POKÉ HARAM! LONG IN THE TOOTH AND CLAW THE WORLD'S OLDEST ANIMALS WHY RELIGIOUS EXTREMISTS STREWTH, IT'S PELTING PERCH! FISH FALLS IN THE OZ OUTBACK WANT POKÉMON TO GO! RHEAS ON THE RUN OUTSIZED AVIAN ESCAPE ARTISTS THE WOR THE WORLD OF STRANGE PHENOMENA LD’S LADY GHOSTBUSTERS • ROSWELL WRECK • WELSH HOLY GRAIL • MACHNOWWWW.FORTEANTIMES.COM THE GIANT WEIRDES OTA IE 345 TIMES FORTEAN NEWS T THE WORLD OF STRANGE PHENOMENA WWW.FORTEANTIMES.COM

FT345 OCTOBER 2016 £4.25 ISNADWMC AKUO AUCIT FMSEY• MYSTERY OF MANUSCRIPTS • UFOS TALK WOMACK AND GIBSON THE TRUTH IS IN HERE

WILLIAM

FA GIBSON HO ITM AHO H IN OL' LETAIAS•LD GHOSTBUSTERS LADY • ANIMALS OLDEST WORLD'S • GIANT THE MACHNOW • VICTIMS SHION AND JACK WOMACK TALK UFOS

MANUSCRIPTS MESSAGES FATALFROCKS&

COE 2016 OCTOBER OFMYSTERY FROMTHEMOON KILLERCORSETS VOYNICH AND OTHER READING THE NASA HISTORY'S WEIRDEST BAFFLING BOOKS APOLLO TRANSCRIPTS FASHION VICTIMS LISTEN IT JUST MIGHT CHANGE YOUR LIFE

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Pokémon versus religion, world’s oldest creatures, fate of Flight MH370, rheas on the run, Bedfordshire big cat, female ghostbusters, Australian fi sh fall, Apollo transcripts, avian CONTENTS drones, pornographer’s papyrus – and much more. 05 THE CONSPIRASPHERE 23 MYTHCONCEPTIONS 14 ARCHAEOLOGY 25 ALIEN ZOO the world of strange phenomena 15 CLASSICAL CORNER 28 NECROLOG 16 SCIENCE 29 FAIRIES & FORTEANA 18 GHOSTWATCH 30 THE UFO FILES features

COVER STORY 32 FROM OUTER SPACE TO YOU JACK WOMACK has been assembling his collection of UFO-related books for half a century, gradually building up a visual and cultural history of the saucer age. Fellow writer and fortean WILLIAM GIBSON joined him to celebrate a shared obsession with pulp ufology, printed forteana and the search for an all too human truth... 38 MANUSCRIPTS OF MYSTERY 32 FROM OUTER SPACE TO YOU From all the coverage it has received, you might be Jack Womack shares his incredible UFO collection with William Gibson forgiven for thinking that the Voynich Manuscript is the only mysterious and undeciphered volume in existence. True, it is probably the strangest, with its unique text and hermetic illustrations, but it is certainly not alone. IAN SIMMONS enters the Library of Babel in search of other unreadable oddities… 44 FASHION VICTIMS This month’s Fashion Weeks in London, Paris, New York and Milan will no doubt witness some strange creations, but this is nothing new. Throughout history, people have tried to stand out from the herd by turning to fashion, even when the results could be bizarre, harmful and even fatal. MARIA J PÉREZ CUERVO reports from the runway. forum

53 A new home for the Nanteos Cup by Ted Harrison 54 Poked by a Pokémon! by SD Tucker AFP / GETTY IMAGES 4POKÉ HARAM 44 FASHION VICTIMS reports Religious extremists want Pokémon to go! Fatal frocks and killer cosmetics

50 BUILDING A FORTEAN LIBRARY No 13. Greed, God, beards – and duels 74 STORIES FROM THE ILLUSTRATED POLICE NEWS No 50. Machnow the Giant regulars SCHER / AFP / GETTY IMAGES FI

02 EDITORIAL 73 IT HAPPENED TO ME GREGOR 25 TELLING PORKIES? 38 MANUSCRIPTS OF MYSTERY 57 REVIEWS 79 PHENOMENOMIX In search of the Hungarian Fisher Pig The world’s weirdest books 69 LETTERS 80 STRANGE DEATHS

COVER: IMAGE FROM FLYING SAUCERS ARE REAL! PUBLISHED BY ANTHOLOGY EDITIONS. FT343 1 www.forteantimes.com fortean times

editor dAVid SUttoN ([email protected]) foUNdiNg editorS bob rickArd ([email protected]) pAUl SieVekiNg ([email protected]) Art director etieNNe gilfillAN ([email protected]) editorial book reViewS editor VAl SteVeNSoN ([email protected]) reSideNt cArtooNiSt HUNt emerSoN The coming of the saucers SUbScriptioN eNqUirieS ANd bAck iSSUeS www.subsinfo.co.uk [email protected] librAriES of bAbEl work of Carl Pabst, who had laboured heroically FORTEAN TIMES is produced for Dennis Publishing by Wild Talents Ltd. Postal address: Fortean Times, This issue has emerged with a somewhat in deciphering the tiny squares of paper filled PO BOX 71602, London E17 0QD. bookish theme. News that a Spanish publisher with Fort’s crabbed shorthand, a small portion You can manage your existing subscription through was planning to print a facsimile of the of which was then published in the journal http://www.subsinfo.co.uk/ – this should be your first port famously enigmaticVoynich Manuscript – an Pursuit between 1978 and 1989. Dr Reed then of call if you have any queries about your subscription. ‘unreadable’ text of curious provenance that began scanning Pabst’s card indexes, which Change your address, renew your subscription or report problems has baffled scholars and cryptographers for a pass to Mr X to transcribe as digital text. In an UK subscriptions: 0844 844 0049 century – prompted Ian Simmons to examine email to us on 6 August – Fort’s birthday – Mr X USA & Canada subscriptions: (+1) 800-428-3003 (toll free) it, and other ‘manuscripts of mystery’ (p38); says that their work began in December 2014 Fax (+1) 757-428-6253 email [email protected] Other overseas subscriptions: +44 (0)1795 592 909 elsewhere (p50), the Hierophant’s Apprentice and, to date, they have transcribed more of the Fax: +44 (0)1795 414 555 continues to advise you on how to assemble notes than Pabst, and before him Thayer (in your own Library of Babel, Doubt between 1937 and 1951) licEnSinG & SYnDicAtion Fortean times IS AvAILABLE FOR tackling that classic managed to publish.This work, INTERNATIONAL LICENSINg AND SYNDICATION – CONTACT: study of human folly in thus far, can be accessed at Mr Syndication Senior Manager ANj DOSAj-HALAI TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 6132 its many forms, Mackay’s X’s website – www.resologist. [email protected] Extraordinary Popular net/notes/ – marshalled in Licensing Manager CARLOTTA SERANTONI TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 6550 Delusions and the Madness groups of five or 10 years [email protected] of Crowds. between 1800 and 1860.Those Licensing & Syndication Assistant NICOLE ADAMS TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 6134 We’re also thrilled to familiar with Fort’s originals [email protected] welcome two titans of will be interested to learn YoU cAn rEAcH ft on tHE intErnEt speculative fiction to our that Mr X has created a single www.forteantimes.com pages this month. Jack chronological sequence, where Womack – whose highly Thayer and Pabst followed © Copyright Dennis Publishing Limited fortean work was the Fort’s eccentric system of subject of an article a few several sequences which often pUbliSHed bY prodUctioN execUtiVe years back (see Robert split between several different lAwreNce brookeS deNNiS pUbliSHiNg, 020 7907 6062 Guffey’s “A Truly Fortean boxes. Mr X details both Fort’s 30 cleveland Street lawrence_brookes@ SF Writer”, FT236:53) – has and his working abbreviations london w1t 4Jd, Uk dennis.co.uk spent 50 years assembling and simplifies the references tel: 020 7907 6000 AdVertiSiNg director SteVe NicolAoU an astonishing collection of to the eight great catalogues of groUp pUbliSHer 020 7907 6633 printed sauceriana: bizarre quakes, meteorites, eruptions iAN weStwood steve_nicolaou@ books, pulp paperbacks and tornadoes used by Fort. 020 7907 6000 dennis.co.uk and strange pamphlets Dr Reed writes: “Mr X circUlAtioN mANAger SAleS execUtiVe testifying to the UFO is making an enormous JAmeS mANgAN brAdleY beAVer james.mangan@ 020 7907 6701 mania that gripped the contribution to the fortean seymour.co.uk bradley_beaver@ West through the Cold War, the Space Age and community by making the Fort notes available export circUlAtioN dennis.co.uk beyond. Luckily for the rest of us, some of the to the world. But he is doing an even greater mANAger SAleS execUtiVe gerAldiNe grobler imogeN williAmS gems from this cache of ufological ephemera service by identifying the original, full geraldine.grobler@ 020 7907 6247 have been handsomely collected in a new book bibliographic citation for each of Fort’s notes, seymour.co.uk imogen_williams@ entitled UFOs Are Real. Defining the nature which Fort never did in either his four books or dennis.co.uk of that reality has provided grist to many a in the notes at the New York Public Library. Fort PrintED BY WYNDEHAM BICESTER mill over the years, and in this issue it’s the would usually just note an abbreviated form of DiStribUtion subject of a fascinating personal discussion the source, so that one has to usually do some Distributed in UK, ireland and worldwide between Jack and SF legend (and fellow FT real digging to find the actual source.” by Seymour Distribution Ltd. 2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT reader) William Gibson (p32). Not everyone As a motherlode of raw data gathered from Tel: 020 7429 4000 / Fax: 020 7429 4001 will agree with their views on where the ‘truth’ the newspapers and scientific publications of Queries on overseas availability should be emailed to [email protected] of the UFO experience lies, but I suspect most the time, these notes will be of inestimable Speciality store distribution by Worldwide Magazine readers will recognise the way most of us first value to researchers into all kinds of anomalies. Distribution Ltd, Tel: 0121 788 3112 Fax: 0121 788 1272 encountered it and other fortean subjects: This is a long-term project done for the love of it StAnDArD SUbScriPtion rAtES 12 issues: UK £39.98; EU £47.50 turning a spinner rack of yellowing paperbacks and the benefit of posterity; for which, on behalf in some long-vanished shop. That the modern of forteans everywhere, we extend our sincere fortean times (USPS 023-226) is published every four weeks by Dennis Publishing Ltd, 30 Cleveland Street, London, W1P 4JD, United Kingdom. UFO mythos has been mediated in no small appreciation to Mr X and Dr Reed. The US annual subscription price is $89.99. measure by our encounters not with aliens but Airfreight and mailing in the USA is by Agent named Air Business, C/O Worldnet Shipping USA Inc., 149-35 177th Street, Jamaica, with these strange cultural artefacts in no way

New York, 11434. diminishes it – perhaps it makes it richer and daVid r SUTToN Periodical postage paid at Jamaica, NY 11431, USA. all the more more beguiling… US Postmaster: Send address changes to: Fortean Times, 3330 Pacific Avenue, Suite 500, Virginia Beach, VA, 23451-2983, USA. bob rickard PaUL SiEVEkiNG REST OF THE WORLD £55; US $89.99 ($161.98 for 24 issues) morE on fort'S notES DEnniS PUbliSHinG limitED We recently heard from the veteran Canadian GroUP cfo/coo BRETT REYNOLDS Fortean Mr X (his legal name, in case you were ExEcUtivE DirEctor KERIN O’CONNOR cHiEf ExEcUtivE jAMES TYE wondering), giving us an update on the joint Why fortean? comPAnY foUnDEr FELIX DENNIS project between him and Dr John Reed to put Everything you always wanted to online all of Fort’s notes, the foundation of his Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations. know about Fortean Times but Circulation 14,320 (jan-Dec 2015) four books and more that were never published. were too paranoid to ask! Printed in the UK. ISSN: 0308 5899 You might remember (see FT324:54) that Dr © Fortean Times: SEPTEMBER 2016 Reed pulled off a last-minute rescue of the SEE PAGE 78

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to their Orthodox cousins by effectively encouraging people A case of Poké Haram to catch Pokémon in their churches. Signs saying things like ‘JESUS CARES ABOUT While some churches have welcomed Pikachu and gang, the world’s POKÉMON GAMERS’ started appearing, and vicars were religious extremists are calling for ‘Satanic’ Pokémon to Go Away allowed to set their churches up as public PokéStops (locations where large numbers intendo’s hit new LEFT: A number of of Pokémon can be caught augmented-reality Christian churches are and exchanged by players), to Nsmartphone game now PokéStops too. encourage tots and teens to Pokémon Go, in which come inside and complete their players hunt the titular virtual Russia’s Defence collections… and then talk about monsters in real-world locations and Security Jesus. around them, has been making Committee, Trendy vicars have tried such endless silly-season headlines in went even tricks before; during a previous the West since its release in July, further. “There bout of Poké-mania in 2000, a but elsewhere the reaction has is a feeling that Kent-based theology student been a little more vociferous. As the Devil came named David Tate invented a might be expected, Pikachu & Co through this rival to the Pokémon Battle- have yet again been condemned mechanism and Cards, then all the rage, in the from the mosques of the Middle is simply trying shape of an alternative, more East in the name of Islam – or to destroy us religious card-game called that element of Islam which spiritually from ‘Christian Power Cards’. Here, considers Pokémon to be worthy within,” he said. Biblical figures like David and of serious religious comment – Irreligious Poké- Goliath could face off against one with Saudi scholars reiterating players outside another Top Trumps-style, each their 2001 fatwa against the of Russia are having different skill-rankings vile djinn in all their guises, able to escape in a number of categories, to whether on GameBoy, DS, N64, Patriarch Kirill’s see which one would win. There GameCube or iPhone. Among reach, however, were 120 religious figures to other things, clerics have accused much to the collect, but, surprisingly, not Nintendo’s beloved characters chagrin of priests at the Russian Jesus, as “it would defeat the of “possessing the minds” Saudi Scholars Orthodox St Nicholas Cathedral purpose if [He] was beaten by of vulnerable youths (unlike in the Austrian capital of one of the bad characters”, said hate preachers, obviously), have reiterated Vienna, where during August Tate. At the time the story made encouraging gambling, being a mysterious “Devil-Pokémon” the news in June 2000, Tate had in league with “international their 2001 called ‘Raa666’ appeared, sold around 150 packets of cards Zionism” and promoting leading to Nintendo receiving an – rather fewer than Nintendo Freemasonry and polytheism. Pokémon fatwa official complaint. The strange had done with Pikachu et al; As the Pokémon evolve into new thing is that there is no Pokémon surely the best solution would forms once they gain enough named ‘Raa666’; the roster has have been a more commercially- experience-points in battle, the means “I am a Jew” in Syriac. expanded exponentially since viable compromise in which game is even seen by some hard- New to the pastime of the 151 creatures of the initial the pixellated beasts faced off line clerics as fostering belief condemning the Pokémon as Pokémon Red/Blue GameBoy against famous Christian figures. in Darwinism – which, as it is agents of evil, however, is the titles released outside of Japan Moses v Meowth, St George vs not mentioned in the Koran, is Russian Orthodox Church, with in 1998, but Pokémon No 666 is Charizard or Jonah vs a highly- defnitely Poké Haram. (Some that organisation’s spokesman a wholly inoffensive butterfly- evolved Level-30 whale-type American Bible-bashers have Vakhtang Kipshidze declaring beast named Vivillon. Perhaps a Pokémon would have been damned the game on similar the latest smartphone version sacrilegious hacker is playing a battles any sane child would have grounds). of the game to be “a threat to prank on Cathedral authorities. paid good money to see. Such things have been human integrity”, and warning Back in Blighty, the religious For more on the current reported on in FT before, during foolish youths against playing and political response to Poké- outbreak of Poké-mania, see Noel past bouts of Poké-mania – see it in church. Apparently, doing mania has been more benign, Rooney’s column opposite, p54, FT149:18, where you can learn so could lead to a three-year with even Jeremy Corbyn having and next issue. that, rather than being a simple prison sentence; plenty of a go on the thing. Meanwhile, ABC News, 26 Mar; Guardian, 20 contraction of the phrase ‘Pocket time for convicts to catch ‘em the Church of England taught a July; www.thelocal.at, 5 Aug; D. Monsters’, ‘Pokémon’ actually all there. Franz Klintsevich, of lesson of Christ-like tolerance Mail, 3 Aug; Times, 16 Aug 2016.

