA mAtt PAttinson www.forteantimes 14 F t 346 ermkn,erysoesi uoeadAi n ls iy rae yantrlgooia phenomenon... geological natural a by created city’ ‘lost a and Asia and Europe in stoners early beer-making, SIEVEKING PAUL rd ttedw fteBronze Ag the of dawn the at trade transcontinental of rise withthe Asia east in use cannabis of intensification an links which archæology, cannabis of review a to according cannabis, using began independently Asia and europe icein last people the of end the at window time short a During POTHEADS PIONEER n phytoliths and fr starch microscopic contained they stor and brewing, beer for used ha would that amphoræ and funnels pots, mouthed wide- of remnants found colleagues and stanford of Jiajing 5,000 some beer how shows china, northern shaanxi, in uncovered toolkit beer-making re CHEERS! 2016. July 15 online, Scientist database. the whocompiled scholars the of one Berlin, lo says earlier,” even or 10,000 as early as from widely distributed been ha to seems plant cannabis 10,200 and 11,500 about between time, almost at europe eastern and of record archæological the entered herb the that suggests literature allarchæological of the database a but – Asia central or china in somewhere domesticated, possibly and cannabis that assumed often is it decades. for digs archæological eurasian fi herb the eurasia. throughout use, psychoactiv its possibly toha thought are and time this at eastwards dispersed – civilisation european founded three the oneof be to thought – people eurasia central rsha bres .c go h reuiest of university Free the of ng ve e, iu eto napparent an on left sidue om oe5,000 some pedcnai,and cannabis, spread Wa ag ag ’s ve ve fi ga h university the at ng ex ltration e. ments oln ri and fruit pollen, entrigu in up turning been been ke cl h same the actly ye ye , wa rbsthat tribes y ars ’s ars wa s ya ye ag fi ag mnay ye made s s used, rst ars o. o. te ars istruhtelts rhooia icvre n id vdneo nin Chinese ancient of evidence finds and discoveries archæological latest the through digs “the e ngwen ag New a Ag ag o. e, ve o, AR ssaegudroot. gourd snake as such tubers and barley tears, cereals of fermentation and mashing the with associated compounds found also said mashing,” and malting during developed changes morphological the match precisely patterns damage the and damaged, were grains starch the of Job millet, broomcorn from came deposits these husks. cereal in found structures silica atntrlformations. natural fact ABOVE: wa oe11,500 some amn ntenoihcer neolithic the in farming idcrasa h it of birth the at cereals wild of domestication the that ret rwbe sfrthe far as beer brew to urge thsbe suggested been has it rvna uhb the by much as driven s edfrfo [FT272:17]. food for need htwr huh ob h un faln-otct f ayto r in are Zakynthos off city long-lost a of ruins the be to thought were What . CHÆOLO h letchemically oldest the ofimdalcoholic confirmed ox bever ol,dtn to dating world, lts organic alates, 0060 Bc 7000-6600 tnab Jiahu nearby at wa Wa river the in ag ye on by found s g h team the ng. nthe in e ars BELOW: “m va ye ag lley any llow o , ’s i facetcieebe-aigkit. beer-making chinese ancient of bit A a YEAR MILLION FIVE TO UP CREATED SITE THE a meo h ie between lived who fourth emperor the Han , liu of tomb the around pits from retrieved been 2016. May 23 online, Scientist iran.New and egypt in sites from comes Bc) 3000 (c. time similar at brewing beer barley for evidence confirmed chemically other only the millennia. bever specialised more of theemergence for case compelling a made Wa said mcGovern [FT195:19]. fr Pa the harbour could and sugarcontent high a had which fruit, hawthorn chinese the from be to likely more are but grapes, ha could tartrates bees tartrates, ag coeni 2004. in mcGovern t h lettaee on has found ever tea oldest the gadclege ha colleagues and ng et hwdeiec of evidence showed ments ye ag s o fermentation for ast sdrn succeeding during es S AGO wa WAS GY n ie the rice. and x ve oefrom come Po ve a ttery .al ue2016. June 4 D.Mail, of effects fracking.” the to similar it also and is sea north the in happens shallow quite is phenomenon of kind “this study. the of author lead Andrews, Julian Prof said seeps,” hydrocarbon at mineralisation of typical is bases column circular like bit looked which morphology, doughnut and disc “the greaterdepths. far at occur usually kind because wa natural this erosion. which cement, natural of build-up a create to sediment microbe-rich with interacted methane the sea the in cracks from methane of release the by formed shapes actually were to two under remains architectural super What ye to up place took that phenomenon geological natural site the that Geology journal the in published research However, civilisation. long-forgotten a of ruins the discovered had they thought they 2013, in Zakynthos of island Greek shallow in courtyards and colonnades apparent spotted divers When ZAKYNTHOS wa bushes. tea root,into took growing and ground the to which fell – eyelids own his off hecut that weakness his at disgust nine a of front in meditating while asleep fell accidentally Buddhism, chan of founder the the to ta back dating legend a Accordingto Bc. 59 from dates tea to reference written oldest the genus the from came remains plant the that showed spectrometry mass Xian. chineseof the city in Bc, 141 and 188 D. unknown. is stimulant a as it when LS IY OF CITY’ ‘LOST Te gDnsy Bodhidharma, Dynasty, ng ars fi o ntal entertained initially not s s ve erp,2 a 2016. Jan 29 legraph, fi ye s sda medicine; a as used rst ag wa ers(-6t of (7-16ft) metres r.H oeu nsuch in up woke He ars. wa wa ntePicn era. Pliocene the in o nJn 06revealed 2016 June in hnsae by shaped then s ga D. wa s es h aething same the ters. fi sae fthis of escapes s Te fi ilyloe lik looked cially wa e f the off ter s consumed rst aiePetroleum Marine erp,3June; 3 legraph, rae by created s ex fi ra Camellia. ve fl planation wa ein re oor wa te million lfor ll a . a e ter a , Hulton ArcHive / Getty imAGes Va Propertius, para499c; Hyginus, Tu History, Aelian, Miscellaneous India: in just not widespread, barbeques”. “Buddhist as bk2 (2003). 2002 Self-Immolations Killing: without Dying modern Other al-T wa dismissed ignitions nEtna, on 1852 Arnold’s Matthew Great, the witnessed Alexander one spectacular most the Sages), (Naked Gymnosophists Indian among para1) – afire” a at day all matches not “I’ll 0:BRIGSENS BURNING 204: la gi cloak poisoned the from the caused agony escape to himself burned who Hercules, and Gymnosophists (p60). of History Russell’ Bertrand in quoted and Etna wa into Leapt / soul ardent that Empedocles, “Great couplet, anti-Arnoldian his with spirit Osborne Sa and “Leap as: rhodomantade plus sandals, pr golden his of one out Horace, Philosophers, the of Lives Laertius, (Diogenes Empedocles philosopher bio his wa Philologus by pr self-immolation fiery this movie 1950 the in the same done had Bergman Ingrid that (would Aetna Mount into jumped rush gloom and despondency of mists glows My soul meet / to fire! of sea thou CORNER CLASS FO ov clnDisputations, sculan ve More lsia,a usual. as Classical, ln ihEpdce,the Empedocles, with Along Richar Nhu, Madame Like 1960s In Tw unwilling or willing just Not eisMaximus, lerius spar s s (Lucian, common also s the ay RT ro ch dn otcinspiration poetic iding ove lwn re cases. Greek glowing o me!” hMhmdBuzz’ self-combustion. Bouazizi’s Mohamed eh se whole, asted gr aa4 Cf para14. 6 vo AAFO H NIN OL COMPILED WORLD ANCIENT THE FROM EANA ve Fo yo re r of Art ex taan/Recei / again it r ke pe rin(bk7 Arrian apher rpigit suc into erupting re cn biigyspewing obligingly lcano Fa We him n centl rt, 2,18,305-11. 1981, 125, !/Eei lg r the ere flag, it Ere / u! eiet u sueIcudflip could I assume I but periment, d otdi reLucianic true in ported Vi bles, by tr Philosoph stern Books, etnam Po ex y, Tu by o0;Plutar no104; etry, mlsi ihe Biggs’ Michael in amples h short-li the iinstreet-vendor nisian . ” Memorable ieDeianeir wife Hec W by p924. we gleefull wa Wi vv465-8) ve Po bk8 bk5 aaeNoDn Nhu Dinh Ngo Madame l n o set not and ll, Empedocles a h retyauto- priestly the had blyilluminated rbally Stromboli), ems, eySuttee fely bk8 ve h ke ch Runaways, ch ch y s me! ove y ve Fi fo 8 Cicer 18; JC & l d ch k o2vv15-22; no12 bk4 7para78; 27 ro 3). ch Wo r rs d 69; wo d ar , ,the t, ‘A a Moralia, d Deeds, & rds , e.It men. ra Ya wa Spring’ b wa o, rd ch s Ta 1963- le 7 llpaper re y, s by k by AT I publicity sad As 0ya-lsit the hurling into 60-year-olds of tradition Roman old supposed – ‘pyrokinesis’ eponymous no King’s Stephen to here Homage rgI sGtigOd,also Old’, Getting Is It Drag ‘What A Stones pre-Rolling a humming perhaps oenoe,tog o uehow sure not though ones, modern 165 that AD like of something Games – Olympic the to postlude as h winner the yinnecr Syrian wo wi men’s other ra the escape from until jumping thrashing sound a took he ra future – no with present a – i sexagenarian strangled his he escapade, this After parents. ve em cr term) arrest IO we ih(h rdtoa punishment traditional (the dish scality rs ve i ali aei told is tale tabloid His agti dleya engri Armenia, in teenager a as adultery in Caught rd tl he – atile re ihispeaoyavc to advice prefatory its with l fo ve by NS models t– it r tsdi odtoso maximum of conditions in rtised ow , , re adoepyoft h buggaree’ the to pay-off handsome a Pe . e an ned aldwith tailed og Th re ra ra ra BY ssl-abnsto (Lucian’ self-carbonisation is gr CA ve .Nx ohn fnot if nothing – Next phanismos). fo Pe pher. e comely a ped nsbre isl odeath to himself burned inus u eodfirestarter second our r :teGek,o ore had course, of Greeks, the s: re fa ro BA ex gr hr“o iigtolong, too living “for ther of rodnr aerof career traordinary Ti nsProteus. inus RRY wo , ber. re i u tfe with stuffed bum his uld lish yey by fo BA mu its r by yo ev ew LDWIN ch uth, i Greek- his kn the oking re tesLucian. itness re enli cipient yo fo ad ev L ’ decide u’d fucking r ve Fo ading by . our n ton rt s ” a a s go hy n fPœi (cf Phœnix of one no Roman that quip modern the Lucian appreciated – cell his to comfort spiritual and material brought Galilæans ro Fo Phœnix A headline-g study to Egypt to – alms Christian with 12. Christians,’ the and Proteus ‘Peregrinus Bagnani, Gilbert survi still that man Gospels the apocryphal of some include could speculate ev the on place a and commentators him earning in belief Lucian’ their – of Christians ridicule local the with in fell iutnosyqafn its quaffing simultaneously aqueduct Olympia his with spectators Atticus i aet h appropriate the to name his and fell happen) did actually (one anti-Roman uprisings urged both he where and Greece Pius, Antoninus emperor tolerant the Ital to his “erecting as (risibly included tub-d (actuall of antics the on Modelled Agathoboulos. Cynic the with gimmicks to ex him allowing also spokesman, and allo who of Index u fshock-and-a of out sigfeh–Lca oknl subjoins mockingly –Lucian flesh asting elatit h lms his flames, the into leapt he – Burning) r ncmoesm e nswhich ones new some compose en ve li hi ok (sc. books their plain mn-singing. Fr eapn to Decamping Wh fo rnor e rmgaol from eed lo oa eamlinieHerodes mega-millionaire local of ul y, nhe en y, re ev fo hr eseilsdi insulting in specialised he where we , Fo wav ieak igns these Diogenes, winecask) a Pe r drdi h obtranslation Loeb the in ndered To er i obcm hi leader their become to him d ab bde ok ulbelot gullible a – Books rbidden o re therefore and differences, fictitious, or philosoph that ab think to phenomenal, things pic be anything can fictitiously onl which of because iscontinuity sense, final a lik anything in thinking, and Romulus of funerals the at happened hea to flames the from soaring vultur a and bellowings, my earthquake, concomitant a he sophisticated his than mob ignorant an stor to this telling if that, saying Greeks’, ‘thrice-accursed his of it as is problems, appr which of note on Olympus. Mount out stinking – g”– ago” we wa ab n i okt all-comer to cock his ing Fr sn i orpino the of corruption his using gr wa u.So out. “A uinad cautionar a adds Lucian s rmhsByzantine his from use ke trossubterranean sterious wo tt h Colosseum the to nt ial retd these arrested, finally s Historia equent ya ns–hspoc his – inus ove Pa se s u fanxso all of nexus a of out d . are to barrier l mrie twith it embroider uld we ve rd Christopher by Fo lestine, , ) fe oigon moving After ”). vera a supposedl (as n ev , atc,s – so tactics, rt, ab sympathetic a fa ti not is it and ncmn rmone from coming en Th ,15,pp107- 1955, 4, s,o fictitious, or lse, squatulated Books, thousand l Ju il)and Bible) e Fo ev y, Th Pe mu wo wa ra ra isCæsar). lius fo ntegd on gods the en ihits with rt aysNot Lady’s e ke re tional bb i plan his r ter l ha uld my ch p605. wo we Fr gr ra www.forteantimes sjingling ts ing y , ch afe as baffled Va ’ plays y’s sterious uld ther inus lling ve he re anging fo y ye tican’ e e cf ; I fa ve aders, ra s the r , ar – y lse n . Ft346 s s y s y .c 15 om TTINSON PA SCIENCE MATT

published a paper in 1968, and the same year the explanation SIGNAL OR NOISE? was found: neutron stars, known as pulsars, which rotate extremely Ther Internet went wild with speculation about alien contact when a “strong signal” was rapidly – every 1.3 seconds – picked up from star HD164595 this August, but DAVID HAMBLING urges caution. sweeping round a beam of radio waves like a lighthouse. Bell did not find aliens, but she did discover a new class of stellar objects. Other results have been decidedly less stellar. Bursts of radio energy lasting a few milliseconds were observed at the in New South in Australia from 1998 onwards. Nicknamed perytons after a fabulous beast invented by Borges, these were traced to a terrestrial rather than celestial origin but could not be located. Theories ranged from exotic types of lightning to gamma-ray bursts produced by cosmic rays in the atmosphere. In 2015 perytons were found to be caused by microwave ovens at the observatory being opened his summer, the A more likely explanation for it was not. Further investigation too early. It takes the magnetron Russian RATAN-600 Tesla’s signals emerged in the showed the signal was coming generating microwaves a few picked 1950s. Two American physicists, from an aircraft, but one flying at milliseconds to cut out, hence the Tup an anomalous signal brothers Kenneth and James an extraordinary altitude of around brief burst. while searching for signs of Corum, found that one of Jupiter’s 80,000ft (24,400m). Ozma had While there have been many extraterrestrial intelligence, moons, Io, sometimes emits accidentally stumbled on the still- false positives from other sources, sending ripples of excitement regular pulses as it passes classified U-2 spyplane. Drake did researchers still have reason to through the Internet. Could this through a belt of plasma. The not publish the results. hope. In 1977, astronomer Jerry be First Contact with an alien regular variations occur as it In 1967, astrophysicist Jocelyn Ehman found a strong signal in civilisation at last? Previous passes through areas of different Bell was working at the Cavendish 1420 MHz radio waves picked incidents show how other causes magnetic field strength. In 1996 Laboratory looking for scintillation up on 15 August by Ohio State need to be ruled out first. they used a replica of Tesla’s produced by giant star-like objects University’s Big Ear telescope from In 1899, Nikola Tesla was receiver to pick up the same that had recently been discovered the direction of Sagittarius. The working on a sensitive instrument repeating pulses, which were and christened . (Quasars signal lasted for 72 seconds, and for detecting radio waves to track coming from Io. are now believed to be varied from five to 20 times as thunderstorms by their electrical Since then, attempt to pick collapsing into black holes, and strong as the radio background signatures. He started picking up radio signals from outer Jocelyn Bell is now Dame Jocelyn noise. Ehman’s immediate up something that seemed space have been confounded by Burnell.) Bell found a distinctive reaction was to write “Wow!” in the more like a deliberate signal the increasing number of radio pulsing signal appearing every margin of the computer printout, than noise: first one beep, then sources on Earth – and above 1.3 seconds. She confirmed with and this has been known as the two, then three. He considered it. The first organised search for a second telescope that it was Wow! signal ever since. whether these pulses might be intelligent signals was Project coming from a fixed point in the The Wow! signal remains produced by solar activity, or the Ozma, in April and May 1960. sky rather than from the ground. unexplained. Ehman is keeping Aurora Borealis, or atmospheric It was headed by astronomer There was no ready explanation an open mind; aliens are a disturbances, but there was “such , originator of the for the anomaly; extraterrestrials possibility but he would like a clear suggestion of number and Drake equation predicting the were seen as highly unlikely, and more signals before drawing order” that they looked like an number of alien civilisations in not the sort of thing that would be conclusions. Multiple searches of intelligent signal. There were no the . Ozma had use of the received well in a scientific paper. the same area have failed to turn other radio transmitters in the US, giant National “Here was I trying to get a up any further signals. In 2016 and European transmitters were telescope for six hours a day, and Ph.D. out of a new technique, and astronomer Professor Antonio too weak, so the signal must have pointed it at Tau Ceti. some silly lot of little green men Paris of St Petersburg, Florida, come from somewhere else. When Drake moved the receiver had to choose my aerial and my suggested that the signal might In 1901 Tesla told the press to point at Epsilon Eridani, he frequency to communicate with have come from comets. Comets that the signals were extra- immediately saw a signal at 1420 us,” Bell joked. have not yet been proven to emit terrestrial. He did not identify a MHz. This is considered the most The signal was labelled LGM (for such signals, but the possibility source, but all the talk was of likely wavelength for interstellar Little Green Men). Bell was relieved is being investigated. The signal Mars – HG Wells’s bestselling communication, as it is produced to find similar signals emanating detected by RATAN-600 may have Martian invasion story The War of by hydrogen and is basic to radio from other parts of the sky in the come from 94 light years away as The Worlds had been published astronomy. The frequency is following months. This looked it first appeared; the researchers in 1897 – and the assumption prohibited for radio broadcasters more like a natural phenomenon, caution that a terrestrial source was that Tesla was receiving for this reason. as it seemed unlikely that several may be more likely. We may be communications from the red “Can it really be this easy?” aliens were all sending similar disappointed again, but the planet. Drake asked colleagues. Sadly, signals specifically to Earth. Bell search continues.

16 FT346 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

we celebrate the remarkable of CHEATINGWo THErms REAPER fromthe the latest batch of super-centenarians skies

nother generation of super- said her nephew. “I think that’s a reason Group in Los Angeles and Guinness World centenarians have been in the news why she has lived so long.” Last year, Jessie Records. The minimum requirement is official Asince our last round-up [FT330:14- Gallan (109) of Aberdeen said: “My secret documentation from before the claimant 15].The oldest person whose age of a long life has been staying away from turns 20. is beyond doubt is still the Frenchwoman men.They’re just more trouble than they’re , who died in 1997 aged 122 worth. I also made sure I got plenty of MBAH GOTHO, 145+ years and 164 days. She enjoyed a kilo exercise. I eat a nice bowl of porridge An Indonesian man who claims to be the (2.2lb) of chocolate every week, every morning and never married. I oldest person in the world by some margin, and also believed keys to a long worked hard and seldom would I said: “What I want is to die”. Mbah Gotho life included olive oil, port take a holiday.” When Augusta (or Sodimejo) from Sragen in central Java and cigarettes – although she Holtz (114) was asked the was born on 31 December 1870, according to gave up smoking at the age secret of , she gave the his 2014 identity card. Now officials at the of 120. “I know that I will die incontrovertible reply: “Having local record office claim they can confirm laughing,” she told friends. “I birthdays”.Twins Pieter and that remarkable date as genuine – though have only one wrinkle, and I’m Paulus Langerock (102), the he will not enter the record books without sitting on it.” world’s oldest living twin brothers, independent verification. Gotho has outlived Super-centenarians are share a room in a nursing home just all 10 of his siblings, four wives, and even constantly asked for the “secret’ outside the Belgian town of Ghent. Paulus his children. His nearest living relatives of their longevity, and their answers are gave some sage (if rather dull) advice: “Don’t are grandchildren, great-grandchildren, frequently bizarre. Weird diets often feature, waste your time fooling around, don’t eat too and great-great-grandchildren. One of his such as ’s raw eggs (see much and don’t run after women.” George grandsons said his grandfather has been below). Edith Dobson (100) of Bexhill said Higgs (109) of Leicester has it about right: preparing for his death ever since 1992. He the key was a crisp sandwich every day, while “The secret of a long life is not to worry has even bought a burial site close to the Constance Melloy of Grimsby said her secret about anything. Just get on with it.” graves of his children. He now spends most was Marmite on toast, which she had eaten St Louis Post Dispatch, 28 Feb 1986; of his time sitting and listening to the radio almost every day since 1918. D.Telegraph, 13 Aug 2012, 11 Nov 2013, 30 because his eyesight is too poor to watch Antonio Docampo Garcia, who died in May 2015; Sun, 5 May 2013, 14 Feb 2014, 20 television. He has had to be spoon-fed and Vigo, northwest , in February 2016 July 2015; D.Mail, 16 Jan 2015; 13 Aug bathed since June 2016, as he has become aged 107, attributed his longevity to 2015; Sunday Mirror, Sunday Telegraph, 3 increasingly frail. When asked for his secret drinking four bottles of red wine every Jan; NY Post, 26 Jan; Irish Independent, 6 Feb; of longevity he said: “The recipe is just day – two bottles with lunch, two with Sun on Sunday, 21 Feb; Sunday People, 17 July patience.” Others without verifiable records dinner – but no water. He owned his own 2016. who have purportedly lived even longer vineyard and founded the wine company include “171-year-old” James Olofintuyi, Bodegas Docampo. Betty Shimeld (103), THE LEAGUE TABLE a Yoruba chief in Ekiti state, southwest a former taxi driver of Mansfield, Those marked with an asterisk have Nigeria, and “163-year-old” Dhaqabo Ebba, Nottinghamshire, attributed had their longevity claims accepted an Oromo elder from Ethiopia, who died on her great age to a daily glass by the Research 10 May 2015. of whisky since the 1940s, while Dorothy Lashly (100) of Cheltenham drank a can of beer every day before lunch for 84 years. Dorothy Howe (100) of Saltdean, East Sussex, said a whisky and 15 cigarettes a day had helped her reach her century – which she celebrated with two large glasses of Scotch. In 84 years, she had consumed almost half a million ciggies. Batuli Lamichhane, a 112-year-old Nepali woman, smokes 30 a day, and has been puffing away for the last 95 years, or so she claimed in January this year. Frank Earley (100) thanked “smoking” for a long life – as a cigarette case saved him from a bullet in TO World War II. Gertrude ‘Topsy’ Hindley (103) of Sidmouth, Devon, said her secret was that she had never had a television, but listened to local radio instead. “She’s never really been aware of what’s going on in the world,” 145+ MBAH GOTHO DASRIL ROSZANDI / NURPHO

18 FT346 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

Spanish. He had lived in Oakland since TAnziLyA BisEMBEEvA, 120+ 1933. Family members said he remained This woman has lived in the village fiercely independent well past 110, living of Islamgazy in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk on his own in a senior apartment complex region all her life, which allegedly until 2014. began on 14 March 1896. “My mother has lived from Rasputin to Putin,” *sUsAnnAH MUsHATT JOnEs, said her son, Shintas Bisembeev. “She 116yrs, 311 days worked for more than 60 years in the Thought to be the last living American fields and on plantations.” She got born in the 19th century [FT330:15], married before World War II, but her Mrs Jones admitted last year to eating husband was called to the war front and four strips of bacon with scrambled egg never returned.Their first-born died in and grits every day. Her hair, long since infancy. Soon after the war, she married turned white, had turned brown again. an elderly Kazakh man and in 1949, She was born in Alabama on 6 July 1899. aged 53, gave birth to a son, followed Her parents were African-American by two more. According to Kazakh sharecroppers; her grandmother, an ex- tradition, she lives with the family of slave, allegedly lived to be 117. In 1928 her youngest son. Her daughter-in-law Susannah married Henry Jones, but takes care of her. Her sons have retired they were divorced in 1933.There were and all live nearby. When asked about no children, but she had 100 nieces and their mother’s longevity secret, they nephews. She died in Brooklyn, New said: “She is very kind, always looks at York, on 12 May 2016, officially the oldest life positively, and sees only the good person in the world, according to the in people.” She did not visit a doctor Gerontology Research Group. until she turned 100. She no longer goes out, but take cares of herself without *EMMA MOrAnO, 116+ assistance. She has 10 grandchildren, 24 On the death of Susannah Jones, her great-grandchildren and two great-great longevity title passed to Emma Morano, grandchildren. According to the Russian born in Piedmont, Italy, on 29 November Book of Records, she is now the second 1899. She left a violent husband in 1938, person in the world (after Jeanne 116+ EMMA MOrAnO shortly after the death of her only child Calment) to live to 120. at the age if seven months. She never married again. She has eaten two (or OLIVIER MORIN / AFP / GETTY IMAGES TrinidAd ALvArEz LirA, three) raw eggs every day since she 117 yrs+? was 20, when a doctor recommended them This Mexican woman had been waiting for to counter anæmia. Another secret of her years to obtain proof that she had been longevity, she says, is eating small quantities born in 1898 so she could claim all the of raw minced meat, and having only milk government old age benefits to which she for supper. She also enjoys a regular glass of was entitled.The Mexico City department grappa. She lives in a small flat inVerbania of social development finally granted her a on the shores of Lake Maggiore, and might be birth certificate, but she was unable to cash the very last person on Earth born in the 19th a single cheque before she died of a heart century – well, maybe. attack on 29 June 2016. *GLAdys HOOpEr, AndrEw HATcH, 117 yrs, 113 yrs, 172 dAys 103 dAys Gladys Hermiston-Hooper became the UK’s Hatch died in Oakland, California, on 18 oldest person on the death of Ethel Lang, 114, January 2016. His family said he was born in 117+ AndrEw HATcH on 15 January 2015. She died in a nursing Louisiana on 7 October 1898, in a time and home in Ryde, , on 9 July 2016. place when birth certificates were rare for Born Gladys Nash in Dulwich, south-east poor black children. Lack of this document London, on 18 January 1903 – the oldest of kept him from being officially recognised as six siblings all of whom predeceased her – the world’s oldest person, though he had for she became a concert pianist before starting years had driver’s licenses and other official Autodrive, one of the first car hire businesses documents with his age on them. His family in London, in the 1920s. She later ran moved from Louisiana to Houston,Texas, Kingscliff House School, now part of Brighton when he was a child. He travelled the world College. Besides being born the same year in the merchant marine as a young man, and as the Wright brothers’ first wepo red flight, was jailed in his early 20s in Texas for what she was good friends at college with the he said was the “reckless eyeballing” of a celebrated aviatrix Amy Johnson. She was pretty white woman. He escaped and lived 117+? TrinidAd ALvErEz LirA widowed in 1977 with the death of her for several years in Mexico, where he learned husband Leslie, who had been a pilot in both

FT346 19 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

world wars. Her son Derek, 84, was wife and son and settled in also a pilot. In October 2015 she Haifa, where the couple had a became the oldest person in the daughter. He built up another world (112) to have a hip operation. sweet business and now has She never smoked, but enjoyed the nine grandchildren and many occasional sherry. Discussing her great-grandchildren. His health recently, she observed that she family prefers not to state his must be doing well as she still had exact number of descendants her own teeth. “It’s true,” said Derek, for fear of the . “I “even if she does have only about don’t know the secret for long four left.” The oldest of her six great- life,” he said. “I believe that grandchildren is 26. On her death, everything is determined from Bessie Camm, 112, from Rotherham, above and we shall never know South Yorkshire, became the UK’s the reasons why.” oldest citizen. nAzAr sinGH, 111 *yAsUTArO KOidE, 112 yrs, 12 dAys yrs, 312 dAys Nazar Singh of Sunderland, Koide became officially the world’s Tyne and Wear, was born in the oldest man in August 2015, following Punjab on 8 June 1904, the son the death of Sakari Momoi of Tokyo of a farmer, and travelled to a month earlier, aged 112. Koide was England in 1965. He worked born in Nagoya, Japan, on 13 March in a foundry 1903 and worked as a tailor. His for almost 25 years, and was secret of longevity was “not to smoke, possibly Europe’s oldest drink or overdo it” – and to live with man (though he had no birth joy. He still had his own teeth and certificate). He died on 20 read without glasses.The father of June 2015, while visiting his seven died in Nagoya of heart failure two eldest sons in India. He and pneumonia on 19 January 2016, said the secret to his long life whereupon the title of oldest man in was a strong family, good food, Japan passed to Masamitsu Yoshida, plenty of sleep, and happiness. born in Tokyo on 30 May 1904. He enjoyed drinking milk and almond oil, regularly ate fruit *yisrAEL KrisTAL, 112+ and had a drop of whisky every On 11 March 2016, following the night. He met Narajan Kaur death of Yasutaro Koide, Guinness in 1932 and they wed in an World Records declared this arranged marriage.They had Holocaust survivor the world’s oldest six sons and three daughters, man, after documents confirming 34 grandchildren and 63 great- his age were found in .Yisrael grandchildren. Kristal was born in Maleniec, near Zarnów in Poland, on 15 September sOUrcEs 1903, and remembers, aged 11, Bisembeeva: Sputniknews. throwing sweets at the Austro- 112+ yisrAEL KrisTAL com, Metro, 12 May 2016. Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef Ebba: BBC News, 6 Sept 2013. when he rode through his town. His Gotho: Sunday Telegraph, 28 SHULA KOPERSHTOUK / AFP / GETTY IMAGES mother died in 1910; his father was Aug 2016. Hatch: [AP] Contra drafted into the Imperial Russian Costa Times, 19 Jan 2016. Army in 1914 and died in action. As Hooper: D.Telegraph, 17 Oct a 17-year-old orphan,Yisrael moved 2015, 18 Jan + 27 Aug 2016; to Łódz´, where he found work in a BBC News, 9 July; D.Mail, sweet factory and became a master 19+22 Jan 2015, 18 Jan, 11 confectioner. He married in 1928 July 2016. Jones: New York and had two children. In 1940 the Magazine, 14 Dec 2015; NY Nazis moved him and his family to Daily News, BBC News, 13 May; the Jewish ghetto, where his children Dundee Courier & Advertiser, died. In August 1944 he and his wife 14 May 2016. Koide: 22 were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau Aug 2015; D.Express, 23 Jan death camp during the liquidation of 2016. Kristal: D.Mail, Guardian, the ghetto. His wife was murdered, 12 Mar 2016. Lira: Guardian but he was liberated by the Red online, 30 June 2016. Morano: Army in 1945, when he weighed D.Telegraph, Guardian, 14 May just 37kg (5 stone, 12lb). In 1950 he 111+ nAzAr sinGH 2016. singh: D.Mail online, 22 emigrated to with his second June 2015. SHAMMI MEHRA / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

20 FT346 www.forteantimes.com

strangedays

This time, we say goodbye to the behavioural psychologist who learnt how to NECROLOG communicate with dolphins and wave off the clown priest of the Church of England