4 FT345 www.forteantimes.com lady aNd fish fall a bit loNg iN the ghosts dowN uNder the tooth Ada Goodrich Strewth, Sheila! Celebrating the Freer and the It’s pelting world’s longest- most haunted spangled perch in lived cats, parrots house in Scotland the outback! and penguins. Page 18 Page 24 Page 26

The Conspirasphere Extra! Extra!

Noel rooNey finds an unexpected convergence of conspiracy theory and mainstream media FT’S FAvouriTe heAdlineS reporting in two rather different stories… or is this just the new normal? From Around The World

Two recent events – one trivial, one anything but – have stimulated the mainstream into discussing conspiracy theory. The attempted military coup in Turkey brought the idea of a false flag into focus and gave it a high profile in a medium Nottingham Post, 9 June 2015. where it is normally a taboo subject. Meanwhile, the release of Pokémon Go (see facing page and p54), apart from rousing the usual (and in this case, probably justifiable) hand-wringing about trivia taking over the world, brought with it the possibility that the game is encoded with high-level spyware. AL / AFP / GETTy IMAGES The coup, if it were not for the tragic loss WA of life involved, might have been comical. A small (and apparently rogue) detachment of Guardian, 20 Mar 2015. REMKO DE Turkey’s huge military blocked a few main thoroughfares, seized a number of media Conspirasphere. When the Daily Telegraph outlets and major infrastructure nodes, and and Alex Jones are saying pretty much – in a gambit that only later would begin to the same thing, you know you are in a look ominously symbolic – blocked off the brave new world of some description. I bridge that joins Turkey’s Asian heartland to wonder if the increasing popular distrust its European fragment. President Erdogan – of officialdom, and the political dislocation apparently – survived several attempts on evidenced in the Brexit vote, is slowly Richmond & Twickenham Times, 19 June 2015. his life, but emerged unscathed to direct a warping the media landscape into massive wave of popular opposition to the something rich and strange. coup, via social media and a handy mobile And then there was Pokémon Go, a phone app. game that encourages users of smart At least, that was the initial story. The phones to seek out cuddly – and entirely backlash that the righteously enraged fictional – creatures in public spaces, and Erdogan unleashed (at the point of writing, occasionally get robbed of their phones upwards of 60,000 people have been in the process. The craze was just getting imprisoned or lost their jobs) provoked into its stride when stories began to appear rumours that he himself had engineered, or suggesting that the game software was encouraged, the coup so he could squash deeply suspect. Personal information could his political opponents and seal his power be accessed on phones that downloaded base. The rumours were supported by the game; and then there were darker an erstwhile colleague, Fethullah Gülen, rumours that the app was little more than now domiciled (and very nicely, thank you) a cover for spyware enabling Big Brother in the United States, whose supporters could track users wherever they went Toronto Star, 8 June 2015. in Turkey appeared to bear the brunt of (although why BB would be interested in the disgruntled president’s vengeance. In citizens cavorting under a bush looking for response, Erdogan and his cronies accused Pikachu is beyond me). Gülen of orchestrating the coup, with the Again, the PG media phenomenon help of the United States government. allowed considerable convergence between The coup narrative, and the theorising mainstream media and its more quixotic around it, has seen a remarkable cousin online. I suspect we will see more convergence of opinion between of this convergence in the near future: Alex the mainstream media and the Jones as editor of the Torygraph? Toronto Star, 19 June 2015.

FT345 5 www.forteantimes.com fields Of dreams

Visitors to a farm near Nantwich, Cheshire, were greeted by a 38ft (11.5m) tall straw sculpture of the Beatrix Potter character ‘Peter Rabbit’. The sculpture, which celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of Beatrix Potter, took around 1,000 man-hours to build and weighs eight tonnes (8,000kg). PHOTO: PAUL ELLIS/AFP/GETTy ImAGES French artist Saype created what is said to be the world’s largest biodegradable painting on the Chaux-de-mont ski slope above the Swiss Alpine resort of Leysin. PHOTO: ALAIN GROSCLAUDE/AFP/GETTy ImAGES

Bales of straw in the form of a bride and groom on a field in Billerbeck, western Germany PHOTO: AFP PHOTO/DPA/mAJA HITIJ

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SIDELINES... LONE SURVIVOR History under fi re Last February, four Colombians went fi shing near Malpelo Island, 300 miles (480km) off the Colombian Pacific coast. The destruction of the Syria’s heritage continues apace The engine failed and the radio broke in a storm. one of the fi shermen, aged 29 and un- named, survived two months adrift in the 23ft (7m) open skiff by eating seagulls and fi sh in an ordeal that killed his three companions. He was rescued last April by a China-bound merchant ship, 2,000 miles (3,200km) southeast of Hawaii. Times, 7 May 2016. MISSION CREEP Randy velthuizen, 53, tried to kill off the weeds in his garden with a blowtorch, but ended up burning down his house in ever- son, Washington State. Sun, 9 April 2016. FALSE PROPHET Ugandan police have arrested emmanuel Solomon Ssemakula and his nine followers, who had allegedly been with him for six years. Ssemakula claimed to be Jesus Christ and said he had also preached in Kenya ABOVE: The plinth of Simeon’s fi nal pillar, complete with later boulder. BElOW: A recent photo shows severe damage to the plinth. and Tanzania. The self-styled Messiah could be charged with sabotaging government Qala’at Sema’an, the great honour was completed in 491. programmes by instructing his Simeon became followers to avoid hospital when church and monastery of Saint This vast edifice – the largest ill; all they had to do was to pray Simeon Stylites [FT259:76], one of the most Christian church in the world to him. He claimed to be on the fi rst and most renowned of before the construction of Hagia a mission to select 144,000 the pillar saints, was severely famous people Sophia in Constantinople in people for the Second Coming damaged by a rocket attack on 537 – comprises four separate of his father (eh?). tuko.co.ke 12 May 2016. Since the start of his age basilicas radiating out from (Kenya), 3 July 2016. of the Syrian civil war in 2011, an octagonal chamber, once the site, northwest of Aleppo, probably domed, built around THREE BANGS AVOIDED has come under the successive the remains of the Stylite’s tallest In a freak coincidence, three control of the Free Syrian Army pillar. Simeon set himself up on gardeners in Suffolk each dug (FSA), Da’esh (ISIS), the Kurdish a 9ft (2.7m) pillar in about AD up an unexploded bomb from YPG (on 28 May 2015) and most 423 – possibly in a vain attempt World War II within fi ve hours of recently the Islamist group to escape the attention of visitors each other. Sunday Star, Ahrar al-Sham. It remains close who continually interrupted his 12 June 2016. to the front line between rebels, solitude and meditation. After including Jabhat al-Nusra (the four years he graduated to a taller local al-Qaeda branch), the YPG, pillar 18ft (5.5m) high, on which and the regime. Amr al-Azm, a he stood for three years; then he Syrian-American academic trying spent 10 years on a third pillar to organise the preservation of 33ft (10m) high.The fourth and Syria’s endangered heritage, said last pillar, built by his admirers, three sources in the area told him was 60ft (18m) high, surmounted they believed Russian jets were by a balustraded platform. Here responsible for the attack, which he remained for his fi nal 20 holed the church’s façade. years, exposed to severe winter Following the Stylite’s death winds and scorching sun.The in AD 459, the church built in his solitude he had sought eluded MARTIn RoSS

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by mortar fire from Assad’s forces. SIDELINES... The castle, arguably the greatest in the world, was also hit by air UNDER OUR NOSES strikes in July and August 2013. As A bacterium that lives in the Robin Fedden put it, “any castle human nostril produces a new after Krak is an anti-climax”. class of antibiotics that – it is Aleppo, currently under pitiless believed – can be used to fight siege, has been severely trashed. hard-to-treat infections such The great Al-Madina covered as MRSA. We are warned that, souq, largely unchanged since the without effective countermeas- 16th century and partly dating ures, drug-resistant superbugs back to the 13th, was burnt out in could cause 10 million deaths 2012; and the 148ft (45m) minaret a year by 2050. D.Telegraph, of Aleppo’s Great Mosque, which 28 July 2016. had survived several earthquakes POTTER FANS THWARTED googLe eARTH since it was erected in 1090, was Mystical Moments, a shop in him, as he became one of the • While the vandalism wrought brought down by Assad’s artillery Slaithwaite, near Huddersfield, most famous people of his age, by Da’esh in Palmyra [FT334:16], on 24 April 2013.The National West Yorkshire, sells magic visited by throngs of sightseers, Hatra, Nineveh and elsewhere is Museum was bombarded on wands to cast healing spells. both Christian and pagan, from well known, destruction across 11 July 2016, causing serious Richard Carter, 57, who spends Ireland to Persia – including three the region has been widespread. damage. Ninety per cent of whole days at his lathe crafting Byzantine emperors. In August 2012 the enormous 12th the Sufi shrines round the city each wand and anointing them The final pillar was still century chapel (below) inside have been destroyed. Aerial with oil, said: “If I had someone standing at the end of the sixth Krak des Chevaliers was damaged photographs of the great Roman come in wanting a wand just century, but all that remained in city of Apamea, near Hama, because they liked Harry Potter, recent times was the meter-high show dozens of ugly holes dug by I would not sell them one, no marble plinth or base: over the treasure-seekers, and there are matter how much money they centuries, pilgrims chipped bits rumours of mosaic floors ripped were offering.” D.Telegraph, 8 off the pillar and, according to one up by bulldozers.The Roman Aug 2016. account, consumed the powdered outpost of Dura-Europos in OCTOPORN stone in water as a magical potion. eastern Syria (site of the earliest James Hush, 27, of Blackpool, The plinth was surmounted by a known occurrence of chemical Lancashire, appeared in court boulder that arrived some time warfare, c. AD 256 – FT247:18) on 1 July charged with possess- in the 20th century, nobody quite has been under Da’esh control for ing extreme porn of a woman knows when or from where. A some months, so we should fear having sex with an octopus. He photograph taken after 12 May for the fate of the oldest known was also accused of possess- this year shows that the boulder Christian church in the world, ing 15,942 images of child sex has been toppled and the plinth located there. D.Telegraph, 14 May abuse. Sun, 2 July 2016. severely damaged. 2016, plus UNESCO websites. BeRnARd gAgnon / CReATIve CoMMonS A RIGHT SPONGER Compulsive eater Hadi Sayyed Ali, 16, weighs 19 stone (120kg) after he became addicted to eating household sponges in Riyadh, Saudi Ara- bia. D.Star, 24 May 2016. EARRINGS UP BOTTOM In a bizarre coincidence, a doc- tor asked to carry out an X-ray on a suspected thief found her own stolen jewellery poked up his bottom, including two gold rings, four gold earrings and two gold necklaces. Police in- vestigating a break-in in central Turkey arrested a 24-year-old man identified as “ÖA” after noticing his “peculiar” walk. Suspecting he had swallowed or hidden the stolen goods, they took him to a hospital in the Beysehir district of Konya province to get him X-rayed.

SYRIA963 / CReATIve CoMMonS Huffington Post, 16 June; TOP: An aerial image of Apamea. ABOVE: The Crusader castle of Krak des Chevaliers suffers an airstrike in August 2013. Metro, 17 June 2016.

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SIDELINES... A rAsh Of rhEAs On ThE run WoANIMALSrmsAT fromLARGE the(And An EMu) skies Plus AnOThEr ABC THEY’RE RAWL YOURS Urged on by his wife, rawlplug enthusiast Peter Barnard, 67, has sold his vintage col- lection for £1,500 – to david Harvey, the boss of Rawlplug Ltd in glasgow. Mr Barnard had hundreds of the plugs, promotional items and tools dating back to the 1920s at his home in gillingham, dor- set. (John Joseph Rawlings invented the wall fixings in 1911.) Sun, Metro, 23 Mar; D.Mirror, 2 April 2016. NOAH’S ARK CRASHES A replica of noah’s Ark col- lided with a norwegian Coast guard vessel as it was towed into oslo harbour on 3 June, causing damage to both ships. The half-size Biblical replica, one of two built by dutch millionaire Johan Huib- ers, 57, after he dreamed of a flood in his home province, somehow lost control and crashed into the moored pa-

trol vessel Nornen, sustain- LTd ing a big hole in its side. no animals were on board. Int. NY Times, 11 June 2016. STEAMING SQUIRRELS Three-year-old Finley Renouf

was feeding a grey squirrel MeRCURY PReSS And MedIA in Tehidy Country Park, near ABOVE: A rhea in the Rhonnda! The inhabitants of Ton Pentre got a surprise when this one turned up one morning in August. Redruth in Cornwall, when a gang (more correctly a ‘scurry’) of six other squirrels RHEAS ON THE RUN Campsey Ashe on 24 May 2012 burst out of the undergrowth • A South American rhea called Chief spent a [FT290:12]. On 9 July “an emu” and charged at him. one of Chief escaped from its owner was spotted crossing the railway them then pounced, sinking in the Wakefield area of West week on the line “near Saxmundham” – maybe its teeth and claws into his Yorkshire around 16 July. Three this was the errant rhea. In any hand. He was treated for days later it was spotted in the run before case, neither was caught. Earlier, puncture wounds in hospital. Thornes area by witnesses who around Christmas 2009, another theguardian.com, 14 July incorrectly identified the dbir being recovered rhea reportedly escaped from an 2016. as an ostrich. The 5.6ft (1.7m) estate near Campsey Ashe and POETIC JUSTICE tall fugitive was caught relaxing was seen near Eyke and dashing A convicted murderer in on a patio in Wakefield on 20 Nottinghamshire, on 22 June 2015, across the A12 in Marlesford. China avoided serving time July. Rheas seem particularly prompting a widespread search by Steve Friend of Tunstall saw it in a jail cell by pretending adept in doing a runner. In May armed police. The hunt spread as twice, once in April 2010 and he had rheumatism. He was 2015 Rosie-Lee was one of three far as South Yorkshire, with police again at the end of June. That held in a comfortable prison rheas that bolted from a farm following up reported sightings month, it was chased and caught hospital in Hubei Province, in Jersey after being spooked in the Rotherham area. He was be an RSPCA inspector, who shot but after 13 years he was by a herd of errant cows. Her captured after four days only a it with a tranquilliser dart, but bored with spending his life in 15-year-old companions, Marty few fields from home. [PA] 26 June it died from “some sort of panic bed, so admitted his decep- and Rembrandt, were found a 2015; Times, 22 July 2016. attack”. D.Mail, 23 June + 1 July tion. However, he discovered short distance away, but she spent 2010; 25 May 2012; Lowestoft he could no longer stand a week on the run before being • One rhea briefly delayed a Journal, 9 July 2012. as his muscles had wasted recovered. Another rhea, a male, train travelling from Ipswich to away. New York Post, 17 May disappeared from a smallholding Saxmundham in East Suffolk as • Rita the rhea also met a sad end 2003. at Carlton-in-Lindrick, it strolled down the track near [FT316:16]. She escaped from a

10 FT345 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

smallholding in Starlings Green, SIDELINES... Essex, on 15 March 2014. Police ABC IN BEDFORDSHIRE were concerned, fearing she could NOT DEAD AFTER ALL cause a car crash. Gamekeeper Following our feature on Alien Big were chased by a ‘panther’ in A distraught pet lover found Stuart Howe, 65, spotted the bird Cats [FT344:20-25], a panther- Streatley, Bedfordshire. Having what he took to be a dead cat, in a rapeseed field after she had sized animal was spotted several passed a 5ft (1.5m)-long felid wrapped it in a blanket and took it to an animal rescue been roaming a golf course in times in the village of Silsoe, skulking in a field, the pair shelter. When they cleaned Hertfordshire for more than a Bedfordshire, on 18 pursued it. “We saw it, staff at gSPCA in guernsey month. He killed her with a single August. Rob Terry was a big black cat in the discovered it was a muddy shot to the head from 70 yards walking his cocker hedges,” she said. black-and-white dog hand and said she would be turned into spaniel when the “It crouched like it puppet. Metro, 1 July; Sun, 5 gourmet sausages. BBC News, 20 ABC emerged from was about to hunt. July 2016. April 2014. a barley field. He It turned around described it as larger and started coming SMALLEST EGG • Six years ago, Elaine and Ian than a Labrador, towards us… we just georgia Crouchman, 22, was Wilson bought three rheas from with jet black fur legged it. We only just collecting eggs from her 20 a breeder in Wales to keep as and a “terrific, 3ft made it back to the chickens in Bury St edmunds, pets. Around the time Chief was [90cm]-long tail”. An car. I thought it was Suffolk, when she found one cornered in Wakefield, one of the ABC (presumably the my last day. My heart 15.5mm long – smaller than Wilsons’ birds, a male, escaped same one) had also jumped up into my a 5p coin. It beat the world from the enclosure in Patna, recently been sighted in the mouth.” A sheep from a nearby record for smallest hen’s egg, Ayrshire. “One of them got spooked nearby villages of Flitwick and farm was mauled within the next which stood at 18mm. Metro, by something,” said Mrs Wilson. Barton. month. Bedfordshire on Sunday, 7 June 2016. “He managed to vault over a high A year earlier, deborah Hamill, 21 Aug; D.Telegraph, 23 Aug MACABRE RELIC stone wall. I am very worried 62, believes she and her sister 2016. A white shirt stained with about him – he will be disoriented, John Lennon’s blood sold for hungry and scared.” Over the next £31,000 on 25 June. It be- week, the large bird was spotted longed to Jay Hastings, a con- by numerous people, in a boggy the Rhondda Valley, South Wales, • A rhea called Lawrence cierge at the dakota building in field and outside shops. He’s still at 8am on 9 August 2016. Lynne escaped from a garden in new York where the Beatle was at large, as far as we know. D.Mail, Evans, 58, got a fright when she Norton Subcourse, Norfolk, on shot dead by Mark Chapman D.Telegraph, 28 July 2016. opened a blind and saw the bird 16 August. He was spotted on in 1980. As Lennon collapsed, peering in, just a foot away. Wales nearby marshes and cornered by Hastings tried to give him first • A rhea was seen wandering online, 9 Aug; D.Mail online, 10 Aug owner Ashley Bullard, 34, but he aid. D.Mail, 28 June 2016. down a street in Ton Pentre, in 2016. escaped when Mr Bullard had an WOMAN IN BLACK asthma attack. Lawrence was still Four times in as many weeks at large six days later. Mr Ballard last May and June, customers was offering a reward of £200 for at the Silverburn shopping his safe return. Beccles & Bungay centre in glasgow reported Journal (online), BBC News, 18 seeing the apparition of a Aug; ITV News, 22 Aug 2016. woman dressed in black “pe- riod clothing”. Managers called • A 15-month-old male emu, one in members of an outfit called of six owned by retired farmer glasgow Paranormal Investiga- Bernard King, 73, of Whipstead tions to try and establish the near Bury St Edmunds in cause of the sightings. Suffolk, jumped out of his 4ft 8 June 2016. (1.2m) pen on 2 August. The bird (erroneously identified by some witnesses as a rhea or ostrich) ran around country lanes prompting many sighting reports before being captured in Glemsford, about 12 miles (19km) south of Whipstead, about two hours later. “I hand-reared him from when he was an egg so he is perfectly tame MARTIn RoSS and he would never have harmed anyone,” said Mr King. D.Mail, Sun, 4 Aug 2016. (Thanks to Matt Salusbury for data on rheas from HLeY BULLARd

AS his forthcoming Mystery Animals ABOVE: Lawrence has legged it from his home in norton Subcourse, norfolk. of the British Isles: Suffolk.)

FT345 11 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

HUMAN WEAPON Tatyana Allen, 18, was ar- The fate of MH370 rested in daytona Beach, Florida, on 4 July after using her six-month-old son to batter her boyfriend, who was also Is one of aviation’s great mysteries closer to a solution? the boy’s father. The boy was taken to hospital, where he was “doing oK”. Allen was Flight MH370 took off from being held without bail. [AP] 5 Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia at July 2016. 12.40am on 8 March 2014 [see FT313:4]. The Boeing 777 was GOLDEN FROG carrying 227 passengers and 12 EXCITEMENT crew. At around 1.30am, First A rare golden frog born on Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid bade a farm in Thailand’s Phrae farewell to Malaysian air traffic province was given to Master control, after which radar and Bapat Witthusilo, a famous then satellite tracking lost all monk at Mai Chareontham contact. In subsequent months, Monastery in Rong Khem dis- the aircraft’s disappearance has trict. no matter how much the become one of aviation’s greatest frog ‘sparkled’ in the sunlight, he refused to predict winning unsolved mysteries. lottery numbers for the vil- Despite the extensive search lagers, no matter how many of the southern Indian Ocean, no times they asked. bangkok. trace of the aircraft was found coconuts.com, 9 June 2016. until the discovery of a wing section called a flaperon on PYTHON ON A PECKER Reunion Island off Madagascar A Thai man recovered in in July 2015, confirmed as debris hospital after a 10ft (3m) from MH370 the following python emerged from the September. Other debris from squat lavatory in his home in the plane subsequently turned Chachoengsao province and up: a horizontal stabiliser from sank its teeth into his penis. the tail section, found between RBIeR / AFP / geTTY IMAgeS

Attaporn Boonmakchuay, 38, Mozambique and Madagascar BA said the python was “yanking in December 2015; a stabiliser

very hard” as he tried to wres- AdRIen panel with “No Step” stencil, tle it off, helped by his wife found in Mozambique in ABOVE: A stabiliser panel from MH370 found in Mozambique in February 2016. and a neighbour. Mr Attaporn, February 2016; an engine who lost a lot of blood in the ordeal, was making a good cowling bearing a Rolls-Royce Someone was the missing jet had focused recovery. Workers dismantled logo, found in March 2016 in on an area of the ocean floor the loo, extracted the python Mossel Bay, South Africa; a piloting the 2,000km (1,242 miles) off and released it back into the fragment of interior door panel Australia’s west coast, selected wild. khaosodenglish.com, found in Rodrigues Island, plane when it on the assumption the flight 25 May; BBC News, 27 May Mauritius, in March 2016; and was running on autopilot after 2016. fragments including what veering off course; but an appears to be a seat frame, a coat hit the ocean official co-ordinating the chsear hook and other panels found on effort said the wreckage could Nosy Boraha island in north-east be outside that search zone if Madagascar in June 2016, along July 2016. “It wasn’t broken off. someone had been in control with clothing, laptop cases, If it was broken off, it would be of the plane when it crashed. backpacks, and an Angry a clean break. You couldn’t even Vance, formerly investigator- Birds bag. break that thing.” He said the in-charge for the Canadian According to world-leading fact the flaperon had apparently Aviation Safety Board, was the air crash investigator Larry been deployed for landing also chief author of a report into the Vance, photographs of the indicated that someone was 1998 SwissAir Flight 111 crash recovered flaperon show a piloting the plane when it hit off Nova Scotia, which killed jagged edge, suggesting the ocean. “You cannot get the 229 people. The force of that high-pressure water flaperon to extend any other way crash broke the plane into more erosion that could only be than if somebody extended it,” than two million pieces. He told caused if someone had been he said. “Somebody would have 60 Minutes that an absence of deliberately guiding the plane to select it.” It certainly appears such wreckage was one factor into the ocean. “The force of the to be a case of suicide and mass suggesting MH370 landed water is really the only thing that murder, probably by Captain in controlled circumstances. could make that jagged edge Zaherie Shah (although his Guardian, 26 Mar, 13 May; MARTIn RoSS that we see,” he told Australian sister begs to differ). D.Telegraph, 21 June, 22 July; BBC news programme 60 Minutes in An Australian-led search for News, 1 Aug 2016.

12 FT345 www.forteantimes.com

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approach is under development: perching drones. The US Air BIRDS’ EYES IN THE SKIES Force has already given contracts to several firms and received From eagle-like unmanned craft with flapping wings to drones that can suck up power by prototype drones capable of perching on electricity lines, bird-like spies are overhead says DAVID HAMBLING. landing on branches, power lines or flat surfaces. ike UFOs, information One of these, made by Design about classified drones Intelligence Incorporated, can only be gleaned in incorporated “biomimicry Lthe fragmentary reports to achieve high levels of from crashes and rare mentions camouflage and concealment.” in government documents. The This biomimicry – giving the recovering of a downed drone appearance of a living thing – was in Somalia suggests that a achieved by having the drone look new era of surveillance is in full like an owl, “a type of bird found bloom, with spy drones now around the world,” so it could able to blend in as never before. blend in anywhere (though many Previously, unmanned aircraft people in cities might be quite like the Predator were obvious surprised to find an owl perched because of their unusual profile outside their window). and persistent buzz; the new Perching allows the drone to get generation hide in plain sight by a look at the target from close up looking like birds. and from a stable position, and The drone that was recovered is less conspicuous than circling in Mogadishu had a wingspan of overhead. The other advantage is about 7ft (2m), and was powered energy harvesting. The drone can by two small propellers. The wings ABOVE: DARPA’s Nano Air Vehicle is designed to resemble a hummingbird. have solar cells, or circuits to suck were entirely novel: although BELOW: The raptor-like drone that crashed in Mogadishu had a wingspan of about up power from an electricity line it they did not provide propulsion, 7ft and was powered by two small propellers. is perched on, so it can recharge they were flexible and flapped in and continue its mission for days, flight, enhancing the impression keeping low, but any conventional Forces have been operating the weeks or months. Prototypes of a bird. We do not know who aircraft would be obvious to hand-launched Maveric drone were delivered in 2012 and the was operating the drone, though human observers. Aquiline made by Prioria Robotics. They USAF has not commented on given the sophistication it seems solved this with a drone that had previously flown theve Ra n the Perching Micro Air Weapon unlikely that it was produced looked like an eagle or buzzard. produced by AeroVironment, programme since. locally. It had an 8ft (2.4m) wingspan, who made the hummingbird-like It seems that bird-like spies Spy drones disguised as and from a distance it could NAV. According to the makers, have passed seamlessly from the birds have been a staple of pass for a bird. Aquiline’s modus Maveric offers a major advantage, world of science fiction to reality; science fiction and techno- operandi would be to fly at low a “camouflaged bird-like profile,” but of course the technology is thrillers for years. The current level along communications lines, which, along with near-silent not going to stop there. Back movie Eye In The Sky features a intercepting messages. operation, makes it ideal for in the 1980s the CIA produced hummingbird-like drone for close- Aquiline was test-flown “covert intelligence, an experimental drone that up reconnaissance. This is closely at the infamous Area surveillance, and looked like a dragonfly and flew modelled on a real experimental 51. The most reconnaissance”. by flapping its wings. This was drone, the Nano Air Vehicle difficult part An even gas-powered, directed by laser, produced by AeroVironment for was landing: more bird-like and had a range of over 600ft DARPA in 2011. The NAV flew like a retrieval spy drone (180m). Its sensor was a small real bird by flapping its wings and involved showed up microphone. As well as having the suffered the same disadvantage flying it in Pakistan in usual problems with battery life, it of all such designs: extremely into a net, 2011. From could not cope with crosswinds, short battery life, with a flight and there photographs and ended up in the CIA museum time of only 11 minutes. Although were several posted online, in McLean, Virginia. pictures show the NAV painted crashes. What this looked to be If the CIA were to return to the in conspicuously bright colours, eventually sunk a modified version idea of bugs that are literally bugs, one of the main goals was to the programme was of Lockheed Martin’s advances in technology would determine whether a drone could greed. Project manager John Desert Hawk with a paint job and make a modern dragonfly far be successfully camouflaged as a Meierdierck challenged the feather-like extensions to mimic more capable in terms of range, bird. The project was shelved after contractors McDonnell Douglas a vulture. This is a drone used by endurance and payload. There are the prototype, apparently due to over their claims for the cost of the the US military, but deniability is now plenty of video cameras small the short flight time. project. Classified programmes one of the key advantages of using enough for such a craft. There have been many other can be highly profitable, as there unmanned planes as spies. There Secret spy planes, like the U-2 bird-like unmanned air vehicles. is far less scrutiny and financial is no way to confirm where they and SR-71, and the F-117 stealth As far back as 1965 the CIA oversight, but Meierdierck have come from or whom they are fighter, historically accounted for a launched a secret spy drone reckoned that McDonnell had spying for. large proportion of UFO sightings. initiative known as Project Aquiline. inflated costs by a factor of The flapping-wing drone found If such aircraft are superseded The Agency wanted a plane that 10. The contractors refused to in Mogadishu takes the imitation by bird-like craft, then the number could fly missions over the Soviet back down and the project was a step forward, and may be the of sightings will go down – and Union without being spotted. It cancelled. hardest impostor to spot at paranoia about being watched by was possible to avoid radar by More recently, US Special present, but a more sophisticated birds or insects is likely to rise.