LOUIS HERMAN different types of whistle In 1966 Louis Herman depending on social (who had a doctorate context, but it was unclear in psychology from the until now if they could City College of New communicate directly with York) began teaching each other, one to one. experimental psychology In 2007 Australian at the University of scientists identified Hawaii, where the bulk specific whistles, which of research was done were interpreted to on rats and rhesus mean “I’m here, where monkeys. A student is everyone?” “Hurry suggested he should up!” and “There’s food focus instead on over here”. Dolphins are dolphins, which had been also thought to have attracting great interest developed a type of sign following the success of language in which they neuroscientist john Lilly’s communicate with their Man and Dolphin (1961). fl ippers. In early 2016, Herman was intrigued a group of scientists in by Lilly’s suggestion Florida showed that the that dolphins might communication between

ALAN LEVENsON / THE LIFE IMAGEs COLLECTION / GETTY IMAGEs communicate using dolphins increases when their own language. In At two years old, both were far from animal rights groups ended they are undertaking 1969 he received funding to open younger than Puka and kea had funding for Herman’s research. a difficult task – in one case kewalo Basin Marine Mammal been when Herman took charge Louis Marvin Herman, behavioural removing the lid from a canister Laboratory in Honolulu. While the of them. Phœnix was taught psychologist, born Jamaica, – as if they were discussing the cognitive abilities of apes were the acoustic system, while Ake Queens, NY 16 April 1930; died best solution. The new research well understood, Herman was learnt a ‘dolphinised’ version of Honolulu 3 Aug 2016, aged 86. was published in the journal among the fi rst to demonstrate American sign Language. Mathematics and Physics. that species more distantly Herman ultimately • Researchers at the karadag (D.Telegraph, 12 Sept 2016.) related to humans were also demonstrated that dolphins, like Nature Reserve, capable of mastering complex bonobos, can process two of in Feodosia, tasks. (Hardly surprising, as the fundamental components of , have dolphins have possessed brains human language: the meaning recently recorded larger and more complex than of words represented by sound two Black sea human ones for more than 25 or symbol, and the order that bottlenose million years.) To one bottlenose governs how they relate in an dolphins, Yasha dolphin, kea, he taught an English sentence grammatically. and Yana, talking acoustic language made up of Research suggested that they to each other in a computer-generated sounds. could understand the abstract pool. They found Another, named Puka, was tested meanings of the words, could that each dolphin for the ability to respond to visual discriminate left from right and, would listen to signals such as hand gestures. unlike chimps, could understand a sentence of By 1977 kea had mastered 12 when humans gesture by pulses without words and could perform tasks on pointing. They were found to use interruption, demand such as “Fetch the ball” sharp clicking sounds for echo- before replying. and “Touch the ring”. location to detect the distance, They alter the On 29 May 1977, two shape, size and solidity of an volume and caretakers at the lab who had object. Like people, the research frequency of been fi red for incompetence found, dolphins can be short- pulsed clicks to released kea and Puka into tempered when they are wrong form individual Yokohama Bay, believing they and relish being right (especially ‘words’, which

were liberating them from prison when rewarded with a helping they string TO – but the dolphins had never of silver smelt). “Our goal is to together into learnt to fend for themselves establish two-way communication, sentences in and are unlikely to have survived. admittedly on a very elementary much the same The caretakers were convicted level,” Herman told People way that we do. of grand larceny and Herman magazine. “We’re not going to talk It was already resumed his research with two philosophy.” known that female bottlenose dolphins, Phœnix and Ake died from dolphins use Phœnix and Akeakamai (Ake). cancer in 2004, and pressure more than 1,000 jOHN ANGERsON / ALAMY sTOCk PHO

22 FT346 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

THE REVEREND ROLY BAIN Ordained in 1978, Bain was an , itinerant priest-clown who performed in churches, hospitals, schools, prisons and open-air events around the country. Dressed in an outsized dog collar and size 18 boots, he exported his unusual preaching method through visits to America, Europe and Australia, at one time travelling more than 38,000 miles (61,000km) a year. Having mastered juggling, high-wire balancing and the art of the pratfall, he devised his own make-up for his performances as “Holy Roly”: heavily rouged cheeks and a red nose, with a black cross on either side of the face. He would proceed down the church aisle on a unicycle and conduct choirs with a pink feather duster. He blew bubbles during prayers to represent God’s promises and embellished the Fairies, Folklore and Forteana Bible message with a fondness for wordplay. The service would often culminate in Bain attempting to deliver Simon Young FiLES A nEW REPoRT FRom THE inTERFACE oF STRAngE PHEnomEnA AnD FoLK BELiEF a sermon while balanced on a slack rope – an elastic cable fixed between two pillars topped with crosses. “It’s a Fairy encounters oFthe and where perhaps there is still a metaphor of the wobbliness of faith,” grudging shared respect for the ‘good folk’, he explained. “It’s ridiculous to try and third kind buoyed along by occasional sightings. Some get on and stay on the rope, yet it’s a Fairies have been floating around for centuries. parts of rural France (Brittany?) and some wonderful thing.” But here’s a teaser: where was the last place parts of Scandinavia figure here, .too Elfin Bain performed as an auguste, in Europe that fairies were believed in by a sabotage of road-making equipment in Iceland the simpleton who in clown tradition significant portion of the community? Ireland? might even bring us up to level two. If I had to always wins against authority. Though ? Bognor Regis? choose, though, the region where traditional his humour could be subversive – he This summer, to try and get a handle on the European fairy beliefs had survived best I claimed to have thrown custard pies question, I tinkered around with a fairy scale would, paradoxically, cross the Atlantic. at 10 bishops – he enjoyed broad that ranges from 1 to 3 – a shameless borrowing In Newfoundland, on the east coast of support from the Church. Lord Carey, from . The first vele l: people see, hear, Canada, fairy beliefs have been carefully the former Archbishop of Canterbury, or (in one memorable case tracked by folklorists since was a patron of the Faith and from Yorkshire) smell fairies, the 1960s, and one of our best Foolishness Trust that funded Bain’s but there is no interaction. we have modern fairy books, Strange ministry. Bain saw the clown’s work The second level: there is light Terrain by Barbara Rieti, was as part of a tradition dating back to interaction between fairies and descriptions oF published in 1991 about the the . His inspiration lay in humans with no long-lasting Newfie y.fe What is remarkable the holy fools who would expose the effects. For example, fairies men and women for someone used to the rather weaknesses of earthly authorities, plait your horse’s mane, or anæmic post-war fairy material especially in the New Year celebration perhaps they pixy-lead you being Fairy- from Western Europe is how of the Feast of Fools, at which the in the forest. The third level: led while out lively fairy belief was in this part lower clergy briefly assumed power strong interaction with fairies, of Canada until recent times. over their superiors. with serious consequences. This berry-picking We have a report, for example, Bain was the author of Clowning might include marrying a fairy of a baby being changed in Glory (1995), a how-to guide for (and/or having kids); using Newfoundland in 1968 – the aspiring performers written with fellow a fairy as a familiar to gain magic powers; or year of the Prague rising and riots in Paris. We Anglican Patrick Forbes, and Playing fairies killing or changing human neighbours have descriptions from the late 1980s of men the Fool (2001), a memoir. In 1994 who annoyed or intrigued them. and women being fairy-led in the woods when he was named Clown of the Year by How do different regions score? Well, there out berry-picking. We have memories from Clowns International. are very few parts of Western Europe where, the same date of fairies whipping children: For more clowns in church see pp4- in the last 50 years, a substantial part of Rieti met an elderly woman who still carried a 5 of this issue; and for their creepier the population would allow fairies to score scar! Often immigrant communities are more cousins, turn to pp22-23. even one. People claim to see fairies, there conservative than the lands they came from: David Roualeyn Findlater Bain (Revd. is no question, but most traditional rural this was certainly the case with fairy beliefs of Roly Bain), priest and clown, born 18 communities would write witnesses off as Newfoundland. Jan 1954; died 11 Aug 2016, aged eccentrics. True, there are some exceptions: Simon Young writes on folklore and history and 62. for instance, there are parishes in Ireland runs www.fairyist.com

FT346 23 www.forteantimes.com the UFO files FORTEAN TIMES presents our monthly section featuring regular sighting reports, reviews of classic cases, entries on major ufological topics and hands-on advice for UFO investigators. The UFO Files will benefit from your input, so don’t hesitate to submit your suggestions and questions.

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

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

LEFT: Mr Juncker’s alien AMONG THE STARS overlords share his First the bad news: Errol concerns about Brexit. Bruce Knapp (see last column, FT345:30) passed not come back. Not away on 11 August. He had least among these was gone into hospital in late Jean-Claude Juncker, June with heart problems president of the and pneumonia. He had two European Commission, open-heart surgeries, then who said in a speech on a post-operative stroke.The 28 June: “The British pneumonia got him in the vote has clipped some end, as it does, and we’re of our many wings. told he died peacefully. His But our fl ight goes on. brother Wesley has left more We will not halt our details of his last days and journey into the future. a brief biography at http:// New horizons await. communityalternative.ca/ And we are fl ying book-of-memories/2684008/ towards horizons that Knapp-Errol/obituary.php are those of Europe and I stumbled, so to speak, on of the entire planet.

Errol in 1996, in the course of Make no mistake, those JOHN THYS / AFP / GETTY IMAGES researching the delightfully who are watching us hokey Carp, Ontario, close-encounter case The list has been archived as PDF fi les by from afar are concerned. I have met and for UFO: The Government Files – for which the redoubtable Isaac Koi at www.afu.se/ listened to several leaders of other planets. he and Drew Williamson supplied far more Downloads/Discussion%20Lists/ They are very worried because they are information than I could use – and Errol As noted before, I am more than grateful wondering about the course the European signed me up for what was then MUFON to Errol for his extremely generous help and Union will take. So we must reassure Ontario’s UFO UpDates email list. At some hospitality when I stayed in Toronto with him Europeans and those who are watching us point, not long after, UpDates became Errol’s and his then-partner Sue while researching from further away” (video at www.. personal project and eventually attracted my book about abductions. While there I com/watch?v=x9pby3pyxuE). most of ufology’s good and great, as well learned about his time in the British Army Naturally the conspirasphere’s collective as its small and very naughty, onto its roll. – and that he’d been posted to the garrison hair fell out, or at least went all frizzy and A significant number were experiencers. just outside my hometown, where he claimed white overnight, at this revelation. But which Much entertainment was to be had from to have escorted the scarcely-unlovely Suna leaders of which planets? Stan X of the the jousting between largely sceptical Portman (daughter of our local Lord Portman Sphere Alliance Data Collectors (read all British and European posters and, on the and doyenne of early ‘swinging London’). about it at galacticconnection.com) tells us whole, credulous Americans. Most of these Which could be called par for the course for a that Juncker had met leaders of the “inner exchanges were polite, if often trenchant. warrant officer’s son who’d managed to marry Earth realm Agartha” and an “ambassador Eventually, the email list became redundant his dad’s colonel’s daughter. Errol was born of a Sirian realm. And representatives of as a medium, and UFO Updates was reborn of a Greek mother in Alexandria (conceived Lyra and Orion”. So that’s all right then. as a Facebook page, which still exists, out of wedlock, so that was something else Less happily, blogger John de Nugent had a albeit now apparently rudderless since its we had in common).The spousal associate slightly different take: “Aliens, specifically founder’s demise. and I celebrated his life and his humour with reptilians, who want the earth back as a UpDates was Errol’s great achievement: Greek and Egyptian cuisine and appropriate reptilian planet as it was in the dinosaur he was not himself an original researcher vinous liquors, but with nary a fl ying saucer age, created the Illuminati (the Big Jews), or commentator, and did not pretend to be in the sky. He is missed. RIP. who dangel [sic] money in front of the Little – he once told me that he’d considered (re) Jews, who in turn manipulate the animalized naming his list ‘Educating Errol’ as a sign BREXIT, SCHMEXIT Americans.” He also divines that “Juncker of both his curiosity and his willingness As those who can stomach the public prints is obviously part-Jewish by his features” to listen to all sides.That said, he was will already know, on 23 June the people [emphasis added] which, by the de Nugent erratic in choosing those to whom he gave of the UK voted (52% to 48%) to leave the theory of human (d)evolution, makes an audience and whom he did not: among European Union.This occasioned much him part-Neanderthal as well. For more, others, he banned the highly eccentric Dr wailing and gnashing of teeth, particularly and much worse, do visit the site (www. Richard Boylan as arbitrarily as he did the among the plus grands fromages of the EU, johndenugent.com). And do ignore all those rather more sober Carol Rainey and Emma who confirmed one’s decades-old impression sceptical cover-up merchants who say this Woods, without ever really explaining why. that they’d prefer democracy to go away and was just a slip of the Juncker tongue.

24 FT346 www.forteantimes.com LOOKS AT MORE ANOMALOUS UFO CASEBOOK EVENTS REPORTED BY APOLLO ASTRONAUTS

SPACE ODDITIES 2 phone-in on UFOs just as the story broke. Last month (FT345:31) I looked at new Presenter Richard Madeley was shaking NASA transcripts released to scotch his head in amazement at the news, and claims that during the Apollo missions I was trying to be objective about what of the 1960s and 1970s astronauts had had allegedly occurred aboard the US UFO contacts. But are there any more shuttle Discovery. Caution was wise, as it puzzling cases from the location where turned out. The alleged message picked you might expect UFO sightings to be up by a radio ham claimed that the crew most common – above our atmosphere had contact with a UFO that ‘locked’ in the lonely depths of space? The onto the shuttle’s controls and had used answer is… perhaps. a code word – ‘Fire’ – to cover this up, The most studied case happened as if such a term would be used for NASA during the Gemini 4 mission – when anything other than an astronaut’s worst astronauts came upon a UFO high above intrigued to join forces with Hynek and other nightmare. The recording of this message did the Pacific Ocean. This was on 4 June 1965 UFO-friendly scientists to create a non-military contain words spoken by a voice passably like while they were circling the Earth over the research team. The team’s work found its the shuttle commander’s, but voice analysis Hawaiian Islands. Only James McDivitt, of the way into the celebrated Spielberg movie failed to establish it was him, and was most two astronauts aboard, was awake and saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind, on which likely a hoax – as, of course, NASA and the – then photographed – the strange-looking Hynek was consultant; he even appears in shuttle crew said in no uncertain terms from object described as “like a beer can (or pop the climactic scene, playing himself, as aliens the start. But the most obvious clue was that can) with an arm sticking out”. land in front of stunned scientists. despite an alleged alien craft taking control of McDivitt stuck to his belief that what he The Colorado University scientists were a NASA shuttle mid-flight, the mission went on saw was unexplained, despite much analysis impressed by the McDivitt sighting, and told unaffected for another fi ve days. There seems after his return to Earth. But there were me they regarded it as a serious ‘challenge’ little chance that this would have been the problems: he had struggled to set camera to scientific understanding that nobody had case if these events had ever happened. exposures and take photographs through yet answered. However, space journalist, UFO The same shuttle – Discovery – became the the tiny window as their small craft rolled in sceptic, and later NASA fl ight controller James centre of an even bigger UFO story on fl ight its planned motion, intended to cope with Oberg took a different view: that the UFO was STS 48 in September 1991. Three days into undiluted sunlight shining directly onto the the booster rocket that had launched the this mission, on 15 September, they fi lmed window. Gemini crew into orbit. It was “up there” in on video some very intriguing images of white NASA released two images from the a lower orbit but could still be seen at times blobs of light seen against the backdrop of hundreds taken during the mission. They catching the Sun. Oberg argued that McDivitt the Earth’s atmosphere (above). These rapidly showed white blobs, but McDivitt said he was tired, his eyes sore, and that his fellow change direction and accelerate in motions knew right away that these were not the astronaut had also admitted to seeing it that certainly look artificial. Unsurprisingly, object he had photographed and, despite during another part of the mission but had not many UFO researchers have speculated that looking through all other exposures, he could immediately recognised what it was. McDivitt this is important evidence, while NASA argued not fi nd his shots (though many photos were strongly rejected this theory and pointed that the lights are really ice particles cast spoiled because of the sunlight glare). The out some sound reasons against it. He was from the hull and that they move oddly when photos NASA released were taken around the actively plotting the location of the booster directed by the jets from the shuttle engines. same time in the mission and are probably as part of an experiment he was conducting The divide over this case is deep, but as a examples of a common source of UFO during the fl ight and so says he knew where UFO sighting with undeniable provenance it misperception during early space missions. it was at all times. Even so, determined to is possibly the best in the history of NASA – This was an odd glow, caused by a bolt on prove his colleague Oberg right, UFO critic even if it was just an Identified Flying Object. the window through which the shot was Philip Klass sent a still taken from footage of There is also a fortean coda, as these two taken, which then ‘flares out’ into a UFO-like the booster in orbit to McDivitt to ask if it was shuttle missions have an interesting link with appearance deriving from solar glare and his UFO. The astronaut said: “I very quickly space and aliens. STS 29, like many NASA limitations of 1960s camera technology. identified [it] as the second stage of the Titan fl ights, allowed the crew to pre-select music However, McDivitt’s sighting was believed rocket which launched us… I am sure that to wake them up in the morning from sleep. genuine by many and has been intensively this is not a photograph of the object which I During the ‘UFO’ mission the crew of Discovery analysed. NASA never resolved the matter, but have described many times”. He also clarified had chosen one day to use the theme music in a 1999 memoir McDivitt (who later fl ew on that the UFO was just that – something from the TV series Star Trek. Meanwhile, the lunar mission Apollo 9) said he suspected it unidentified – and he was not claiming it was commander of STS 48 was astronaut John might have been something small and close of alien origin. Creighton. US Astronaut John Crichton (same to the capsule, as judging size and distance During the NASA space shuttle programme pronunciation) was the protagonist in the cult in space was difficult. The sighting was taken of the 1980s and 1990s a number of TV series Farscape, about a shuttle pilot who seriously by the ‘Condon Report’ – a team of ‘sightings’ were made during missions that gets lost during a NASA mission and meets scientists led by physicist Dr Edward Condon do qualify for the description of UFOs. Some aliens in deep space. out of the University of Colorado in Boulder. images generated wild theories, but better Now, by chance, we can tie the above This analysed the best data available during understanding of near-Earth space gained coincidences together when, after a decade the late 1960s under a government grant by NASA suggests some were a geophysical off screen, the TV show Star Trek returns to and caused the US Air Force to drop its phenomenon occurring on the edge of the television in January 2017. This time the ship investigation into UFOs (Project Blue Book). Earth’s atmosphere but only seen from space. that will go out in search of new life and new But the Condon study was not suggesting One of the strangest of the shuttle UFO civilisations will not be the USS Enterprise, that all cases were resolved or that scientific stories occurred to mission STS 29 early on as in several previous series: Star Trek: interest in the subject be quashed. I was 13 March 1989, although nothing was made Discovery will be about the Federation craft fortunate to visit Boulder along with Dr J Allen public during the fl ight. Two weeks later (in a the USS Discovery, named after a long line of Hynek, who for over 20 years was scientific British tabloid), there was a graphic headline – spaceships that reach towards the stars. In advisor to Blue Book. We debated cases “Shuttle Crew Saw Aliens” – although this was real life, this run began with the NASA shuttle such as this one with some of the scientists a bit of a stretch as the story only describes Discovery – which, as you can see, has a who had worked on the more puzzling data them seeing an unresolved object in space. head start on the fi ctional craft in allegedly in the ‘Condon’ study. Some were sufficiently By chance I was at an ITV studio doing a live alien encounters.

FT346 25 www.forteantimes.com DIABLERIES THE DEVIL IN 3-D

In the second half of the 19th century, Paris was overtaken by a new sensation – stereoscopic cards in which the Devil and all his works were shown in astonishing, and often humourously satirical, detail. BRIAN MAY tells how he fell under their diabolical spell and with fellow fi ends DENIS PELLERIN & PAULA FLEMING explores the technological and cultural background of these hellish creations.

he fi rst time I intervening 150 years, encountered a it’s almost impossible TDiablerie card to emulate what these was very early on artists created. a cold, frosty morning in the late 1960s, in that WHAT IS A romantic marketplace DIABLERIE? of curious antiquities A Diablerie is a special of all kinds – Portobello kind of stereo card. But Road Market in West what is a stereo card? London. Being already Stereo cards – 3-D views obsessed with all printed on paper – were things stereoscopic, I fi rst sold to the public used to go there every in England and France Saturday morning around 1853, and to browse around became hugely popular the stalls looking for stereoscopes, stereo throughout the 1850s. One of the pioneers in cards,Viewmaster reels, stereo cameras, and LIFE IN HELL England was TR Williams (see A Village Lost anything related to what seemed to me a lost and Found), who began creating works of art in art; for the magic of 3-D had lit a spark in me the medium of stereo daguerreotypes around that was to last a lifetime. MIGHT BE QUITE 1851, but soon moved over to marketing One morning, one of the street traders his stereo photographs as prints on early showed me something I had never seen photographic paper, mounted on cards which before – a magical group of yellow-rimmed SIMILIAR TO fi tted into the new ‘standard’ Brewster-style stereo cards showing scenes of skeletons and stereoscopes.The paper was coated with a demons.These were apparently engaged in THAT ON EARTH layer of egg white (albumen) containing silver various activities that made it seem as if life in salts, in which a photographic positive image Hell might be quite similar to that on Earth; could be ‘fixed’ so that it became relatively the fact that most of the inhabitants were no into full colour, and the scene morphed from stable and resistant to further exposure to more than bags of animated bones did not day into night: chandeliers, lanterns, and light. Many of these 1850s prints have survived stand in the way of them having fun!Viewed strings of incandescent torches burst into light in perfect condition. in the stereoscope these scenes jumped into against dark skies and murky waters, and Going back a stage, the negatives to make life in an astonishing way, and it was evident hellish fi res appeared from below. And to top these prints were made on glass plates by that they represented a whole new Universe it all, the eyes of the Devil and his skeletons a different chemical process – Wet-Plate created by skilful sculptors – dioramas and ghouls gleamed with an eerie red glow. Collodion.The plate in the camera had to have populated with characters beautifully No one viewing an original Diablerie tissue been coated just seconds earlier with a sticky modelled in clay and photographed in 3-D. But in a stereoscope for the fi rst time can fail to solution containing guncotton and silver salts, the magic did not stop there.The photographs be stunned by the ingenuity, the beauty, and which was required still to be tacky at the time mounted in these cards were monochrome the sheer madness of these small works of art. of exposure.The effort required to master this – made in the 1860s, long before colour With all the advances we have made in the extremely tricky process was justified because photography. Viewed with light shining on the front, in the usual way, the images were seen just in various shades of sepia – a ‘day-time’ ABOVE:A rare original box of 12 Diableries published by tion which conformed to what church-goers of the day Block c.1875. were being told about life after death. Hennetier’s great view. But their creators had built colouring FACING PAGE: ‘L’Enfer’: here we see some unfortunate inspiration was to adapt this bas-relief style, often seen – and more – into them by ingenious means. damned souls, depicted as skeletons being boiled in a in churches depicting the Stations of the Cross, to show When the cards were held up to a bright light cauldron, while a winged and tailed Satan prods them what the afterlife might look like. When the stereo card source, so that they became more illuminated with his trident. Created by Pierre Adolphe Hennetier is illuminated from behind, the scene, coloured in fi ery from the back than the front, an amazing some time before 1860, and typical of his early sculp- tones, and featuring glowing red eyes in the heads of ture work, this picture is essentially a religious visualisa- the skeletons, becomes even more devilish. transformation happened.The pictures sprang

26 FT346 www.forteantimes.com Diableries: stereoscopic aDventures in Hell ALL IMAGES FROM

FT346 27 www.forteantimes.com the resulting plates were very LEFT: A Diablerie card, illumi- sensitive – or ‘fast’ – making nated from behind, in place in it possible to secure an image an 1860s French stereoscope. in exposures of just a few BELOW: Sculptor Louis Alfred seconds.These negative plates Habert modelling one of his were developed immediately creations – Mademoiselle Satan. on site, fi xed, varnished and dried, and carefully stored until they were used to make souls of men, embodied the Albumen positive prints. not as spirits or ghosts, The resulting stereo cards but as living skeletons, he gave theirVictorian audience opened a door to a whole an unprecedented view of new world of devilments the world, a kind of Cinema in 3-D. ‘Devilments’, and TV of the day rolled into incidentally, is probably one, providing education, the best translation of entertainment, and the the word diableries into sharing of ideas. English – for the series is Many stereo cards all about the activities of were hand-tinted, using the Devil, in a loose and watercolours applied to the sometimes comical sense. front surface of the prints, and for these cards There was actually very little humour in the buyer would pay a higher price than for those fi rst dioramas by Hennetier, but, under the monochrome versions. But the French the auspices of a succession of publishers, developed something a little more ingenious. the fi rst of whom was a man called Lamiche, The ‘French tissue’ was introduced around Hennetier was encouraged to spread his 1858, modelled on a toy called a Polyorama wings creatively. And very soon he was joined Panoptique, offering a new way of enjoying by another sculptor who came with great stereo views. Instead of adding colours to the skills and a reputation as a fi ne artist – a man front of an albumen print, they turned it over called Louis Alfred Habert. It seems that for and painted it on the back.They then made a while these two men worked in friendly and pinpricks and scratches in the paper in the spectacularly fruitful competition within a exact positions of items to be highlighted, partnership; and later, when they split up, such as jewellery, lights, and lanterns, and they continued to reference each other in even ‘surprise’ elements such as fi reworks, their separate works. etc.To the reverse of the prints they then There are, in all, over 180 bona fi de applied blobs or tiny pieces of coloured gel Diableries, created between 1860 and the to the prickings, so that, viewed from the mid 1890s. At fi rst sight, they are simply great front, with the light coming from behind, not fun, a parlour entertainment to share indoors only did the whole picture become coloured on a rainy day or a frosty night. But these but the pricked lights and scratches would exquisitely crafted scenes were created for sparkle with a magical effect.To complete reasons far beyond mere amusement. Beneath the manufacture of these tissue views, a sheet the innocent façade of child-like stories lies of tissue was then applied to the back of the an undercurrent of social comment, topical prints to cover up the ‘works’; then the whole allusion, humour, and, in many cases, seditious was permanently sandwiched between two satire – which was so dangerous in the pieces of cardboard – the mount, or ‘matte’ – repressive regime in which they were made, into which twin ‘windows’ were cut to allow that it rendered their creators liable to be viewing from the front and also illumination arrested and incarcerated. from the back. DIABLERIES The manual work involved in completing THE CHANGING FACE OF THE DEVIL just one of these French tissues was enormous WERE ONCE Lamiche, Hennetier, and Habert did not – and required considerable skill, especially invent Diableries; they simply used the because this precise work had to be applied new technique of the stereoscope to revive twice, identically to the left and right images. PART OFTHE something that had been popular in one form These cards became very popular in the or another for centuries, and had been freely 1860s, and their makers became very creative, used by many artists since the advent of putting all sorts of ‘surprises’ into the backlit MYSTERY PLAYS lithography. aspects, including moons, comets, trains, and... Originally, Diableries were part of the fi res.Thus the French tissue was a perfect Mystery Plays that were enacted outside medium for the subjects of the Diableries, MODELLING HELL churches for the benefit of the illiterate ready to bring them alive in all their devilish Nobody knows exactly why a young man masses in the Middle Ages. Mysteries were splendour. The Diableries included all of the called Pierre Adolphe Hennetier fi rst decided lengthy plays about the lives of saints, ‘surprise’ elements seen in other tissues, but in 1860 to make three tabletop tableaux and to keep the audience’s attention, the the great new feature was the eyes.The reds depicting Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. narration was occasionally interrupted by (and sometimes other colours) of the eyes Coming from a background of small-scale actors disguised as devils who would make of the Devil and all his skeleton henchmen, sculpting of story-telling ornaments for as much noise as possible, and thus provide attendant goblins, and ghouls, set the churches, Hennetier had already paved the a much needed break – the equivalent of Diableries apart with their unearthly glow, way for the genre by creating bas-reliefs today’s intervals.There were small Diableries, and were undoubtedly a contributory factor depicting popular fables for the stereoscope. involving two devils, and big ones with up to in their great success. But now let us take Now he created a vision of the afterlife, in his four devils. It must be remembered that in another step backwards, and ask ‘what are we own unique style, which would have resonated Catholic France of the time, the Devil was a looking at in these stereo photographs, and with current notions of the day about life after mighty weapon used by the Church, not only how were the images originated?’ death. But in populating his vision with the to keep people on the right path, but also to

28 FT346 www.forteantimes.com CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: An Infernal Concert: Satan in a jolly mood, conduct- ing his orchestra. Behind them is a panel of ‘judges’ seen against a distant moon- scape: the middle one is covering his ears, and the other two seem to be scream- ing for mercy. No wonder Satan is enjoying himself so much! Hennetier is convey- ing a very different message here from the grim tones of ‘Hell’ and other early Diableries. We are clearly meant to join in the merriment – Hell is becoming a place which just might be fun. Satan is Unwell: An abrupt change of mood. Satan is sick and appears weak and haggard. The is taking his pulse has the body of a skeleton man, but the head of an ass. He has recommended a foot bath, as well as a clystère – the administration of a potent laxative per rectum. The skeleton to the left of the group of nurses is holding a rectal pump and the other one a rectal syringe. Regattas in Satanville: It’s a glorious day for boating, and Habert’s vivid imagination has conjured up a veritable horde of skeletons, all reminding us that Hell can be fun! Satan, for once, is not trying to win the race. Relaxed, with raised oars, in a boat with a spread-winged bat as a figurehead, he is being distracted by a pretty personal assistant. Gateway to Hell: Like Dante and Virgil before us, we are standing outside the gates of Hell. Everyone seems to be looking straight out of the picture at us, giving us a special welcome to eternal damnation. One new soul doffs his hat to us and shows us his pass, on which we can read the number ‘13’ and ‘valid for admission’. There are stalls selling things we might like to buy – the last chance before we depart this Earth. The Infernal Library: What kind of library is this that opens at midnight (according to the sign on the right of the door) and in which skulls sorted by sins are standing in rows where books should be? The artist has made it obvious that what ‘readers’ come to consult here is not bound volumes, but skulls. Satan has a a whole collection and keeps them all neatly categorised; in the Enfer of Hennetier and Habert, skeletons represent souls. So Satan is revelling in his collection of stolen essences of humans.