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ALAN MURDIE reminds us that ghostbusting sisters have long been doing it for themselves

he re-imagined Ghostbusters LEFT: Ada Goodrich Freer, psychic and movie released over the psychical researcher, photographed summer did little to draw in 1894. BELOW: The importance of Tattention to serious psychical mediumship for 19th century women is research, but did highlight the idea explored in Alex Owen’s 1989 book. of women pursuing ghosts. In this respect art has taken a long time crystal-gazer, but also what, for want of to catch up with life, as female a better name, we call a ‘Seer’”. She involvement in ghost hunting goes used a crystal ball, but insisted its size back a long way – to the birth of the didn’t matter, it was how you looked at Society for Psychical Research in it. Her own preferred method was to 1882. Unlike many scientific bodies scry with one having the diameter of and institutions of the time that were little more than a shilling, reached after exclusively all-male affairs, women extensive experiments to find the best played a prominent role in the subject reflective surface, ranging from optical from the outset. instruments to Iceland spar. It has been long argued that Couching her experiences in the mediumship was also one of the few jargon of psychical research, images areas in 19th century life where women viewed with the crystal appeared could not only operate on equal terms, objective. However, “The images were but actually exert superiority over not actually existent in the crystal, male believers – see The Darkened but the crystal acted as suggestion Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism and stimulus on images projected in Victorian England (1989) by Alex from one’s own brain.” These “crystal Owen. Female investigators of the pictures” appeared to be projected period often crossed the boundary to the outside of the crystal. She between researchers and research counselled that “One great difficulty subjects. For example, the classicist experienced by persons experimenting Margaret Verrall (1851-1912) and her in crystal-gazing was in focusing the

R PSyCHICAl RESEARCH / MARy EVAnS PICTURE lIBRARy daughter Helen Verrall (1883-1959), eyes correctly. They should be directed

FO later Mrs Salter, from Cambridge, who to a point about half an inch below both produced automatic writing, also the surface of the crystal, to avoid SOCIETy worked tirelessly for the SPR assessing disturbances caused by reflections, cases. from the surface of the crystal, of the Ghost hunting was in its infancy (in the ADA AVERRED SHE surrounding objects.” (Proceedings of the Victorian era ghost hunts occurred more SPR, 1888-89, v.5, pp.486 et seq.) often in the séance room with the ghost HAD SEEN THE Ada didn’t simply confine herself to coming to you), but there were also some experiments but was keen to record the female investigators prepared to deploy PHANTOM NUN visions of others, and to confront ghosts. In their own gifts as sensitives to explore 1896 she investigated a haunting at Preston haunted houses. However, the results were Manor, Brighton, Sussex, an 18th century not always happy, as revealed by the career FOR HERSELF building erected on the site of an earlier of Ada Goodrich Freer (1857-1931), one 13th century structure. Here Ada apparently of the most fascinating, controversial and presented herself as a spiritualist medium rather mysterious figures from the time. A whilst investigating a mysterious ‘Woman prolific writer on psychic topics in the, 1890s in White’. Experiments with a Ouija board often under the pseudonym ‘Miss X’, she resulted in purported communications claimed personal psychic gifts and charmed emanating from two mediæval nuns, ‘Caroline’ her way into the upper circles of the SPR, and ‘A gnes’, hinting at secret crimes centuries deeply impressing some of its leading and before. Following these séances in January most aristocratic members. She also wrote 1897, human remains were unearthed, and for the magazine Borderlands, produced by other historical details discovered which – at spiritualist journalist and social reformer WT least for some – seemingly corroborated parts Stead. A collection of her essays covering of the messages. spiritualism, dowsing, poltergeists, and Encouraged, Ada progressed to parallels between the lives of the saints investigating Ballechin House, Perthshire (‘the and phenomena being recorded by the SPR Most Haunted House in Scotland’) haunted was generally well received, save for some by another phantom nun (this time named comments on the American medium Mrs ‘Ishbel’ according to Ouija messages). Ada Piper. averred she had seen this figure for herself Ada claimed an in-depth knowledge of in the glen near the troubled house. She also crystal gazing, acquired not just from study glimpsed other human figures and phantom of its history back to antiquity but her own dogs, while guests and servants suffered personal experiments. As she confided to their bedclothes pulled away, feelings of other researchers, these had led her to cold and the sensation of a presence. Ada’s believe that she was psychically gifted and involvement seemingly acted as catalyst, that “she was not only an accomplished rather like the arrival of Harry Price at Borley a

18 FT345 www.forteantimes.com generation later. like Borley Rectory, Ballechin House had the reputation of being haunted (mostly by weird noises) for years prior to Ada’s visits, although there was little first-hand evidence for visual phantasms prior to 1897. Everyone agreed the building was troubled by strange, mostly nocturnal sounds, but it did stand in a seismically active area. This was an early case where the researchers brought in equipment, such as a phonograph and seismograph, for recording physical manifestations. Unfortunately, these instruments were only deployed very late in the investigation, and when the team of SPR researchers received unfavourable publicity in The Times, the Society, fearing a public relations disaster, backed away. nonetheless, Ada stayed with the case, publishing a book with John, Marquess of Bute: The Alleged Haunting of ----- House, including a journal ABOVE: Sketches of ‘Ishbel’ the phantom nun of Ballechin House, Perthshire, from Ada’s 1899 book. kept during the tenancy of Colonel Le Mesurier Taylor (1899), seen as a forerunner of the Price books on Borley Rectory 40 years later. Vision, are purely subjective, being merely was “unimpressive”. Her book was not well received, with Ada the recrudescence of previous sensory or As always, issuing armchair criticisms is standing accused of exaggerating both her intellectual experiences.” This is a bit like easier than undertaking field research, though own experiences and those of others. The arguing because you see things in your dreams to his credit Podmore had taken some trouble editor of the SPR Journal reflected the cooling at night, your waking vision is not to be trusted to visit poltergeist-shattered homes (unlike attitude towards her by running a scathing either. the legions of sceptics in the generations critical review by SPR resident sceptic Frank Podmore implied Ada transferred her who have breezily declare that ghosts don’t Podmore, who attacked the approach taken. visions to others by suggestion, stating: “It exist but have never been to look). Indeed, Regarding the ghostly nun (another Borley was Miss Freer who first saw a ghostly figure; Podmore’s critique of poltergeist reports parallel) Podmore resurrected Ada’s crystal it was again Miss Freer who first heard ghostly published in 1896 easily remains the best experiments to discredit her. Although noises, and throughout these records it is and most detailed sceptical examination yet declaring: “I intend nothing in derogation Miss Freer who is most frequently and most written. But his criticisms were not a surprise, of Miss Freer’s moral and intellectual conspicuously favoured with ‘phenomena’. as Podmore, once a believer, had renounced qualifications,” he dismissed her testimony Ultimately, whilst acknowledging that “Miss spiritualism. On a more basic level, there is “because she is liable, in a quite unusual Freer has shown that she knows how to also textual evidence suggesting deep down degree, to hallucinatory experience, and observe clearly and how to record accurately,” Podmore just simply didn’t like women. because many of her hallucinations, as she he declared “her testimony in a matter of this Seeking another outlet for her talents in has herself shown in her article on Crystal kind carries very little weight” and the case Scotland, Ada then embarked upon an enquiry HISTORIC EnVIROnMEnT SCOTlAnd

ABOVE: The exterior and interior of Ballechin House, investigated by Ada Goodrich Freer when it was considered by some “the Most Haunted House in Scotland”.

FT345 19 www.forteantimes.com into ghost-seeing in the Highlands and Islands, collecting testimony from crofters and fishermen. Sponsored by lord Bute, she headed to the Hebrides and South Uist. She was not impressed, writing in 1902: “nowhere in our proud Empire was there a spot more desolate, grim, hopelessly poverty- stricken, a wilderness of rock and of standing water, on which in summer golden lichen and spreading water-lilies mocked the ghastly secrets of starvation and disease.” yet it was within the wretched huts of locals “hardly to be distinguished from the peat stacks beside them” that amazing stories of visions and prophetic phantoms could be gleaned. Or so she claimed, for much later she was found to have plagiarised the work of Father Allan Macdonald, a Roman Catholic priest on the Isle of Eriskay, who gathered an astounding collection of folklore involving apparitions and death warnings from his congregation before JO TURnER / CREATIVE COMMOnS his death in 1905. Her expropriation of the much-loved priest’s ABOVE: Gwydir Castle, Conwy, where haunting work was a subject of local gossip for years phenomena have been reported since the 19th but only fully exposed in 1958 by dr John century. LEFT: Trevor Hall produced a pair of hostile Campbell, a Celtic and Gaelic scholar, living books about Ada Goodrich Freer. on the Inner Hebrides, who published his findings in ‘The late Fr. Allan Mcdonald, Miss ghosts at Gwydir Castle were all claimed Goodrich Freer, and Hebridean Folklore’ in at once, the situation would remind me of Scottish Studies (1958) v.2, p.175. the extraordinary claims made at a certain In 1907 amid rumours of involvement haunted house in dorset investigated by with fraudulent séances, Ada quit psychical Tom Perrott in the 1960s and later mostly research and the SPR omitted reference to discounted.However, this fading away of her works thereafter. Ada married a dr Spoer, apparitions over the centuries is a pattern reducing her age by 17 years on official identified by Andrew Green. Ghosts, it, seems documents (she was blessed with looking are not immortal but have a kind of ‘half- much younger than her actual years) and life’ of between 250 and 400 years. Green moving first to Jerusalem and eventually dying highlighted a case where in the 18th century in new york in 1931. a ghost of a woman in red shoes, a red gown In the mid-1960s, sceptic Trevor Hall, and a black headdress was observed in a who embarked on a literary crusade against little-visited corridor of a mansion. Many many of the founders of psychical research, years passed before the apparition was seen turned his basilisk glare on Ada, producing again, and by then, (perhaps because the two hostile biographies: Strange Things original full description of the ghost was not (1968) and The Strange Case of Ada Goodrich then known) it appeared as a female in a pink Freer (1980). With Ada Goodrich Freer he “SOME CLAIM dress, pink shoes and grey headdress. not was somewhat curbed in Strange Things witnessed again until the mid-19th century, by collaboration with dr Campbell, but he TO HAVE BEEN the figure had by then dwindled down to “a delighted in exposing how Miss Freer had lady in a white gown and with grey hair”. Just exaggerated and distorted her early life and before World War II, all that was reported ancestors. A more impartial view emerged TOUCHED ON THE was “the sound of a woman walking along from researcher Guy lambert, who admitted the corridor and the swish of her dress”. In that Ada had romanced a good deal about SHOULDER” 1971, shortly before the demolition of the her ancestors and the kind of society she property, workmen “felt a presence in one of was born into. Precisely how she acquired the old corridors”. In another case in Scotland her education, deportment and charming llanwrst in Conwy, first labelled as ‘haunted’ an apparition originally reported as dressed manners and graces, which commended in the 19th century when sightings were at a in green seemed to have faded to yellow her to those with whom she dealt, remained peak, including a servant girl and a former by 1905 and was reported by the 1970s to something of a mystery, but as lambert owner, ‘Sir John’. However, Peter Welford and be ‘the colour of ripe corn’. (See Phantom considered, “one is hardly justified in writing Judy Corbett, who bought the 15th century Ladies, 1976; Ghost Hunting: A Practical her down as a complete adventuress, building in 1994, are quoted as saying: “Many Guide, 1973, 2016). whose word cannot be trusted on any topic, people continue to feel, see and even smell Other Gwydir phenomena allegedly include including her own subjective experience”. A a range of paranormal things here, which hearing children crying, a ghost wolfhound, more balanced treatment is surely deserved; are always uncannily consistent in terms of “a short Elizabethan lady in a yellow dress” in indeed it is a project I will hopefully pursue in location and recorded experiences.” the garden, and “a torch-lit procession… seen 2017. Regarding the ghost of an old woman at night on the Great Terrace”. If true, closer Turning to modern hauntings, after in grey, Judy said: “The apparition has not examination is surely needed. numerous stories of ghosts in mundane specifically been seen in recent years, [but] However, despite this airing of the haunted and unexceptional urban buildings, it is its presence continues to be felt and some charms of Gwydir, I think it won’t be until a refreshing change to actually learn of claim to have been touched on the shoulder winter that they attract the visitors and manifestations in an ancient castle. According whilst at the same time experiencing a tourists they deserve. Currently, the most- to the Welsh Daily News (17 July 2016), considerable drop in temperature.” read news story for the Daily News is: ‘Where ghostly activity is continuing at Gwydir Castle, I have to say that if the proliferation of are the nudist Beaches in north Wales?’.

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Forged papyrus leads to Jesus’s “hotwife”, fortean follow-ups plus severed feet and new Stonehenge finds

the gospel of jesus’s wife [ft294:4] At a conference in Rome on 18 September 2012, Prof Karen King, Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School and a prominent New Testament scholar, announced the existence of a papyrus fragment with a text in (Egyptian) Sahidic Coptic appearing to offer evidence that Jesus was married. The faded fragment, 4cm by 8cm (1.6in x 3.1in), has a text scattered across 14 incomplete lines, translated as follows: “not [to] me. My mother gave to me li[fe]”; “The disciples said to Jesus”; “deny. Mary is worthy ABOVE: The fragment of papyrus turned out to be “an inept forgery”, the work of a German pornographer called Walter Fritz. of it”; “Jesus said to them, My wife”; “she will be able to be my disciple”; “Let wicked people had been lifted and chopped in Florida. fantasies of cuckolded husbands swell up”; “As for me, I dwell up to make the phrases in the Fritz studied at the Free powerless to stop their wives’ lust with her in order to”; “an image”; fragment, something that showed University in Berlin around for other men. Sabar reported: “my moth[er]”; “three”; and up in a very unusual word-break, 1988, took a job as a tour guide “On one of his wife’s sites… “forth which”. Though Prof King and one of the words had a at Berlin’s Egyptian Museum, passages from Goethe, Proust, called the fragment “The Gospel missing letter that was found backpacked around Egypt, and and Edna St.Vincent Millay are of Jesus’ Wife”, she emphasised only in the PDF description. studied Coptic. Following the fall interspersed with philosophical that the text didn’t prove that Furthermore, the lettering of the Berlin Wall, he blagged his musings on Jesus’s teachings, the Jesus was married or that, if he was suspiciously splotchy, the way into the directorship of a new slippery nature of reality, and were, that his wife was Mary grammar poor. museum of East German history ‘the Perfection of Sluthood.’” She Magdalene – only that “some A wonderfully persistent in the old Stasi HQ in East also would babble in a language early Christians had a tradition researcher called Ariel Sabar Berlin in about October 1991, Fritz supposed to be Aramaic that Jesus was married”. In has now traced the papyrus’s but disappeared in the Spring while they were having sex. She any case, it was welcome news provenance and in June 2016 of 1992 after exhibits started herself claimed that she had for fans of The Holy Blood and published his findings in The to go missing. He then popped been a clairvoyant since the age the Holy Grail and Dan Brown’s Atlantic magazine. The forger up in Florida as a director of of 17, and had been instructed notorious pot-boiler. turned out to be Walter Fritz, a an auto-parts company. Sabar by angels to do everything she Almost immediately after smooth-talking German living in discovered that Fritz bought the subsequently did. Int. NY Times, Prof King’s announcement, the Florida, who contacted Prof King domain name gospelofjesuswife. 11 April 2014; Live Science, 25 Aug Vatican newspaper labelled in 2011, showing her the papyrus com on 26 Aug 2012, more 2015; Catholic Herald online, 17 the papyrus “an inept forgery”. and requesting help in its than three weeks before Prof June 2016; Church Times, 3 July Some experts in papyrology and translation and authentication. King publicised the papyrus. 2015, 24 June 2016.. Coptic linguistics attested to He claimed to have bought it and Confronted with the revelations its authenticity; other begged five other Coptic papyri from concerning Fritz, Prof King has seVeReD feet [ft289:20] to differ. In April 2014, Harvard Hans-Ulrich Laukamp in Florida now admitted that the fragment Twelve severed announced the results of carbon- in 1999. The latter had allegedly is a forgery. human feet dating tests, multispectral acquired them in East Germany In 2003 Fritz had launched a in trainers imaging, and other lab analyses: in 1963. Laukamp was a rather series of pornographic websites washed up the papyrus appeared to be of simple-minded alcoholic who that showcased his wife having in the Pacific ancient origin – between AD died in 2002. His relatives denied sex with other men – often more northwest 659 and 859, or possibly earlier he ever possessed any papyri, than one at a time. One home between – and the ink had no obviously and also insisted he was in West page billed her as “America’s 2007 and modern ingredients. However, Berlin in 1963, unable to cross #1 Slut Wife.” There was no 2012 – nine in the text itself was tracked down over to the Communist side, and charge, but the men had to agree British Columbia and three to an interlinear translation of was in Germany attending his to Walt’s filming. The couple’s in Washington State. Most of the Gospel of Thomas published dying wife when Fritz claimed to work belonged to a fetish genre the people to whom the feet online in 2002. Phrases from this have bought the papyri from him called “hotwife”, built around belonged were eventually

22 FT345 www.forteantimes.com Mythconceptions by Mat Coward 105: tIMe off

identified; most were suicide play was not suspected. express. victims. Since then, the severed co.uk, 5 April; BBC News, 18 May, foot phenomenon has moved to 3 June, 5 July; Bristol Post, 19 May, the UK. On 19 February 2016, 5 Aug; plymouthherald.co.uk, 6 dog walkers stumbled upon a left Aug 2016. foot on top of bramble bushes in Weston Park East, Bath. It supeRheNge [ft333:16] was severed about 4in (10cm) In 2014, above the ankle and looked as researchers if it had been unearthed. After found the fi nding very little DNA, police remains of 17 said it appeared that the foot new chapels had been ‘fixed’ or preserved and hundreds with chemicals. Dr Heather of other Bonney, a forensic anthropologist archæological ILLUSTRATIONS: HUNT EMERSON at the Natural History Museum features scattered across the in London, said the state of the 4.6 square mile (12km2) ritual the myth bones suggested the foot came landscape of Salisbury Plain Inmates in British prisons can have their sentences reduced, from an adult, but there was no around Stonehenge. Then provided they keep their noses clean while they’re inside. way of knowing the sex, age or in September 2015, ground- ancestry. She added there was no penetrating radar at Durrington evidence of any injury or disease Walls, a roundish landscape the “truth” and the item was “entirely feature constructed around Despite the popularity of the phrase, there is in fact no such thing 2500 BC less than two miles consistent with being either a in UK law as “Time off for good behaviour.” When you’re sentenced from Stonehenge, appeared to medical, anatomical or museum by the court you receive a conditional release date (the earliest date specimen.” show that the straight edge was on which the custodial element of your sentence can end), and no On 4 July, a second left foot aligned over a row of up to 90 amount of snitching, toadying, ostentatious religious observance, turned up in undergrowth in standing stones – about 30 still doing extra shifts in the laundry, or attending rehabilitory training the back garden of a property intact – that once stood 15ft courses can bring that date forward by so much as a day. Although in Weston Park, a few hundred (4.6m) high, and formed one side time served cannot be reduced by good behaviour, it can be extended yards from where the fi rst of a C-shaped arena. However, by bad behaviour: a disciplinary hearing, known as an adjudication, foot was found. Then on 3 a limited excavation found no has the power to add to your time in custody. August, a third foot was found megaliths. “We are certain we in the garden of a property on do not have any stones,” said Dr Cranwells Park, adjacent to the Nicola Snashall, National Trust sources park where the fi rst two feet archæologist. “What we have www.offendersfamilieshelpline.org/index.php/release-date; http://blogs. appeared. Whether this one is instead are at least 120 pits that channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-why-did-huhne-and-pryce-get-out- a left or right foot has not been were created to take great big early/13440 reported. Det Insp Paul Catton timber posts. We think there of Avon and Somerset Police may have been as many as 200 Disclaimer said he “strongly believed” the or even more as we have some feet had originated from “an gaps in the ground penetrating If any legal experts, on either side of the wall, wish to appeal against these fi ndings, please do so via the letters column. old private collection”. Police radar data… [The pits] have believe animals had unearthed ramps at the sides to lower posts the feet – or disturbed the into. They did contain timbers Mythchaser location where they were stored. which have been vertically lifted Meanwhile in Wales: on 5 out and removed at some stage. It is generally known that the two front benches in the House of April a tourist stumbled upon a The top was then fi lled in with Commons are two swords’ lengths apart, and that this is by design, severed human foot on Tal Y Foel chalk rubble and the giant henge so as to stop opposing politicians stabbing each other in the front. beach near Dwyran, Angelsey. bank was raised over the top.” This is so well known that it forms part of the spiel of official tourist DNA tests showed it belonged The current speculation is that guides and appears in authoritative books and websites. But it can’t to Richard Thomas, 47, who had the giant timber monument was possibly be true, can it? For a start, when were MPs last allowed gone missing from his Bangor erected before the Stonehenge to carry swords in the chamber? And has the width of the gangway home on 31 December 2013. Foul construction crew had begun always been the same, through the House’s various rebuilds? And, living at the site. Once they perhaps above all, are we to suppose that those of Cabinet and moved in, they took out the Shadow Cabinet rank are too lazy to lunge, too corruptly corpulent timbers and put up an enormous to be capable of staggering a few paces across the gap to bank and ditch, which remain run their opponents through? I’m not putting this to today. Previous excavations on the vote; instead, can anyone provide the site have revealed seven proper proof either way, for the Ayes or houses and it has been suggested the Noes? up to 4,000 people could have lived within the village. BBC tHe BooK News, D.Mail online, 12 Aug; MYtHConCeptIons D.Telegraph, 13 Aug 2016. Don’t MIss BooKsHops out now onlIne anD In all GooD

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Strewth: It’S PeltIng Perch! Teleportation, aerial distribution or simply the urge to merge? PAUL CROPPER investigates recent fish falls in western Queensland. NDI MCQUEEN NICOLA WHITE CY ABOVE LEFT: A fish in front of Nicola’s White house. ABOVE RIGHT: A perch from Cyndi McQueen’s dirt track. BELOW: A selection of grunters at the Oakhills’ cattle station.

Fish falls are a fortean favourite, fish fall, they were sure they must are quite easily explained by the and feature regularly in FT’s have dropped from the sky as the “rapid dispersal” theory. pages. Australia has a rich history nearest body of water, their dam, So is aerial distribution just a of such cases. Naturalist Gilbert was a kilometre away. A creek bed myth? I don’t think so. Even Jeff Whitely published a summary behind the house had been bone- Johnson believes that distribution of 50 Australian reports in 1972 1 dry from one year’s end to the next. of fish via whirlwinds is rare, but and in the January 1998 issue of The Oakhills’ story prompted certainly not impossible. Some FT Tony Healy and I highlighted other locals to come forward with other cases in my Australian file, several modern cases and their experiences. On the same in fact, involve fish found in roof suggested some explanations muddy morning, Nicola White gutters and other elevated places, for the phenomenon, including from ‘Clio’, 12 miles (20km) from and several witnesses claim to distribution by whirlwinds and ‘Bernfels’, found four small, live have actually seen fish fall. 2

even teleportation. Recent fish in front of her house. Another One such person is an older KHILL reports from western Queensland, neighbour, Cyndi McQueen, found Winton resident John East who OA

however, suggest an earthbound fish on one of her dirt tracks. wrote to me recently with this HNEE explanation for at least some of the Armed with the Oakhill, story: TA sudden appearances of fish in the White and McQueen reports are left stranded in places seemingly I have just read an article in the arid outback. and photos, I approached one of impossible to reach from the nearest Longreach Leader where you have The amount of rain that fell Australia’s leading ichthyologists, permanent water. Of course very asked for information regarding across western Queensland on the Jeff Johnson of the Queensland few residents are actually out in the “Fish From The Sky”. My wife and evening of Tuesday, 9 March 2016 Museum. He quickly identified teeming rain to see this happening. I are well into our 80s and lived on was truly extraordinary: Winton, the fish in all three cases: Does Jeff’s ‘Randy Road- a property in the Winton district a small sheep and cattle town, spangled perch, Leiopotherapon Runner’ theory fit the facts of for much of our lives. During that recorded its wettest 24 hours in unicolor. The spangled perch the Winton falls? Pretty closely. time we experienced fish falling 16 years, and over 75mm fell on (aka ‘spangled grunter’) is one In all three locations the fish from the sky during heavy rain on ‘Bernfels’, a large cattle station of the most widespread and were spangled perch, found on at least two occasions. On the last northwest of the town. For owners common freshwater fish species in relatively flat surfaces that could occasion we saw them falling and Tahnee and Ross Oakhill, the Australia. have supported high temporary bouncing off 200-litre drums and rain was a welcome surprise as Jeff outlined to me his theory water flows linking existing tanks.They were only about five ‘Bernfels’ had been suffering a of what had happened at Winton: populations of the hardy little or six centimetres long and looked drought for almost four years. When it [a reported fish fall] ‘grunters’ with their final resting like little perch.There was not any Even more surprising was the involves spangled perch, by far the place. In one of the McQueens’ waterhole or creek close to the area. sight that greeted Ross as he most common reason is this species photos, the surface water is still The above experience convinced me stepped outside next morning: has an incredible urge to disperse clearly evident. No fish were that the fish came from the sky in along a 100m length of gravel and breed when large rain events seen falling or found on roofs the rain. road he found a dozen small fish, occur. They may have been trapped or in gutters on any of the three When the next major rainstorm all alive and wriggling. Baffled, for years in cramped waterholes, properties. approaches Winton, I think many the Oakhills posted their story on dams, rivers, or creeks and will But while the Winton fish falls residents will still be watching the social media, and soon their photos seize the opportunity to furiously seems to have a simple cause, can skies. were attracting national and swim up temporary flows during all Australian cases be wrapped up international attention. heavy rain in a desperate attempt so easily? Many other Australian NOTES When I contacted them a week to disperse.This often leads them cases do involve spangled perch 1 The Australian Naturalist, March 1972. later, the young couple were happy many miles up blind gullies, wheel and many of the fish are found on 2 “It’s Raining Sprats and Cods!” to discuss the amazing event. tracks, or just meandering overland flat ground or near rutted roads, FT106:34-36, Jan 1988. See also FT262:24-25 and 315:5. While they hadn’t actually seen the flows and when the rain eases many so perhaps the majority of cases

24 FT345 www.forteantimes.com Karl ShuKEr presents his regular round-up from the cryptozoological ALIEN ZOO garden

A LOST FLYCATCHER Despite having been overlooked taxonomically for such a long time, at least Wallace’s ray has not suffered the sad fate of another very belated discovery. During the 20th century, there had been occasional sightings on the Galapagos island of San Cristobál of a small vermillion flycatcher, but this was assumed to be the same species as those found elsewhere in the Galapagos archipelago, which in turn were assumed to be the same species as the vermillion flycatchers native to nearby Ecuador (Pyrocephalus rubinus). These assumptions were dramatically disproved following a chance encounter with one such bird by San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory biologist Dr Alvaro Jaramillo, SCHER / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

FI visiting the Galapagos in 2007. He realised that its song was totally different from that of

GREGOR Ecuadorian vermillion flycatchers, and as such ABOVE: Was the legendary Hungarian fisher pig a local variety of the European wild boar or a feral pig? birds are born with a preset melody, lacking the ability to create new songs themselves, THE HUNGARIAN FISHER PIG cryptozoologically for its equally enigmatic this suggested that the Galapagos vermillions Whereas Arthurian legend had its Fisher reedwolf). Perhaps somewhere in one of constituted a separate species. Consequently, King, rural Hungarian lore once included an Hungary’s many long-established hunting assisted by fellow researcher Ore Carmi, ostensibly real but presently unidentified lodges there is a trophy head or a bristly pelt he conducted an extensive DNA-based beast known as the fisher pig. Also termed from one of these perplexing porcines. comparative study of museum specimens of the swamp pig, this hitherto-obscure Orosz István and Tötös Miklós, pers. comms, Galapagos and Ecuadorian vermillions. Sure creature, seemingly undocumented in 3 July 2016. enough, the Galapagos specimens’ DNA profile mainstream cryptozoological literature, was was distinct enough for them to be recognised kindly brought to my attention by Hungarian WALLACE’S FORGOTTEN FISH as a separate species, which has now been crypto-investigator Orosz István via a series of Over 160 years ago, while exploring the dubbed P. nanus. Facebook communications in July 2016, which Negro, a Brazilian tributary of the mighty But that is not all. During their studies, can be summarised as follows. Amazon River, English naturalist Alfred Russel Jamarillo and Carmi also found that vermillion The old shepherding folk of his country Wallace (Charles Darwin’s co-discoverer of the specimens collected in earlier times from the still speak of this mysterious animal, which evolutionary mechanism of natural selection) island of San Cristobál were sufficiently distinct they claim to be extinct (allegedly dying out encountered a small but distinctive specimen from those inhabiting other Galapagos islands during the 1880-1890s, according to famous of freshwater stingray, which he duly collected to be categorised as a second valid species, Hungarian agricultural writer Imre Somogyu in and sketched. unique to San Cristobál. So this hitherto his celebrated 1942 book Kertmagyarország Familiar to the local Indians, who refer to ‘invisible’ species has now been named P. Felé), but which once lived in marshes around it as the raia cururu or toad ray due to the dubius. Sadly, however, Jamarillo’s ostensibly the rivers Tisza and Körös. It did not graze similarity of its dorsal surface’s coloration and upbeat tale of discovery does not have a like normal wild boars, its diet consisting of patterning to that of the cane toad Rhinella happy ending. Apparently always rare, the San crabs and fishes. Orosz was not aware of any marina that also exists in this locality, it Cristobál vermillion flycatcher has not been illustrations, but added that it was said to be subsequently became, and remains, familiar seen since 1987, and is feared extinct – a very big, with a curved back, and that it lived in to tropical fish fanciers in the Western world, species lost to the world before the world even large herds. He felt that it was probably nothing as numerous specimens were exported realised that it was a species. more than a local variety of the European wild to Europe and North America. Moreover, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction- boar Sus scrofa, whereas fellow Hungarian many illustrations of it are reproduced in countdown/first-bird-extinction-galapagos/ 14 crypto-enthusiast Tötös Miklós considered that both the scientific and the aquarium fish June 2016; www.audubon.org/news/this-new- it might have been a feral (run-wild) variety of literature. It is therefore remarkable that it species-went-extinct-it-was-even-discovered 5 domestic pig. has only now been recognised as a distinct July 2016. Both wild boars and feral domestic pigs species, formally described in will indeed inhabit swamps and marshes, a Zootaxa paper in June 2016. are famously omnivorous, and are known Consistently misidentified with to enter shallow water to devour fishes and various known rays in the past, invertebrates. Yet as wild boars and feral this ‘new’ species has been domestic pigs are such familiar creatures officially dubbed Potamotrygon in this region of Europe, why would any wallacei, Wallace’s ray, in honour that lived in the Tisza and Körös marshes of its long-deceased discoverer be delineated with their own name by the (Wallace died in 1913). local shepherds, unless they had evolved http://agencia.fapesp.br/ a distinctive morphology and lifestyle that freshwater_stingray_discovered_ readily separated them from more typical wild by_alfred_wallace_over_160_ boar and ferals, at least in the eyes of the years_ago_is_described/23464/ shepherds (if not in those of zoologists)? I’d 29 June 2016; http://biotaxa. be very interested to learn more about the org/Zootaxa/article/view/ CHARLES J SHARP fisher pig of Hungary (a country already famous zootaxa.4107.4.5 ABOVE: A colourful male vermillion flycatcher, Pyrocephalus rubinus.