FT346 29 www.forteantimes.com maintain its influence and power. Everything had not yet adopted the pseudonym of Gavarni), the 1830s, but the Devil did not appear just possible was done to hold simple souls in holy a small book made up of folding pages, few inside the pages of illustrated magazines. He terror of the Evil One, and of the dreadful copies of which have survived.They were soon was also in books and on the stage. Author consequences of a sinful life. Representations followed by a series of extremely pornographic Frédéric Soulié published the Mémoirs of the of Hell, complete with horrible and vicious lithographs published anonymously in Brussels Devil in 1837 and 1838, and the public could see demons, were sculpted or painted both outside in 1830 by Eugène Modeste Edmond Le him in a succession of vaudevilles, parodies, and inside churches, and sermons would often Poittevin (born Poidevin, 1806–70) under the and comedies with such titles as La Tentation mention the torments inflicted upon the title Charges et Décharges Diaboliques (Diabolical de Maître Antoine (1832), Le Cheveu du Diable damned. Charges and Discharges). In 1835, Achille (1833), Le Souper du Diable (1834), Une Femme For centuries very little changed, and the Devéria (1800–57) also resorted to pornography est un Diable (1835), Vive le Diable! (1836), Devil kept frightening old and young people to show the devious ways of the Devil in the L’ Enfer en Goguette (1837), and so on. People alike. By the late 18th century, in Alain-René 13 plates of his Diabolico-Foutro-Manie. Those were by now gradually accepting the Devil as Lesage’s Le Diable Boiteux, (The Devil Upon publications must have had a limited impact, a person who could be mocked and ridiculed, Crutches) and Jacques Cazotte’s Le Diable as they were bought only by well-off amateurs, rather than feared and dreaded. Amoureux (The Devil in Love), demons started but things changed when journalist Charles Habert and Hennetier were a little too young being seen more as fantastic fi gures capable Philipon (1800–61) founded the satirical weekly to have known that fi rst wave of 1830s devils, of changing their appearance and sometimes papers La Caricature in 1830 and Le Charivari but they were young men – and Lamiche was in willing to help humans than as sinister two years later. his prime – when the second wave came in the characters bent on the eternal damnation of Paul Gavarni published two double-page 1840s. the human race. Moreover, the Devil began spreads, called La Procession du Diable and Suite A Physiology of the Devil illustrated by Jean- to lose his traditional horn and tail, and was de la Procession du Diable in La Caricature on Pierre Moynet (1819–76) was published in 1842; represented as a person who could mingle 24 March and 7 April 1831. On 3 and 22 March then came the famous Le Diable à Paris, in 1845 anywhere without being detected.The fi nal 1833, Charles Ramelet (1805–51) made several and 1846.This was a collection of short pieces blow to the traditional vision of the Evil One vignettes of Diableries Fantastiques for Le on various aspects of Parisian life supposedly came with the advent of lithography (again Charivari. Around the same time, the illustrated ordered by Satan himself through one of his at the end of the 18th century) and its use in review L’ Artiste (1831–1904) published a demons, Flamèche. Satan, getting bored in Hell, illustrated magazines. lithograph by Edmond Le Poittevin showing had sent Flamèche to Paris and told him to the Devil carrying on his back the Musée Royal report what he saw there.The pieces, dropped THE DEVILS OF PARIS and laughing at artists running after him with in a special drawer called Le Tiroir du Diable From the fi rst quarter of the 19th century to their canvases under their arms.Victor Adam (The Devil’s drawer), were written by some of the time the fi rst stereoscopic Diableries were (1801–66) also made some lithographs showing the great authors of the time (Balzac, Alfred de registered there were three main waves of in dozens of vignettes the works of the Devil or, Musset, George Sand, and Gérard de Nerval) Diables and Diableries.The fi rst wave started as he called them in one of his plates his Passe- and the illustrations were signed by Gavarni, timidly at the very beginning of 1825 with Tems [sic] or hobbies. Tony Johannot, Bertall, Nanteuil, and others. Récréations Diabolico-Fantasmagoriques, Étrennes There are other examples of illustrations Le Diable à Paris was subsequently re-issued in de 1825 by Guillaume Sulpice Chevallier (who showing the Devil or his minions throughout 1853 and again in 1868. At the same time, the Devil appeared in a variety of stage shows.There were so many of DIABLERIES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY them in 1844 that they inspired two end-of- the year reviews: Paris à tous les Diables and Diableries de l’année. Once the Devil had become fashionable, there were diables and diableries everywhere, to some people’s horror and to others’ delight; they were on every wall and in every house. In the words of the song in the review Paris à tous les Diables, Le Diable se donne à Paris / Et tout Paris se donne au diable (The Devil gives himself to Paris / And everyone in Paris gives themselves to the Devil). A similar situation occurred when the third wave of Diableries hit Paris in the mid-to-late 1850s.The Devil was still as popular as ever, and journalist Léo Lespès (1815–75) wrote a long and very witty piece about him called The Devil, his Pumps and Works, in the 31 August 1856 issue of Le Figaro. Towards the end of 1858, no fewer than fi ve devil-related plays or operas could be seen on Parisian stages on the same day, which caught the attention of caricaturist Cham, who drew a man with his back to the readers, standing in front of a wall covered Having been at the cutting edge of sterescopic viewing in the 19th century, the Diableries in posters advertising the performances. are now moving into other media. We’ve already had an award-winning short fi lm (with music Underneath he wrote the following caption: from Brian May & the Czech National Symphony Orchestra) entitled one night in Hell, a “Wondering which Devil to turn to” – a variant devilish and spectacular animation that tells the story of one skeleton’s journey into a ste- of a common French expression which normally reoscopic Hell. Currently, work is underway on a feature-length version mixing stop-motion goes ‘Wondering which Saint to turn to.’ By animation and live action, with an expected release date of 2019. Meanwhile, the Diableries the time the vignette was published, another application allows users to delve into the Diableries world by exploring Brian May’s personal Hell-related show had been added to the list – collection of Diableries stereo cards in amazing detail through initiative interaction. The app Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, which also includes the Diabl-O-Scope augmented reality feature where users are able to interact had premiered on 21 October. with “One Night in Hell” characters. The characters react to the user’s play and can be Everything was therefore ready by the end recorded to be shared on social media. For all the latest news on Diableries-related pro- of 1858 for the creation and publishing of a jects, visit: www.onenightinhell.com/ new series of Diableries in a new medium – by Hennetier and Habert.The two sculptors, like

30 FT346 www.forteantimes.com A Bicycle Race in Hell: Satan evidently foreground and right to left in the know for sure when this 1873-reg- a distance of just over 10 miles; but loves racing, as long as he wins. We background. At the back of the fi eld istered diorama was actually made, soon races were being organised see him in the lead on his unfairly is a demon who is about to run over the outfits and headgear of the two everywhere in France and Great Britain massive unicycle, comfortably ahead a fallen skeleton; another skeleton lady spectators are suggestive of alike. These are early days for cycles, of all the other competitors on their is trying to stop him by pulling his the late 1860s or very early 1870s, and there are no chains or gears, so more common, and aptly named, tail. Satan views all this with amuse- which would make this one of the the rate at which the ‘driven’ wheel boneshakers. This is another wonder- ment, presumably because it makes very fi rst ‘snapshots’ of such a sport- rotates is exactly the rate of pedalling. fully creative composition, designed him even more certain of winning the ing event. The fi rst bicycle race ever Hence, Satan is no fool choosing a specifically to work only in 3-D –the race. Bicycle races were a novelty in was held in France on 8th December huge wheel; in this case, the bigger race going from left to right in the Habert’s time, and though we don’t 1867, between Paris and Versailles, the wheel, the faster the ride.

the general public, were familiar with the Devil the time he had spent in prison, and for the Adapted and extracted from and his ways, and had probably seen some of fact that he was being closely watched by Diableries: Stereoscopic the many plays referring to him. Lamiche had the police. In Lamiche’s mind, the President Adventures In Hell, by Brian had an even longer acquaintance with past Prince had become the Dark Prince, and his May, Denis Pellerin and Diableries, and had several grudges against newly founded empire was the Dark Empire. Paula Fleming, published the Emperor, whom he viewed as a fallen All that was now necessary was to convince his by LSC Publishing RRP £40. angel (he had been legally elected President two artists to include hints and allusions to the Includes OWL stereoscopic of the French Republic and had then seized current régime that would be plain enough to viewer. power by force but, unlike Satan’s, his coup had be easily understood by the public, but also Available from the London Stereoscopic succeeded).The Emperor was an evil creature subtle enough to escape the attention of the Company website: www.londonstereo. who was responsible for his son’s death, for censors. FT com/books-diableries.html

FT346 31 www.forteantimes.com AVISITTOTHE UNDERWORLD

MIKE DASH examines the unsolved mystery of the tunnels at Baia. Did ancient priests fool visitors to a sulphurous subterranean stream into believing that they had crossed the River Styx and entered Hades?

here is nothing LEFT: The Phlegræan remotely Fields painted in the Elysian about 1780s by Michael Wutky. the Phlegræan BELOW: A Cumæan sibyl TFields, which by Andrea del Catagno. lie on the north shore of the Bay of Naples and states that the – nothing sylvan, nothing cave itself concealed green. The Fields are part an entrance to the of the caldera of a volcano underworld. that is the twin of Mount The best known Vesuvius, the destroyer – and from our of Pompeii, a few miles perspective the most to the east. The volcano is interesting – of all the still active, but today its tales associated with most obvious feature is the sibyl is supposed this barren, rubble-strewn to date to the reign of plateau. Fire bursts from Tarquinius Superbus the rocks in places, and – Tarquin the Proud. clouds of sulphurous He was the last of the gas snake out of vents mythic kings of Rome, that lead up from deep and some historians, underground. at least, concede that The Fields, in short, he really did live and are hellish, and it is no rule in the 6th century surprise that they have her virginity. Pointing to BC. According to always been associated with all manner of a heap of dust, Amalthæa legend, the sibyl travelled to strange tales. Most interesting, perhaps, is asked for a year of life Tarquin’s palace bearing nine the myth of the Cumæan sibyl, who took her for each particle in the pile, books of prophecy that set name from the nearby town of Kyme – Cumæ but (as is usually the way in out the future of Rome. She – a Greek colony that fl ourished in about such old tales) she failed to offered the set to the king for 550 BC, when the Etruscans still held sway allow for the vindictiveness a price so enormous that he over much of central Italy and Rome was of the gods. Ovid, in summarily declined – at which nothing but a city-state ruled over by a line Metamorphoses, has her the prophetess went away, of tyrannical kings. lament that “like a fool, I did burned the fi rst three of the not ask that all those years books, and returned, offering THE SYBIL AND THE CAVE should come with the remaining six to Tarquin The sibyl, so the story goes, was a woman youth as well”. Instead, at the same price. Once again, named Amalthæa who lurked in a cave on she aged but could not die. the king refused, though less the Phlegræan Fields. She had once been Virgil depicted her scribbling arrogantly this time, and the young and beautiful – beautiful enough to predictions of the future on sibyl burned three more of the attract the attentions of the Sun god Apollo, oak leaves that lay scattered precious volumes. The third time who offered her one wish in exchange for about the entrance to her cave, she approached the king, he

32 FT346 www.forteantimes.com ABOVE: The ruins of Baia’s Roman spa complex. Its pools were fi lled with warm water from underground sulphur springs. BELOW: The entrance to the “A ntro della Sibilla” or Cave of the Sibyl in Cumæ, discovered by Amedeo Maiuri in 1932. Maiuri also uncovered the hidden entrance to Baia’s ‘Great Antrum’ in the 1950s.

thought it wise to accede to her demands. archæologists and scholars of romantic bent Rome purchased the three remaining books BAIAWASA SPA have from time to time gone in search of of prophecy at the original steep price. a cave or tunnel that might be identified What makes this story of interest to as the real home of a real sibyl – nor that historians as well as folklorists is that NOTED FOR ITS some have hoped that they would discover there is good evidence that three Greek an entrance, if not to Hades, then at least to scrolls, known collectively as the Sibylline CURESAND ITS some spectacular subterranean caverns. Books, really were kept, closely guarded, for Several spots have been identified as hundreds of years after the time of Tarquin the antro della sibilla – the cave of the the Proud. Secreted in a stone chest in a IMMORALITY sibyl – over the years. None, though, led vault beneath the Temple of Jupiter, the to anywhere that might reasonably be scrolls were brought out at times of crisis thought to be an entrance to the underworld. and used, not as a detailed guide to the Because of this, the quest continued, and future of Rome, but as a manual that set gradually the remaining searchers focused out the rituals required to avert looming their attentions on the old Roman resort disasters. They served the Republic well of Baia, which lies on the Bay of Naples at until the temple burned down in 83 BC, a spot where the Phlegræan Fields vanish and so vital were they thought to be that beneath the Tyrrhenian Sea. Two thousand huge efforts were made to reassemble the years ago, Baia was a fl ourishing spa, noted lost prophecies by sending envoys to all the both for its mineral cures and for the great towns of the known world to look for scandalous immorality that fl ourished there. fragments that might have come from the Today, it is little more than a collection of same source. These reassembled prophecies picturesque ruins – but it was there, in the were pressed back into service and not 1950s, that the Italian archæologist Amedeo fi nally destroyed until AD 405, when they are Maiuri discovered the entrance to a hitherto thought to have been burned by a powerful unknown antrum. It had been concealed general by the name of Flavius Stilicho. for centuries beneath dense undergrowth The existence of the Sibylline Books sprouting from a vineyard; Maiuri’s workers certainly suggests that Rome took the had to clear a 15ft (4.6m) thick accumulation legend of the Cumæan sibyl seriously, and of earth and vines to lay it bare. indeed the geographer Strabo, writing at The antrum at Baia proved difficult about the time of Christ, clearly states to explore. A sliver of tunnel, obviously

REATIVE COMMONS that there actually was “an Oracle of ancient and manmade, disappeared into /C

ON the Dead” somewhere in the Phlegræan a hillside close to the ruins of what may LO

N Fields – a statement that implies, in turn, be a Greek temple. The fi rst curious VA that the Romans believed an entrance to onlookers who pressed their heads into its the underworld existed somewhere on the cramped entrance discovered a pitch-black plateau. So it is scarcely surprising that passageway that was uncomfortably hot ALEXANDER

FT346 33 www.forteantimes.com and – so Maiuri reported – wreathed in fumes; they penetrated only a few feet into the interior before beating a hasty retreat. There the mystery rested, and it was not revived until the site came to the attention of Robert Ferrand Paget – who liked everyone to call him “Doc” – in the early 1960s. EXPLORING THE TUNNELS Paget was not a proper archæologist. He was a metallurgical chemist (and nephew to Sidney Paget, the well-known illustrator of Sherlock Holmes) who had retired to the Bay of Naples and excavated as a hobby. As such, his theories need to be viewed with caution, and it is worth noting that when the academic Papers of the British School at Rome agreed to publish the results of the half-decade that he and an American colleague named Keith Jones spent investigating the tunnels, a fi rm distinction was drawn between the School’s endorsement of Paget’s plans of the interior and its refusal to pass comment on the theories he had come up with to explain when and why it had been built. These theories eventually made their appearance in book form, but attracted little attention – surprisingly, because the pair claimed to have stumbled across nothing less than a real-life “entrance to the underworld”. Paget was one of the handful of men who still hoped to locate the “cave of the sibyl” described by Virgil, and it was this obsession that made him willing to risk the inhospitable interior. He and Jones pressed their way though the narrow opening and found themselves inside a cramped tunnel, about 6ft (1.8m) tall but a mere 21in (53cm) wide. The temperature inside was uncomfortable but bearable, and the two men pressed on into a passage that, they claimed, had probably not

ORACLEOFTHEDEAD.COM been entered for 2,000 years. ORACLEOFTHEDEAD.COM JOHN SMOUT TOP: The entrance to the Great Antrum, fi rst explored by “Doc” Paget in the 1960s. ABOVE LEFT: The Great Antrum, lined with Roman ‘cocciopesto’ waterproof cement. ABOVE RIGHT: A render from a 3-D model made by researcher John Smout. The shadow on the blue ground represents sea level. The ‘River Styx’ is only just above this level. Everything above the red line is inside the volcanic cliff, in solid rock.

34 FT346 www.forteantimes.com JOHN SMOUT S: ORACLEOFTHEDEAD.COM TO BOTH PHO TOP: An elevation showing the tunnel system from the “Dividing of the Ways” and giving Paget’s names for various features. The red portions represent those areas blocked with soil. ABOVE LEFT: Twin tunnels inexplicably divide and meet again behind the puzzling feature that Paget dubbed the “Dividing of the Ways”. ABOVE RIGHT: View of the “Sanctuary” with tiled niche and arch bricked up by the Romans, seen from “South 120” and the “Rise”. BELOW: “Doc” Paget.

It took Paget and Jones, working in remains a mystery; at some point in the difficult conditions, some time to explore SOMEBODY HAD tunnels’ history, it had been laboriously what turned out to be a highly ambitious fi lled in, and it has never been excavated. tunnel system. The interior included an oddly Further blockages were found elsewhere in complex network of narrow passageways. BEENANXIOUS the tunnel system; according to Paget’s rough The entrances to some of them proved to be calculations, something like 7,000 cubic feet disguised, and whose precise purpose Paget – TO STOP UPTHE (200m3) of soil had been carried in baskets and all those who have come after him – can from the surface, an operation that would only attempt to guess at. have required 15,000 man-journeys The fi rst of these peculiar features TUNNELS down the narrow passageways. occurred about 400ft (125m) from the Somebody, he decided, had entrance, at a spot where the path diverged, once been very anxious to only to merge again some 330ft (100m) themselves. First, at stop up the tunnel system further into the complex. Paget suggested the bottom of a much and conceal its purpose. that this “dividing of the ways” had at one steeper passage, some time been masked by a wooden door. Swung 650ft (200m) inside the AN ENTRANCE TO closed, this would have masked one route to tunnel, they discovered HADES? the lower levels. But, opened, it could have an underground stream So what was the “Great been used (so the explorer suggested) as a 6ft (1.8m) wide, which Antrum,” as Paget called ventilation system; hot, vitiated air would be disappeared into the it? Who had built it – and sucked out of the tunnel complex at ceiling darkness. The river itself was what had it been used for? level, while currents of cooler air from the hot to the touch. Fording it and And who had blocked access to surface were constantly drawn in along the ascending a steep passageway on the it? In time, “Doc” came up answers to fl oor. far bank, the men next came upon what they all of those questions. As Paget and Jones went deeper into thought had been an “inner sanctuary”. The tunnel system, he proposed, had the hillside, two further puzzles revealed What this room was, or had been used for, been constructed by priests to mimic a visit

FT346 35 www.forteantimes.com S: ORACLEOFTHEDEAD.COM TO BOTH PHO ABOVE LEFT: The start of the underground watercourse, perhaps representing the River Styx, which the dead crossed to enter Hades. Although near sea level, the water is fresh and drinkable. BELOW: The writing on the wall, daubed over a lamp niche, that Paget believed read “Illius Mar”. It is now thought to represent a date, “IIII KAL MAR”. to the Greeks’ mythical underworld. In this have been initiated into Baia’s mysteries. interpretation, the underground stream Dating the construction of the complex represented the fabled River Styx, which was a greater challenge. The explorers found the dead had to cross to enter Hades; a little evidence inside the tunnels to point to coracle, Paget speculated, would have been the identity of the builders – just a mason’s waiting to ferry visitors across, and a crossing plumb bob in one niche, and some ancient made in darkness might have concealed the graffiti, which can be read as a date: “IIII stream’s meagre breadth. On the far side, KAL MAR,” or 26 February, in an unknown initiates would have ascended to the hidden year. But, working on the assumption that sanctuary, and it was there they would the passages had once formed part of the have met… whom? One possibility, “Doc” surrounding temple complex, they concluded thought, was a priestess posing as a sibyl, and that they could best be dated to the late dispensing prophecies for a steep fee. For archaic period, around 550 BC – at pretty this reason he took to calling the complex the much the time, that is, that the Cumæan “Antrum of Initiation.” would have been required merely to provide sibyl was said to have lived. If so (and The tunnels, then, in Paget’s view, might illumination. This feature made no sense Italian archæologists prefer to believe that have been constructed to allow priests if the tunnels were (as more mainstream the tunnels are later, and Roman) then the to persuade their patrons – or perhaps archæologists have always suggested) merely complex was almost certainly the work of the simply wealthy travellers – that they had devised to channel warm air to Baia’s famous Greek colonists of Cumæ itself. As for when journeyed to the underworld. The heightened Roman baths above. And the “dividing of the tunnels were blocked up, that – wrote temperatures below ground, combined, the ways,” with its hidden door, would have Paget – must have taken place after Virgil’s perhaps, with drifts of volcanic vapour, could allowed a party of priests – and the “sibyl,” time, during the early Imperial period of certainly have given that impression. And too, perhaps – quick access to the hidden Roman history. But who exactly ordered the if visitors were scared, befuddled, or even sanctuary. work, or why, he could not say. drugged, it would have been possible to Indeed, the whole system, Paget thought, In time, Paget and Jones resolved at least create a powerfully otherworldly experience, closely matched ancient myths of visits to the one of the Great Antrum’s mysteries. In 1965 one capable of persuading even the most underworld. In Virgil’s Aeneid, for instance, they persuaded a friend, Colonel David Lewis sceptical of the priests’ power. the hero, Aeneas, crosses the Styx only once of the US Army, to investigate the Styx for In favour of this argument, “Doc” on his journey underground, emerging from them using scuba apparatus. Lewis and his supposed, was the careful planning of the Hades by an alternate route. The discovery of son dived into the stream and followed it tunnels. He pointed to the huge number of a further, blocked, tunnel at the back of the into a tunnel that dramatically deepened, lamp niches which had been built into the hill suggests that the complex at Baia may discovering an underwater cave, along with tunnel walls; there are more than 550 in all, have been constructed to allow just such a the source of the stream’s warmth: two and they come at the rate of one every three journey. And since Virgil himself, in Paget’s springs of boiling water, superheated by the feet (90cm) in the lower levels, far more than argument, had lived nearby, he might himself volcanic chambers of the Phlegræan Fields.

36 FT346 www.forteantimes.com DONAR REISKOFFER ABOVE: Sulphur drifts from a vent on the barren volcanic plateau of the Phlegræan Fields, a harsh moonscape associated with legends of prophecy. Might such fumes have been used by priests at Baia to help create a sense of descending into the underworld?

RIVERS OF FIRE of how its ancient builders, working with SOURCES Whether Paget’s elaborate theories are primitive tools at the end of the Bronze Age, CF Hardie, “The Great Antrum at Baiæ”, Papers correct remains a matter of debate. It seems could possibly have known of the existence of the British School at Rome 37, 1969 much more likely than not that the tunnel of the “River Styx,” much less excavated a Victor Failmezger, Paget, Discoverer of Hades, complex served some ritual purpose; in tunnel that so neatly intercepted it. There is National Media Services, 2013 addition to the mute evidence of the lamp no trace of the river at the surface – and we AG McKay, Cumæ and the Phlegræan Fields, niches, the recent efforts of another British still have no real idea where its source is, or Cromlech Press, 1972 researcher, John Smout, have established where it leads. Daniel Ogden, Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in that the entrance passageway was angled Little seems to have changed at Baia the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook, so that it would have been picked out and since Paget’s day. His discoveries have Oxford University Press, 2002 illuminated by the sunrise over Mount made remarkably little impact on tourism RF Paget, “The ‘Great Antrum’ at Baiæ: a Vesuvius at each equinox around 500 BC. at the ancient resort, and his willingness Preliminary Report”, Papers of the British One central question may well be whether it to embroider evidence (and, at least School at Rome 35, 1967 is possible to see Paget’s channel of “boiling occasionally, to just make it up) means that RF Paget, In the Footsteps of Orpheus, Robert water” deep underground as anything other work still needs to be done to unpick fact Hale, 1967 than a deliberate representation of one of from fi ction in the Great Antrum. Today, HW Parke, Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in the fabled rivers that girdled Hades – if not the network of passages is locked up and Classical Antiquity, Routledge, 1988 the Styx itself, then perhaps the Phlegethon, dangerous to enter. Little attempt is made to Fikrut Yegul, “The Thermo-Mineral Complex the mythic “river of fi re” that, in Dante’s exploit the idea that the narrow entrance in at Baiæ and De Balneis Puteolanis”, The Art Inferno, boils the souls of the departed. And the rock was once thought to be an entrance Bulletin 78:1, Mar 1996 for all the scepticism of the archæologists, to the Romans’ Hell – and, pending proper historians of the ancient world do not dispute investigation by archæologists, not much AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY that the powerful priests of antiquity were more can be said about the tunnels’ origin perfectly capable of mounting elaborate and purpose. But among the many mysteries MIKE DASH is a deceptions. A recent geological report on the of the ancient world, the Antrum on the longtime member of far better known Greek oracle site at Delphi Bay of Naples remains among the most the Gang of Fort. He demonstrated that fi ssures in the rocks intriguing. FT was FT’s publisher for nearby brought intoxicating and anaesthetic some years, as well as gases to the surface at the spot (see ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS a regular contributor to FT127:21, 181:48-50), suggesting that it may My thanks to John Smout and Peter Knight the magazine, and is have been selected and used for a purpose for several illuminating discussions regarding the acclaimed author of much like the one Paget proposed at Baia. the Oracle site and Doc Paget’s claims. For Tulipomania, Batavia’s Yet much remains mysterious about the full details of the tunnel complex, and to Graveyard, Thug and the Great Antrum – its purpose, its still hidden keep up to date with ongoing research at Pulitzer Prize nominated Satan’s Circus and The exits, and, not least, the vexed question Baia, visit www.oracleofthedead.com. First Family.

FT346 37 www.forteantimes.com darknessvisible Hell in tHe Cinema

Ever since the silent era, fi lmmakers have been putting their visions of Hell on the silver screen, and much of their inspiration derives from a 14th century Italian poet and a 19th century French artist. REV PETER LAWS descends to the fi ery pits in search of the template for this celluloid inferno.

The dismal situation waste and wild. LEFT: A poster for the 1935 Fox fi lm Dante’s Inferno. A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, FACING PAGE: One of Gustave Doré’s iconic 1861 As one great furnace fl amed; yet from those Illustrations of Dante’s poem. fl ames No light; but rather darkness visible For Dante, the Inferno is a complex funnel (Milton, Paradise Lost) of descending circles, fl owing with rivers of blood that get hot enough to boil souls.There’s t’s a hideous spectacle, an eye-popping torture and mayhem, but it’s spooky too: take feast and a trailer-ready icon that the eerie forests where people are eternally audiences understand immediately. It’s melded into tree stumps as punishment for ian eternal, pitiful, violent extravaganza their suicides.The influence of the poem – plus it has naked writhing. Hell was would also be seen in that other great literary made for the cinema, and you won’t just fi nd evocation of Hell, Milton’s Paradise Lost. it in the horror genre.The inferno heats up Later still, it was a 19th century illustrator a surprising amount of comedies, schmaltzy of Dante’s works, Gustave Doré, who helped dramas and cute Disney fi lms too. cement the Italian poet’s vision for the The concept of Hell has been our close modern age.The French artist self-published companion ever since we realised we would his chilling engravings to accompany the die, and it’s a founding fear of many (though poem in 1861: he may have been working 600 by no means all) religions. From ancient times years after Dante, yet in terms of infernal to the present day, artists have been unable imagery, the two men might be seen as to resist painting, sculpting and writing co-conspirators in scaring the crap out of about what terrible things might happen to us anybody with religious leanings. on the dark side of death.Yet a brief wander Doré’s illustrations of yawning abysses, through the visions of Hell presented on the sheer rock, coiling serpents and naked, cinema screen shows a very particular cultural squirming bodies – he also illustrated Paradise influence. It’s not that of the Ancient Greeks, Lost in similar style – provided the common Romans or Egyptians.The latter’s ideas of visual furniture for the Hell of the movies: the afterlife were pretty grim at times – the throughout most of the 20th century, this was crocodile-headed demon Amut, who munches what Hell looked like. on the hearts of the immoral dead, comes to mind – but at least you faced annihilation soon STORYBOARDING HELL after. The people who really laid the blueprint It’s no surprise, then, to fi nd that cinema’s fi rst for the Hell of the movies were the Western plunge into the pit has Dante’s and Doré’s Christians. fi ngerprints all over it.The ambitious L’ inferno By the fourth century, theologians like (1911) was Italy’s fi rst feature-length St Augustine were already exploring fi lm. It’s a still impressive theatrical staging Christianity’s love affair with eschatology and of Dante’s poem, with his gaping chasms and apocalyptic terror. From then on, the Church writhing sinners all present and correct. It’s would riff on the subject continually; and yet controversial too. A short sequence shows the it was centuries later, in 1320, that the red dOrÉ PrOvided Mohammed damned forever and, as shoots of the cinematic Hell really started to per the poem, his entrails are hanging out. show. Dante Alighieri’s epic poem The Divine Audiences might have been horrified at these Comedy is an exhausting trek through Heaven, THe FUrniTUre visions, but they clearly loved being horrified: Purgatory and the cosmic horror of the the fi lm went on to become a worldwide hit. Inferno. After looking at the many of the FOr THe HellOF In 1924, Hollywood followed the Italians’ silver screen, you can’t miss Dante’s influence: example.Tinseltown’s fi rst depiction of Hell this is a vision of Hell that carries an eternal came in a silent version of Dante’s Inferno X-Certificate, with imagery both hideous and THe MOvies directed by Henry Otto. Yet it was nine haunting. years later that the key American version,

38 FT346 www.forteantimes.com

JOHN SPRINGER COLLECTION / CORBIS / CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

LEFT: The 1935 Fox fi lm Dante’s Inferno offered the definitive cinematic treatment of Doré’s vision. BELOW: A lobby card from the silent Hollywood version of 1924.

with a contemporary setting, hit cinema mind-bending science fi ction drug thriller It further cemented the Dante/Doré screens. Dante’s Inferno (1935) starred Altered States (1980). Cinema has always been trademarks of Hell, which continued to Spencer Tracy as Jim Carter. He’s a money- part of the socio-cognitive machine. Every manifest in all sorts of places. hungry fairground showman putting on lurid time this footage was emulated or re-used, A dazzling full-colour riff on Dante can stagings of Dante’s poem for sensation- it did something to the public consciousness. be found in the second instalment of the loving punters. When he goes too far, and gets too greedy, he’s presented with a vision of the real Inferno. Cue the high stony crags and abysmally deep gulfs, while fl ashes of fi re descend and smoke belches up. It’s an epic, haunting vision in which Doré’s illustrations are brought to life on the screen. And, of course, as this was 1935, Hell now had recorded sound. Along with the nightmarish special effects we get the fl uttering strings and groaning choirs of a full orchestration. It remains an astonishing, and genuinely freaky sequence, even today. These early screen images of Hell grew even more influential because footage from the fi lms was so often recycled in other movies.The 1935 version borrowed from the 1924 one, which itself lifted sequences from the Italian L’ inferno of 1911. Footage from all of these fi lms, and others like them (for example, Maciste in Hell, 1925) was still being re-used decades later. They crop up in everything from exploitation crime fl icks like Maniac (1934) and Hell-A-Vision (1936) to Kenneth Anger’s experimental

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954). E AUCTIONS AG They were even re-used in Ken Russell’s HERIT

40 FT346 www.forteantimes.com GATEWAYS TO HELL

Does Hell have a door? The Ancient Greeks said you could reach it through Lake Avernus, near Cumæ, southern italy (see p32-37). Mediæval Christians were pretty sure the door was in a cave in Ireland. If you asked Tertullian, a prolific and influential Christian theologian of the early Church, he’d tell you that the gateway to Hell wasn’t in any of those places at all: you’d fi nd it “between the legs of a woman”. In the movies, unsurprisingly, the entrance to Hell is usually in America. It often crops up in dusty deserts, as in

SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION / GETTY IMAGES The Devil’s Rain (1975), Town (1988) or Highway to Hell (1992). Even in Italian ABOVE: Albert Finney descends to a Hell of both fi re and ice in the 1970 fi lm Scrooge, a musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. horror maestro Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy, Hell breaks through in the swamps of the deep south as well as in a New bodies seemingly strewn for miles. In the England town. In The Gate from (1987) Hell’s GUards 2014 Da Vinci Code-style horror fi lm As Above it’s in a suburban American backyard. In So Below, a team of explorers trek through Michael Winner’s The Sentinel (1977) it’s the underground catacombs of Paris and fi nd found in a brownstone Brooklyn apartment PrOd naked the gate of Hell. It bears, of course, the same block. Wes Craven’s Invitation to Hell inscription as Dante’s: “Abandon Hope, All (1984) has one that’s pure 1980s: you can sinnersWiTH Ye Who Enter Here”. Ignoring this warning walk right into the land of eternal suffering unleashes a whole world of supernatural via the keypad-coded doors of an exclusive terror. Obviously. yuppie health club. In Ghostbusters viCiOUs sPears These are just a few examples of how the (1984), the gate’s found in Sigourney apocalyptic literature of the Bible, expanded Weaver’s fridge (though to be fair, they upon by theologians, was taken up by Dante, don’t specifically say Hell, so who knows?). Coffin Joe trilogy, This Night I’ll PossessYour and then Doré, as the principal storyboarders Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry (1997) Corpse (1967).The fi lm works like a twisted of the cinematic Hell. presents a spectacular recreation of the Wizard of Oz: most of it is shot in moody black Doré Hell, but it’s accessed by a slowly and white; then, when we enter a lengthy and FIRE ON SET! descending lift, complete with a PA system nightmarish sequence in Hell, it’s colours Dante and Milton have a fair amount of fi re and air conditioning. A similar mode of set to max.The stagey foam-rock sets might and ice in the abyss, but it’s not often that transport to the fi ery depths was used in look like something from a 1960s Star Trek a movie Hell uses both. Scrooge, the 1970 Alan Parker’s Angel Heart (1987). episode, but the vibe is full-on Dante/Doré. musical version of A Christmas Carol, is Quite where Hell is actually located Naked sinners slither along the fl oor, covered one of the few that does. Albert Finney, as is anyone’s guess, though in 1989- in what looks like chalk dust and mud, while Scrooge, tumbles into a red-hot hell where he 91 reports suggested that it might be Hell’s guards prod them with vicious spears, is promptly made the chief clerk to Lucifer somewhere beneath Siberia (see FT59:16 and some of the damned are fused with the himself – but his office is below freezing. and “Driller Killer”, FT72:42-43). At least rock itself – all accompanied by a constant “You’ll be the only one in hell who’s chilly,” that’s according to a team of Russian soundtrack of painful moans, explosive says Alec Guinness as he closes the door. engineers who drilled a hole there, nine fl ashes and bizarrely, the squeal of a wild But it’s the fi re of Hell that fi lmmakers have miles deep. They broke through into a chimpanzee. always latched on to. Indeed, when Disney fi ery chasm below and dropped a heat The poem’s mediæval Christian influence released Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983) they resistant microphone down with what is all over the schmaltzy (but visually had Scrooge McDuck tumbling into his deep must have been a seriously long jack inventive) drama What Dreams May Come grave-plot only to fall through his coffin into lead. Miles beneath the Earth’s surface, (1998). Based on the novel by horror legend the fi ery depths below. they recorded the tormented, mournful, Richard Matheson, the fi lm sees Robin Fire is cinema’s go-to visual shorthand agonized screams of “a great multitude Williams hopping from Heaven to Hell to save for for Hell depiction. It’s quick, clear and of people”. For many, this was proof of his wife, trapped down there for the crime cost-effective too. Lower budget fi lms can’t a literal Hell and the story spread like… of suicide.The movie goes for pat-on-the- often afford long strolls through elaborately well, like hellfire, particularly amongst back comfort rather than scares, but there hellish sets. Show a few fl ashes of fi re Christian broadcasters eager to prove the are still some unsettling images to be found. through a crack in the fl oor, however, and reality of the abyss. Turns out, it was an From pale, naked bodies grabbing at a boat the audience knows exactly where they are. – and horror movies were to faces stuck fast into the ground, these are Films like The Prophecy 2 (1998) and 1988’s to blame. The sound was just the loop of all Dante-fuelled visions.You’ll fi nd similar priest-vs-demon horror The Unholy both use some screaming sound effects from the imagery in Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond (1981). this ‘flash of orange light’ to symbolise the 1972 Mario Bava fi lm Baron Blood. His Hell is a dark and dusty wasteland with underworld: it’s cheap, but it does the trick.