FT345 25 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

research has revealed that greenland sharks could live up oldest animalsWorms fromto 400 years; plus more the animal oldies worth skies celebrating

• Greenland sharks are now the longest- it contains proteins that are metabolically 32 years older than the previous oldest living vertebrates known on Earth.The inert,” explained Mr Neilsen. “This recorded creature, another ocean quahog, discovery places their lifespan far ahead of means that after the proteins have been whose shell is now in a German museum. the oldest elephant in captivity, Lin Wang, synthesised in the body, they are not Unfortunately, by the time its age had who died aged 86 and the official record renewed any more, so we can isolate the been established, Ming was dead – its flesh for humans, held by Frenchwoman Jeanne tissue that formed when the shark was a had been thrown away and only its shell Louise Calment (122 years and 164 days). pup, and do radiocarbon dating.” The team remained. Of course, it is not known how Researchers – led by Julius Nielsen, a marine looked at 28 sharks, collected as by-catch much longer Ming might have lived had it biologist from the University of Copenhagen during scientific surveys between 2010 and been left in place on the ocean floor. – found that the sharks grow just one 2013. Using this technique, they established In 2013, another assessment of Ming’s age centimetre a year, and reach sexual maturity that the largest shark – a 16ft-long female was carried out counting bands that were at about the age of 150. Radiocarbon dating – was between 272 and 512 years old (born measured on the sectioned surface of the showed that one female was about 400 years between 1504 and 1744), but most likely outer shell margin rather than the hinge; old.The former vertebrate record-holder somewhere in the middle, so about 400 years and the result confirmed by comparing was a bowhead whale estimated to be 211 old (born c. 1616). “Even with the lowest the banding patterns with those on other years old [FT230:12]; but if invertebrates part of this uncertainty, 272 years, even if clams that were alive at the same time.This are brought into the longevity competition, that is the maximum age, it should still be determined Ming was 507 years old when a 507-year-old Icelandic clam called Ming considered the longest-living vertebrate,” caught – 134 years older than the German holds the title of most aged animal. said Mr Nielsen. Conversely, if her age is at specimen.The revised age estimate was also Greenland sharks, one of the world’s the upper end of the scale, she may have supported by carbon-14 dating. “We got it largest carnivores, can grow up to 24ft out-lived Ming the clam. Science, Guardian wrong the first time and maybe we were a (7.3m) and are found, swimming no more online, 11 Aug; BBC News, Times, 12 Aug 2016. bit hasty publishing our findings back then,” than 1.7mph (2.7km/h), throughout the cold said Paul Butler, an ocean scientist from waters of the North Atlantic at depths of • In 2006, as part of a study into climate Bangor University. “But we are absolutely around 1,800ft (550m). With this leisurely change, scientists from the Bangor certain that we’ve got the right age now.” pace of life and sluggish growth rate, they University School of Ocean Sciences Sunday Times, 28 Oct; D.Mail, 29 Oct 2007; were thought to live for a long time. While dredged up about 200 ocean quahogs, a Independent, 16 Nov 2013. the ages of many fish can be determined type of deep-sea clam, from the Atlantic by counting the growth layers of calcium sea floor off the coast of Iceland.Tests were • The oldest cat in the world today might carbonate ‘stones’ found in their ears – in a conducted on the shells to determine their be 31-year-old Nutmeg, who lives with Liz manner somewhat similar to counting tree age. As the shells grow at different rates at and Ian Finlay in Blaydon,Tyne and Wear. rings – sharks do not have such earstones. different times of the year, distinct layers The couple regularly feed Nutmeg treats What’s more, Greenland sharks lack other can be counted like tree rings. One 3.5in including tuna, cream and hot roast chicken, calcium-rich tissues suitable for this type of (9cm) quahog turned was initially and the old chap has his own room. Nutmeg analysis. Until now, determining their ages thought to be 405 years old became the Finlays’ pet in 1990. Spice, had been impossible, but the researchers and was promptly dubbed their other cat, kept bringing home a found a way. ‘Ming’, after the Chinese stray friend, and the childless couple “The Greenland shark’s eye lens is dynasty in power when decided to adopt the tabby. A vet composed of a specialised material – and it was born.This was judged him then to be five years old. “Nutmeg is like a lovable old grandpa,” said Mrs Finlay. “He is very gentle. He has changed as he has got older, just like humans do. He is grumpier now and his meow is more like a growl.” D.Express, 29 June 2016.

• According to Guinness World Records, a Siamese cat called Scooter celebrated his 30th birthday in Mansfield,Texas, on 26 March 2016, making him officially the world’s oldest living cat. “He likes to see new places and he likes people,” said his owner, Gail Floyd. He grew accustomed to accompanying her, and travelled to 45 of the 50 US states. Ms Floyd said that as a kitten, he liked to play in her hair and got julius nielsen used to riding on her shoulder, going with above: A Greenland shark enjoys a leisurely pace of life. inset: 507-year-old Ming went to meet its maker. her wherever she went. He would wake her up every morning at 6am, “talking” and

26 FT345 www.forteantimes.com strangedays TeRs neWs cA DuncAn siMPson / sWns.coM

above: (left-right) Poncho the 90-year-old macaw; Missan the swedish moggy, who may have turned 30; Pat the African penguin, who passed away last December aged 37.

jumping around, and was always waiting by born on 18 March 1990, making her 26. And Westmeston, East Sussex. Sheep usually live the door when she arrived home from work. 25-year-old Mummy Cat, living with Bran to about 10 or 12.The oldest known one died He enjoyed getting blow-dried after a bath Parker in Hindlip, Worcestershire, was shot in in 1989 aged 28. In 2012, the then oldest was and his favourite food was chicken, which he the abdomen and the face last June, causing killed falling off a cliff on the Isle of Lewis a was given every other day. her to lose an eye. One of the pellets was so month short of 26. Sun, 16 Mar 2015. close to her brain that a vet was obliged to • The all-time Guinness champion is Creme put her down. The Local (Sweden), 22 Feb 2015; • An African penguin called Pat, thought Puff, a Texas cat that died on 6 August 2005 Sun, 14 April; D.Mail, 7 June 2016. to be the oldest such bird in Britain and the aged 38 years and three days. Scooter died second oldest in Europe, died last December sometime before 8 April, whereupon the title • Britain’s oldest dog was mauled to death aged 37. She was put down by vets in Torquay, passed to tabby Corduroy, 27, from Sisters, while out on a morning walk on 1 August. Devon, because of her arthritis. Pat hatched Oregon (born 1 Aug 1989) – but should it Jack, a 25-year-old Yorkshire terrier, was at Paignton Zoo in 1978 but moved to Living really go to Nutmeg? Or maybe to 30-year-old bitten in a sudden and savage attack by a Coasts in 2003. She hatched nine chicks at the Henry, a ginger tom, living with Sally Brown black Lakeland terrier near his home on zoo, which has the largest colony of African in Norwich? Mrs Brown, 48, a veterinary Teesside. Ray Bunn, 70, Jack’s owner, said penguins in the UK. 9 Dec 2015. nurse, got Henry as an eight or nine-week-old he had just taken him out of the car and was kitten from a rescue centre in March 1986. putting his lead on when “the dog just came • Thousands of well-wishers helped the She feeds him on a Swedish cat food called out of nowhere and grabbed Jack on his side.” world’s oldest captive-bred panda celebrate Husse made from natural chemical-free Mr Bunn tried to fight the rogue dog off and her 38th birthday on 10 August. Jia Jia has ingredients. He also has treats of chicken and put an end to the mauling. “I punched it, but outlived the life expectancy of a zoo panda by fish verase l times a week. Mrs Brown has 15 it was about three minutes before it let go,” he eight years and has a healthy appetite. She cats, of which several others have reached a said. Jack died on the way to the vet. eats 15lb (6.8kg) of bamboo and fruit a day ripe old age: 24, 19 and 18. “Henry’s sight is Claims have been made for Max, a 29-year- in her enclosure at Ocean Park, Hong Kong. starting to fail now and he’s had a few teeth old mixed terrier from Louisiana, but his date She has joint problems, high blood pressure out, but in all that time he’s never had any of birth can’t be confirmed.The same goes and poor vision from cataracts. Metro, 11 Aug illnesses,” she said. USA Today, 16 Aug 2015; for Bella, a Labrador cross from Derbyshire, 2016. [CNN] 10 May; (Portsmouth) News, 12 May; whose owners believed she was 29, but Sunday Post, 18 May; D.Mail, 31 May 2016. because she was a rescue dog, her precise age • Poncho, believed to be the world’s oldest couldn’t be determined.The oldest dog ever parrot, turned 90 last October. The green- • Three other aged moggies should get a recorded was an Australian cattle dog named winged macaw, who starred in Ace Ventura: Pet mention. In February 2015 came news of a Bluey, who lived for 29 years and five months Detective with Jim Carrey in 1994, celebrated farm cat called Missan aged 29, due to turn before being put to sleep on 14 November with a walnut-stuffed cake. After she filmed 30 “this spring”. In the absence of a death 1939. D.Telegraph, 17 Dec 2015 + 3 Aug 2016; 102 Dalmatians with Glenn Close in the UK in notice, we presume Missan still walks among D.Mail, 3 July, 17 Dec 2015 + 2 Aug 2016. 2000, she was deemed too frail to fly back to us. Owner Åsa Wickberg, from Karlskoga, the US, so she was passed to Rebecca Taylor, southern Sweden, found her as an abandoned • A sheep called Dolly, living on the South a pet shop owner in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, kitten in 1985, and the family dog adopted Downs, turned 23 last year and was thought where she remains to this day – as far as we her as one of her own. A tabby called Tammy, to be the world’s oldest. Sharon Moore was know. D.Mail, 5 Nov 2012, 14 Oct 2015; Sun, 14 living with Anna Gough in Macclesfield, was looking after her at Moore Racehorse Trust in Oct 2015.

FT345 27 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

This month, the Christian fundamentalist who mainstreamed the apocalypse is summoned NECROLOG to heaven, while a pioneering investigator of the cattle mutilation phenomenon passes on

58 million copies, with four of catastrophes (the Tribulation) blown merchandise industry with them topping the New York Times presided over by the Antichrist. CDs, DVDs, calendars allowing bestseller list. The books became At the end of this, Christ (an the chosen to count the days a fi xture at every chain store and English speaker, naturally) will until Rapture, clothes sporting a airport bookrack in the country. The reappear in the Second Coming Rapture logo, a board game in ninth book, entitled Desecration: after which Armageddon, the fi nal which players earn “redemption Antichrist Takes the Throne, was battle between good and evil, will tokens” that can be cashed in published a month after the 11 take place. Finally the triumphant for eternal life, even a book for September 2001 terrorist attacks. Christ will rule in peace for 1,000 those who miss the great event, LaHaye and Jenkins became years (the Millennium) before the called Oops, I Guess I Wasn’t millionaires many times over, world comes to an end. Most of Ready (what to do if you miss the but unlike some others in the the Left Behind series concerns Rapture). fundamentalist movement, LaHaye the adventures of a group who LaHaye was anti-evolution, was not motivated by money. become born again Christians after anti-abortion, anti-Catholic, anti- On the surface, LaHaye’s the Rapture and who spend seven gun laws, anti-pacifism, anti-UN books were old-fashioned years racing round the world in (the notion of global peace he adventure stories, but their core fast cars and helicopters fi ghting regarded as a con-trick perpetrated MARIO VILLAFUERTE / GETTY IMAGES was theological, inspired by pre- the evil forces of the Antichrist – a by the Antichrist to postpone the TIM LAHAYE millennialism: the Second Coming Romanian-born Secretary General apocalypse), anti-environmentalist, The Reverend Tim LaHaye, son of is imminent and that before it of the UN whose troops are called anti-Harry Potter, anti-feminist and a Ford auto worker from Detroit, comes, Christ will summon all “peacekeepers” and who is based virulently anti-gay. He believed was one of the most influential “true believers” who will be lifted in Baghdad. that a precondition of the Second Christian fundamentalists in up to Heaven in the Rapture (an Opinion polls carried out in Coming was that the state of Israel America, credited with moving idea popularised in the 1830s by 2002 suggested that a large should be re-established within its religious fanaticism based on belief John Nelson Derby, founder of the percentage of Americans regarded biblical borders, and that the Battle in an imminent apocalypse into Exclusive Brethren). The fi rst novel the novels less as pulp fi ction of Armageddon would be brought the American cultural mainstream. in the series – Left Behind: A Novel than tomorrow’s news reports. about by hostile forces, based in In 1984 he founded the American of the Earth’s Last Days (1995) – They found, for example, that Iraq, mounting a massive attack Coalition for Traditional Values, opens with passengers vanishing nearly a quarter believed that on Israel. which – with his wife Beverly’s from on board a transatlantic the Bible had predicted the 9-11 The Reverend Tim LaHaye, counter-feminist Concerned Boeing 747 leaving nothing but attacks; about the same number Christian fundamentalist, born Women for America – became two piles of clothes, jewellery and believed that Jesus would return Detroit, Michigan 27 April 1926; of the most influential lobby groups dental fi llings. in their lifetimes, and nearly two died San Diego, California 25 July in the US. In 2003 the Institute for LaHaye described the book in three (including, or so it was 2016, aged 90. the Study of American Evangelicals as “the fi rst fi ctional portrayal of said, President George W Bush) described LaHaye as the most events that is true to the literal believed the Book of Revelation’s TOM ADAMS influential Christian leader – ahead interpretation of Bible prophecy.” apocalyptic prophecies to be Travelling west from Texas in 1970, of Billy Graham – in the US in the However, it is not the fi rst Rapture broadly accurate. Tom Adams and Gary Massey previous 25 years. novel – or even the fi rst Rapture LaHaye was an enthusiastic drove to Colorado to research He designed a self-improvement book to bear the title Left Behind. conspiracy buff, convinced that the 1967 “Snippy the Horse” scheme called the LaHaye Another was published by Peter the Illuminati was just one of many mutilation case [FT68:23]. Adams Temperament Analysis (based and Patti Lalonde just before the groups working to “turn America subsequently became known for on the mediæval theory of the release of LaHaye’s. Further, there into an amoral, humanist country, investigating cattle mutilations. four humours). He wrote dozens are startling parallels between ripe for merger into a one-world Starting in 1978, he published the of books – including self-help Left Behind and a 1970 novel socialist state”. In Rapture Under newsletter Stigmata to track cattle manuals like How to Win over entitled 666 by Salem Kirban. As Attack he wrote: “I myself have Depression (1974), Anger Is a Carl Olson remarked in This Rock been a forty-five year student of Choice (1982), Why You Act the magazine: “LaHaye has been in the satanically-inspired, centuries- Way You Do (1984), I Love You, the Bible prophecy business for old conspiracy to use government, But Why Are We So Different? over thirty years. I fi nd it difficult education, and media to destroy (1991) and the best-selling The to believe he had no knowledge every vestige of Christianity within Act of Marriage (1976) in which he of the books by Kirban and the our society and establish a new claimed that religious wives have Lalondes. While recycling might be world order. Having read at least sex more often and enjoy it more good for the environment, it isn’t fi fty books on the Illuminati, I am than non-believers. very appealing when it comes to convinced that it exists and can An unorthodox but powerful literature.” [See FT215:59.] be blamed for many of man’s element in LaHaye’s ministry was Left behind will be the inhumane actions against his fi ction. His Left Behind series of unbelievers – not just atheists, fellow man during the past two 12 novels (co-written with Jerry B but also Roman Catholics, hundred years.” Jenkins) became the publishing Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists The Left Behind novels spawned phenomenon of the turn of the and everyone else, who will a 2014 fi lm adaptation starring 21st century, selling more than then endure seven years of Nicolas Cage as well as a full-

28 FT345 www.forteantimes.com strangedays

and animal mutilations as well as the associated black (mystery) helicopters. , The most prominent theories concerning the source of cattle and animal mutilations were satanic cults, extraterrestrials, and black or covert government programmes. The latter theory is dubious since livestock could easily have been culled from government-owned herds away from prying eyes. Speculation in Stigmata was kept to a minimum. Adams gathered mutilation news with the motto “Consider everything. Believe nothing”. He possessed a photographic memory and encyclopædic knowledge in many fields including modern music. He enjoyed working behind the scenes, helping other researchers. He began work on Mute Testimony in 2000, combining his research work with that of his associate David Perkins. Early fairies, folklore and forteana in 2002, he gave Perkins permission to use his writings and materials in any way he wished and ceased all Simon Young FiLES A nEW REPoRT FRom THE inTERFACE oF STRAngE PHEnomEnA AnD FoLK BELiEF communication with him thereafter. Adams dropped out of paranormal research for unknown, possibly assume that we were dealing with a late source personal, reasons. Perhaps he was The figures on souTher fell and that the story had improved in the telling. tired of dealing with associates of the Souther Fell is an impressive north Cumbrian But the first detailed analysis was published in fundamentalist born-again persuasion. peak, with steep and sometimes scree-laden 1747, just three years after the last sighting, by His short marriage to Christa Tilton, slopes. In 1735, in 1737 and in 1744, spectral an author who’d investigated carefully. The best 1987-1991, may have triggered a figures were seen on these slopes from the report was published, meanwhile, after another retreat from pursuing paranormal farmhouses on the flats below. Apparently, a writer had talked to various witnesses, in 1787; interests, although he apparently single man saw the 1735 manifestation; a family and some surviving witnesses had given sworn continued research on a high level the second; and 26 people the third.That’s very statements in 1785. In fact, the only important throughout the 1990s. His friend Gary important. discrepancies in early sources are the years: for Massey alleges that when suffering The figures were not in the sky above Souther example, the 1747 account (in the Gentleman’s a humiliating incident during driving Fell, but moved on the mountain itself, so Magazine) claims, wrongly, that the last sighting lessons he vowed to never drive, a vow much so that it was possible to was in 1745.The Souther Fell he kept. I corresponded with him in draw the path they followed. spectres badly need a long 1990 and 1991 concerning cattle and The favourite 18th-century mosT of The study: there will be unexploited horse mutilations in Cochise and Santa explanation, namely that this contemporary reports in, as Cruz County in SE Arizona, and can was a fata morgana, or complex figures seem yet, undigitised Cumbrian confirm he did not enter the Internet mirage, is an absolute non- newspapers; not to mention in age. For many years he worked at Flex- starter, then; though another To have been the myriad of books written on O-Lite, and latterly at the Dollar Store, explanation, that of three low- the Lake District from 1750-1900. but was in dire financial straits for flying meteorites, is perhaps miliTary However, let me try several years before his death. More even less convincing. Most of immediately to introduce one than seven months elapsed before the figures seem tove ha been other datum that is frequently the research community knew of his military. There were formations of cavalry, there overlooked or downplayed. Every one of passing. were carriages with soldiers, but there was also the three sightings took place on 23 June: Adams privately published his review a man with dogs chasing horses. Midsummer Night’s Eve, the night when the of mystery helicopters and animal Is it possible that these were real people? fairies come out to play. In the drab 18th- mutilations, The Choppers – and the There are several considerations that suggest century accounts of the sightings there was no Choppers (1991), which is available not. (1) Some of the figures went abnormally room for the word ‘fairy’. But in understanding on-line at: http://www.ignaciodarnaude. fast; (2) the horses and men seemed to have what happened, we need to recall that com/avistamientos_ovnis/ had a single body; (3) the figures went over fairies were often seen as phantom armies; a Adams,Thomas,Choppers%20and%20 impossible terrain, including rock faces; (4) the mysterious militia seen in Lancashire in 1745 the%20Choppers-1.pdf numbers, particularly in the third case, were was believed, for example, by locals to be fairies Thomas R Adams, cattle mutilations astounding – horses paraded across the mount anticipating the Jacobite revolt. And fairylore investigation pioneer, born Paris, Texas for an hour; and (5) the figures left behind no was strong in Cumberland into the early 19th 6 May 1945; died Paris, Texas 20 Aug physical marks, such as hoofprints or thrown century. 2014, aged 69. horseshoes. Simon Young writes on folklore and history Terry W Colvin Usually, faced with this kind of evidence, I’d and runs www.fairyist.com

FT345 29 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.

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

PUT IT IN THE BLACK BAG, BELOW: Linda Moulton Howe clutching a mysterious PLEASE Someone had ET artefact... oh, it’s just her Regional Emmy award Just to underline, not to say hammer home, for her 1980 documentary Strange Harvest. my theme that ufology is mired in ancient found a strange cases, moribund thinking, and the recycling hard evidence when your own of rubbish, one’s attention has lately been government says there is nothing called to some recent effusions of Linda chunk of metal there, universities are scared to use Moulton Howe, a media entrepreneur and their resources, foundations will not former beauty queen, who has a taste for in New Mexico provide funding and peer review what most of us would call tall stories. science is closed off”, and handing Those with long memories will recall round a sample of what she called that not long before the Roswell 50th- high DC potentials would make it lose “the unidentified layered metal” anniversary schmooze-fest of 1997, weight. No luck there, either, which for her audience to “see and touch”. word surfaced on Art Bell’s Coast to should hardly come as a surprise. (See Fifteen years after Reiter had solved Coast radio show that someone had www.ufowatchdog.com/howeufodebris. Ms Howe’s problem for her, she is still found a chunk of metal in New Mexico, htm for the full report by one of touting this object as an ET artefact. and it was so strange and inexplicable Ms Howe’s appointed investigators, On 4 August she posted this on her that, naturally, it had to be a fragment scientific technologist Nicholas A website (www.earthfiles.com/index. of a certain well-publicised fl ying Reiter.) So there seemed to be nothing php?category=Headline+News): “Was saucer. It might have been more anomalous about this many-layered Bismuth/ Magnesium Layered Metal in interesting if somebody had claimed sandwich of bismuth and magnesium. NM UFO Crash A Superconductor?”, it was proof that the Mescalero The only thing Reiter could not quoting an unnamed Army sergeant Apache had once been accomplished establish in 1996 was how it had come “writing from “his Grandad’s diary alchemists, but there is a limit (never to be the way it was, and to what about 1947 security patrol at UFO far off) in ufology to which one may Earthly use it might have been put. crash in Roswell region” [sic] that jump to conclusions. Anyway, Ms In 2001, Reiter updated his report: “A lone surviving occupant was Howe was put in charge of researching “In 2000, one last revelation came found within the Disc, and it was this curiously layered piece of metal, our way on the origin of the artifact. apparent its left leg was broken… The and conscientiously sent it off to two The combination of bismuth and occupant communicated via telepathic qualified scientists to have it analysed. magnesium had eluded us for four means.” Ms Howe will surely give As far as I know, by the way, the fi nder years. But then one day, we found a recycling a bad name. remains anonymous, and it remains reference to an obscure industrial uncertain if the fragment actually was process used in the refi nement of lead. GET WELL SOON found at White Sands. The story is that The process, called the Betterton- I learned most of the above from posts and it was removed from a “wedge-shaped Krohl Process, uses molten magnesium links on Errol Bruce Knapp’s ‘UFO UpDates’ aerial vehicle of unknown origin” at fl oated over the surface of liquid lead. Facebook page. I am more than grateful to White Sands, New Mexico, in 1947. The magnesium sucks up, or pulls Errol for his help and hospitality while I Not that it really matters: but, had this bismuth impurities out of the lead! was researching my book about abductions, been allegedly a long-lost Rembrandt, Often, the magnesium is used over and and for many years of friendship. The calls for a less skimpy provenance over again… Could this little known original UFO UpDates email list was, in would have been long and loud. process have been the real origin of its heyday, full of interesting characters However, we are where we are. some unusual-looking metal residue, with interesting things to say, pro- and The investigators duly reported back that was then in turn promoted as a con- the phenomenon. The latest news that there was nothing unearthly about piece of alien technology?” about Errol, though, is not so good. It seems the fragment, which consisted of thin Job done, then, you’d think. But that sometime in the summer he had a alternate layers of magnesium not for Linda Moulton Howe, who heart attack and a stroke. It seems that (100–200 microns) and bismuth rejected Reiter’s fi ndings and subsequent surgery to install a pacemaker (1–4 microns), with traces of those of her other investigator, also installed a severe infection. At last zinc in the former. Someone who’d also failed to endorse report, he had cognitive problems and had suggested it was a high- the ET interpretation. Five could not speak, although he did recognise temperature superconductor. It years later, Ms Howe was his visitors. He is partly paralysed, and his failed those tests. Someone else telling the ‘X-Conference’ hands jerk involuntarily. But he is expected had proposed that it might be part in Washington DC, in to recover, although it will be long process. of a propulsion system, and best conspiracy-cover- I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing Errol

had imaginatively theorised up style, “what it is the very best, and a faster recovery than N HOWE TO that applying extremely like to investigate prognosticated. LINDA MOUL

30 FT345 www.forteantimes.com JENNY RANDLES TUNES IN TO THE NEWLY- UFO CASEBOOK RELEASED TRANSCRIPTS OF THE APOLLO MISSIONS

SPACE ODDITIES fashioned radiogram that tuned across a vast For as long as human beings have fl own into range of frequencies. By chance we lived very space there have been stories that odd things close to the fi rst BBC studios in a converted have happened to astronauts out there. church in Manchester where a new TV show From claims that the Apollo landings on the – Top of the Pops – began transmission. I Moon found structures hiding inside craters happened to deliver newspapers from the to space shuttles being followed by aliens, shop directly opposite and saw many bands these yarns are often on the dubious side. arriving. I also discovered here that you could Now NASA has released transcripts covering ‘tune in’ to the rehearsals live if you found the incidents reputed to have occurred during the ‘secret’ frequency and were nearby. Until the

NASA late 1960s/early 1970s when Apollo headed show moved into a new studio this was great for the Moon. These have been placed on fun. In attempting to look for other ‘secret’ their website www.nasa.gov/ and illuminate as an effective stress-reducing device. What it broadcasts late one night we came upon some controversies. obviously was not was anything really burning a very startling message. It was in broken Take Apollo 8 – the pioneer mission to fl y – as there is no oxygen on the sterile Moon. English and faded in and out in an eerie around the Moon without attempting to land. At the time nobody knew what the light was, manner rather like the astronauts described This was the fi rst time that humans travelled but astronomers have seen them from Earth – but you could pick out a few words including far enough to see Earth as a whole planet and called them Transient Lunar Phenomena “This is a test transmission” followed by odd against the black of space. That historic (TLP). No scientist thinks they are alien words such as “etheric” and ending with “this sight was beamed live to us all, rising behind spaceships. Outgassing from craters is one station is situated in outer space”. another world (our Moon), and I was one of theory – although there are several others, In January 1964 spaceflight was very new, millions to put it onto my bedroom wall soon including small meteorite impacts – because, but I thought this was a new Earth satellite afterwards. For the fi rst time the human race given its lack of protective atmosphere, – or even to my childish ears that it sounded could see how small, isolated and vulnerable the Moon is bombarded constantly by like a far more exciting alien message beamed we were on this drifting ball of rock. That such debris. In fact, Apollo 11 was later to Earth hoping to attract the attention of the single image inspired many towards ecological vectored to look at TLPs viewed from Earth latest world to reach up into the cosmos. Of crusades and to rethink our place in the by astronomers when fl ying over the crater course, it was no such thing. Years later when cosmos and whether we were alone. Aristarchus. Michael Collins, who stayed in working at the BBC I found out that others had Partly through need and partly by clever orbit whilst Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin heard it too, and some were better equipped planning, NASA had set this moment for stepped onto the surface, was able to see to track it to source. Some even claimed to Christmas Eve 1968 and for the three them and make scientific observations at hear “an alien language” spoken alongside astronauts to broadcast a Christmas message close quarters; but he did not joke about what the constantly rebroadcast message. In fact from our sister world. On the 40th anniversary they looked like, so nobody has misread that it made the local TV in Manchester in 1964 in 2008 commander Jim Lovell explained transcript as anything extraterrestrial. and Jodrell Bank staff were played a recording that they were given no instructions on what One of the most provocative transcripts of the message made by a radio ham but not to say – just that it should be ‘appropriate’ occurred during the Apollo 10 mission, which detected on their big dish. They suspected it – and so they chose to read from Genesis, was the last fl ight designed to go to the was a hoax by someone trying to trick people with all three astronauts taking turns talking Moon and test the lunar module close to the into thinking aliens were out there and told to the largest audience ever on planet Earth. surface but then come home without making the BBC to report it to the proper authorities. After circling the Moon 10 times early on that the fi nal dangerous stage. The mission was But it was not a hoax either. In fact, the Christmas morning, the crew then had to in May 1969 just weeks beafore Apollo 11 eerie broadcasts were not coming from Earth ‘burn’ the engines to propel them out of orbit took the fi nal step and successfully landed. orbit and never used the words “outer space” and head for home. If this went wrong then At one point, as Apollo 10 rounded the Moon, as I (and many others hearing them – or the they would be stranded days from home with Eugene Cernan heard a “whistling sound” recording made of them) swore they did. The no hope of rescue as their air ran out. When and remarked that it “even sounds outer- true words spoken were badly modulated and they came back from the dark side into radio spacey” and was like music. Commander hard to pick out but a Scottish radio expert contact, Commander Lovell announced the Thomas Stafford agreed he could hear it and used a beat frequency oscillator to clean burn’s success with: “Please be informed, Cernan added “like something from outer them up and revealed that, instead of what there is a Santa Claus”. To which mission space – who is going to believe it?” The third everyone thought, the actual words spoken control replied wryly – “That’s affirmative, you crew member, John Young, replied: “Nobody… were: “This is a test transmission for circuit are the best ones to know”. Should we tell them about it?” Cernan agreed adjustment purposes from a radio station of This was claimed by some to be a ‘code with this assessment, noting: “We ought the Hellenic telecommunications organisation. word’ to mean that on the dark side they to think about it some” – thus triggering This station is situated in Athens, Greece.” found proof of aliens. I would have thought speculation of an extraterrestrial cover-up. Our minds had been startled by the oddity and – and Lovell confirmed in 2008 – it was just In the end, the commander, Tom Stafford, rushed to identify what we were listening to, an appropriate way of saying they had all got contacted Houston to try to relay the sounds so found a form that matched the context we the one present they wanted that Christmas and the matter fi zzled out unresolved. There were placing onto the message and an Earth- and would be coming home to their families. have been numerous suggestions about what bound long distance radio transmission from Again and again in mission transcripts you will the crew were listening to. Some scientists southern Europe was ‘heard’ yet ‘believed’ fi nd hopeful believers leaping to conclusions, suggested that it was noise picked up from by us to be an alien message beamed to our making innocuous words mean something one of the gas giant planets like Jupiter world from inhabitants of another. Was this they were never intended to convey. – known to emit huge amounts of noisy the same process that caused the Apollo Elsewhere in the Apollo 8 mission they radiation that would have been easier to astronauts to hear strange modulated sounds circled the Moon. During one of the live TV detect with the bulk of the Moon shielding the of natural origin crossing millions of miles broadcasts astronaut William Anders notes swamping noise from Earth. Another theory of space and then ‘decode’ them via the the crew see “a strange light down there”. was the spacemen’s minds were creating expectation of their minds as ‘space music’ Borman quips: “Is it a bonfire?” To which a musical pattern out of random noise by formed by joining the audio dots? Anders responds: “It might be campfires”. matching it to rhythms stored in their memory. As you can see, not all strange things Again, most people would accept that this Interestingly, I had a possibly relevant seen or heard in space have a mysterious was simply space humour. In a tense situation experience just before Apollo 10 that might explanation; a few instances are a little harder these transcripts are quite full of such asides be instructive. My family had a large old- to resolve, and I will look at those next month.

FT345 31 www.forteantimes.com FROMOUTER SPACETO YOU

JACK WOMACK has been assembling his collection of UFO-related books for half a century, gradually building up a visual and cultural history of the saucer age. Fellow writer and fortean WILLIAM GIBSON joined him to celebrate a shared obsession with pulp ufology, printed forteana and the search for an all too human truth...