FT346 41 www.forteantimes.com In fact, fi re has become so synonymous with dragged away by squealing animated shadow co-production might have been presented as eternal damnation that fi lms sometimes hold characters. JasonVoorhees met a similar fate a documentary, but it revelled in dramatised it back to trick the audience into thinking in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993); scenes of horror. In its depiction of Hell, we that they’re not in Hell, even though they though conveniently for the Franchise, his see a frantic, mechanical puppet show where actually are. In the Amicus fi lm Tales from the stay down below turned out to be far from demons torture the naked and the damned in Crypt (1972) the unfortunate protagonists are permanent. fl ames, forever. shuffling through the dim corridors of a stone This idea of being physically pulled into the catacomb. We fi gure they’re somewhere on Inferno appears famously in Michelangelo’s TO RULE IN HELL Earth. When it’s fi nally revealed to be Hell great fresco for the Sistine Chapel, The Last Running a complex system designed to itself, the signifier kicks in… and a sharp- Judgment. Here, men are dragged down to deliver everlasting pain must be a pretty suited sinner falls into the lake of fi re. Pretty Hell, sometimes even by the testicles. Being tricky business, which means Hell is often much the same thing happens in the updated dragged off by demons is the key plot point presented as having some sort of malevolent version, Tales from the Hood (1995), where the of Sam Raimi’s Drag me to Hell (2009). In this Master in charge of it. Depictions of this big Hell reveal isn’t just a cue for belching movie, however, Hell isn’t just about physical overlord, usually Satan himself, vary from fi re but has a character sprouting horns and a displacement to the infernal realm: the hell- fi lm to fi lm. Comedy, by its nature, delights in satanic forked tongue. No prizes for subtlety bound sinners change physically too. As one employing stereotypes, so in The Simpsons and there. woman is dragged under the train tracks in South Park: The Movie, for example, we get a Movies like Event Horizon (1997) and a CGI frenzy of fi re and fl ailing arms, we see standard image of a red-horned Lucifer. The Constantine (2005), or the Japanese Jigoku her transformed into something ghoulish.This latter, at least, adds some contemporary horror fi lms, all present interesting and varied idea of humans changing form in Hell can be backstory: Satan is the gay lover of Saddam visions of Hell.Yet fl ames are the core symbol found in Dante to some degree (monstrous/ Hussein. In Adam Sandler’s Little Nicky threaded through these and many others; so human hybrids feature in the poem), yet in (2000), Lucifer is a suave, horned Harvey much so that the apocalyptic Schwarzenegger visual art and fi lm, it’s uncommon, with Hell’s Keitel who has the daily task of shoving a thriller End of Days (1999) suggests that Satan tortured souls remaining recognisably human pineapple up Hitler’s anus. Worse still… doesn’t just live in hellfire, he carries it in his for the most part. Hitler has to choose the pineapple. bladder. In one scene, the Devil, played by Such monsters derive from a different We fi nd scarier images of Hell’s overlord Gabriel Bryne, takes a leak in the street and visual tradition than that of Doré’s 19th in some unexpected places.The animated fl icks his cigarette into the gathering fl uid. century take on Dante, one of mediæval movie All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989) has a Boom… It turns out even Satan’s urine is as Hellmouths and Last Judgements, like those dream sequence that suggests the fi lm’s title fl ammable as petrol. found in the works of Hieronymus Bosch. Scan might not always be true. Charlie, a ‘morally his most ambitious painting, The Garden of upstanding’ dog, has a terrible nightmare DRAG ME TO HELL Earthly Delights, and you’ll fi nd a veritable of being sucked into Satan’s realm, where Many fi lms assume Hell is something we Where’s Wally of depravity. Naked sinners he’s chewed and torn by little dog demons, either wake up into, post mortem, or is have fl utes rammed up their rectums while and the boss of Hell stomps in as a gigantic, something we fall into when death comes others are bodily suspended through the canine monster. Scroll through a few Internet (like Scrooge McDuck); but in some strings of an eternally playing harp. Around forums and you’ll fi nd plenty of people who movies, demons stalk, terrorise and actively them, grotesque demons of mixed human were traumatised when they saw this scene as pull people down into the pit. We see this in and animal form devour and humiliate them: children. the hit romance Ghost (1990).The yet the suffering humans stay human, from This is all quite different from how the fi lm has a New Agey, ‘death is nothing to fear’ what we can see. It’s not a vision of Hell that king of the demons is presented in Dante. vibe, but it paints a surprisingly bleak and movies have made use of, although we catch a Here, we fi nd a three-faced Satan trapped in traditionalist view of what awaits the morally fl avour of Bosch in the fi lm Haxan: Witchcraft the core of Hell, which isn’t hot but freezing suspect.The ‘bad’ characters in Ghost get Through the Ages. The 1922 Swedish/Danish cold. He’s locked in ice while chewing, Amut- TO AF ARCHIVE / ALAMY STOCK PHO

ABOVE: Fire remains one of the most potent cinematic signifiers of hellish domains and human damnation, as shown by the poster for the Arnie’s 1999 exercise in pre-millennial tension, End of Days, and a still from the 1997 scf-fi horror Event Horizon (or “The Shining in space” as some dubbed it).

42 FT346 www.forteantimes.com ABOVE LEFT AND BELOW: The Escher-like labyrinth at the heart of 1988’s Hellraiser II: Hellbound was a rare attempt to depart from the traditional cinematic model of Hell. ABOVE RIGHT: Another novel idea was the canister of green gloop in which Satan has been trapped – temporarily at least – in John Carpenter’s 1987 Prince of Darkness.

style, on three famous sinners in each of his labelled as heresy by many Church leaders, three mouths.There’s one creepy and almost but it’s a theory that deserves serious sympathetic detail too. Satan is weeping consideration. along with the rest of the damned – not an However, despite these nuances in idea we tend to fi nd in the various cinematic Christian belief, fi lmmakers and audiences Hells. fi nd the traditional view more invigorating. An intriguing attempt at re-imagining the Like it or not, Hell tends to inspire more Lord of Hell comes in the 1988 fi lm Hellraiser convincing artistic expression than its II: Hellbound, (the sequel to Clive Barker’s heavenly counterpart. I won’t lie: while I Hellraiser),which paints a very different vision waded with difficulty through Dante’s samey of both Hell and its master. There aren’t the descriptions of the Paradisio and Purgatorio, usual chasms of belching fi re, but a cold, stone the Inferno had me gripped. Ask someone labyrinth, reminiscent of the work of Dutch to picture a work by Hieronymus Bosch, and graphic artist MC Escher, which is presided it won’t be the happy souls in Heaven they over by a geometric God-shape called remember, even though Bosch painted them. . It’s the tortured souls of Hell that come It’s not a place of chaos, like the traditional immediately to mind. cinematic Hell, but the home of a terrifying Perhaps Hell’s fl eshy terrors and endless order in which metal is stronger than fl esh suffering are easier to imagine than the – a superiority the inorganic Leviathan spectral perfections of Paradise. Wandering demonstrates by peeling back sections of Heaven’s golden streets or kicking back with E AUCTIONS

AG people’s faces and bodies.The vulnerability an infinite, omnipotent God feel sort of

HERIT of the human form is mocked, making Hell a abstract, even kitsch.That’s not to say that place of utter exposure. We are just transient Paradise does not, or cannot, exist – it’s just victims shuffling about in fragile meat cases, that any attempt at creating ‘a perfect world’ and Leviathan exposes this fragility and rules A NICE PLACE TO VISIT, BUT… in our fi nite minds seems to produce the weak over it. For cinema, it’s a rare diversion from While it’s true that the imagery of Hell stereotypes of wishful thinking. the typical Dante/Doré model. in Western cinema is largely fuelled by But we do know what it’s like to have our A few other movies have tried to innovate Christian ideas, the exact nature, and even skins burned against a naked fl ame, or how it Hell. Peter Jackson paints it as the innards the existence, of Satan’s realm is a topic of feels to be prodded with something sharp… of a fl eshy, tentacled worm in The Frighteners fi erce debate in current Christian theology. like a pitchfork. We know what it sounds (1996), while Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey The headline-grabbing believers often insist like when people scream, and we’re all too (1991) suggests that Hell isn’t just fi re, that the traditional Dante/Doré imagery is familiar with human suffering. Regardless of but an eternal kiss from your hairy-lipped an exact depiction of what Hell is like.Tap whether or not Hell exists, the eternal abyss grandmother. “This is not what I expected “HELL IS REAL” into YouTube and you’ll makes a sort of cultural sense to us. It has this place to look like at all”, says Ted.To meet hundreds who claim to have had actual traction, particularly in horror cinema, but it which Bill replies: “Yeah, we’ve got totally glimpses of the place. I preached in a church burns equally brightly across the genre board lied to by our album covers.” Then there’s just the other week where a member of the – which is why fi lmmakers have always tried John Carpenter’s under-rated theological congregation said they’d been there once! to make darkness visible, depicting Hell in horror Prince of Darkness (1987), in which an Apparently, it’s very dark. such fun and frightening ways. In audiovisual extraterrestrial Jesus traps Satan in green Other Christians, like the late but still terms, Hell is dramatic and emotional gold. gloop… until the evil starts sloshing back out influential John Stott, think Hell is more Filmmakers can’t resist it – and while we, the into the world.This spooky Hell is a dense like the atheist’s idea of death: a kind of audience, may be scared to live there, we’re black liquid realm, held behind a mirror. The annihilation in which a person dies and is weirdly keen to visit. FT demons reach out clawed hands to break simply no more. Hell is indeed eternal, in this through into our world – and when they sense, but the dead aren’t tortured, burned AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY fi nally do, everything goes black. alive, or boiled in rivers of blood. Others, like Then there’s the 1992 comedy Stay Tuned. hipster pastor Rob Bell, even argue that God REV PETER LAWS is a church Here, Hell is being forced to star in a never- will get what he ultimately hopes for in the minister, YouTube Horror host ending line up of demonic TV shows like I end – love will win and all people, no matter and regular FT contributor. His Love Lucifer or Driving Over Miss Daisy. I what their beliefs, will fi nd themselves in debut novel Purged is out in can think of worse things. a blissful heaven.This ‘Empty Hell’ idea is February. www.peterlaws.co.uk

FT346 43 www.forteantimes.com STRANGE STATESMEN #14

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE…

In the fi rst of two reports, SD TUCKER slips on his VR-helmet to explore the strange post-modern world of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where mushrooms become men, imaginary weapons actually exist, and vampiric Pokémon act as spies for the West.

by the Orthodox Church as ‘Satanic’, as we saw last issue, (FT345:4) but also by fi gures from the military and government as being a danger to national security. Take Aleksandr Mikhailov, a retired Major-General from the FSB secret-police, who told Russian media in August that the locations of the hidden Pokémon in Russia, which are supposedly randomly generated by an in-game algorithm based upon a phone’s GPS data, might not be so random after all. What if, Mikhailov asked, Bulbasaur and Snorlax had been deliberately placed next to sensitive military locations to take advantage of players’ addiction to taking photos of Pokémon in situ? Just imagine that these creatures appear not in some city park, but at secret installations where a conscript-soldier or any other military serviceman photographs it with his camera, n November 2015, during a daily news- new, virtual-reality empire, as high-resolution strictly of their own free will, without any broadcast on Russian state TV, any a simulation of the old USSR as you’re ever pressure or coercion.This is an ideal scheme watching Western defence analysts likely to fi nd. with which [Western] secret services can were given a chilling preview of one of collect information. And no one would even I THROUGH A GLASS, WRONGLY the new super-weapons in President pay attention, because it’s such a trendy Vladimir Putin’s expensively assembled Muscovites also fi nd themselves menaced by hobby. Whilst organisations like the CIA nuclear arsenal. An ‘accidental’ glimpse fi ctional threats from within Putin’sVirtual “most likely played no role in the development was provided by an unwary cameraman of Russia. For example, Nintendo’s new monster- of Pokémon Go,” added Mikhailov, “they blueprints for a novel type of robotic nuclear- hunting augmented-reality smartphone app will definitely use this to get torpedo which, close analysis of stills showed, Pokémon Go has not only been condemned information.” In this scenario, Nintendo are was intended to be launched across entire oceans from within the safety of Russian waters. Having the ability to completely destroy and irradiate enemy coastlines with a 100-megaton blast, and create a giant tsunami to wipe out life as far as 930 miles inland, it was a fearsome warhead indeed; or it would have been, had it actually existed. Many Western analysts expressed scepticism, but given that the mere possibility of such TO a device has now been raised, American defence planners will feel they have an obligation to look into it and devise possible countermeasures, thereby wasting valuable time, resources and manpower. Not a bad result – and all for the price of a piece of paper, ‘inadvertently’ displayed. 1 When you say you have a new weapon that probably doesn’t exist but which forces your opponent to act as if it did exist, then in the current global standoff SERGEY TIMOFEEV / ALAMY STOCK PHO of Cold War 2.0, you effectively do have that TOP: A ‘leaked’ image of Putin’s robotic nuclear torpedo, which may or may not actually exist. ABOVE: Some Russian new weapon. Welcome toVladimir Putin’s commentators think Pokémon Go is being used by Western intelligence agencies to spy on the Motherland.

44 FT346 www.forteantimes.com PUTIN’S VIRTUAL RUSSIA

just an accidental dupe, whose idea is being cabbages, toilet paper, bras or bicycles, people computer workers so often get headaches: exploited by Shadowy Forces. For others, sought reasons for the new reality. Some because of the vampire living inside the PC, the situation is different.Yevgeny Fyodorov, resorted to the occult, seeing a web of hidden sucking their souls out through a hidden tube. a Deputy in Russia’s Duma (parliament), forces at work, whilst others retreated into Videogames were another key medium for posted online a fi lm claiming the game was the comfort zone of extreme nationalism, the wicked West to import energy-vampires part of a conspiracy by the Japanese game blaming the West for Russia’s fall. A paranoid into Russia, the pamphlet stated, so we can giant to make Putin’s United Russia Party mixture of these two outlooks was also see how the current Pokémon scare fi ts into collapse by sending people out onto the possible, as can be seen in a bestselling 1992 the same basic pattern: looking through your streets in their thousands, creating a state of pamphlet from St Petersburg, called How US-designed iPhone screen and seeing a ungovernable chaos and mass riots as they to Avoid Energy-Vampirism and How Not to horde of Zubats hanging from the rafters must searched desperately for a rare Become a VampireYourself. have made it seem, to some, as if the capitalist Psyduck. 2 According to this profoundly vampire-army had yet again returned. 4 For Igor Boev, director weird document, Satan has of a mental health clinic criss-crossed the globe with a THE PLAY’S THE THING! in Stavropol, the game series of hidden craters, each of Here, we enter the rabbit-hole. It has often represented a US-Japanese which contains an arch-vampire been alleged that Putin only achieved plot to transform the fl ower whose appearance “is similar power at all because of another phantom of Russian youth into brain- to King Kong”.These craters menace, namely the supposed ‘terrorists’ dead cretins, disrupting their are supplied with energy who were supposed to have perpetrated studies to the extent that, sucked from human souls the infamous apartment block bombings of within a generation, Russia’s by a breed of lesser “cosmic September 1999, which killed 293 people economy and social structure vampires” who wander around and injured over 1,000 in cities throughout would be wholly ruined. There draining people’s life-force Russia.These are often suspected to have will be no businessmen or before transferring it into a been a false-flag operation on behalf of workers, or political fi gures, network of pipes connected Putin’s allies, which allowed the then-PM to he predicted, gloomily. Instead up to Satan’s craters. Here, unleash his military upon the rebel province of them there’ll just be social the Kong-beasts operate a of Chechnya, whence the Islamist bombers Pokémons – that is, hopeless kind of parallel power-grid, officially blamed for the outrage hailed. videogame addicts. If so, then this is hardly a transforming stolen auras into renewable As the outgoing President Boris Yeltsin zero-sum game the West is playing, with tales energy to fuel the Devil’s plans. Fortunately, shuffled off-stage to spend more time with of Poké-morons quitting their jobs, studies ordinary energy-vampires could be warded his vodka-bottle, Putin became hailed as a and families to complete their imaginary off simply by imagining oneself surrounded hard-man hero, famously saying he would collections pouring in from North America, by a giant golden egg – but things were no “kill [the terrorists] on the shitter” 5 if he had Europe and Australasia as well.To combat longer that easy in the post-Soviet world. In to, and being swept to power as President in such electronic evil, the Russian state has the new free-market landscape, demonically the subsequent elections. Or is this just yet now released an antidote in the shape of a inspired Western manufacturers had begun another paranoid ? Who more nationalistically highbrow smartphone fl ooding the Russian market with various knows? A 2015 book about Russia was called app, Discover Moscow Photo, which asks you products that might have appeared to be Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, to walk around the city playing virtual hide- inanimate but were really vampires in a very apt title indeed. Written by an ex- and-seek with native cultural icons like Yuri disguise.This so-called “masked vampirism” Russian TV producer, Peter Pomerantsev, Gagarin and Ivan the Terrible; Leon Trotsky was particularly evident in Western electronic it identified a Putin aide namedVladislav is particularly well hidden. In a perceptive goods, which explains why screen-watching Surkov as being the true man behind the online article about Putin’s Pokémon Panic, Eliot Borenstein, a Professor of Russian Studies in New York, commented on “the resemblance between the augmented-reality of Pokémon Go and the creation of phantom [Western-inspired] villains in the Russian media. If anything, Pokémon Go is a parody of the current Russian political scene; Russians should be on the lookout for ‘fifth columnists’, American-financed fake human- rights crusaders, gay and lesbian sexual predators, and anyone who dares to question the legality of Crimean annexation.This, too, is augmented-reality: asking Russians to look through a particular lens in order to see what isn’t there.” 3 DONKEY KONG COUNTRY However, there may also be an occult angle to such outbreaks of state-sponsored virtual paranoia. Following the collapse of the USSR, Russia descended into a decade of social and economic chaos. Looking around them and seeing Russia’s decline from world ALEXEI NIKOLSKY / AFP / GETTY IMAGES superpower to failing state where workers TOP: The book that fi ngered spin doctor and ex-theatre director Vladislav Surkov, “the Kremlin demiurge”, as the sometimes had to accept their wages in vodka, man behind the bizarre blurring of fact and fi ction in Putin’s Russia. ABOVE: Putin has a word in Surkov’s ear.

FT346 45 www.forteantimes.com STRANGE STATESMEN #14 / GETTY IMAGES FP /A KOV YA SEREBR RY DMIT

ABOVE LEFT: Sergey Kuryokhin appears on a fake episode of The Fifth Wheel TV programme in 1991 to present his theory that Lenin was a mushroom. ABOVE RIGHT: God’s Will leader and anti-gay campaigner Dmitry Tsorionov (aka Enteo) is detained by Russian riot police at an unauthorised rally in Moscow in 2015. BELOW: A poster for an Enteo event. blurring of fact and fi ction in Putin’s Russia. enough cash). A fan of French post-modernist Simply put, Surkov is a spin-doctor, sometimes THE REVOLUTION philosophers like Derrida, Surkov has dubbed the ‘Kremlin demiurge’, who is in absorbed their doubts that such a thing as charge of nothing less than the manipulation ‘reality’ actually exists, and seems obsessed of reality itself. A trained theatre producer HAD BEEN with the play-within-a-play structure of and fan of avant-garde art, Surkov may have Hamlet. As such, Surkov has created a political taken inspiration from a well-known event PLANNED BY MEN stage in which all the men and women are in Russian TV history: the day in May 1991 merely players, their acts being seven shades when the punk-musician and artist Sergey TAKING MAGIC of nonsense. Some play the villain, others the Kuryokhin appeared on a fake episode of a clown, but the only real hero is Putin. If you real documentary series, The Fifth Wheel, in MUSHROOMS are media-literate enough to get the joke, which he seemed to prove that, prior to his then Surkov won’t bother to hide it from you; death, Lenin had transformed into a he’ll even let you laugh, and accept giant mushroom.This was the Glasnost applause.The ultimate aim, though, is period, when all kinds of hitherto to sow confusion. Putin’s rule is notably unknown truths about Soviet rule were light on concrete ideology, making being revealed by reformists, and this it hard to devise effective resistance ‘revelation’ was taken at face-value by to it, something that is made all the several million viewers. Kuryokhin’s worse when you’re not sure whether theory, presented in a thoroughly the opposition party you wish to join plodding way so as to appear more is really an opposition party at all, plausible, and with plenty of erudite or a post-modern joke. 8 Like the art references, was that 1917’s Russian of countering imaginary weaponry, Revolution had been planned participating effectively within entirely by men who had been taking an imaginary democracy is almost hallucinogenic magic-mushrooms impossible. for years, chief amongst them Lenin, and that “in the long run, mushrooms GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN replaced their personalities and they As Gnostics will know, every demiurge turned into mushrooms”. Lenin “was needs a Higher God for whom to create a fl y agaric”, Kuryokhin said, whose a new physical reality, and in Surkov’s armoured-car served as a spawning- case that idol is naturally Putin – who vehicle to disseminate the fungal-bloom of opposition parties, which are essentially has recently become a tripartite deity. He is bolshevism to others. Due to the huge public fakes. Surkov himself is on record as ordering a god metaphorically, ruling all he surveys; reaction following the broadcast, officials the creation of such false parties, 7 but you he is a stud-like sex-god in Russian popular had to issue an official denial of the ‘news’, have to be careful not to believe everything culture; and now, unbelievably, he has begun explaining that “a mammal cannot be a he says. Paradoxically, he is quite open about to worshipped as an actual god, by acolytes. plant”. 6 Maybe not; but if the mass media what he is doing, whilst simultaneously The strongman-cult can be seen in things could be abused to make the proles give denying it. He appears, for example, to have like Siberia’s new Putin Café , where you credence to absurdities like mushroom-men, written a bestselling 2008 novel, Almost Zero, can wipe your arse on toilet-paper bearing energy-vampires and Kong-demons, then what under a male version of his wife’s name. He Barack Obama’s face, or your dirty shoes on a else could it make them believe? provides the preface, calling it “the best Stars-and-Stripes doormat, whilst the sex-god After entering the Kremlin, Surkov book I have ever read”, but denies both its persona manifests itself in such phenomena had great fun fi nding out. Some people, for authorship and the fact that it tells a satirical as butt-plugs cast in Putin’s image and made example, are gullible enough to believe his version of his own life-story (which it clearly from rough sandstone for those who want illusion that Russia is a genuine democracy, does, being about a morally ambivalent to know what it feels like to be savagely just because it has general elections and PR-man happy to serve any master with impaled by Vlad. Especially kitsch was the

46 FT346 www.forteantimes.com Russian glossy Hello!-alike magazine LEFT: Svetlana Frolova leads a service at the Secrets of the Stars, which in 2008 sanctuary of her Putin cult at Bolshaya Yelena. broke sales records after devoting God spoke to Frolova and revealed that Putin a whole issue to printing topless is the reincarnation of St Paul the Apostle. images of the President combined with swooning stories about him take endless pleasure in the perfect manfully decapitating rats with an knowledge granted him by God?’; ‘Will axe (“I severed its head with one he think the great thoughts of the Mind blow!”).The true exclusive in its pages, who created the universe?’; ‘IsVladimir though, was an interview with Putin’s Putin a god by nature or can he become then-wife Lyudmilla, in which she one only by grace?’; and ‘Can we worship sensationally accused him of being an VladimirVladimirovich as a god on energy-vampire who had “sucked all Earth?’ Those who attended to fi nd the juices” out of her, a typically ironic out were surprised to fi nd the lecture sexual recasting of such imagery by beginning with a not especially holy- Surkov’s drones. 9 sounding rap-song called I Go Hard Like Putin’s transformation into a more Vladimir Putin, before Enteo appeared, literal god may well have been kick- speaking of how one day “Putin realised started by Surkov himself, who in 2011 that his goal in life was God, and the announced that he “honestly believes Almighty entered into the body of that Putin is a person who was sent Vladimir Putin [and] thenVladimir to Russia by fate and by the Lord at Putin began to do good deeds, like a difficult time”.The following year, break up opposition meetings”. Enteo’s Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian ultimate conclusion was that one day Orthodox Church (which has been the “living temple” Putin would indeed fully co-opted by the Kremlin as a become a “god-like being” and grow a

LIA PLANKINA / ALAMY promoter of their regime and fellow long beard, as all gods should. “We are TA persecutor of Pokémon), agreed, not worthy,” he said, going all Wayne’s calling Putin’s leadership a “miracle World, and the audience left satisfied – of God”. Worse, this August the because most of them had apparently 11 REUTERS / NA Orthodox ArchpriestVsevolod Chaplin come to laugh. Was the whole thing said it would be basically fi ne for the satire, a critique of the growing Putin- President to kill his political opponents if he and anticipate him preparing the way for cult, or a PR-stunt by the notoriously stunt- wanted to! In a photograph that circulated Christ’s Second Coming. 10 happy Enteo? Or was he sincere? It was hard on social media, Russian soldiers bound for More ambiguous was a 2014 lecture held to say whether this was an act of rebellion or Ukraine were pictured lining up to kiss giant in Moscow entitled ‘Will Putin Become God of pure sycophancy – and it was supposed to be icons of a golden-haloed Putin, watched over by Divine Grace?’ by a self-styled “expert hard to say. Following the rap, Enteo’s next act by chanting Orthodox priests. From this it in metaphysical Putinism” named Dmitry before beginning his speech was to read out was but a short step to the creation of The Tsorionov. Tsorionov, better known by a poem by – yes –Vladislav Surkov! Perhaps Chapel of Russia’s Resurrection in 2007, an the handle ‘Enteo’, is the founder of the Enteo’s follow-up lecture will ask his fans all-female cult devoted to the veneration of an ultra-nationalist (some would say fascist) whether or not Putin will one day transform icon of Putin which ‘miraculously’ appeared organisation God’s Will, which is closely allied into a giant mushroom. FT from nowhere one day in the presence of the to the Orthodox Church. Advertising his event sect’s founder, and which in 2012 began just as online with a tasteless image of Putin sitting Next issue: Putin, Surkov and Darth Vader ‘miraculously’ bleeding pure myrrh.TheVlad- on a throne and radiating heavenly light, use an imaginary army to fi ght a fi ctional war worshippers dress as nuns and sing patriotic Enteo promised attendees answers to such with a non-existent enemy in a country which Soviet-era songs to Putin, pray for his success, conundrums as: ‘WillVladimir Putin’s mind doesn’t exist!

The Occult in Russian and Soviet putins-rasputin; another essay by the euromaidanpress.com/2016/08/19/ NOTES Culture, Cornell University Press, BBC’s Adam Curtis, relating the post- scholar-russian-orthodox- 1 www..co.uk/news/world- 1997, pp370-372; remember Marx’s Soviet Russian avant-garde scene to church-moscow-patriarchate- europe-34797252; http://europe. famous old comparison of capitalism Surkov, is at www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ supports-domestic-repressions- newsweek.com/putins-half-baked- to a vampire stalking Europe? For adamcurtis/entries/20c22534-f722- militaristic-rhetoric-euromaidan- secret-super-nuke-torpedo-real- Russians being paid in random 3d7a-b7ba-0506fcc00063 press/#arvlbdata; www.telegraph. 398852?rm=eu items, not money, see http://news. 9 www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news- co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ 2 www.rt.com/politics/351286- bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/177421. from-elsewhere-35988175; www. russia/8509670/All-female-sect- retired-fsb-general-suspects- stm huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/07/ worships-Vladimir-Putin-as-Paul-the- pokemon/; www.asahi.com/ajw/ 5 Politer translations are available. putin-butt-plug_n_4919509. Apostle.html; http://newsfeed.time. articles/AJ201607210053.html; com/2011/10/04/small-russian- 6 https://best-hoaxes.blogspot. html; www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ Fyodorov seems to have been orthodox-sect-considers-vladimir- co.uk/2013/03/lenin-was- worldnews/europe/russia/2158556/ obsessed for years by the idea putin-a-saint/; www.businessinsider. mushroom.html; http:// Vladimir-Putin-hailed-as-virile-vampire. that NATO is attempting to foster com.au/an-all-female-cult-worships- modernnotion.com/why-millions-of- html; The Putin bum-plug actually revolution, so that the US could then russian-president-vladimir- russians-once-believed-that-lenin- appears to be a satirical creation steal Mother Russia’s resources putin-2012-1 was-a-mushroom/ criticising his attitude towards gay and reduce her native population rights … or is it? 11 www.vocativ.com/world/russia/ “like happened with the American 7 www.theguardian.com/world/2006/ 10 https://themoscowtimes. people-think-putin-is-a-god/; https:// Indians”. aug/17/russia.tomparfi tt; www. therussianreader.wordpress.com/ worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/vladimir- com/news/surkov-says-putin-is- 3 www.huffingtonpost.com/ tag/gods-will-fascist-group/; www. kara-murza/russia%E2%80%99s- gods-gift-8140; www.telegraph. eliot-borenstein/pokemon-go-and- rferl.org/content/feature/26573039. fake-and-real-opposition co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir- paranoia_b_11570772.html; Times, putin/11530938/Vladimir-Putin- html; https://warisboring.com/this- 16 Aug 2016 8 An excellent essay by Peter praises-Orthodox-Church-for- russian-activist-thinks-vladimir-putin- Pomeranstev on Surkov is at www.lrb. might-be-god-cfd9c6849873 4 Beatrice Glatzer Rosenthal (Ed.), boosting-patriotism.html; http:// co.uk/v33/n20/peter-pomerantsev/

FT346 47 www.forteantimes.com THE HIEROPHANT’S APPRENTICE PRESENTS cbUilDinG a c fortean library 14. WE ARE MEANT TO BE CRAZY

coincide with President Lyndon Johnson’s Everyone knows the book that kick-started their own interest in forteana. We’ve come lighting up the Christmas tree on the White across a surprising (to us) number of people who were first entranced into the subject House lawn. In November, Mrs Mary Hyre, by this issue’s addition to the fortean library, John Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies. It the local journalist, had had a horrible struck us as possibly significant that when first feasting on this daisy chain of a history of nightmare, in which there were “a lot of weirdness, most of our initiates seem to have been teenagers. A book that starts “Fingers of lightning tore holes in the black skies as an angry cloudburst drenched the surrealistic people drowning in the river and Christmas landscape” doesn’t promise much to cultivated literary taste, but sitting under the packages were floating everywhere”. chapter title ‘Beelzebub Visits West Virginia’ it does raise expectations of a rollicking According to one witness, a dozen UFOs good, slightly self-conscious, modern-gothic page-turner. And it’s all supposed to be true! were circling the bridge while all other Besides, at the age of 14 or so, proper literature is what you do in school, yawn. Despite attention was fixed on rescuing survivors. his opening hype, Keel does have a strange tale to tell, and between the episodes of These are the major dots that Keel oddity offers a kind of wisdom, or mode of provocative reflection, that sticks with you. joins to conclude that the Mothman was That’s not the only reason this became a seminal book. Keel tells his tale in best new- somehow part of the psychic build-up to journalist style, involving himself pretty much every step (or flight) of the way, and he the catastrophe, and that the ‘space people’ recounts as many strange and creepy things happening to him as happen to his numerous protagonist-witnesses. Keel didn’t invent but certainly gave a huge boost to the myth had deliberately misled him as to its nature of the Men In Black (MIB). He scarcely disguised his contempt for the extra-terrestrial (“They knew. They just didn’t want me to hypothesis. And so he, along with sundry French commentators, plus Jacques Vallée and warn anyone”). those associated with UFO Bulletin and then Magonia, was a founding father The more detached reaction to Keel’s of the synthesising tendency that was first called the New Ufology and later evolved into presumption is that any feeling of unease the faintly misnamed pychosocial hypothesis. or even impending doom can be justified as premonitory when some disaster happens. And, just as you can justify a stiff drink The Mothman Prophecies operates on at 6:00am because someplace on Earth several levels at once. On one face of there’s a bar open, there’s always a disaster the book we have the notion that the happening somewhere in the world that you appearance of an anomalous creature can tie to your preceding forebodings. It’s dubbed ‘Mothman’ at, or mostly at, a also a statistical certainty that from time disused munitions plant in WestVirginia, to time, however occasionally, an extended was somehow proleptic of the collapse contagion of disquiet, like that generated of the Silver Bridge, linking Point by the Mothman frenzy (fad?) around Point Pleasant with Gallipolis, Ohio, into the Pleasant, will be followed by some sudden Ohio River, on 15 December 1967. Keel and unexpected calamity nearby. It is segues into a discussion of a plethora of equally inevitable that someone – perhaps UFO sightings occurring at around the most of us, secretly – will suspect that there same time (November 1966 to December is some underlying cause, perhaps working 1967), and divers characters associated outside of time, and someone will fearlessly with them.These range from contactees identify it. For instance, we have lately of various kinds – including the deluded been reminded, there was no shortage of Woody Derenberger and his ET pal Indrid persons proclaiming that God’s wrath had Cold, both of whom Keel appears to take been invoked when the ‘atheistic’ Rev seriously – to the MIB, who in their half- David Jenkins was consecrated Bishop of baked way follow him and many another Durham at York Minster in 1984, especially witness around. Meanwhile almost when the Lord promptly struck the ancient everyone’s telephone acts up with weird building with lightning, resulting in a fire noises, cut-outs, mystery callers, senseless and costly repairs (FT43:54-55). Why He did ‘morse’ code and so on, and Mothman, not incinerate the wayward Bishop himself, with giant wings, strange squeaks and Several Mothman witnesses were and/or those who approved his elevation, is glowing red eyes, carries on freaking out among those on the Silver Bridge when of course not explained. Perhaps the Deity the locals – usually solitary, or in small it collapsed, caught in a rush-hour traffic wanted to watch what fun Spitting Image groups – whereas the hordes of sightseers jam. Keel’s “stable of contactees” – whose would have with the Bishop. who descend on the little town see no visitors tended, he wryly remarked, to Keel settles on ‘ultraterrestrials’ as the unusual wildlife at all. It should be pointed “have names that sound like synthetic ultimate source of Mothman, the UFOs, out that this is a book rather more about fabrics” – had been getting messages that the MIB, the Silver Bridge disaster and UFOs, contactees and MIB than it is about there would be a monster “EM event”, his own many woes – along with every Mothman (or prophecies) per se; but that’s perhaps a nationwide power failure, on paranormal phenomenon you can think part of its convoluted point. that date, timed by the ‘space people’ to of. Just as there remains a problematic

48 FT346 www.forteantimes.com lack of logic in why the Right Rev. David places, but is a state of energy.” Jenkins himself wasn’t flash-fried to a Ultraterrestrials are the bees’ crisp in divine vengeance, so there is a “oUtsiDe of knees at camouflage, misdirection and certain vacancy in the QED department as disguise, so flying saucers (or fairies) are to why these hypothetical entities should a DoG, a book “transmogrifications of energy under the generate Mothman, UFOs and MIB, not to is man’s best control of some unknown extra-dimensional mention Keel’s mountainous phone bills intelligence… manipulating… human and other afflictions, in the run-up to the frienD. beings through… mystical illumination. bridge collapse.The key to this conundrum Our religions are based upon our longtime lies in many acerbic remarks, and several insiDe of awareness of this intelligence and our paranoid ones, strewn throughout the book. struggle to reduce it to humanly acceptable The Mothman Prophecies is written like a a DoG it’s terms.” And it victimises us. So Keel can stream-of-consciousness thriller, and so has say, in a 2001 afterword: “Many forms of clues to its nature hidden in plain sight; but too Dark religious and political fanaticism are linked not, it seems, in any calculatedly helpful directly… to paranoia and schizophrenia. order. It’s worth looking at some of these in to reaD..” We are meant to be crazy. It is an important order to pick apart Keel’s drift. part of the human condition… This planet He is at least straightforward about Groucho Marx is haunted by us; the other occupants just his lack of interest in, and his disdain for, evade boredom by filling our skies and seas the paranormalist establishment. He is with monsters.” scathing about UFO organisations and It seems that no one has ever been researchers, among whom, incidentally, “ancient gods dwelling on mountaintops entirely sure, reading Keel, where truth “paranoid-schizophrenics and obsessive- directly ruled large segments of the ends and fiction begins and ewher compulsive personalities” dominate the population in the Orient, Greece, Rome, imagination sits, be it in the middle or field: “The air force and CIA did not have Africa, and South America” but were at the ends.That he exaggerated and to try to disrupt the ufological movement. no more ‘real’ than the “fictitious space invented no one seems to dispute, and his It is by its very nature a self-disrupting people” of today. (Read Homer carefully, new-journalist placement of himself at the network of disoriented people.” In the and quibble over the Greeks, at least.) He centre of the Mothman drama wrecks any first chapter he bluntly announces: “I am offers a cod-science description of how sense of objectivity. There is, presumably, a no longer particularly interested in the hairy beasts, UFOs and such materialise core of truth amid all the excitements; and, manifestations of the phenomenon. I am and dematerialise along the electro- when he chose, Keel could be an assiduous pursuing the source of the phenomenon magnetic spectrum (that old chestnut and original researcher – as when, itself. To do this, I have objectively divorced again). All this and much more like it is albeit mistakenly, he lit on the Japanese myself from all the popular frames of sandwiched between segments of a chaotic incendiary fu-go balloon as a solution to the reference. I am not concerned with beliefs and barely chronological account of his Roswell crash. His ultraterrestrials irritated but with the cosmic mechanism which 13 months’ entanglement with people nuts-and-bolts UFO buffs, but he slithered has generated and perpetuated those and events at Point Pleasant. It seems not away from them in a 1985 interview: “If beliefs.” Yet he does not exactly dispose unfair to suggest that the book was written you read my books carefully, you will of such beliefs or the “popular frames intentionally to disorient the reader, in a see that ‘ultraterrestrials’ are a literary of reference”, as he broadcasts factoids kind of mimesis of what ‘the phenomenon’ device, not a theory,” he told Richard and generalisations – and not a few half- does and what Keel says happened to him Toronto in Shavertron. Keel elaborated truths – throughout. Just a page later, for over that period. on this in Fortean Times (FT40:3-5): “Even example, he tells us a tad tendentiously Behind all the carry-on, Keel says, lie now people… are still assuming that that “ is now a tested and verified the ‘ultraterrestrials’.This isn’t something ultraterrestrials are actual entities… what phenomenon”. Elsewhere he says that he works up to: within 60 pages he lays I said in five books, carefully spelled out Mothman “seemed to have a penchant for the idea out. He first makes the crucial and defined, is that we are the intelligence scaring females who were menstruating, point that he has found that witnesses which controls the phenomena.” Yes, there another UFO/hairy monster peculiarity” to “chimerical” events suffer from are hints (see above, passim), but scarcely – funny we didn’t hear of that before, but effects and symptoms “which have been spelled out: ‘scurried past’ might be a Keel insists on the point later. Apparently, observed throughout history in religious better expression. while also favouring garbage dumps as … demonology, occult phenomena, Read Keel, and especially this book, places to manifest, “UFOs often zero in on and contacts with fairies. All of these and you will be eating a certain kind lovers in parked cars. Many – most – of the manifestations clearly share a common of apple. But, even if Keel abandoned monster episodes in my files took place in source or cause.” But Keel sidesteps the fortean impartiality in the course of The remote lovers’ lanes… The phenomenon obvious conclusion. Mothman Prophecies, we can be pleased has an almost pornographic preoccupation “My long and very expensive excursions to acknowledge that 40 years after it with our mating practices… Could it be into the borderland where the real and appeared, and despite sundry attempts, that some people are programmed to love unreal merge have failed to produce any no one’s yet quite pinned down Mothman’s by this mysterious force?” Anticipating evidence of any kind to support the idea identity. And the MIB still roam the outer the Hopkins-Jacobs school of abductee that we are entertaining shy strangers from limits. FT lore by some years, he claims that a some other galaxy. Rather, I have come “surprising number of contactees [Keel to realize that we have been observing Many thanks to Isaac Koi and Dr David includes abductees under this head] were complex forces which have always been Clarke (notably the latter’s “A New orphans and through them the whole an essential part of our immediate Demonology: John Keel and The Mothman ‘hybrid’ concept was launched” whereby environment. Instead of thinking in terms Prophecies”, in Damned Facts: Essays on “more and more Earthly women would be of extraterrestrials, I have adopted the Religion, Folklore and the Paranormal, ed. impregnated by spacemen and eventually concept of ultraterrestrials – beings and Jack Hunter & Jeffrey J Kripal, Aporetic the whole planet would be populated with forces which coexist with us but are on Press 2016) for supplying elusive reference a hybrid race”. Keel sees this as “just an another time frame; that is, they operate material for this piece. updated version of the biblical begatting outside the limits of our time-space theme”. “Thousands” of people had been continuum yet have the ability to cross over John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies, New abducted (or thought they had) by the into our reality. This other world is not a English Library (Hodder & Stoughton), mid 1970s, an exaggeration at best.The place, however, as Mars and Andromeda are revised edition 2002

FT346 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 Spirits of Place

FR MaheR reports on a symposium held under the #FolkloreThursday banner and exploring the area

detailed guide to a peninsula. FR MaheR is the author of The place that only exists “Spirals in the Last Changeling and the Horror in the imagination), Landscape” by Urban in a Hurry series of novellas. She is the organiser of The Legendary described Prehistorian Kevin Llangollen Faery Festival. Calderstones as, Brophy considered “Ghost soil, a natural the impact of urban preserve for temple expansion. Prehistory he #FolkloreThursday hashtag shades”. History, is embedded in our has become something of a both communal and towns and cities, Tglobal phenomenon on social prosaically personal, and dolmens can be media, tweeted about by the mixes with shared beached on street likes of Guillermo Del Toro and this very mythic reality and corners, often caged magazine. Earlier this year, one of its stories get ‘pinned’ to by railings. Many creators, John Reppion, organised Spirits things – especially trees. ABOvE: Today, the Glaswegians were horrified when their of Place, a multi-disciplinary symposium The Allerton Oak is split almost Calderstones enjoy Cochno Stone was buried, the suggestion on the psychogeography of Merseyside. in half, the damage attributed to life under glass. being that they couldn’t be trusted not The event was held in Calderstones gunpowder ship The Lotty Sleigh, which to vandalise it. Briefly exhumed last year Mansion, Liverpool, where a wide range blew up on the Mersey in 1864. A young and its markings recorded, there are of speakers (including a number of FT John Lennon is rumoured to have been plans for it to be uncovered permanently. contributors) addressed a well-informed caught smoking dope beneath its shade, In “Where The Buddleia Grows”, Ian audience. and during World War II women sent ‘Cat’Vincent examined “useful places for John, author of 800Years of Haunted leaves from it to bring their soldier urban magic” – industrial borderlands Liverpool, began by describing husbands home. David discovered where the line between ‘natural’ and Calderstones Park, once a private estate, that someone had sent a leaf to his ‘constructed’ is often blurred, “though now one of Liverpool’s most beautiful grandfather in 1941 – but it wasn’t his nature always finds a way to break public open spaces. From the tree spirits grandmother! through”. of the Japanese Garden to the American ‘Landscape punk’ Gary Budden After a brief description of the Indian ‘fairies’ infesting the imported insists landscape doesn’t have to be ‘Calderstones’ – a group of six Neolithic giant redwoods brought to Liverpool beautiful to generate mythic writing. sandstone boulders that give the current from the US, each area had its genius Stories are embedded in the world about park and mansion their name – by urban loci, including the giant statues guarding us – in metal and brick, concrete and pre-historian Kevin Brophy, local legend the gates and the humble fairy ring wood, in the very earth beneath our feet Ramsey Campbell was interviewed about that appears not far from the foot of – both literally and metaphorically. Our folk horror. the ancient (some say 1,000 years old) history surrounds us and the stories we Described by the Oxford Companion Allerton Oak. It was a suitably creepy tell, true or otherwise, are always rooted to English Literature as “Britain’s most appetiser for a deliciously strange day. in what has gone before. respected living horror writer”, Ramsey In “TheVictorian Titanic”, Gill Hoffs Adam Scovell’s “Wyrd Wirral” talk defined folk horror as the place where recounted a forgotten tragedy. Built in celebrated the “English eerie” and landscape and folklore come together to haste to catch the Australian gold rush, explored the liminal landscape between produce unnerving and uncanny forms. RMS Tayleur’s revolutionary metal hull the rivers Mersey and Dee.The setting The benign looking, 70-year-old master confused her compasses for Sir Gawain and the of terror read chilling passages from his and she slammed into Green Knight, it has novel Creatures of the Pool. an island off Dublin. been mythologised As #FolkloreThursday’s Dee Dee Out of approximately for millennia. Chainey was unable to attend, Ron 700 passengers, fewer fought in what is now Cowell stepped in, looking at recently than 300 survived.The an Asda car park and discovered prehistoric carvings in nearby Tayleur tragedy eerily a standing stone in Sefton that predate the Calderstones. foreshadowed the sinking Wallasey was reputedly With Richard Macdonald on the of the Titanic; she too was climbed by early Everest ‘modern’ (post-prehistory) history a ship of the White Star mountaineer Andrew of the Calderstones, it was a packed Line and there weren’t Irvine. Alan Garner’s day. A slimmer list of speakers would enough lifeboats. book The Owl Service was perhaps have given listeners more David Southwell, filmed in Bebington and thinking space, but this first event creator of the cunning Thieving Fear by Ramsey from #FolkloreThursday was beautiful, book Hookland (a Campbell was set on the unsettling and richly rewarding. FT

FT346 51 www.forteantimes.com forum experience anomalies

local lake, or even a monster legend There will be dragons associated with it.Virtually without exception, the answer turns out to be no. Sceptics would argue that this proves the reports were always Are the nature reserves and lakes of South Dakota really home to giant, ephemeral fictions, and they surelye ar serpentine creatures? Jerome clarK recounts a family monster sighting and correct in most cases. One might also deduce that perceived sightings were wonders why we see so vividly things that simply can’t be there. more or less one-offs, which were lost to popular recall soon after. ships. Its body was proportioned like At Lake Champlain, as others have JEROME CLARK is a lifelong a snake’s. After a couple of minutes, noted, a creature first mentioned fortean and regular FT contributor, author of more than 20 books it was lost to view, apparently having in print in the early 19th century grappling with anomalies. He sunk. evolved from an immense serpent in continues to grapple from his little P would later state flatly: “It its formative decades to something like town on the prairie. was a sea monster.” But it was such an American Loch Ness plesiosaur by only in the way that 19th-American the mid-20th century. American lake dozen or so years ago, my newspapers called lake monsters monsters of long ago were described older son Alex, who was then “sea serpents” – in other words, variously (or just as often not ain his early 30s, observed an generically, not exactly. Located described at all), and it is easy to shrug extraordinary phenomenon in in the north-central section of the them all off as inventions and mistakes, the company of two other witnesses. One , South Dakota is distant a variant of the once ubiquitous “snake was his mother, who is my ex-wife, and from any sea. Still, it is noteworthy story” which encompassed other my former mother-in-law. In the interest that the vocabulary had carried over fantastic reptilian critters: hoop snakes of privacy protection, I’ll refer to the from the 19th century, when sightings (FT292:42-45), glass snakes, stomach former as ‘P’ and her mother as ‘E’ (since like these were often chronicled, or snakes, and sky serpents (FT248:30- deceased). at least noted in passing (perhaps in 36). Or it would be, anyway, if sightings Spring fed and formed by glacial recognition of their frequency), in were confined to long, ago when activity thousands of years ago, Pickerel just about any US newspaper. One everybody from prankster to editorial Lake, covering 955 acres (386ha) in the gets the impression that every lake fantasist to over-lubricated observer northeastern corner of South Dakota, is was expected to house a monster. to sincere witness arguably worth among the deepest bodies of water in the By the earlier 1900s, however, press heeding is dead and in no position to Dakotas. When I was married to Alex’s accounts declined, without ever quite comment. Fewer sightings, it ought mother – not recently – I spent part of falling into extinction (see Mark to be stressed, are not at all the same every summer at my in-laws’ cabin on Greener, “The Golden Age of Sea thing as non-existent sightings. Pickerel’s shore. In all that time, though, Serpents”, FT260:32-38). I suspect For all the problems with the I heard of nothing particularly unusual. this had to do, in part, with improved journalism of a wild and woollier, pre- Neither, at the time of their sighting, had journalistic standards, beginning professionalised era, a survey of those Alex, his mother, or his grandmother. with the passing of the habit some old stories leads one to observe that The episode commenced on a quiet small-town editors apparently “serpent” typically meant “snake.” summer mid-afternoon broken suddenly entertained of filling vacant spaces That was the template, at any rate. by E’s urgent summons to P. “You should with yarns concocted to amuse their There were discordant features, almost see this,” she said. P then alerted Alex, readers, who may have recognised as if random reptile parts had been who quickly joined the company. E the jokey local references later attached: alligator jaws, lizard legs, was staring out on the placid water at generations would miss. No doubt fins, varying colours. On occasion the something situated about, at a maximum there also was a growing reluctance alleged witnesses seem impressive: estimate, a quarter mile (400m) away to publish sensational, hard-to- ship’s captains, military officers, and (deduced from its proximity to a familiar believe claims even from seemingly the like. Here is an example: landmark).The object that had caught earnest individuals, in the interest of Early on the morning of 13 July, their attention was so clearly visible that sobriety and respectability. Beyond 1892, according to New York’s Fort the three were confident it could not be that, even in many of the ostensibly Covington Sun (4 Aug 1892): “While the mistaken for something else.Then and straightforward accounts, it is schooner Madeline Dowing, on its way later, Alex and his mother emphatically sometimes possible to discern a likely from Buffalo to the city [Toledo, Ohio], rejected any suggestion that they had explanation in the form of the form of was passing the Dunning… in Lake observed a log or anything comparably an unusually large, though ordinary, Erie, Captain Patrick Woods saw, about prosaic. fish.Yet.... half a mile [800m] ahead, the waters What they were seeing made no sense In our time, with the exception of the lake lashed into foam. Drawing to them. It was an immense serpent, 40 of Lake Champlain (see FT182:44- near, to the surprise of the captain to 50ft (12 to 15m) long, an estimated 47), Americans do not expect scary and all on board, a huge serpent… 2ft (60cm) in diameter, moving in an creatures in their lakes. Monster lay at full length on the surface of undulating fashion on or near the traditions faded long ago, as my the water....The serpent was about surface, its head poking above. Alex and friend Chad Lewis documents in his 50ft [15m] in length and not less than P would recall independently that the Lake Monsters of Wisconsin (2016), four feet [1.2m] in circumference… a head was not serpentine but “dragon- in which he follows up on press terrible looking object [with] a large like”. P compared it specifically – and accounts from a century and more head. Fins were plainly seen.” Alex concurred – to something that ago to determine if any contemporary A more typical item, this from the once adorned the leading edge of Norse resident knows of a monster in the NewYork Times (3 Sept 1886), notes

52 FT346 www.forteantimes.com forum experience anomalies

includes not just proponents but actual witnesses, understandably) offering up an extraordinary claim – i.e., such things are, and are more or less as described – while the other retorts with explanations, as often as not laced with ridicule, passing as prosaic but sometimes begging their own questions. One side ends up feeling grievously wronged, the other smug and self-righteous. And at this rate we have decades, maybe centuries, of such posturing to go. I don’t believe that lake monsters are cryptids any more than I believe they’re logs, otters, beavers, sturgeon, or any of the other usual suspects. I do believe they’re imaginary, and I am just as convinced that they aren’t only that. You can “see” one, even if the verb is not self-explanatory. The thing “seen” is at once there and not there, blurring ontological categories in defiance of all our understanding of how things operate in the world. Like so many other high-strangeness anomalies, from fairies to hairy bipeds to alien humanoids, lake monsters are limited to experience, followed by memory and testimony. They are persistent sightings of a “genuine sea several years ago. ABOVE: While not event (verifiable or potentially monster” in Narrow Lake, Michigan: The moral of the story: lake American lake verifiable) phenomena,wev ho er monsters no “The monster… raises itself out of the monsters do not always depend longer feature in vivid (and these experiences are if water on moonlight nights to a height upon publicity to sustain their many newspaper nothing else vivid), and they are not of 10 feet [3m] and then disappears. existence.The usual hand-waving reports, they demonstrable because they haven’t Its body is said to be about the size of dismissal, which holds that such have made the taken place within material, in this a stove pipe and its head to resemble things exist only to lure tourists, does odd splash in the case zoological, reality. They may movies, such as not apply here. Hoaxes, jokes, and not exist when you’re not observing that of a serpent.” this 1977 effort I cite these two reports because misperceptions (all real enough) featuring a stop- them. Which doesn’t mean they are (1) they aren’t transparently phony notwithstanding, honest, clear- motion creature entirely subjective and hallucinatory; or jokey (in other words, relatively thinking persons do see weird fresh- terrorising a encounters with the fantastic occur restrained as these things go) and (2) water creatures they cannot identify, lake in Northern routinely to more than one person at they bear some broad resemblance and in good viewing conditions. California. a time. to what my son spotted alongside his Even so, the physical evidence for I call such things “experience mother and grandmother. Yet they’re water-bound cryptids is close enough anomalies” (for a fuller exposition, different, each with its distinctive to zero to raise doubts even in the see FT243:42-47).The concept features.This discontinuity persists in most sympathetic listener or reader. acknowledges the reality, which ought much larger report samples. It need hardly be said – and if it to be self-evident by now, that not all The three witnesses with whom I were otherwise, we’d all know about fantastic perceptions are errors and have a personal connection learned it – there are no bodies, no reason to fictions, even as it does not force us to subsequently that other longtime lake think there are breeding populations reinvent the world to accommodate residents, both white and American of large to huge undiscovered animals entities whose earthly habitation – as Indian, were aware of monster practically under our noses.Their what they seem to be – has proved rumours.They had seen or heard presence would surely manifest more notoriously difficult to demonstrate in something themselves, or knew of conclusively than in the occasional any literal sense. others’ sightings from other years, sighting. We also have only the Which means perhaps that lake but mostly kept silent for the usual broadest resemblance to link one monsters are less unexplained than reasons. (Pickerel, incidentally, is on sighted creature to another. It’s as if inexplicable, manifestations of a the Lake Traverse Reservation of the reports take their inspiration from shadowy, half-dreamed, half-real Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate band, with the idea of a monster in a lake, and a realm we humans encounter, likely a significant Indian population.) The shifting idea at that, rather than from more often than we are comfortable account that opens this piece is the a living, breathing animal. acknowledging, through the interaction first published airing of a sighting As all FT readers know, debates of consciousness, imagination, and there that I am aware of. For that about such things have raged forever. whatever else is out there or in here. If matter, printed mention of a Pickerel We know, too, that they get us the world is confined in its possibilities, serpent till now has been confined to nowhere.There have always been experience is boundless. As the old a short paragraph in a book I wrote no more than two sides, one (which maps attest: there be dragons here. FT

FT346 53 www.forteantimes.com

SEND REVIEW COPIES OF BOOKS TO: BOOK REVIEWS, FORTEAN TIMES, PO BOX 2409, LONDON NW5 4NP, UK. Thisreviews month’s books, films and games Recanting Roswell certainty A study of the New Mexico event is guaranteed to irritate those who believe wholeheartedly in a crashed UFO – and will get up the noses of the too…

made anything of it until the Moore’s (and the Air Force’s) late 1970s. The first book on the “Even sincere yarns aside, it beggars belief subject was published in 1980. accounts of dead that nobody at Roswell Army After that, the Roswell incident Air Field, home to the 509th occupied much of ufology into aliens owe more to Bombardment Group, trained the 1990s and spilled into – alone in its time – to deliver popular culture. Even then, many confabulation than atomic weapons to the enemy, Roswell in the 21st ufologists remained sceptical, to experience” recognised a downed weather none more so than those engaged balloon, a sight familiar even to Century in reconstruction, through civilians in the region. The Evidence As It Exists Today newly available government and It was not a serious explanation military documents, of official persons relating such stories are in 1947, and it was not a serious Kevin D Randle UFO policy. Not so much as a conscious liars, but the rest of one when revived (this time Speaking Volumes 2016 hint of extraterrestrial wreckage the testimony arrives, at best, under the Mogul banner) by the Pb, 418pp, bib, $19.95, ISBN 9781628155136 and bodies could be discerned second-hand, sometimes from Air Force in 1997. If personnel at therein. Then again, official family members passing on Roswell had been so staggeringly “This book will annoy just about records immediately documenting what their deceased ex-military, incompetent as to confuse balloon everyone,” veteran Roswell- the event itself, whose occurrence Roswell 1947-based husbands materials with the remains of incident investigator-chronicler (while murky in its details) and fathers alleged. Tellingly, an advanced, potentially hostile Kevin D Randle sighs. Indeed, if nobody denies, remain missing. no contemporary evidence links foreign aircraft, it would have you subscribe to an unshakable Few speak as authoritatively bodies to Roswell until decades made for a notorious Cold War belief concerning the object that on the matter as Randle. The later, after the event had sparked scandal. plummeted from the sky onto author or co-author of a number wide discussion in mass media. History would also have taken the rural countryside north and of Roswell-related books, he has In the absence of compelling note of the US government’s west of Roswell, New Mexico, travelled extensively, uncovering reasons to conclude otherwise, abrupt access, even if withheld in July 1947, Roswell in the 21st hundreds of informants and even seemingly sincere accounts from the citizenry, to somebody Century may be an argument to speaking with just about of dead aliens apparently owe else’s extraordinary technology. stay away from, especially if you everyone with something to more to confabulation than to Actually, history would have have concerns about your blood say, then seeking confirmation experience. changed in July 1947. If the pressure. or disconfirmation of whats he’ On the other side, Randle event itself was covered up, its This is not just another Roswell heard. skewers the claims of the late ripple (more like wave) effects book. There have already been too His military background, which engineer Charles B Moore, would have washed over science, many, each selling the definitive has proved uniquely valuable, prominent advocate for the technology, defence policy, solution (with rare exceptions, provides him with insights into notion that the Roswell material intelligence and industry. By 2016 crashed spacecraft or weather everything from the formats consisted of a balloon array with many thousands of scientists and balloon). Years ago, I gave up of official documents to the attached microphones, employed engineers would have examined following that literature. In my procedures employed in the in a programme (code-named the hardware in order to unlock later years, I find, the sensation handling of sensitive materials. Mogul) to detect sound waves its secrets and to apply them to of an insulted intelligence is one Randle was initially taken from potential Soviet atomic earthly use. Nothing, however, I do not care to indulge. Both with what seemed to be credible tests. points to anything like that. proponents and debunkers have testimonial evidence. Eventually Though indisputably involved Few Roswell proponents shown themselves to be adept at (as I did), he grew doubtful of with Mogul, in the end Moore have any sense of the historical displaying just that. that evidence, especially as it was just another unreliable context in which an ET-generated Roswell in the 21st Century, concerned the supposed recovery witness, as Randle makes clear event would have unfolded. which never insults one’s of dead aliens. Of the eight in a litany of Moore assertions Such question-begging led me, intelligence, is noteworthy for claimants (he spoke directly with flatly contradicted in project and a lifelong student of history, being the first recantation by a all) who said they had observed weather records. Where Roswell to reject the proposition as major figure in the controversy, such bodies, Randle writes, “not storytellers are concerned, exceedingly unlikely. Randle and now nearing its fourth decade. one [..] turned out to be telling notices, fables and fabrications I evolved, if separately, in the The episode has been known the truth”. are not one side’s exclusive since it happened, but nobody That doesn’t mean that all property. Continued on page 56

FT346 55 www.forteantimes.com reviews BOOKS

Continued from previous page would try to send messages back. Davids is convinced that he Essential virus same direction: initial sympathy, began receiving (sometimes growing doubt, at last a virtual unexpectedly, and on occasion The Earth needs viruses to continue, but certainty that whatever took asked for) a series of ‘messages’ place in New Mexico nearly seven from Forry; these are mainly some are just intracellular hoodlums decades ago, a crashed spacecraft in the form of extraordinary did not precipitate it. Nor, for that ‘coincidences’ in which the matter, did a weather balloon. coming together of strongly particles. Only 10 are needed to So what did happen? Here related information from transmit the infection. Randle, in conceding a truth different sources at a significant Even viruses that don’t so many avoid speaking, will moment seems to defy chance cause human illnesses can have infuriate believers on both sides. and probability, including proof devastating social, environment There is “no real answer,” he says. of Forry’s identity. An addendum and economic consequences. Whatever it proves to be, I’m lists the key 142 incidents in Potato virus Y – which also sure, the answer – presumably chronological order. infects peppers and tomatoes – waiting in unrecovered official Davids was introduced to is, Roossinck notes, a “serious documents – will be interesting, neuro-psychiatrist Gary Schwartz concern” for farmers worldwide. likely surprising. (by Whitley Strieber’s late wife), Virus The 2001 outbreak of foot and Meantime, if you’re open to and together they began the An Illustrated Guide to 101 mouth disease remains a poignant a rigorously objective analysis work of collecting, verifying and Incredible Microbes remainder of our food supply’s of the Roswell controversy by documenting these incidents, Marilyn Roossinck vulnerability to viral infections. a supremely knowledgeable including the mysterious

Ivy Press 2016 On the other hand, not investigator with the rare obliteration of text in a document Pb, 256pp, illus, ind, £20.00, ISBN 9781782403265 all viruses are intracellular integrity to change his mind, put that had been unblemished terrorists. Some are beneficial, at Roswell in the 21st Century at the moments before. least if you’re not a caterpillar or top of your reading list. If nothing else, Davids’s We tend to think of viruses as marine bacterium. Jerome Clark memoir of Forry, his collections, pathogens that cause deadly, Cotesia congregata bracovirus his influence on Hollywood and debilitating infections such as aids wasps’ ability to infect the Fortean Times Verdict the genre publishing houses, flu, AIDS, polio, hepatitis C or caterpillars that incubate and THERE’S SOMETHInG HERE TO and adoration by fans, is worth the current bête noire, Zika. But form the food source for their AnnOy EVERyOnE – A MUST-READ 9 reading on its own. only a handful of the thousands offspring. The virus suppresses This serves as a context for of viruses known to science cause the caterpillar’s immune system, An Atheist in deciphering the synchronicity and human diseases. Indeed, viruses which would otherwise destroy Heaven meaningfulness of the messages, are everywhere: each millilitre the wasp eggs. The Ultimate Evidence for Life here logged in great detail (which of seawater contains about 10 Certain phages, viruses that After Death? includes chemical analysis of the million viruses, for example. A infect and can kill some bacteria, strange blotted page). Running Paul Davids & Gary E Schwartz few viruses are beneficial, most may help us avoid the long- through this, Davids and Schwarz are innocuous and almost all are, heralded antibiotic apocalypse atheistinheaven.com 2016 (both being sceptical also) discuss HB, 511pp, illus, ind, $29.95, ISBN 9780989024242 as this book shows, photogenic. and maintain the carbon balance their attempts to understand Viruses are wonderfully in the sea. Without synechococcus Many of you may what this means in terms of enigmatic. Biologists are not phage syn5, the sea would be a know of Forrest evidence for Forry’s survival really sure if they are alive. “bacterial soup” devoid of other Ackerman (1916– of death, and whether it could And, as Roossinck notes in this life. So, despite their reputation 2008), the pioneering have any effect on the perpetual accessible and well-illustrated for being pathogens, viruses are American editor standoff between the Skeptics book, biologists have struggled essential for life on Earth. and collector who and the Believers. “to find a watertight definition” As this book shows, viewed championed the comics, horror, This project, four years in of what constitutes a virus since under an electron microscope SF and fantasy genres and who, the making, was summarised in Martinus Beijerinck identified viruses are often beautiful. Each during WWII, sent parcels of Davids’s filmed documentary The the first member (tobacco mosaic of the 101 viruses has a full page books and paper to UK science Life After Death Project (2013), in virus) in 1898. portrait that helps you appreciate fiction fans. Many of these fans in which arch-skeptic Dr Michael Viruses hijack the cell’s just how varied, photogenic and turn sent copies of their fanzines Shermer, founder of the Skeptics’ machinery to reproduce. Indeed, important these microbes are. for his collection and among these Society, agreed to appear as a five to eight per cent of our Roossinck, whose enthusiasm would have been the earliest “token skeptic”. genes seem to have come from for virology is – if you’ll pardon records of the doings of the UK’s Shermer later described the retroviruses (the class that the pun – infectious, has penned ‘first forteans’. Ackerman – or project and his unexpected includes HIV), which our genomes an accessible, fascinating Forry, often transcribed as ‘4e’ reaction to it in an article collected over millions of years. introduction that underscores the – is at the centre of this study for Scientific American called And some viruses are incredibly importance of these ubiquitous of possible communications ‘Anomalous events that can shake contagious. Rotavirus A is the microbes. from the other side of death. He one’s scepticism to the core’. most common cause of childhood Mark Greener was a staunch atheist and once He also, in a personal message, diarrhœa, for example. A gram of promised Davids, a filmmaker and praises Davids for his honesty fæces from an infected person, Fortean Times Verdict protégé of Ackerman, that should and integrity regarding the Roossinck comments, contains An – AHEM! – InfECTIOUS READ he ‘wake up’ after dying to find he evidence-gathering and analyses; up to 10 trillion Rotavirus A viral ABOUT VERy HAnDSOME VIRUSES 8 was mistaken about the matter, he and Davids himself provides a

56 FT346 www.forteantimes.com reviews BOOKS

notarised statement declaring theories, captivity narratives, and that his evidence is authentic, tales of everyday life.” which Schwartz is comfortable in Lepselter, who has a literary By the yard endorsing. background, is not concerned So here it is, a slab of paper primarily with the veracity A transcribed 18th century as thick as a government white of the UFO stories and alien paper, establishing the reality of abduction accounts told to her, survey is analysed in a mere 13 pages apparent communication with a but instead how these stories – deceased person. Nevertheless, it real or imagined – resonate with makes for a good read, managing the everyday experiences of early Georgian, imperial zeitgeist. to both entertain and inform. ordinary Americans of “class, loss, Most of his writing, however, gives Whether it will stand race, gender, and [..] a world of his methodology and results, and alongside other historical case accelerated technological change.” here Wood contrasts himself to studies on post-mortem postings With their focus on the loss of the earlier Wessex monument – such as the famous ‘Cross liberty, captivity, as well as alien pioneers Stuckely (who believed in Correspondences’ apparently experimentation and biological the ancient cubit – 26.8in (68cm) received from the deceased exploitation of humans against – and massaged his recording of leaders of the SPR between 1901 their will, she appears to suggest Stonehenge to fit that measure) and 1932 – remains to be seen; that alien abduction experiences Stonehenge 1740AD and Inigo Jones, who liked but it certainly deserves to be reflect the alienation and the geometric exactitude and had John Wood’s 1740 survey and read and seriously considered. ‘uncanny’ feeling among many report transcribed and analysed difficulty in counting the stones. Interestingly, this book is not Americans that something is very on CAD Flowers has not only produced published through a commercial wrong with their society and the a transcription of Wood’s words TW Flowers publisher but by the authors direction of their nation. and plans (112 pages) but has themselves. There are problems, however. CreateSpace 2016 returned to the Stuckelian Bob Rickard The language can be too academic, Pb, 132pp, illus, £14.08, ISBN 9781515311232 idea of a universal measure of making it difficult, sometimes, length, though this time, Thom’s Fortean Times Verdict to fully understand Lepselter’s In 1740, renowned architect John Megalithic yard of 32.664in InTERESTInG LOOK AT POST- conclusions. Wood the elder and his son John (83cm). (Other megalithic yards MORTEM COMMUnICATIOn 8 Because of the obvious dangers surveyed Stonehenge with an are available.) He has taken The Resonance of of ridicule facing an academic accuracy of 0.25in (6mm) in a Wood’s measurements, converted discussing a topic as controversial manner that was “rude and simple them (often to seven decimal Unseen Things as UFOs and conspiracy theories, such as my eyes delivered to the places!) and replotted them to Poetics, Power, Captivity, and Lepselter goes a bit too far with brain”. Of this (the first accurate) find new alignments and soe solv UfOs in the American Uncanny the language of disbelief. This survey and its significance for for all time the true secret of Susan Lepselter would not be a problem were it Stonehenge studies he said: “But Stonehenge (the second time not for her obvious fascination leave every man the liberty of this year it has been solved) in University of Michigan Press 2016 with tales of the fantastic. It is fancying as he pleases, when he just 13 pages and the front and Pb, 192pp, notes, bib, ind, $27.95, ISBN 9780472052943 difficult to believe that anyone hath sufficiently gazed upon the back covers. Sadly, it is often not with such an in-depth knowledge original”. The ‘original’ are his possible to see the Wood for the In The Resonance of of the subject does not take it plans, but it is equally true for the threes… and fives andve se ns etc. Unseen Things: Poetics, more seriously than implied with stones. So what fanciful liberties For Flowers, picking his Power, Captivity, and phrases such as the “Once upon have been taken with Stonehenge numbers carefully, the “winter UFOs in the American a time...” that starts the Roswell and Wood’s plans? Wood was not solstice alignment is rejected as Uncanny, the cultural portion of the text. immune to the scholarship and an archæological red herring” anthropologist While Lepselter’s beliefs about intense patriotism of his time, in favour of the summer Susan Lepselter offers readers legitimacy of the UFO phenomena for he believed that Somerset, solstice sunlight being blocked an ethnographic meditation on are somewhat ambiguous, the or rather its Druids, were the and amplified by sarsens and what she calls the ‘uncanny’ text is a good introduction to source of all arcane knowledge bluestones. The reasoning for persistence and cultural freight the history of ufology and alien instructing Pythagoras, Zoroaster this solar entrapment is not of UFO-related conspiracy abduction studies, covering and even Confucius and the illuminated: is it to allow the mica theories in 20th century the written works of abduction ‘Indian Hylobii’ (sky-clad ascetics). of the Altar Stone to reflect the American culture. authors such as the late Bud They had four great centres: sunlight back to the heavens, as This well researched 181 pages Hopkins and John Mack among Wookey Hole and Priddy Circles others have suggested? Perhaps. begin with her explanation that other personalities in this in the Mendips; Stonehenge; and Which is the more appealing the study is neither a history of otherworldly field. Avebury. They also showed great fantasy: an original, solid the UFO phenomenon in America For this reason the book will interest in Bath and its springs, Georgian Wooden rule or a newer, nor a sociology of UFO believers be enjoyable reading both for and the stones of Stanton Drew. computer-generated, plastic or alien experiencers, but UFO enthusiasts researching the Indeed, Stonehenge “was copied Flowers’ arrangement? Best tell rather about an almost uniquely history of the field, as it will be for from the like work” of “the temple the Hylobii to wrap up warm for American poetics. students of sociology. of the moon at Stanton Drew”, of the solstice celebrations. In the author’s words, “this Richard Thomas which Wood had earlier produced Rob Ixer book is not about UFOs: rather plans. Much of this truth he it follows the recursion and Fortean Times Verdict demonstrated from the etymology Fortean Times Verdict resonance between uncanny GOOD InTRO TO THE HISTORy Of of local place names and Greco- REInTERPRETInG A SEMInAL 1740 memories, hauntings, conspiracy UfOLOGy AnD ABDUCTIOnS 3 Roman writings and the general, TExT On STOnEHEnGE 7

FT346 57 www.forteantimes.com reviews BOOKS

Some Remarks Neal Stephenson

new Atlantis in sound William Morrow Paperbacks 2014 Pb, 336 pp, $15.99. ISBN 9780062024442 The Radiophonic Workshop was only the best known of many Some ask: where innovative -making outfits in post-war Britain are the flying cars? Stephenson asks: Where’s my donut- Until now, the Radiophonic call it that) was characterised shaped space station? Workshop has somewhat eclipsed by individuals toiling with Where’s my ticket to other players in British early tape-splicers in almost complete Mars? electronic music’s history. The seclusion and often eccentric and Some Remarks gathers extent of this is laid bare in the downtrodden. journalism, meditations, revelatory book Tape Leaders – a One wonders whether such interviews and a short story. landmark survey by the composer, states are a prerequisite to In articles written 1993–2012, film-maker, instrument-builder enjoying experimental music, Stephenson muses on the Tape Leaders and researcher Ian Helliwell, or if they are gradually instilled development of rocketry in who has uncovered hitherto from without through a wider ‘Locked in’; on early e-money A Compendium of Early British unacknowledged independent apathy towards such pursuits. A in ‘The Great Simoleon Caper’; Electronic Music Composers electronic music composers quote from inventor/engineer/ and on academic snobbery in Ian Helliwell with sound-houses and using composer FC Judd (the subject ‘Everything’ and ‘More Foreword’. Sound on Sound 2016 tape machines and electronic of Helliwell’s 2011 film Practical In ‘The Salon Interview’ Hb, 220pp + 15 track CD, £29, ISBN 9780995495807 techniques much as Oram Electronica) encapsulates the (2004), he expands on the originally imagined. stoicism that seemed widespread: historical background to The We Have Also Sound-Houses – a Tape Leaders is an A-to-Z of “The composer of electronic System of the World, the quarrels 1979 documentary on the BBC’s electronic music composers in music or musique concrète has between Newton and Leibniz, Radiophonic Workshop – noted Britain, focusing on the early little need to offer justification the development of Calculus that the workshop’s manipulated pioneers. It features well-known of his work. He can regard it as Puritanism, the reconciliation sound became synonymous with figures such as Joe Meek, Delia an experiment in an unexplored of science, religion and alchemy the otherworldly, the nightmarish Derbyshire, Brian Eno, William field, and can supply musical by Leibniz, Newton and other and “misplaced sanity”. Burroughs (who dabbled with motive by pointing to the savants of their time, and the This was not the original vision tape cut-ups at Paul McCartney’s fascination of creating new links between System and of the Workshop’s co-founder, London studio in the 1960s) and, sounds.” Cryptonomicon. Perhaps of equal Daphne Oram, who around the of course, Oram (whose 1972 For anybody interested importance is how the System time of its opening in 1958, metaphysical book An Individual in modern music (and the novels turn the birth of modern pinned to its door the prescient Note of Music, Sound and modernist condition), Tape banking into entertainment! passage from Sir ’s Electronics will be reprinted later Leaders is essential reading. It is Some of the same territory is 1624 New Atlantis: “We have this year). a monumental feat of research. covered and updated to the 21st also Sound-houses, where we Helliwell scores every name Illustrated throughout with century in ‘Metaphysics in the practise and demonstrate all with a ‘Commitment Factor’ rare ephemera, it conjures an Royal Society 1715–2010’. Sounds and their Generation…” (Oram scores 10/10), and an awe-inspiring sense of a parallel ‘Mother Earth, Mother Board’, Oram had wanted to establish a ‘Obscurity Quotient’. At the universe: what would our musical a 118-page book within a book, British electronic music studio extremes of the Obscurity landscape look like today if collects Stephenson’s Hacker comparable to the French RTF Quotient, we find Janet Beat experimental sound practices had Tourist articles on undersea and German WDR studios, but (whose early œuvre was destroyed been more widely assimilated? telecommunications cable-laying when it became clear that the in a flood), Brian Whibley and Helliwell was responsible in the 1990s. Introducing divers, Radiophonic Workshop would Ralph Broome, both of whose for one of the highlights of the the engineers who call themselves merely provide material for the archives were dispersed when Science Museum’s Alternative cable trash, it provides a history BBC’s drama department, Oram they died. Histories of Electronic Music of the art. And Art it is, as every quit, resolving to set up her own Other early works have been conference earlier this year, hill, dip, and shallow has to be ‘sound house’. lost, but Helliwell, whose own giving a satisfyingly damning taken into account. Read how As if to rub salt in the wound, Commitment Factor must rank appraisal of academe’s habitual Lord Kelvin invented the mirror the Workshop’s 1963 monograph a solid 10, has tracked down disregard of outsiders. galvanometer, a new improved co-opted her Bacon quote, recordings languishing on the The fact that Tape Leaders compass and a depth sounder, quipping: “It would be nice to brink of oblivion, many of which appears at this time of growing making a fortune from each. think that [Bacon’s] flight into feature on the accompanying interest in post-war electronic While some of the material is fancy on the subject of sound was CD, all displaying a level of music underlines the truism dated, it covers Stephenson’s motivated by ideas of creating sophistication seemingly at odds that composers’ works are only development as an SF writer and the incidental sounds to illustrate with the limited means then properly appreciated after they’re growing to adulthood of the World the works of his contemporary, available. gone. Wide Web. Shakespeare, for it is precisely The life stories Helliwell Daniel Wilson Páiric Ó Corráin for this purpose, . the special has gathered show a culture of effects for radio drama, that this electronic music-making distinct Fortean Times Verdict Fortean Times Verdict modern version of Bacon’s Sound- from that of France and . A VERy BRITISH TAKE On POST- THROWS A fASCInATInG LIGHT On house was created.” The British school (if you can WAR ELECTROnIC MUSIC 8 A Sf GREAT’S DEVELOPMEnT 8

58 FT346 www.forteantimes.com reviews BookS

We leaf through a selection of ALSo RECEIVED recent fortean books...

our old Monsters A third impetus was the official crackdown Witches, Werewolves and Vampires from on Christian Catholics. (The Arima clan, Medieval Theology to Horror Cinema former rulers of Shimabara, had allowed Christianity to flourish, before they were Brenda S Gardenour Walter McFarland 2015 replaced by the Matsukura clan). PB, 241pp, illus, notes, filmography, bib, ind, £36.95, ISBN 9780786476800 This triple whammy backfired in December 1637, when tens of thousands besieged Brenda Walter, a professor at the Saint Louis several castles in the region. A few suc- College of Pharmacy, researches the his- cesses against the clan armies (who were tory of medicine, Aristotelian discourse and joined by contingents from other regional “the influence of medieval otherness on the domains by order of the shogunate), were horror genre”. quickly followed by a succession of routs. The focus of her study are the ‘usual sus- What lifts this out of history’s miserable pects’: the witch, the vampire and the were- catalogue of crushed religious groups is the wolf, which she traces back to the Aristote- extraordinary mythology that formed around lian parsing of natural science in mediæval the figurehead of the Shimabara rebellion European universities. The ethereal world – a 16-year-old boy called Jerome Amakusa beyond the Moon was warm, light, male and Shiro – amplified by a superstitious fear good; below, the Moon was evil, cold, dark, among the oppressors. female and imperfect. In time, these warped Jonathan Clement’s thrilling account, philosophies – embroidered here with a supported by detailed fieldwork and archival wealth of fascinating historical footnotes research, shows that the rebels were seen – became a sort of ‘theological’ basis for variously as tax rebels and as a doomsday anti-semitism and misogyny, nowhere better cult led by a boy sorcerer. demonstrated, she argues, than in the fate When the farmers bested trained samurai of our unholy trio in modern horror movies. in combat, the victors believed they had the Walter attributes their enduring popularity blessings of an alien god and prophesied to the subtle fact that “despite their seem- that fires in the sky would bring about the ing ‘otherness’, they are painfully and beauti- end of the world. Clements writes: “The sect fully human.” She adds that: “even in their was said to harbour dark designs to over- wretched state they, like us, might still be throw the government. Its teachers used redeemed through salvific human e.lov ” a dead language that was impenetrable Walter’s academic tone is subdued by her to all but the innermost circle of believers. light touch and in no way interferes with the Its priests preached love and kindness but enjoyment of her thesis, possibly aided by helped local warlords acquire firearms. They many familiar contemporary references, typi- encouraged believers to cast aside their fied by a memorable dissection of the teen earthly allegiances and swear loyalty to a female-werewolf movie Ginger Snaps (2000). foreign god-emperor before seeking terrible martyrdoms.” Christ’s Samurai When the rebels’ last stand at the old The True Story of the Shimabara Rebellion castles of Hara fell, the end of their world came true on 15 April, and 37,000 rebels Jonathan Clements and sympathisers were beheaded by the Robinson /Little Brown 2016. Pb, 265pp, maps, notes, bib, ind, £14.99, ISBN 9781472137418 shogunate, adding to the thousands killed up to this point. The rebellion was a disaster All but forgotten in the West, but still refer- for the many towns and villages in the region enced by Japanese culture (including manga left without a population; consequently, and movies) despite being a taboo subject the leader of the Matsukura clan was also for some of the time, is the story of the four- beheaded for the crime of misrule. The month Shimabara Rebellion that began in judgement of time, though, is stymied; December 1637. Briefly, in the mid-1630s, Catholic historians reject any claims to mar- the two ruling lords (of the Shimabara and tyrdom for Jerome and his followers because Karatsu Domains) in this southwestern part their motive was not purely a defence of of Japan’s Nagasaki Prefecture, imposed the Faith; and historians draw back from extremely heavy taxes on their subjects. calling this a ‘peasant revolt’ because of the This and a famine caused many masterless involvement of the ronin and retainers of samurai (retainers from previous ruling fami- banished clans and, of course, the role of a lies ordered to leave their fiefs) to join the foreign religion. peasantry in plotting a rebellion. This is history writing at its best. reviews FILM & DVD

SEND REVIEW COPIES OF DVDS, BLU-RAYS AND GAMES TO: FORTEAN TIMES, PO BOX 71602, LONDON E17 0QD.

city versus country; fashionable versus scuzzy; and, ultimately, clothed versus naked. All of this is bundled together in a package that is itself a clash between two film genres: glossy thriller and gothic horror. These contrasts are pulled together with skill, and the opposites meld into each other rather than jarring. An intriguing æsthetic then, and in service to an equally intriguing structure; however, the film has some serious flaws which conspire to render it a failure. Foremost among these is Kristen Stewart’s performance as Mau- reen. Stewart has undeniable star quality, but at this stage of her career she simply does not have the acting chops to carry a film, particularly one as intense as this, without heavyweight support to help her out. Maureen is at best a rootless character, at worst some- one who is losing her mind, but Stewart plays it all with the same collection of shrugs, stammers and furrowed brows. For a film that rarely has her off screen, it’s a fatal flaw. The dialogue is often Train to Busan for the benefit of a market that Personal Shopper banal and on occasion risible;

Dir Yeon Sang-ho, South Korea 2016 might not yet have seen all the Dir. Olivier Assayas, France 2016 describing her encounter with a On UK release from 28 October originals. That is certainly how it On UK release from 28 October malign female apparition, Mau- comes across, and consequently reen says: “She vomited some ecto- Arriving at a platform near you it may find wowing Western audi- Maureen (Kristen Stewart) is plasm and left.” There is a lengthy, shortly is this hot ticket from ences a tougher task, accustomed personal shopper for demanding, crucial section of the film where South Korea, which has appar- as we are to high-quality offerings mega-famous, trend-setting celeb- Maureen is plagued by text mes- ently broken all sorts of box such as The Walking Dead and Les rity Kyra (Nora van Waldstatten). sages, which may or may not be office records in the East. The Revenants. Dashing around Paris and London, coming from the beyond.Technol- central character, Seok-woo At times, Train to Busan feels choosing and collecting clothes ogy means that sequences like this (Yoo Gong), is a self-absorbed more like a good old-fashioned and accessories, Maureen is the are perforce creeping into cinema, divorcee who, having missed his disaster movie than a horror de facto stand-in for her client, but sending and receiving texts is young daughter Soo-an’s school film: the characterisation is employed because she knows hardly cinematic stuff. recital and bought her a Wii for pretty thin and the sentimental- Kira’s taste and how to make her There are moments when the second birthday running, is ity pretty thick; despite perilous look good. But Maureen is dis- Assayas’s skill as a technician shamed into agreeing to take situations galore, it isn’t remotely satisfied, not just with her job shines through: such as when Mau- her to visit her mother in Busan. frightening; and despite having but with her life; she is mourning reen’s inbox fills with messages, Unfortunately, also along for the a body count in what must be the the death of her twin brother who each of which indicates her stalker ride is a young woman infected hundreds, if not thousands, it is passed away some weeks before is getting closer and closer, and with what can only be described remarkably bloodless. from a heart condition. Like him, a remarkable glide out of a hotel as a zombie virus – one that has I don’t want to give the impres- Maureen reckons herself to be a elevator, through the lobby and soon spread throughout the train. sion that this is a bad film, medium, a spiritualist in touch out into the street. Both sequences If you’re Simon Pegg, you because it isn’t. There are some with a world beyond our own. recall Hitchcock at his best, and should look away now – because impressive set pieces, the occa- Holding to a pact made with her I imagine he would have had a these are not zombies for the sional moment of wit and insight, brother, Maureen is waiting for a field day with this material. Sadly, purist: they are lightning-fast and two or three engaging perfor- sign from him to prove there is life such moments are too infrequent (as in Zack Snyder’s Dawn of mances. The tension is handled after death. to rescue the film; the idea might the Dead remake), their bite is well, and if nothing else the film Assayas presents for our con- have been to set up an opposition almost instantly contagious (as works fine as a thriller. But as a sideration a series of dualities: between 21st century thriller and in 28 Days Later), and they flock zombie movie, I’m afraid it has haves and have-nots, on the most 19th century Gothic chiller, but together in massive numbers (as arrived about 10 years late. basic level; personal and public; this offers little of either. in World War Z). Daniel King sophistication and naiveté; body Daniel King From all this you might surmise and soul; and the biggie – life and that Train to Busan is something Fortean Times Verdict death. They are presented through Fortean Times Verdict of a rehash of the last 15 or so we wILL shortLy arrIVe at visual oppositions: swanky pent- More LIke ratners than years’ worth of zombie movies DIsappoIntMent parkway 5 house flat versus old dark house; cartIer unFortunateLy 6

60 FT346 www.forteantimes.com reviews FILM & DVD

From Dusk Till Dawn: the slow-burn inevitability of an almighty confrontation at the Titty ShorTS Season Two Twister crossroads of Season One is Dir Robert Rodriguez, US 2016 absent in Season Two. While the cast ceLL Entertainment One, £19.99 (DVD) play their parts with gusto, it’s all – like the Gecko brothers themselves Signature Entertainment, £15.99 (Blu-ray), £12.99 (DVD) What I actually liked about Season – hard to love. Plenty do love it In a stroke of Day of the Triffids-style luck, John One of the Robert Rodriguez- though: a third season is on the way. Cusack’s cell phone runs out of battery just as produced From Dusk Till Dawn TV Nick Cirkovic everyone else’s gets zapped by a signal that turns series – based on his own bloody them into spasming psychos. Despite some crummy twitching/acting from the extras, it’s a 1996 crime/horror genre splice star- Fortean Times Verdict pretty thrilling and brutal scene. Soon, though, ring Quentin Tarantino and George saDLy, soMethIng oF a we’re firmly in familiar ‘apocalyptic road movie’ territory. There Clooney as the notorious Gecko MIsseD opportunIty 6 are some inspired moments, like when the ‘phoners’ open their brothers – was seeing how it stuck to mouths and tinny music comes out, and a scene in a bar where or departed from the original.There Arcadia the Jukebox plays the disco classic ‘Ring My Bell.’ Yet, there’s a was also an element of sophistica- problem: the film feels like it was made when the novel was writ- tion in the flashback narrative inter- Dir Tod Williams, US 2016 Signature Entertainment, £19.99 (Blu-ray), £15.99 (DVD) ten: 10 years ago. Maybe it’s the ropey CGI. Maybe it’s the glut play that fleshed out, in particular, of zombie movies that have turned these stories into clichés. Or the background of Jessie Garcia’s In a dystopian near-future, life maybe it’s that mobile phones feel too old and established to be Texas Ranger Freddie Gonzalez and expectancy is just 39 years due to that much of a threat. Yes, there’s a still relevant message about his relationship with his mentor an incurable virus – incurable, that how our little screens can turn us into mindless drones, and this (Don Johnson). Finding out what is, unless you’re one of the elite would have been a kick-ass movie if it had been made 15 years fuelled Freddie’s path of revenge who live in Arcadia, a luxurious ago and with a bigger budget. But in 2016, it feels like too little worked well for me, although I was skyscraper. A government operative, too late. I dug the ending though, which reminded me of King’s less interested in the background lured by the prospect of free pas- recent Lovecraftian novel Revival. rev peter Laws 5/10 of Santanico Pandemonium, Salma sage, is sent to neutralise a terrorist Hayek’s Titty Twister dancer (here organisation who may have found a creature DesIgners: the FrankensteIn played with a vampirish pout by cure of their own. Eiza González), which is partly what Arcadia is an impressive British coMpLex makes Season Two a problem for me. sci-fi thriller which works better Studiocanal, £12.99 (DVD) Basically, it goes all True Blood on than Ben Wheatley’s recent High This is an entertaining film about the men (and it us, concerned with factional infight- Rise despite having only a fraction is chiefly men) who design and build the monsters ing between vampires, with some of the budget. As a sci-fi film it’s a from our favourite movies. There have been an Mesoamerican mythology and grue- mild swizz because there’s actually awful lot of these documentaries over the last few some Grindhouse elements bunged very little hard SF in it; but you years, so finding anything new to say is the real in for good measure. Santanico, in have to cut it some slack, as daz- challenge. Directors Gilles Penso and Alexandre alliance with Richie Gecko, plots zling FX are just not a possibility at Poncet, they of the Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan from her revenge against the blood cult this level. What you do get though a few years back, manage to do so, but not in the manner you’d in the aftermath of the previous sea- is a masterful control of narrative, expect. Seeing the monsters again is, of course, a treat, and son’s climax; 500-year-oldVampire pace and tension: very few of the makes you want to revisit the original movies; but what is most Queen, yet slave to the darkness, main characters meet in person and fascinating about this film is how it reveals the sadness and she really wants to be done with it. the shoot was quite plainly done in bitterness felt by many in the industry, in particular an apocalypti- Meanwhile, estranged from Richie, discrete chunks, so there’s real skill cally grumpy Phil Tippett, as a result of the rise to dominance of Seth has become a drug addict, involved in cutting it together to CGI. Given that everybody – and I mean everybody who’s asked nursed by Kate Fuller, who is on a create drama.The other interesting the question – says they prefer models to CGI you’re left scratch- quest to rescue her brother from the thing is that it’s so overtly politi- ing your head as to how this state of affairs has come about. But then someone mentions the studio executives and how smaller thralls of the cult. Ranger Freddie cal; it even advocates direct action budgets and tighter schedules now demand that all effects shots has his own quest: heir of an ancient as potentially the only solution to are done separately from the first unit work: in other words, the warrior race, he seeks to eradicate society’s ever-widening inequality. monster makers were defeated by the men in suits. Dk 7/ 10 the vampire threat wherever he The acting is way above average for a finds it. low budget genre movie, particularly There is plenty of the charismatic and grizzled Marc DeaD enD DrIVe-In and carnage throughout, but the Baylis, and the script is pretty good Arrow Video, £15.99 (Blu-ray), £12.99 (DVD) ‘what happens next?’ scenario is too. The seams show occasionally This 1986 Ozploitation classic sees young people replete with nasty villains and anti- of course but that’s to be expected. incarcerated at the local drive-in. They think they’re heroes I found it increasingly hard Director Tom Large is one to watch; having fun, but these places are actually the youth to care about.You might be of a it’ll be interesting to see if he gets prisons of a dystopian future. One kid, a skinny guy mind that Richie Gecko is a charac- more money to play with on future who is eager to ‘bulk up’ and get as ripped as his ter we can actually root for, and that projects and how he handles it if he brother, winds up inside and seems to be the only a man who cuts out the eyes of an does. For now though, Arcadia is a person who realises that what’s on offer is confinement rather innocent woman and then butchers little gem of a thriller with plenty than recreation. There are some cool stunts, amusingly odd dia- her is all part of the off-kilter, mor- to say. logue and typically quirky fashions. I’m not the biggest fan of 80s ally subversive fun of the series; and Daniel King punk, though, so some of the film’s charms were lost on me. Still, perhaps you’ll enjoy the vampire as a sort of heady cocktail of Mad Max, Escape from New York in-fighting as an exercise in nasty Fortean Times Verdict and Night of the Comet, it’s pretty enjoyable. rev pL 6/10 one-upmanship. If so, then Season Low-buDget sF thrILLer Two is for you. However, much of punches aboVe Its weIght 8

FT346 61 www.forteantimes.com LISTEN IT JUST MIGHT CHANGE YOUR LIFE

LIVE | CATCH UP | ON DEMAND

FORTEAN TOPICS GO TO... CONTACT US BY POST: BOX 2409 LONDON NW5 4NP R MORE DISCUSSION ON OR E-MAIL [email protected] FO PLEASE PROVIDE US WITH YOUR POSTAL ADDRESS www.forteantimes.com/forum lettersDear FT…

A talking bucket least a glimmer of credence to the pivotal Burroughs and Penniston My grandfather Eric Hurst was account of a highly advanced, born in Surrey in 1912. From an structured craft manœuvring in early age he took a passionate the forest. If I have got this right, interest in the emerging medium then her conclusions were not of radio and by the age of 12 he had “disappointing” – unless of course built a four-valve wireless complete one is desperate for a non-exotic with huge gramophone horn. It was explanation. As this incident is the fi rst radio in the tiny six-house now getting on for 40 years old hamlet of Ede’s Fields.The old folk and nothing remotely like the around about used to call it a “trey- Burroughs/Penniston craft has valved ‘arkner-in”, because it had emerged from Skunkworks or the three valves and you “harkened-in” former Soviet Union, then I think it to it.When my grandfather joined is not going too far to suggest that the RAF in World War II, he wanted Simulacra corner it may just have been an extra- to be a pilot, but this was refused terrestrial/dimensional (alien) on the grounds that he was far more Sean Cooke found this stone on Seaford beach in Sussex. He vehicle. At the very least, we can valuable as a radio technician. said: “When I turned it over, I was stunned to see the face of a now fi nally lay to rest the fatuous As the war progressed, he black cat staring at me.” lighthouse/lightship explanations, worked at Bletchley Park. He later We are always glad to receive pictures of spontaneous forms and so beloved of the debunking frater- told my father the following story. fi gures, or any curious images. Send them to PO BOX 2409 LONDON nity. Col. Halt is on record as saying Somewhere near London, in a NW5 4NP or to [email protected] – and please tell us your that he was aware of the lighthouse wooded place, there was a secret postal address. and that the effects it produced transmitter, possibly used to send were not remotely like what he saw messages on strong experimental in the forest. A recent book by Nick frequencies. One day a local man, Canal. From the eastern end of the the bodies of American war dead Pope discusses Burroughs and Pen- with no knowledge of the transmit- canal to Loch Ness there are six were shipped back home; but the niston’s experiences in detail. ter, was out with a bucket collecting locks to negotiate, while from the body bags were sometimes used Geoff Clifton coal for the fi re. After fi lling it up, western end there are no fewer to carry less worthwhile cargo; a Solihull, West Midlands he headed back. Suddenly a voice than 23. One can possibly imagine rather obvious method of transport- boomed out of the bucket, giving a seal or even a dolphin making its ing something other than that The one and only the man the fright of his life. He way through one lock (are there intended, but certainly possible. It ran off without the haunted pail! any examples elsewhere?), but was suggested that Hansen could In “The Enchanted Isle” I had thought that it was water in managing to get through a mini- have smuggled the Iceman into the [FT343:32], Roger Clarke makes the pail, and that my grandfather mum of six seems highly unlikely. US in this way. passing mention of Tennyson had explained how the arc of the As for a basking shark, I doubt A 1966 report adds further “striding the hills [of the Isle of water and the metal bucket had that it could either pass through a ‘evidence’; Jim Lucas, a NewYork Wight] as he composed Idylls of acted as a kind of primitive receiv- lock without attracting attention war correspondent, stated that US a King”.The Tennyson work is of er. My father remembers it as coal, or, indeed, survive for long in fresh Marines had shot not only tigers in course Idylls of the King – and while and has pointed out how the crys- water. the Central Highlands ofVietnam the correction may seem pedantic, tals found in coal can be used as a Dr P G Swindells but also ‘a large ape’. Officially, I suspect King Arthur and his fol- kind of ‘cat’s whisker’, to pick up Wolverhampton, West Midlands there are no apes indigenous to lowers would want to insist on his signals in a simple radio set. I am that part of Southeast Asia. An deserving of the definite article. no electronics expert, and suspect Vietnam and the Australian journalist earlier wrote Dennis Lien that this could be radio technician’s of a ‘large primate’ having been Minneapolis, Minnesota folklore. Have any other readers Iceman found in a cave there in 1944. heard the like of this story? That’s it, I’m afraid; as usual, Chinese ancestry Lewis JW Hurst With reference to your book review tantalising, tenuous and unverifi- Tokyo concerning the Minnesota Iceman able – but that seems to be the way A more plausible version of Hei [FT343:59]: a couple of years ago I these things go! Sing Tso’s data-free theory about nessie’s identity published an article on this subject Shaun Ivory Chinese descent from alien giants in a magazine.Your account men- Redcar, North Yorkshire and Nephilim [FT342:74, 343:71] Regarding possible candidates tions the Iceman appearing in the was published 70 years ago by for the mysterious inhabitant of USA, when previously last seen in not disappointing Franz Weidenreich (1873-1948) Loch Ness for which Greg May Hong Kong. My research showed and GHR von Koenigswald (1902- suggests various marine creatures that Frank Hansen served with the I am not sure that MG Sherlock 82), and was followed up in the [FT344:70]: a problem any such USAF at Da Nang, a major staging [FT343:73] was reading the same 1950s by the Chinese authorities. creature would face would be the post inVietnam, one of several Jenny Randles’s column [FT340:28- “[Weidenreich] had noticed that difficulty of passing through the areas where manimals had been 29] that I was. I got the distinct smaller breeds of dog often have various locks on the Caledonian previously reported. From Da Nang impression that Jenny had given at relatively large brains and small

FT346 65 www.forteantimes.com letters

faces compared with larger ones. Journalism’s decline point of contact for reporting big a black had been shot in Humans also have much larger either. Back in the heyday of 2012. I thought nothing of it until brains and relatively smaller faces There’s a reason why, as Paul , in the late 20th I noticed that the sightings of than chimps, gorillas and orang- Sieveking notes [FT334:20-25] century, a handful of enthusiastic black in the adjoining utans, something that had puzzled there are fewer UK reports big cat investigation groups set up county of Suffolk and along the researchers for years.Weidenreich in recent years in the local and websites for effective reporting of -Suffolk border seemed believed it all made sense if our national press: the press, espe- ABC sightings, back in the days of to nosedive soon afterwards, family tree included some unusu- cially the local press, has itself running a membership organisa- with suddenly a lot more pumas ally large ancestors. As the millen- been greatly diminished.There’s tion with a physical newsletter for seen in Suffolk instead, as if the nia passed, our bodies shrank but less media left around to do the which you could charge member- competition has suddenly been our brains remained large. In other reporting.Take a flick through ship subscriptions.The Internet eliminated. words, we were descended from your newspaper – if your com- pioneers of big cat reporting The figure of 80 to 90 per cent Asian giants, and Gigantopithecus munity still even has one – and eventually found out what a drag black leopards among UK big was one of them.”(New Scientist, 18 it’s surprisingly hard to find email it was to operate such websites – cat sightings that Paul men- May 2016). contact details for ‘Editorial’ for for free, as it turned out. Many of tions isn’t one I recognise. Rick Of course, the current thinking its journalists, let alone a phone the big cat investigation sites of Minter, author of Big Cats: Facing is that Gigantopithecus is much number. In the part of the UK old are a bit static now, with the Britain’s Wild Predator (reviewed more distantly related to modern where I live and where I gather latest news items being a couple FT289:58), estimates that in any humans, but that some popula- big cat reports – the county of of years old.There have also been given local sample within the UK, tions of Chinese people owe some Suffolk – one in six people have fallings-out among big cat investi- reports will be a couple of per of their DNA to other hominids, still never been on the Internet gation groups over the years. cent , around 75 per cent Denisovans – or possibly Red Deer (assuming you can get wifi or even Other big cat investigation black (melanistic) leopards and Cave people – as well as the Nean- mobile coverage out in the middle groups avoid contact with the the remainder sandy-coloured derthal genes that Europeans and of nowhere), so a lot of people media; who can blame them when pumas.The Suffolk sample – Eurasians carry. This is complicated just aren’t going to email in their even serious reports on big cats more than 150 sightings over 40 by the lack of NeanderthalY chro- big cat sightings to what’s left in Britain are marginalised by na- years – seems to have proportion- mosomes in our DNA, probably due of the local press, ever. If you’ve tional newspapers to the “Weird ally slightly more pumas than the to rape and pillage.The Denisovan ever tried phoning your local News” ghetto? national average, with slightly DNA was only discovered in 2010, paper with a story after 5pm on I appreciate that the “Where fewer black leopards. Pumas are and has now been identified in a weekday it ain’t easy; expect a are the bodies?” argument pre- generally more common than people from Papua New Guinea to voicemail at best.The local press sents a real problem for UK big black leopards in the west of the Inuit Greenland.The traditional is less a part of people’s lives that cat investigators. But people also county, with black leopard sight- view of Neanderthals as uncultured it used to be.There are fewer have short memories – no one ings more frequent in the east victims of our species’ ingenuity is journalists trying to do the same remembers the May 2012 Daily nearer the coast, although there also crumbling under the weight job and there are fewer actual Mirror report of the discovery of are habitats (especially wetlands of evidence of their funerary rites, pages in local newspapers. Close what appeared to be the rotting and water meadows by the rivers) ability to articulate and so on. It examination of some recent big corpse of a young adult or older that seem to attract both leopards seems very few of us can claim to cat reports shows that these break cub black leopard discovered and pumas, as well as lynxes. be pure Homo sapiens. in the national press and then in Morayshire, Scotland, with A couple of years ago I was get- Georgina Skipper are picked up by the (much more photos. (http://www.mirror.co.uk/ ting reports almost exclusively of Weymouth, poorly resourced) local press later, news/uk-news/big-cat-remains- pumas, but now it seems at least not the other way round. found-by-dog-839016). one black leopard is back. It’s all There are notable About 18 months into my in Mystery Animals of the British exceptions – Bury investigations of big cat sightings Isles: Suffolk, to be published im- Free Press and the in Suffolk, I began to find that minently by CFZ Publishing, and Haverhill Echo in random people I’d known locally meanwhile at http://twitter.com/ particular do a fine for a while had either seen a big mysteryanimals. job of reporting lo- cat themselves, or had a family I think the November 2014 cal big cat sightings, member or friend who’d seen one sighting of “two sandy coloured while the Freedom locally. In the village of Westle- ABCs” at Long Melford, Suffolk, of Information Act ton, not far from the Suffolk coast in your report may have become now makes it easier and near where I live, I found that garbled. Cambridge News report- for journalists to having seen a big cat wasn’t even ed that the witness came from the come up with big that unusual. East Anglia has a Long Melford area, on the Essex cat stories based on strong tradition of keeping things border (she’s known to me, and police call logs and to oneself. Farmers in particular wisely decided to be vague about local council data are aware that their neighbours where she lived when reporting on Dangerous Wild are often heavily armed, often her sighting to the press, in a part Animal licensing with both a shotgun license and of the world where everybody and recorded animal a Firearms Certificate to own knows everybody). But her sight- escapes. a rifle, so they sometimes keep ing itself was in Red Lodge, way The Internet quiet about a big cat they’ve over to the northwest and right on “Ground control? and social media seen so that it’s not shot by one the border. haven’t sustained a of their neighbours. I heard a Matt Salusbury

ROL ISAACS I meant to eject the CD” viable alternative rumour from North Norfolk that Dunwich, Suffolk CA

66 FT346 letters

Chipperfield legend Dartmoor Wildlife Park, and one although it is likely to be an urban Wrong colours witness even went to Plymouth Zoo legend, it was said that on some I read with interest the feature on to see their pumas to confirm his occasions the children applied the In his excellent report on the ABCs [FT344:20-25], but I must identification of what he had seen. black lead to the newly installed Weird Weekend North [FT343:20- take exception to the suggestion Since the publicity concerning fireplace. It must be presumed that 21], Rob Gandy got the colours that Mary Chipperfield either de- the escaped , Danny Bamping, what they received for their efforts wrong when describing my talk on liberately, or accidentally, released aka The British Big Cat Society, has was not what they expected. [See “Hooded Entities”.The 7ft (2m) three pumas on Dartmoor. During issued a press release stating that also FT341:71] tall entity seen on Backstone (not the late 1980s and early 1990s I his experts would like to see all Garry Stringfellow Black Stone) Circle on Ilkley Moor used to have lunch with her hus- large dangerous zoo animals fitted Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire was green, and the small entities band, Roger Cawley, once a year at with a “GPS microchip” to enable were black, not brown.The fact an animal show in Sussex. On sev- them to be found immediately in Ghosts and glaucoma that, due to technical difficulties, eral occasions Mary was present as the event of escape. However, such I couldn’t show the accompanying well. I was already very interested devices do not exist outside Clive Ghostwatch [FT343:18-19] men- slides probably led to the wrong in introduced species and had come Cussler’s Oregon Files novels, nor is tions that seeing figures in the colours being mentioned. I am across several historic records of there a prospect of them existing peripheral vision “is a feature still interested in collecting other pumas being seen in Devon. As for many years yet. I accept that found in other apparitional sight- reports of black hooded, or cloaked, Mary and Roger had been involved the idea is patented, but so are ings as well as a folkloric motif, as entity sightings. People can contact in several zoos and wildlife parks, many ideas that are just not yet those knowing their fairy lore will me via WestYorkshire Pagan the conversation was often steered practical. recognise”.When people have a Meetup. towards this topic. Chris M Moiser defective area in their visual field, Steve Jones There is no doubt that the Chip- Director, Tropiquaria Zoo, Wash- the brain makes a ‘best guess’ at By email perfield family was the main driv- ford Cross, Somerset what is being seen within that ing force behind Plymouth Zoo. It area – and often guesses wrong, Marby and the was always going to be a short-term Hummers commonly ‘seeing’ human figures. operation whilst the safari parks This is dignified with the title Martians were set up. Plymouth was primar- Paul Giamatti asked for help Charles Bonnet syndrome, after the ily a quarantine station where regarding a 17th century ritual of doctor who first recognised it in his I enjoyed Theo Paijmans’s ‘Blast animals completing quarantine disguised men going from house to father, and in later life in himself. from the Past’ about Friedrich could familiarise themselves with house sweeping and making a buzz- It’s not uncommon in people with Bernhard Marby [FT343:28-29]. the public before being moved on. ing sound [FT339:73]. In the North glaucoma or macular degeneration. Spiritualists and others report- Some became a more permanent of England, particularly along the My mother, who had fairly ing telepathic communication residential attraction and the Yorkshire-Lancashire border, a advanced glaucoma, often saw with Martians or astral journeys visitors got to know them.When similar custom existed until the people in the room with her when to the red planet were one of the Plymouth Zoo closed in early 1978, mid 20th century. In the early part she knew she was alone. She was more unusual consequences of the there was actually only one puma of the 20th century many houses afraid to mention this in case Martian ‘canal craze’ of the late there, not five.The majority of the still had cast iron ‘ranges’ consist- people thought she was losing her 19th and early 20th centuries, and animals went to Longleat, the big- ing of a fire grate with an oven to marbles. So, firstly, if you have a the debate about intelligent life on ger Chipperfield base, and some to one side and often a water boiler relative with glaucoma or macular the planet entangled with it.There Bournemouth Zoo, which has since to the other. These ranges were degeneration, ask them if they have been several recent surveys closed. Unfortunately Ellis Daw, polished with a substance called see things that aren’t really there of this episode,1 but Marby was the former owner of Dartmoor ‘black lead’ and were the pride of – and if so reassure them that it is completely new to me. Wildlife Park, suggests in his book every housewife. Around New Year, just physiology and not a sign of I can, however, perhaps throw a From the Lamb to the Tiger that he children would visit the houses going gaga. Secondly, if you ‘see’ little light on why, in 1924, Marby acquired two pumas from Plym- with brushes, dustpans and ‘black something from the corner of your thought that “the Americans outh Zoo when it closed. lead’ and on being admitted to eye that actually isn’t there, go and had tried to communicate with In fact it seems more likely that the house would proceed to sweep visit an optometrist and make sure people on Mars”.The possibility of these two animals arrived earlier, the hearth and polish the range they check your visual fields – you receiving radio signals from Mars when a small zoo in Gunnislake, while humming all the time, and could have undiagnosed glaucoma had been discussed intermittently just across the border in Cornwall, with the expectation of receiving a – or conceivably macular degen- since the turn of the century. 2 was forced to close by the local small reward. They were known as eration, although you are likely to The idea was first raised by authority in October 1970, and mummers although no mumming be aware of this from distorted or Nikola Tesla (1856-1943).3 In 1901 two pumas were moved on from play was enacted as part of the blurred vision. Glaucoma treat- he reported detecting extrater- there.The idea of putting two – or ceremony. ment has become much more restrial signals while experiment- even five – adult pumas into a I recall seeing the remnant of effective over the last decade or ing with radio transmission using cage with an existing established this custom one evening in the so, so it’s worth finding out; and high-voltage equipment at his group, which is what would have Black Swan public house in Tod- conversely, in the past fewer peo- laboratory at Colorado Springs, happened in 1978, is just ridicu- morden around the year 1965.Two ple were diagnosed and of those Colorado. The idea surfaced inter- lous. If attempted, there would children entered the pub with dust- nobody was effectively treated. mittently over the next couple of have been carnage. As mentioned pan and brush, humming all the Alan Donnelly decades, but achieved prominence in my book Mystery Cats of Devon time until they received a reward again around 1920 when Gugliel- and Cornwall, puma sightings had and before being shown the door. Editor’s note: For more on Charles mo Marconi (1874-1937) reported occurred within 20 miles (32km) of By the 1960s most houses had Bonnet syndrome, see FT98:19, detecting extraterrestrial signals Dartmoor Wildlife Park as early as replaced the old cast iron range 125:14, 159:25, 184:46-49, with equipment on his yacht 1966, before they were on show in with modern tiled fireplaces and 321:54-55. during an Atlantic crossing. All

FT346 67 www.forteantimes.com letters

LeFT: An operator at a US Army signal station listens for radio transmissions from Mars during the 1924 opposition, as reported in the October 1924 edition of Radio Age, p27 (reproduced in Steven J. Dick, Life on Other Worlds, 1998 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press), p.202).

ABOVe: Telegram from Admiral Edward W Eberle (1864-1929), Chief of US Naval Operations, or- dering signal stations to listen for transmissions from Mars during the 1924 opposition (courtesy Keith Cowing; see http://spaceref.com/onorbit/government-sponsored-seti----in-the-1920s.html, accessed 14 Aug 2016). these developments were reported he had worked with Percival the head of the Gorgon that he in The Biological Universe: the in newspapers and magazines Lowell, leading an expedition to has slain, with Algol featuring as Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial but rarely featured in scientific a high-altitude mountain site in one of her eyes.When the Greek Life Debate and the Limits of Sci- ence, 1996 (Cambridge: Cambridge journals. Chile in an attempt to photograph constellations passed into Arab University Press), pp401-410, and I However, I suspect that the ac- the canals. In 1909 he planned an culture, the Gorgon became a follow his treatment here. tual trigger for Marby was the 1924 attempt to listen for signals from demon, hence the name. Algol is 3 For a recent biography see W opposition of Mars. Oppositions Mars using a radio receiver borne a variable star (strictly speaking Bernard Carlson, Tesla: Inventor of occur when the planet is unusu- aloft in a manned high-altitude an eclipsing binary) with a period the Electrical Age, 2013 (Princeton, ally close to Earth, and hence were balloon. In the event this some- of about 2½ days and a change New Jersey: Princeton University considered well timed for radio what ill-thought-through scheme in brightness large enough to be Press); reviewed by David Hambling communication (they are also the was not carried out. noticeable to the naked eye. In [FT338:62]. best times for more conventional Paijmans also mentions that the mediæval West the stars were 4 Henry L Giclas, ‘Todd, David Peck’, observation, which is why they are Marby warned that the terres- believed to be unchanging, so the in T Hockey (ed), Biographical En- important to astronomers). trial atmosphere was populated variability went unremarked (or cyclopaedia of Astronomers, 2007 The American astronomer David by malignant demons under the at least unrecorded), but Arab as- (New York: Springer), pp1143-44. Todd (1855-1939)4 had somehow influence of the star Algol, and tronomers noticed it and referred 5 Hans Werckmeister (Director), persuaded the American govern- suggests the German film Algol to it as the Demon’s eye blinking. Algol. Tragödie der Macht (Algol: ment to suspend non-essential – the Tragedy of Power 5 as the Clive Davenhall Tragedy of Power), 1920. See also: military and naval wireless traffic inspiration. Morningside, Edinburgh https://dcairns.wordpress. for the day of the opposition and This explanation is certainly com/2014/05/18/ to use their signal stations to listen plausible: the film was released ReFeRenCeS http://ithankyouarthur.blogspot. for messages from the putative in 1920, so the timing is right. 1 The most comprehensive recent co.uk/2014/12/stumm-kraftwerk- Martians. Needless to say, no However, it is not the only possible survey of Mars and Spiritualism algol-tragedy-of-power.html signals were detected, but the explanation. Algol was always is Chapter 7 of Robert Crossley, A restored version is listed as in experiment was widely reported. the demon star and considered Imagining Mars, 2011 (Middletown, preparation by Edition Filmmuseum: Mars’s 1924 opposition was on 23 ill-omened.The name is Arabic Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press), pp129-148. There is also www.edition-filmmuseum.com/ August, whereas Marby’s article in origin, an abbreviation for ra❩ useful material in Chapter 8 of (all URLS accessed 14 August appeared in the April 1924 issue of s al-ghūl (the Demon’s Head) and Jerome Clark, Hidden Realms, Lost 2016). Der Eigene Weg. So, if Todd’s project has been in use in the West since Civilizations and Beings from Other 6 6 See, for example, Paul Kunitzsch did influence Marby, it must have the 10th century. Worlds, 2010 (Detroit: Visible Ink), and Tim Smart, Short Guide to been through advance publicity; I Algol is otherwise β Persei, pp129-168 and Gareth Medway, Modern Star Names and their believe that it was well advertised the second brightest star in the ‘Mediums, Mystics and Martians’, Derivations, 1986 (Wiesbaden: Otto in advance. constellation of Perseus.The Magonia #99 (2009), pp3-9. Harrassowitz), p49 and Ian Ridpath, Todd had a history of Martian traditional depiction of the con- 2 Steven J Dick gives a detailed Star Tales, 1988 (Cambridge: Lut- escapades. Earlier in his career stellation shows Perseus carrying description of these developments terworth), pp102-105.

68 FT346 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.

First-hand accounts from Fortean Times readers and posters at forum.forteantimes.com

Restless shaking, almost hysterical. So much rest room time had passed that everyone was there working. In 1969, when I was 19, I got a I never went into that room again. job typing accounts sheets for Nothing would induce me to enter it. Chartered Accountants called If ever I needed the loo, I would use Charles E Dolby. They had offices the facilities at Exchange Station. in old chambers at 11 Dale Street Soon after, I left that company and on the corner of Dale Street went to live in Portugal. and Hackins Hey, Liverpool – an I contacted Tom Slemen, the writ- ancient decrepit building that er of over 30 books about Liverpool’s would have made a perfect history, folklore and ghosts. My story film-set for a Dickensian drama. I appeared in Haunted Liverpool 19. guess nothing had changed since He told me that in this location there the 18th century; I think the date had been many timeslips where, for above the door was 1779. A few instance, people have walked into a other businesses occupied this pub and found it full of military men building. I worked on the ground and soldiers on leave from WWII, floor in a tiny office with two other with women dressed in 1940s style; girls. About six article clerks had the next office. or they step out of a shop and everywhere has They were paid buttons because they were train- “I had to pluck up changed to how it was over a century ago. ing to be accountants, but actually did most of Years later I found myself in Liverpool and the work. the courage to make discovered that the old chambers had gone. When this building was first built it mustve ha I wonder if the ghosts also went, or have they had some sort of water closet, but not a type a run for it through found their way into the new building? we would recognise. There can’t have been a Sandra Johnson room especially for that purpose because the a crowd of ghosts” Mouldsworth, Cheshire office toilets were located on the top floorup four flights of stairs and were inside a very large without comment. room, definitely not intended for toilet facilities; One morning I decided to get in early. All the Haunted hearth such a waste of space, especially as most of end-of-year accounts had to be typed and I the offices were tiny cramped little rooms. This wanted to get a head start, so I caught an earlier SD Tucker asks whether readers have any huge room had about eight toilets in cubicles train from Rock Ferry to James Street Station. I personal stories of haunted ovens, chimneys, or in a line opposite the only door. They were on a picked up the mail on the way into the building hearths [FT342:36-40]. Many years ago, a friend higher level, so you had to climb up a step. The and instead of opening up our office, I needed and I ventured down to Martha’s Vineyard, one floor was old wooden boards, unpolished and un- the loo, so without thinking I got the key off of the islands off the cost of Massachusetts, treated. All the offices had their own key to this the hook in the outer office, ran up the stairs, in the greyest depths of November. My friend’s room and the door was of very heavy solid oak, opened the big old door and, dropping the mail family owned a house there and November was with a new Yale lock, so it locked behind you. onto a sink, went into our office’s loo. As soon one of the quieter times on the island, a time Outside the steps leading up to this door were as I locked the door, the whole room erupted when mostly only the people who actually live made of concrete, obviously a later addition – no into bedlam. I went into a state of total shock on the island year-round were present. We rode wood in sight. I suspect there were original back and couldn’t move a muscle. The room outside the ferry out and it was grey and blustery. There stairs somewhere. the cubicle was filled with the sound of wooden was a beautiful good-sized hearth in the house. I’ve been in many haunted places such as clogs running and jumping on the floorboards. Before we settled in for the night we built a Dean Hall, supposedly the most haunted house Raised and high-pitched voices were so terrible roaring fire and warmed ourselves in front of it, in England, and many old and halls with I felt that if I opened the door I would be faced a necessity rather than a luxury in New England ghosts, and have never felt a thing, not the with lunatics in an uncontrollable frenzy. I stood in late November. I’m proud of my long, thick slightest vibe. I would have no problem staying unable to move for 15 to 20 minutes, and all hair and took the opportunity to wash it and let the night in them. I even went on a ghost walk the while pandemonium was on the other side it dry in front of the fire as I brushed it out. When when one of the group was totally spooked of that thin wooden door with gaps above and we retired for the night I left my brush in front of because she felt a little hand slip into hers, but below. Even writing this, my heart is racing – I the hearth. The next morning it was missing. I there was no one there, or rather no one visible. have never known fear like it. mentioned it to my friend and she laughed. She The rest of the group were frightened, but I didn’t I realised I had to pluck up the courage to told me that her grandmother, whose house it feel a thing. So it is really amazing that whenever make a run for it through a crowd of crazed originally was, also took pride in her long hair I entered this room at the top of the offices I ghosts. I was well aware that whatever was mak- and would make a habit of washing it, brushing could feel an atmosphere immediately – so ing all that noise was not of this Earth and was it out, and letting it dry in front of a nice fire. She much so that I would only use these toilets if I definitely not friendly. After a few false starts and speculated that her grandmother had taken my was absolutely desperate. The minute I entered shaking with fear I flung the door wide to find… brush in solidarity... or perhaps as a token of there was a total quietness; it was freezing and it an empty, freezing room, almost humming with something she missed. I never found the brush felt as if I were being watched. It was absolutely, silence. It was as if someone had just flicked a and had to get another one when I got back to terrifyingly scary. I never mentioned this to any- switch and turned off a blaring radio. I ran for the the mainland. one. No one else seemed to be bothered; all the door, forgetting the post and in a fumbling panic Allison Rich staff used the toilets whenever they needed to got out of there. When I reached my office, I was Rhode Island

FT346 69 www.forteantimes.com mark towse I el ane yada lhms n oet aioccult Nazi to home and alchemist dead a by haunted Hell, aktowse mark histor bizarr Houska’s at looking when gate a open allegedl to – Republic Czech the of the during to said ha is Hitler that area surrounding fa li and structure, present the predating long and occult been in has steeped Prague, of north (50km) miles (Hrad h o 10 top makes the Republic Czech the in one location and – hotspots historical haunted www.forteantimes 70 ve osi h ateadisimmediate its and Castle the is mous 0.Ha osa Czech Houska, Hrad 108. ve traVeLLer Fortean pt its to up s re Ft ’ hardly t’s the a is the planet on place haunted’ ‘most the debate the but analysis, e pa S‘aaomlunit’ ‘paranormal SS an up set y, 346 enn friidcsl’,30 castle’), ‘fortified meaning an neim htactuall that enigma an mains the my ev Wo .c re riad om r ie rdHouska Hrad time. ery et–adsilclassified still and – cent my rl wa fo d re we re oHl.Ho Hell. to y thological Wa ua etr of feature gular nsic stsdetailing bsites tr Ioccupation II r av my fo l oasrnecsl adt ebitoe a over built be to said castle strange a to els tcllor stical rtean hy wev ab e So pe. out e y er e , y re public ex periments... ga engr old an in seen LEFT: mystery. a remains Houska ex for reason discernible no with and nowhere of middle the in ABOVE: ea to teway sig Hrad isting, av h castle the ing. Lo cated bu 900 About begInnIngs Houska’s nin an dispatched 1253-1278) (reigned Ottokar II King that concern stirred such stories up the and time, the of European Central superstitious a perhaps, conclusion, unsurprising being it to re led soon it circling monsters of half-animal stories half-man, and bottom, the see Nobod could Earth. the into down directly hole gaping a capital, na on ag they if pardoned the out sw inaccessible an In in Bohemia. Prague modern-day of area the Republic Czech the ye ha to chro by Houska Hrad that certain Although Hell. lcddirectly placed dri been hadn’t who and those white, turned hair their with descended ihtecastle’s lands, the his with in sore open this protection against a as Houska Castle built beasts. and terrifying of strange stories the confirmed the histor something its to up plays Houska ridden to stor seems Houska Hrad whole the and an torture moc a and devils otyaddgaltl eprta the than deeper little we a dig and try to Houska’s pedig quite that’s UK’ history: the post-Saxon of whole the to timeframe similar a spans though, phenomena, one-offs. re re feelings unusual and noises strange sightings, ghost of incidence stories, the these from apart quite that, yo more the outline nu some eac making filmed, and visited having TV shows hunting ghost American two that gr onsda h nrnet el An Hell. to entrance the as cognised ua curne,ntjs unusual just not occurrences, gular otda osaaepredictabl are Houska at ported r tta on.Bizarrel point. that at ars l pt pe.I hudb noted be should It speed. to up all u yo igOttokar King osaslgc fstrange of legacy Houska’s msand amps brof mber lpati the in elephant lkonstories known ll Ottakar u fpioeswho prisoners of oup we il fte10sand 1500s the of nicle ecig.Adt hsthe this to Add cringe. ne ro ve ve re st co – bsite motn oda ihthe with deal to important eit h hole. the into pe we tgtr nt opeewith complete unit, stigatory ch of e ab ex gr Castellan me seog omak to enough is – amber ight. s n ein fflying of legions and yss isted , osasmri past. morbid Houska’s ye we ro re a ne its under oan eoemvn n it’ on, moving Before it aei oprsnto comparison in pale we ex interdimensional – rock tn uc lneat glance quick A tten. r ago ars undt h surface the to turned sts ihta ad I’ll said, that with bsites; wa ove eiet fteNazis the of periments rns.Ivisited I irdness. we , ove fo vere olgn as then says, legend so etoe in mentioned s ke ch otenrho the of north the to s r- fa se r ro estoa claims, sensational ontknow not do h gate the r plbeing apel (Castle -pmediæval d-up yo osoe obring to ones mous re wa in d , om. vera hti no is what u can find on an find can u dt elo be to ed wa hy s Th fo rd cr brids Ye fa s ow wo hundred l ve e who men e fo wa ne in unded Wa ke wa ,Hrad s, y, cliché- n l be uld n,going und, mad n re y wa built s and known s plastic rd inof gion fa to y w a fo en) s a fo aw we y ct r lk y fo s ling re e y r h d y mark towse uigte30 the During weIrdness oF CenturIes to inwards, Houska Hrad of all battlements castle, the normal any of those unlike fo 800 accessible. easily omne aldOronto called mercenar commander Swedish a goes, story the and large are which anything of empty is ra to if as – court oinr hmadltte spread. this them But let and them ignore than to stories wild such to appeasement it that capital. new his were the Prague), perhaps in one of construction the (following Bohemia in built castle is Houska limited had and tl belie ghosts still the of one is His laborator his in him killing night, one castle the visit pluc hunter two until villagers, local the terrorised and ex re the in headquarters his as Houska used alchemist, and magician black a allegedly uor–lctdasoesthr stone’s a located – rumour re gate a having of potential destabilising potentially nowhere. of al has it as in monitor to significant no enjoys and importance ha strategic to appears siting its and wa ue nHa Houska. Hrad on cused hrta u.Every out. than ther in ecnutdoccult conducted He gion. in – gions eiet ttesite the at periments Gi Pe e nthe in ter ye ke ve hp Ottokar rhaps ae seriousl taken r of ars ptecuaeto courage the up d wa httenation the that n wa ve ev etrt aeagsueof gesture a make to better s re wa ward va eeytesatof start the merely s to d ni utasuperstitious a just if en uel nytesecond the only putedly we re re va sbe ntemiddle the in – been ys tg onsfo whic from points ntage Ye ot fHlihterror Hellish of ports inaon h castle, the around gion ke r hnmn,all phenomena, ird ding h qaecentral square the s wa Pe re ars psomething ep ore,adthat and sources, hp he rhaps oteinfernal the to y y. re Wa fo fo Th ex onsdthe cognised h otpart most the r rc ex (1618-1648), r etwindows, cept r sno is ere s ti still is it es; wa ternal s , y. ve who s re yo ow a no had asoned ung in wa wa ove fa from ll s ce y r – h s ptigfire spitting machines metal seeing recounted He h urudn area. surrounding the nai h ate n Houska and castle, the inhabit i ecnre en enin seen being mercenaries his oastl eteeaestill occasional are there me told locals e hundred few A n13,the 1836, in otKrlHynek Karel poet áh iie Houska visited Mácha re ot fgot of ghosts of ports fa osCzec mous ye r later ars h , ye mácha. Hynek poet LEFT: dungeon. haunted reputedly the to door the RIGHT: ABOVE inner castle the LEFT: ABOVE Hell. to entrance supposed the over built chapel, the TO nightmare. capraphobe TO RIGHT: P LEFT: P ka wa czech rel lls. ’s a ’s rjce near projected soul suc his which in visions having gate original the n netrn the entering on and this osbymdr as Lest cars. modern or possibly occupations, Soviet or Nazi the sound which – fir spitting machines metal moving also He Prague. modern surround that sidlište, a eerie an shone with that holes with riddled “cliffs” and casket handheld vision his he in that said He future. re wa ke eec otehg lcsof blocks huge the to ference wa wa re onit h i n then and pit the into down d hw oigpcue in pictures moving shown s one eighg,self- huge, seeing counted n13,adi em obe to seems it and 1836, in s kdaon uesandstone huge around lked h ag prmn blocks apartment large the ye ra ly lwlgt–seemingl – light llow wa hrlk ak from tanks like ther by 200 oHl,started Hell, to y a ch ye yo plbuilt apel r nothe into ars ung www.forteantimes eforg we wo man wa ove Ft a 346 et, s e a r y .c 71 om

botH pics: mark towse fairly accurate vision of certain 20th- not want to be alone here, day or night. century technological developments. They apparently had strange feelings. Mácha’s story was related in private When I came to Houska myself, for correspondence to Edward Hindle the whole first year I had the feeling rather than printed in the papers of that someone was behind me… it the day. Given his reputation as a was uncomfortable. Once, therefore, I literary genius, he never needed or went alone into the dark castle, stood courted publicity, so it seems fair to in the middle of the courtyard and take the visions he experienced at scolded this “presence”. I told this Houska at face value. If he was telling “something” that if it did not want me fibs, he still seemsve toha made some there, then I would leave, but if I stay, impressive guesses about the future. this harassment has to stop. Since then Bringing Houska into the modern the “presence” has gone and I’ve felt era, we have the alleged involvement fine here. of the Nazis. We know that the SS occupied the castle, and it was MT: I’m interested in the Nazi rumoured that Heinrich Himmler occupation of the castle. There are visited in person. Did he have a rumours that occult experiments mandate to see if Houska could be were carried out and that the castle used as a portal to other dimensions, was used as a stud farm for pumping or to tap into some dark and demonic out Aryan babies. We know nothing force? Given Nazism’s much discussed official, as the Nazis oyedestr d all links to various forms of occultism, evidence and documents on leaving. perhaps it’s not that much of a stretch, What light can you shed on this especially given Houska’s history. period? Official records pertaining to the SS’s presence were all destroyed as the MK: From the time of World War II, Nazi war effort floundered; wevho er, there are no official documents. We immediately after the war, the castle only have stories of what happened. was used as a convalescent home and The Germans were careful to clean stories began to circulate... Houska completely. I have been This is where Houska gets really promised documents from people interesting: enter CastleWarden in Germany and , but they Miroslav Konopásek… unfortunately remain only promises. Former Minister of Culture Stepanek InterVIew wItH a CasteLLan visited me a few years ago and over Mark Towse: Many ghostly sightings coffee told me that the Ministry of have been reported over the years. Are the Interior is hiding something, and there any particular ‘hot-spots’ in the it only remains for the documents to castle? What strange experiences do be declassified. Apparently, in the people report when visiting? final days of the conflict, Houska was involved with a last-ditch Nazi attempt Miroslav Konopásek: The main to win the war. Selected individuals castle gateway has the most reported allegedly attended an occult ceremony, sightings, and most occur during the but they all died. Evidently, something day, rather than at night – which I went wrong. understand is unusual for haunted locations. Many people have problems MT: Three German soldiers were found with the castle when they visit – some in a shallow grave after the Nazis cannot bring themselves to enter. We pulled out – are these soldiers the only have, in the past, allowed people to corpses found in the grounds, or have stay overnight – not just TV shows but there been others? interested ghost hunters – and several wse to have left suffering from depression, MK: We found out about the dead Nazi hysteria or extreme panic. I can soldiers due to Houska being used as a s: mark understand that people who know the convalescent home for the young and to castle’s history might experience such disabled immediately after the Nazi pHo things when they realise they are in construction really seems to suggest TOP: a devil in occupation. We know what happened Houska and alone – but often they that the builders wanted to keep wrought iron immediately after the Nazis evacuated report intense feelings of not being something in. adds to the thanks to stories from people who alone... atmosphere. actually stayed there. Soldiers visited MT: Houska was reconstructed a ABOVE: castle Houska and locked the castle, with MT: Houska’s location is strange, to decade ago and made into a tourist warden miroslav its patients inside, for three days. The say the least – would the area perhaps attraction. Other haunted locations konopásek – a soldiers dug up the courtyard, and this have been more suitable for a castle often report increased unusual man with many is when the bodies were found. During 900 years ago? activity when work or modifications strange stories this time, the castle was searched are carried out [see Peter McCue, to tell. thoroughly by uniformed men – I was MK: Nobody knows exactly why, “Renovation Hauntings”, FT268:30- told that they had strange uniforms, when or by whom Houska was built 35]. Did anything unusual occur neither police nor soldiers. After the – we have only limited records from during this period? war, apparently, a complete library Ottakar’s time. The local forests, even containing books of occult literature back then, were impenetrable and not MK: Some craftsmen carrying out the and Jewish Kabbalah was found and even suitable for hunting. The overall repairs and reconstruction really did removed somewhere.

72 Ft346 www.forteantimes.com 72 Ft201 www.forteantimes.com wse to s: mark to pHo

MT: What was the first recorded ABOVE LEFT: the (always a symbolic association with supernatural incident at the site? German soldiers extra window with Satan); it’s the only such image to be “no room” was found in a Christian chapel anywhere MK: We have no records that far were found in found behind in the world. So, until an excavation back, at least outside of the castle’s vegetation and can be carried out, we cannot say for the hidden mythology, but before the castle was certain if there is a gateway to Hell, a shallow grave chamber even built the vicinity was referred to carved into a never ending Axis Mundi, or, at the as “The Devils’ Place” on old maps. after the Nazis the sandstone least, a very deep hole. So the stories of occult associations in foundations was The construction of Houska alone, ancient times certainly seem viable. pulled out finally unearthed. with its internal battlements and There was a wooden fort known in this ABOVE RIGHT: its bizarre location, makes the site location, possibly dating back to the the unique something of a mystery. Factor in the 900s – but who can say what else might female centaur ghost sightings and frequent reports have gone on around this area so long Hell’, with the battlements built on is surrounded by of unusual experiences, and even if ago? the inside to keep the demonic forces some of europe’s half of the stories are bunk, Houska trapped and away from the Bohemians earliest frescoes remains a fascinating paranormal MT: Are there any other unusual of the day. What do you make of this of saints and hotspot. Talking to villagers at the stories about Houska that are not idea? angels fighting local pub, several recount stories of commonly known? dragons and having seen shadows at the windows MK: I personally believe that Houska demons. of the castle, and of feeling watched MK: I don’t want to compromise Hrad is one of the places that are called when they are alone in the vicinity of Houska’s real history with unproven the “centres of the world” or the the castle. stories, like the rumoured visits from Axis Mundi. There are reported to Houska does have an undeniably Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis, be places such as these around the strange “air” about it, as if there is but there is one story that certainly globe, which have great power, and of something uneasy or wrong about adds to Houska’s legacy of strangeness. course our ancestors had great respect the place: not very scientific, I know, It was rumoured for many years that for them and worshipped them. The but that’s how it feels. After all, it Houska has one more window on the institutionalised Church came up has played host to flying monsters, outside, looking in, than there are with another mercenary philosophy to a murdered black magician, a time- windows on the inside. Utter nonsense, keep people away from these places: travelling Czech poet, an SS garrison is it not? Well, how about this? Just perhaps Hrad Houska was said to be a and a secret occult library. The Czech six years ago in one of the ground gateway to Hell to keep people away government apparently still possesses floor rooms, the earth floor slid away, from its power… classified documents, which the ex- and the missing window returned to Culture Minister claims relate to the world! A hidden room had been InConCLusIons occult Nazi experiments to locate an discovered, which the last inventory of As for the actual ‘gateway to Hell’, the alleged gateway to Hell. It all makes the castle, in the 18th century, had not floor in the chapel is made of massive Borley Rectory look a little tame... FT recorded. The window of the room was slabs of sandstone, and the current visible on the outside, but completely owners refuse to let any excavations MARK TOWSE is a lifelong inaccessible due to a 20m cliff-like take place in the chapel because of fortean and student of drop – so it kept its secrets up until potential damage to its unique pagan- western Hermetics. when very recently! Christian frescoes. These show St notvsdvsvsexploring ldvldkvlccsdddks the haunted Michael slaying a dragon, but also the czechvldsvdlskvdvmdsssdcskvrepublic, he runs MT: Finally, Houska is most famous only known representation of a female an online ethnobotanicalssdkvdskvmdsscvlsdsdkds company. for being built over a ‘gateway to centaur, with a bow in her left hand vdlksvdslkvd kv ssksd skdvsdkvslkvmskvmvmskv msdlvdvdsvsvsdv Ft346 73 www.forteantimes.com Ft199 73 www.forteantimes.com stranGe and sensational stories froM

Jan bondeson presents more sensational stories and startling Victorian images from the "worst newspaper in england" – the illustrated police news.

51. help! My baby was taKen by a ......

The above slightly cryptic headline describes a type of story that was a long- time Illustrated Police News favourite: a little baby is snatched by some threatening, dangerous animal. There is always an illustration depicting the animal running away with the helpless babe dangling from its jaws or talons. What happened next? You had to buy the IPN to find out! All right, so you got your copy? Cor Blimey, just look at that one! A baby abducted by a monkey! In the small village of Manxbridge in Somerset, a certain Mr Judcote, a gentleman of private means, kept a large pet monkey named ‘Hulch’. Believed to be quite harmless, the beast was allowed to roam wherever it pleased. One day in July 1870, Hulch bounded into a neighbour’s garden and snatched a baby from the arms of another child. Gibbering and chattering, the monkey took off with his new companion, climbing an outhouse to throw off his pursuers. The parents were prostrate with anxiety; what would this filthy animal do with their defenceless little baby? Mr Judcote sent servants to search the grounds for Hulch, carrying various treats to lure the creature from the trees, but they found no trace of the monkey. After spending all day carrying the baby around, Hulch suddenly and unexpectedly came bounding up to some farm labourers and politely handed the baby over to them, as if he had become bored with this uninteresting toy. The infant was alive and unharmed. The IPN does not ABOVE: ‘Hulch’ the monkey abducts the future state what happened next, except that the the parents were Somerset Tarzan, from the Illustrated Police News, parents were said to be equally prostrate 9 July 1870. with relief when their child was returned to prostrate with FACING PAGE: A three-year-old boy is abducted by a them. Did they insist that Hulch be chained wolf in Aragon, Spain; from the Supplément Illustré of Le Petit Journal, 25 January 1914. up, or even destroyed, or did they employ the monkey as a baby-sitter so their infant anxiety. what would son might become the Tarzan of Somerset? in some strange manner, the sow had been In September 1870, the wife of a farmer this filthy beast do able to unlatch the door, enter the cottage named Brown, living near Hacketstown and abduct the baby. It was also noted in Ireland, went out to milk the cows. She with their baby? that the practice of leaving young children left her little baby inside the house and unattended was only too prevalent, and latched the door. A few minutes later, she could be fraught with fearful consequences. heard a servant give a yell, and saw a large ran after it into the sty, where she found Later in 1870, a bad year for unattended sow running out of the house, carrying the mangled remains of her child. At the children, a little boy named Walter Percival the baby in its mouth. The frantic mother coroner’s inquest, it was concluded that, was playing with some other children

LEFT: "Stop the donkey, boys!" but it disappeared into an alley. When Mrs From the IPN, 19 November Olds’s spaniel was found, it seemed very 1870. well fed, and next to it was a round object, ABOVE: "Stop the pig! Stop the pig!" From the IPN, the head of the baby. The dog had shared its 17 September 1870. meal with some other disreputable-looking BELOW: "You naughty street mongrels. The curs would have been in doggies!" From the IPN, 12 immediate danger of being lynched, had not June 1880. Mr Olds and a certain Mr Jelfs been able to explain the circumstances. In an outbuilding to the ‘Three Pigeons’ public house, near where the Olds family lived, an inquest had been held on the body of an infant found drowned in the Oxford and Birmingham Canal. The jurymen had adjourned the inquest to have a drink at the pub, since the dead baby was ‘high’ and smelt very badly. Although a pig-trough had been put over the little corpse, the hungry dog must have shoved it out of the way, stolen the corpse, and ran off with it. It is not known if the careless jurymen were content with putting the infant’s head on a plate, to have it staring accusingly at them when the inquest was resumed, or whether they brought the dog along to ‘represent’ the rest of the child. “Disgusting!” I can hear readers exclaim. “Can it get any worse?” Well, this is the IPN, so it certainly can – Join us next issue for “Help! My baby was just taken by – an enormous eagle!” near Newtown (the report does not tell us seemed to rally for a while, but his wounds which one). All of a sudden, a donkey came were considerable; the suffering infant fell Jan Bondeson's collection of galloping by, grabbed Walter by the leg, and into a state of insensibility and expired the made off with him. When Walter screamed following day. What happened to the dog and stories from the Illustrated Police for assistance, his father and uncle, who had the donkey was not recorded. News, Strange been playing in a football match nearby, In June 1880, the Oxford housewife Mrs Victoriana, is came running. They stopped the donkey and Emma Olds saw her large spaniel run out now available belaboured it with sticks until it dropped of an outbuilding, carrying something in its little Walter, who was brought home and put mouth. “There goes the dog”, she observed from Amberley to bed. placidly. The dog ran out into the street, Publishing, The strange behaviour of the donkey was where there was a great outcry, since the priced £20. much marvelled at. Since the beast had animal was carrying the body of an infant (www.amberley- recently been worried and bitten by a dog, dangling from its jaws. Screaming and books.com) it was suspected that it might have been yelling with horror and revulsion, the Oxford suffering from hydrophobia. Little Walter townspeople desperately pursued the dog, WhWhyNyNotot Be Be AWAWriter?riter?

What our students say: Being awriter can offer youasecond income,extraspending moneyor it can even be afull-time career.It’syour choice.But whateveryour “Iwon the 2015 Flirty Fiction Prima writing ambitions, we have acourse that will help youtoachieve them. Magazine and Mills and Boon competition.The prize was £500,a That’sbecause our first-class home-study creative writing course contains all threepage feature in the magazine and youneed to knowtobecome asuccessful, published writer.You learnhow the chance to work with Millsand Boon on my book. Also Ihave three stories in to write articles, shortstories, novels, TV,radio, drama and more. Yo uare three anthologies with other authors – we’ve raised shown howtodevelop your writing style, present your manuscripts, contact almost £2,000for cancer charities” editors, find markets and HOWTOSELL YOUR WORK. Rachel Dove, West Yo rkshire. What’smore, youdonot need anyprevious writing experience to succeed on “My total earnings so far are the course as it’ssuitable for the absolute beginner. £2,500.” Throughout the course youwill be tutored by aprofessional writer,who will Victor Wright, West Midlands offer constructive feedback on your twenty marked assignments. In addition, “I have been publishing my own niche youcan count on the supportofour dedicated Student Services team who website for circus critique. This work has led to recognition in my field, with will do all theycan to ensure that youget the most out of your studies. work offers ranging from writing book When youenrol, your full course is sent to youonafifteen daytrial.Your reviews for scholarly journals to running master classes for young people. Ihave had studies are then flexible to your requirements. Moreover, we offer youafull two paid writing residencies at festivals this year and refund guarantee.Ifyou do not earnback the equivalent of your fees by the have beenemployed to writetweets. Paymentstotal time youfinish your course we will refund them in full. £2575,plus expenses for travel, tickets to eventsand payments in kind in the form of review copy books.” So, if youwould liketolearnhow to earnfromwriting,try our risk-free Katherine Kavanagh, West Midlands course. Forafree prospectus visit our website or call our freephone number “As aresultofmycricket articles, I TODAY! have been elected into The Cricket WritersClub –anorganisationthat www.writersbureau.com countsexperienced journalists among its members. One of the perks of this FREE CALL Quote: membership is apress card that gives me entry into 24 HRS 0800 856 2008 AT1016 all of England’s cricket stadium press boxes.” Martin Read, YES! Please send me free details on how to become asuccessful, freelance writer. “I’ve been published in and Good Life earning £400. And Name: now I’ve got my first book published by Bloomsbury called MOB Rule: Address: LessonsLearned by aMother of Boys. The WritersBureau course providedmewith structure, stoppedmyprocrastination but most Postcode: importantly it provided the impetus to try something different.” Hannah Evans, Winchester Email: # “When Ifirst saw my wordsinprint it Freepost RSSK-JZAC-JCJG was lifechanging. Someone else had The Writers Bureau read my work,believed in it,paid for it, and put it out there for others to Dept AT1016 see. As more articles made it to press, Manchester,M31LE Writers Years of Bureau 27 Success my confidence grew and Ifound Iwanted to inject www.facebook.com/thewritersbureau www.twitter.com/writersbureau some of myself into my writing. At the time of writing Members of BILD this Ihave received £1,197 for my work.” email: [email protected] Please include your name and address and ABCC Kris Roberts, Somerset Enrol online to access your course modules TODAY at: www.writersbureau.com reader info Why Fortean? how to subscribe ANNUAL SUB of 12 issues (inc p&p) UK £39.98; EC £47.50; USA $89.99 ortean Times is a monthly of all apparent phenomena, coined ($161.98 for 24 issues); Rest of World £55. Please see house ads in the latest issue for details of special offers. magazine of news, reviews the term ‘teleportation’, and was F and research on strange perhaps the first to speculate that North America (US & Canada) phenomena and experiences, mysterious lights seen in the sky Subscribers should contact: IMS. 3330 Pacific Avenue, Suite 404, Virginia Beach, VA 23454, USA. Tel: 800-428 3003 (toll free); Fax: 757 428 6253; curiosities, prodigies and portents. might be craft from . Or order online at www.imsnews.com. It was founded by Bob Rickard However, he cut at the very roots of UK, Europe & rest of world in 1973 to continue the work of credulity: “I conceive of nothing, in Major credit cards accepted. Cheques or money orders should be in sterling, (1874–1932). religion, science or philosophy, that preferably drawn on a London bank and made payable to Dennis Publishing. Born of Dutch stock in Albany, is more than the proper thing to Mail to: Fortean Times Dovetail Services, 800 Guillat Avenue, Kent Science New York, Fort spent many years wear, for a while.” Park, Sittingbourne, ME9 8GU, UK. NB: This address should be used for orders and subscriptions only. researching scientific literature in Fort was by no means the first Telephone payments and queries: 0844 844 0049. the New York Public Library and person to collect anomalies and Fax payments and queries: 0844 815 0866. the British Museum Library. He oddities – such collections have E-mail payments and queries: [email protected] marshalled his evidence and set abounded from Greece to China how to submit forth his philosophy in The Book of since ancient times. Fortean Times the Damned (1919), New Lands keeps alive this ancient task of Dennis Publishing reserves all rights to reuse material submitted by FT (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents dispassionate weird-watching, readers and contributors in any medium or format. (1932). exploring the wild frontiers between Illustrations He was sceptical of scientific the known and the unknown. Contact the art director by email ([email protected]) before sending explanations, observing how From the viewpoint of samples of work. We cannot guarantee to respond to unsolicited work, scientists argued according to their mainstream science, its function is though every effort will be made to do so. own beliefs rather than the rules elegantly stated in a line from Enid Article submissions of evidence and that inconvenient Welsford’s book on the mediæval Please send all submissions to David Sutton, Editor, Fortean Times, data were ignored, suppressed, fool: “The Fool does not lead a PO BOX 71602, London E17 0QD, UK or email drsutton@forteantimes. discredited or explained away. revolt against the Law; he lures us com. As we receive a large volume of submissions, a decision may not be immediate. He criticised modern science for into a region of the spirit where... its reductionism, its attempts to the writ does not run.” Letters Letters of comment or about experiences are welcome. Send to PO Box define, divide and separate. Fort’s Besides being a journal of 2409, London NW5 4NP, UK or email [email protected]. We dictum “One measures a circle record, FT is also a forum for reserve the right to edit submissions. beginning anywhere” expresses the discussion of observations Books, periodicals and other material for review instead his philosophy of Continuity and ideas, however absurd or Send to: Fortean Times, PO Box 2409, London NW5 4NP, UK. in which everything is in an unpopular, and maintains a position Caveat intermediate and transient state of benevolent scepticism towards FT aims to present the widest range of interpretations to stimulate between extremes. both the orthodox and unorthodox. discussion and welcomes helpful criticism. The opinions of contributors He had ideas of the Universe-as- FT toes no party line. are not necessarily those of the editors. FT can take no responsibility for organism and the transient nature submissions, but will take all reasonable care of material in its possession. Requests for return of material should be accompanied by a stamped addressed envelope or an International Reply Coupon.

We occasionally use material that has been placed in the public domain. It is not always possible to identify the copyright holder. If you claim credit for something we’ve published, we’ll be pleased to make acknowledgement. Special Correspondents AUSTRALIA Graham Cordon (SA), Tony Healy (ACT), John Palazzi (NSW), Len Watson (Qld). CANADA Brian Chapman (BC), Graham Conway (BC), CYBERSPACE Richard Alexander, John F Callahan, Hugh Henry, Steve Scanlon, Janet Wilson. ENGLAND Gail-Nina Anderson, Louise Bath, James Beckett, Claire Blamey, Peter Christie, Clippers wanted! Mat Coward, Kate Eccles, Paul Farthing, George Featherston, Paul Gallagher, Alan Gardiner, Keith George, Anne Hardwick, Richard Lowke, Alexis Lykiard, Diana Lyons, Dave Malin, Nick Maloret, Valerie Martin, Tom Ruffles, Meryl Santis, Paul Screeton, Regular clipsters have provided the Gary Stocker, Roman Suchyj, Frank Thomas, Paul Thomas, Nick Warren, Owen lifeblood of Fortean Times since it Whiteoak, Bobby Zodiac. FRANCE Michel Meurger. GERMANY Ulrich Magin. began in 1973. One of the delights for the editors is receiving packets HOLLAND Robin Pascoe. IRELAND Andy Conlon, Pat Corcoran, Andrew Munro. of clips from Borneo or Brazil, Saudi Arabia ISRAEL Zvi Ron. NEW ZEALAND Peter Hassall. Iosif Boczor. SCOTLAND or Siberia. We invite you to join in the Roger Musson. SWEDEN Sven Rosén. THAILAND Chris Williams. USA Loren fun and send in anything weird, from trade Coleman (ME), Jim Conlan (CT), Myron Hoyt (ME), Greg May (FL), Dolores Phelps (TX), journals, local newspapers, extracts from obscure tomes, or library newspaper archives. Jim Riecken (NY), Joseph Trainor (MA), Jeffrey Vallance (CA), Gary Yates (UT). WALES To minimise the time spent on preparing clippings for a Janet & Colin Bord. Fort Sort, we ask that you cut them out and not fold them too small. Mark each clip (on the front, where possible) with Clipping Credits for FT346 the source, date and your name, so that we can credit you Richard Alexander, Gerard Apps, David V Barrett, Louise Bath, James Beckett, Simon in the listing (right) when we use the material. For UK local Bickerdike, Terry Browning, Rob Chambers, Peter Christie, Terry Colvin, Andy Conlon, and overseas clips, please give the town of publication. For Pat Corcoran, Brian Duffy, John Evans, George Featherston, Rob Gandy, Alan Gardiner, foreign language clips, we appreciate brief translations. To avoid confusion over day and month, please write the date Keith George, Paul Giamatti, Alan Gibb, Tim Greening-Jackson, Tony Healy, Hugh in this form: 1 NOV 2016. If you send photocopies, copy on Henry, Colin Ings, Tony James, Rosalind Johnson, Richard Lowke, Alexis Lykiard, Diana one side of the paper only. Lyons, Dave Malin, Bert & Betty Gray-Malkin, Nick Maloret, Valerie Martin, Tom Mason, Mail to: Fortean Times, PO Box 2409, London NW5 4NP, UK Greg May, John Palazzi, Jim Price, Dan Rose, Tom Ruffles, Meryl Santis, David Soltesz, E-mail: [email protected] Frank Thomas, Joe Trainor, Dave Trevor, Chris Tye, Nicholas Warren, Len Watson, Owen or post on the FT website at www.forteantimes.com Whiteoak, John Wilding, Janet Wilson, Gary Yates, Bobby Zodiac.

78 FT346 www.forteantimes.com

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

A Bangladeshi-born imam was murdered A grizzly bear attacked and killed a by two Da’esh (ISIL) supporters who mountain biker as he was riding along a MONTH viewed his practice of using healing trail just outside Glacier National Park in amulets as “black magic”. Jalal Uddin, Montana on 29 June. Police officer Brad 71, was battered around the head and Treat, 38, and another rider were in the face with a hammer and left for dead Halfmoon Lakes area of Flatland National in a children’s playground in Rochdale, Forest when they evidently surprised the Greater Manchester. Mohammed Hussein bear, which knocked Treat off his bike. The Syeedy, 22, and Mohammed Abdul Kadir, 24, second rider left to look for help and was not are said to have targeted the imam when injured. There had been only 10 fatal bear they discovered last year that he practised attacks in Glacier National Park since it was ruqya healing. This involves the use of healing created in 1910, the last being in 1998. BBC amulets known as taweez, that believers News, 30 June; (Queensland) Courier-Mail, Sun, think can bring good fortune or ward off evil. 1 July 2016. Syeedy and Kadir stalked their “quiet, dignified and well-respected” victim, who had a deep Tomas Suchy, 22, was crushed to death by a knowledge of the Qur’an, before attacking him one-ton ‘wall’ of frozen fish. The Slovakian-born as he walked home from the mosque on 18 worker died when a stack of pallets toppled February 2016. Kadir fled abroad and is thought over and fell on him in a cold-store room at wings of terror to be in Syria; Syeedy went on trial in August, an Interfish factory in Plymouth, Devon, in help! my child was just protesting his innocence. D.Telegraph, 24 Aug October 2013. He died instantly from head 2016. injuries. There were 52 boxes each weighing abducted by a giant eagle! 55lb (25kg) on each pallet. The stacks were Two children died after their throats were slit piled up too high and workers should have by glass-coated strings used for flying kites on been provided with hard hats. In June 2016, India’s Independence Day, 15 August. Saanchi the fish firm was fined £500,000 for health Goyal, three, and Hari, four, were looking out and safety shortcomings. Times, 22 June; through the sunroof of their cars in different Metro, 28 June 2016. parts of Delhi when sharp strings slit their throats. Zafar Khan, 22, also died when a kite A woman was mauled to death and another string looped around his neck as he rode his injured by Siberian tigers after they stepped out motorbike home. Kite strings – locally known of their car while on a tour of Beijing Badaling as manjha – are treated with powdered glass Wildlife World on 23 July. Visitors are allowed or metal to bring down competitors’ kites. to drive their own vehicles in the park, but They killed a five-year-old boy in 2015 in the are forbidden from getting out. The harrowing northern town of Moradabad, and a five-year- attack was captured on video. The first woman, old girl in Jaipur in 2014. They also kill and who left the car because of an argument with maim hundreds of birds; this year, at least 500 her husband, sustained severe injuries. The were admitted to the Charity Birds Hospital in second woman joined the husband and the faces in the window Delhi on Independence Day and the two days car’s driver in a rescue attempt, but was killed windOwpane ghOsts and following. The hospital said it treats up to 8,000 by another tiger. [AP] 25 July; NY Daily Post, 26 birds every year. The Delhi authorities have now July 2016. lightning dagueRROtypes banned sharpened manjha. BBC News, 17 Aug; Irish Times, 18 Aug 2016. Juanita Gomez, 49, from Oklahoma City claimed her 33-year-old daughter, Geneva Gomez, was A woman was beheaded by a train as she had possessed by the Devil – and beat her to death + sex next to a railway track. An official said: “The on 27 August. She punched her repeatedly to woman was on top of her partner and when “rid Satan from her body,” according to court meet the mormons, she heard an approaching train, she started to records. “She forced a crucifix and religious stranger things, stand up. Right then, the speeding train tore medallion down her throat until blood came her head off. Had she remained in her previous out of her daughter’s mouth.” Geneva’s body, montagu summers, position, she would have stayed alive. The man carefully washed, was found on the floor in the anD muCh more… survived.” The accident happened in Russia shape of a cross with a large crucifix resting on the Trans-Siberian line, near Ulan-Ude. The on her chest. Another murderous mother was homeless couple were reportedly “both drunk”. Angela Blackwell, 27, from South Carolina, D.Mirror, 15 July 2016. who killed her four-day-old son last February by putting him in the fridge for three hours. She FORtean Ashar Niazi, 35, an IT engineer from Croydon, faces 20 years to life. D.Mirror online, 23+30 south London, died when he came off his Aug; time.com, 1 Sept 2016. Yamaha R1M superbike after being hit by a pigeon on the A22 near Godstone, Surrey, at George and Pat Pitman married on St Valentine’s TIMES around 7am on 14 August. He was with three Day 1959, and were married for 55 years. Pat friends, who saw the bird fly into him. Thed bir was diagnosed with cancer on 11 November was also killed. standard.co.uk, 14 Aug; D.Mail, 2014, and was admitted to the University 3 Sept 2016. Hospital of North Tees two days later. When her health deteriorated, George was taken ill and James Zordel, 59, was killed when the was also admitted. As she slipped away on 20 motorbike he was riding at night hit a black cow November, he took her hand and said: “Close 347 on a blacktopped road about six miles (10km) your eyes, I’m coming with you.” His heart south of Interstate 70 near Russell, Kansas. stopped 21 hours after her death. They were Irish Examiner, 28 June 2016. both 77. D.Mail, D.Express, 28 Nov 2014. ON SALE 10 NOv 2016