ALL IMAGES FROM FLYING SAUCERS ARE REAL! PUBLISHED BY ANTHOLOGY EDITIONS.

s well as being an award-winning LEFT: Frank Edwards, Strange World (New York, Ace writer of speculative fi ction, Jack Books, 1964). FACING PAGE: A photograph of a Womack has been for 50 years a UFO over San Francisco, in Flying Saucer Review’s collector of printed material – World Roundup of UFO News and Events (New York, Abooks, magazines and eccentric Citadel Press, 1958). pamphlets – relating to the UFO phenomenon.The physical collection has now found a safe home at the archives of fountains as I did, in Puckett’s or elsewhere. Georgetown University, as the ‘Jack Womack That paperback, in retrospect, proved as Flying Saucer Library’, but Jack is also delightfully subversive a text as any I’ve read. sharing some of these pop-ufological treasures You’ve told me about your own fi rst time, but in the form of a book called Flying Saucers it’s been a while. Are Real! Given the title, the fact that this is a book about books – not nuts-and-bolts UFOs, JACK WOMACK: Local TV naturally led to the whatever they are – might come as a surprise world of non-traditional literature. I was eight to some. It’s a visual history of the late 20th when I listened to two morning show hosts century’s obsession with other worlds and discuss Frank Edwards’s Strange World and alien visitors, and mostly of what Jung called within an hour I was at the nearest Rexall “a modern myth of things seen in the sky”. Drugstore, in Lexington, Kentucky, pulling Or, as cyberpunk pioneer and fellow fortean it out of its slot in the black metal rack. They William Gibson has it in his introduction: saw a lot more of me as the months passed, “It’s the source-code, the veritable root of the and I started to fi nd other such collections – enigma… the only physical evidence of the Strangest of All, Stranger Than Strange, Son of advent of that meme...The truth, all these Stranger Than Strange – and got every one I years, hasn’t, as The X-Files had it, been out saw. Also haunted the single used bookstore there, but rather was in here. Within these downtown, which was a good one. peculiar volumes, these testimonials to In all of them I found hints of that sense of certain human needs.” wonder that my friends who read science fi ction from a young age describe fi nding. WILLIAM GIBSON: I walked into Puckett’s “FORT’S LO! Mine, however, came from thinking about the Greyhound Cafeteria, on Main Street in implications or possibilities of the Barbados Wytheville,Virginia, and saw this odd-looking Coffins or the Mantell UFO sighting, or any of type-only cover on the paperback rack: Book TERRIFIED ME. the old classics. of the Damned. It was an Ace book, an imprint Sometime in 1965 I found, on the rack, the I held in some regard. I’m not sure of the year, second Ace paperback Fort, Lo! The blurbs or how old I was, but I paid whatever fraction I HID ITIN MY on the back – “THE COW WHO GAVE BIRTH of a dollar and took it home. Ace subsequently TO TWO LAMBS” – were different, somehow, reprinted the other three volumes as well, CLOSETFOR to those on the other books. “To read Charles bless their hearts. Fort is to ride on a comet.” I bought that book whenVirginia was an Unlike the other books, Lo! terrified me. apartheid state, non-white Americans legally SIX MONTHS” I hid it in my closet for six months, afraid of forbidden to use the same toilets and water reading past the second chapter (even though

32 FT345 www.forteantimes.com

LEFT: A pair of aluminium foil Martians in Morris Goran, The Modern Myth: Ancient Astronauts and UFOs (AS Barnes and Company/Thomas Yoseloff Ltd, 1978). ABOVE RIGHT: A painting by David Huggins based on a close encounter at his Georgia farm in the 1950s. “These Little Guys seemed to come out of the sky. They seemed to be able to appear and disappear.” Linda Moulton Howe, Glimpses of Other Realities, Volume I: Facts and Eyewitnesses (LMH Productions, 1993). BELOW: Cecil Michael, Round Trip to Hell in a Flying Saucer (Vantage Press, 1955). Ted Owens, How to Contact Space People (Saucerian Publications, 1969).

I realise, now, I was a fortean by the time I DTs a few years earlier, no one ever took him fi nished the fi rst chapter).The implications seriously. and incidents described, and the way Fort In 1966, on a summer night when I was described them, was unlike anything else 10, in the heart of the second great UFO I’d encountered. It was like going from the fl ap, my mother and I were sitting in lawn red dirt marijuana of Strangest of All to the chairs and watched a slow-moving object CIA-approved LSD tested at Narco, outside of with revolving orange lights pass overhead, town, of Lo! I never came back. seemingly silent. We watched for maybe six minutes or so. Mother called the authorities WG: I had grown up with my mother’s account but nobody else had heard or seen anything. of a close sighting in 1948, near Oak Ridge, About a month later, my grandmother and I Tennessee, the year I was born. Classic cigar- were in the University of Kentucky football shaped craft, illuminated windows or panels stadium to see Fourth of July fi reworks when along its sides, described as resembling the the exact same thing fl ew overhead, but now windows of another passenger train when visible from a different angle, so it was easy yours passes it in the night. It had sped, to tell it was a plane with orange advertising. stopped dead, levitated to clear a ridge on My mother still didn’t believe it to be the our rented farm, then sped on, all in complete same thing. Nonetheless, that was when I got silence. She was the only witness, of course. my fi rst lesson in the validity of eyewitness Possibly a dream, confused with reality, or a testimony. waking one? I do believe she believed it had happened. So I had that to refl ect on, when I WG: I’ve seen several UFOs, all de- fi rst found Fort. Did you have any tales of the Unidentifying pretty quickly. One was a anomalous, in your family? small plane with the undersides of its wings rigged with illuminated panels, identified JW: A couple. My great-grandmother and her as such in the local paper, the morning after. two girls lived in a cemetery keeper’s house My favourite wasn’t actually fl ying, when in the middle of an old downtown cemetery sighted, but rather on the ground in a fi eld, in Lexington for a few months in 1906. One so that for about three seconds I utterly night my great-grandfather was patrolling knew that They had not only landed, but his beat, and in his absence she said unseen in a stunningly classic 1950s saucer! It was fi gures started pounding on the doors and she revealed to me as the car swung around a was ready to get out the double-barrel but turn onVancouver Island, then instantly didn’t, when the banging suddenly stopped. resolved into what it actually was: a pair They moved, not long after that. Southern ofVolks beetles, parked with noses facing cemetery weirdness, I always fi gured. one another, which happened to both be In the late 1950s, my uncle used to tell my the exact same shade of pale metallic mother and grandparents about seeing fl ying blue. Another was actually the reverse of saucers over the Kentucky River, where he a sighting: an identified object growing lived in a small cabin. As he was, at that time, gradually more mysterious-looking: seated recovering from a near-fatal attack of the on the beach at Spanish Banks, at sunset, a

34 FT345 www.forteantimes.com seagull fl ew out to sea from behind me. As I bookstores, I’d turn up the occasional old watched it dwindle, I saw it become a weird, hardcover here and there for a quarter or so. seemingly oscillating, steadily-pulsing point It wasn’t until 20 years or so had passed of brilliant white light, actually refl ected that I realised how many books there had sunlight on the bird’s wings, an effect I’ve been, and how many I wound up having in read of in the literature. Had I not observed front of me, all of which were ultimately it seemingly become that, I could never have most interesting for what they said about the been convinced that that point of light was a authors, and the beliefs and hopes and fears seagull. of their authors. What Fort did for me was make me more scientific, I think.That is, I became agnostic WG: I remember visiting your apartment for about everything, which I see as more in the fi rst time, and being impressed both by keeping with a system consisting of an your library and by your sense of what these evolving body of theory. Not that I don’t books meant. It was very eclectic, of course, believe, for instance, that homeopathy is and I recall being particularly impressed utterly ridiculous. How did your reading of by a mimeographed volume, bound in black Fort affect you, philosophically? electrical tape, declaring Dan Rather, of all people, to have been JFK’s assassin, and JW: Like you, I started to approach also by an extraordinarily elegant, privately everything in as logical a way as I could; and published, profusely illustrated coffee table after time came to see that it wasn’t so much book of someone’s enema bag collection. that even if fl ying saucers, or Bigfoot, or the Until then I had never thought to suspect Loch Ness Monster didn’t exist, the fact that Rather, nor had I known that enema bags, so many believed they did almost made them in themselves, could be regarded as erotic real, at least for a time. But, that nothing “ATTHE CORE objects. Needless to say, I was delighted. But could be automatically assumed. First, you meanwhile, I suppose, at the core of it all, the had to look at the data, as the data are. OFITALL,THE fl ying saucer collection was steadily growing. As I continued to collect books on these subjects, now no longer so much willing to JW: After the Condon Report came out in believe as just wanting to see how many FLYING SAUCER 1969, essentially saying that there was no different theories and notions could be reason for further scientific investigation of put forth before a believing public without UFOs, and at the same time we went to the evidence, and in what sort of way. By the late COLLECTION Moon, the fi rst thing that happened was that 1960s the old Strange collections had been these sorts of books disappeared, briefly. pretty much replaced by books on UFOs both WAS GROWING” Meanwhile, the essential demographic new and old, and I got those; and at the used began to split.You had books on connections

TOP: Howard Menger, From Outer Space to You (Saucerian Books, 1959). Menger was a contactee who met his fi rst alien – a blonde woman sitting on a rock – in 1932, aged 10, and was later taken to the Moon, where he was allowed to hold a space potato. ABOVE: This Venusian allowed Menger to photograph him in front of his ship.

FT345 35 www.forteantimes.com LEFT: Harold T Wilkins, Flying Saucers on the Moon (Peter Owen Ltd, 1954). Long interested in forteana, Wilkins turned to UFOs late in life and continued to demonstrate “a breathtaking willingness to believe anything”. Describing himself as “an open-minded skeptic” he proceeds to tell of an alien spotted in a small Kentucky restaurant, recognisable as such by his “five-toed shoes”. BOTTOM LEFT: Michael X’s We Want You: Is Hitler Alive? (Saucerian books, 1969, originally published 1960) was one of the fi rst books to propose a South American/Nazi origin for the saucers, and as well suggest Hitler survived in one of the secret Argentine saucer bases. BOTTOM RIGHT: Richard Daniel, The Elvis-UFO Connection (Castle Rock Enterprises, 1987). The book proposes that Elvis’s career was helped by alien beings.

between Bigfoot and UFOs, between mystery cats in Devon and UFOs; you had books on whether aliens were from here, or Earth-2, or somewhere else; you had books proposing the Moon was a big spaceship, that the Moon was hollow, that alien bases were on the Moon, and my old favourite, We Never Went To The Moon! Early on I widened the collection into pretty much all fortean categories, and then further into the collection I came to call “Human – All Too Human.” I would pick up UFO and forteana books I didn’t have wherever I found them. Atlantis and Watkins and Skoob always good for those in London; one of my biggest scores came during my fi rst visit to Powell’s in Portland, in 1994. Book barns in Maine. Old houses serving as bookstores, in Indiana. Stores in the hearts of barely-living downtowns.Then, during the fi rst year of Internet sales I found 90 per cent of the remaining titles on that list for which I’d been searching.The fl ying saucer section in my collection was certainly the most fully representative of manifestations of that particular phenomenon, presenting all theories from abstruse quantum possibilities to the likelihood that the Saucer people were possibly minions of Satan.

WG: I remember you having a fi le card in your wallet, or half of one, later in the game, that listed the legendary rarities, the un- obtania. Particularly one that chronicled weirdnesses of the Great War, virtually every copy having been incinerated en masse by the Luftwaffe, in London. Did you ever fi nd that one? And I remember you fi nding an Ogo-pogo volume on that card, in a nearby bookstore, on a visit toVancouver. And of course I still treasure the hardcover second edition of Lo! You gave me 18 years ago, not least because it was illustrated by a young Alexander King, who, as a frequent guest on The Gary Moore Show, which my mother watched, was no doubt my very fi rst experience of a bohemian raconteur. When we met, of course, we also had Fortean Times in common, as much we had Fort. I don’t remember quite when I discovered FT, but it was fairly early on in my life inVancouver, and I’ve yet to miss an issue, purchasing each one from a newsstand, usually one or another somewhat specialist newsstand, one after another falling by the wayside as things digitised.Today it’s the only magazine I buy unfailingly, regardless of where I am. And I think it would be fair

36 FT345 www.forteantimes.com ABOVE: Photograph from A Pictorial Tour of Unarius, (Unarius Educational Foundation, 1982). The organisation published over 100 books transcribing channelled conversations with the space brothers, and various other-dimensional beings, whose arrival they had awaited since forming in Los Angeles in 1954. to say that at this point I’ve probably been Georgetown University having acquired The book of the exhibit, Flying Saucers Are influenced as much by the cumulative your saucer collection entire? Recalling Real! has just come out, and it is a fortean experience of FT as by the works of Fort the days when virtually every wall in your marvel of sorts in that I can actually have a himself. apartment was covered with collector-crafted part of my library in convenient coffee-table board shelving, you must have freed up book form. JW: I would concur with that.Yes, the considerable space in the process! I’d assume Much of the rest is still here, including aforementioned want list, which by 1998 that Dan Rather is still in electrician’s tape Is Dan Rather the Kennedy Assassination’s was down to 300 titles; and a year later, post Dallas, the enema bag compendium in its San Andreas Fault? Sadly, The Erotic Art of eBay/Abebooks intros, was down to 10. One place of honour, the cryptids still gazing the Enema was mouse-masticated during a was, indeed, Mysteries of the Great War by down on your now far more conventionally minor outbreak, and most of the cryptids HT Wilkins, one of the most entertaining adult domestic arrangements? have been deaccessioned to other friends. stylists in the fortean fi eld, which he later I am happy to note that Biblical Dinosaurs, entered. Mysteries was published by Philip JW: Exactly. The show will be held again in which posits that the Ten Lost Tribes of Alan in 1935. I suspect 90 per cent of the early part of next year at Georgetown Israel were in fact saurians, is still in its copies went up with their warehouse and University, when the collection arrives in full. place on the shelves. FT Paternoster Row on the heaviest evening of the Blitz, 29 December 1940. I looked for that one nearly 30 years before fi nding it, AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES fi nally, at an Australian Internet store. Still have that Ogopogo book, still JACK WOMACK is the author remember that bookshop, whose owner you of Ambient, Terraplane, allowed as had shifty hands sometimes. Am Heathern, Elvissey, Random TISTICH

glad your Fort gives you so much pleasure. BA Acts of Senseless Violence, I gave Richard Kadrey a jacketless fi rst of Let’s Put the Future Behind ZLATKO Book of The Damned, which I’m sure he still Y/ Us, and Going, Going, Gone. has. And I have my full set of all fi ve fi rst In 1994, he was the co-

edition Forts, three (Book of the Damned, MILK GALLER winner of the Philip K Dick Lo! Wild Talents) in dust jackets, the entire Award. He was born in Lexington, Kentucky, reprinted run of Doubt!, all seven Fortean and is a longtime resident of New York City. Studies, the nine bound FTs. Oh yes: Lo! is signed.That one being the most influential, WILLIAM GIBSON is the ultimately, the one I will likely always keep. award-winning author of Nothing would make me happier than to Neuromancer, Count Zero, see Fort’s works in the Library of America Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual series. Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Pattern Recognition, Flying Saucers Are Real! WG: So my understanding is that the book Spook Country and The by Jack Womack is published by of the collection, and the associated show Peripheral. He lives in Anthology Editions on 16 September, currently (August 2016) at Milk Gallery Vancouver, Canada. £36.99 + P&P from http://anthology.net/ in Manhattan, are the indirect result of

FT345 37 www.forteantimes.com T Uni eid oi rbbyinta fa isn’t probably it so period, n nlsssosta h inks used the that shows analysis and oco to manuscripts their of some off (nowthe Italy the in from Romano 1912 Collegio in it bought who dealer book enmade. been re clear (though ha scholars unlike else anything quite illustrations the and alphabet hindered thing. the of sense ha popular there to back it brought and Uni now it and u be but Librar Manuscript and hc ti rte ae akto back dates the written is on it paper which the that shows dating re mid-17 the in of Prague, II Rudolph Holy Emperor the Roman of possession the in it that to prior noted Kir the Athanasius scholar of library the to back tuc 38 www.forteantimes Vo ke cent ana main ke ve ve Po fi ft nc auciti h only the is Manuscript ynich . ve we rs 345 Since notebo rcsit traces book the into d rs rs tfia Gregorian ntifical yo MANUSCRIPTS ye a r afo h 15 the of half t t)we hysold they when ity) t’ Beinec ity’s re ve dta t origins its that nd r oehead some ars my the by disco its from name its takes 260:58-59) and FT130:42-46 (see Manuscript he fi ossetwt that with consistent .c re been Vo aca shortfall, nancial om ster Wi h etbigi oknown no in being text the a siMMons ian Vo ie in sides ly nc curdtemanuscript the acquired ynich Fr st wa vere lfrid ynich fErpa rgn,btin but origin), European of y. re OFMYSTERY malthe all om ra otlikely most s Carbon etdatmt omake to attempts peated Th ke r, Vo nge Ya Po si nundertaking an is is th th aeBook Rare ynich, y. ch century; wa le lish centur letter A er ve st, em oha to seems y , ev and ihisunique its with rseen er y, aware co ve en ness, ra ters ve ei has it ge my h Library the st ALPHABET KNOWN NO IN IS MANUSCRIPT THE te rosadundeciphered and erious tadhrei lutain,bti is it but illustrations, hermetic and xt re ce ived, of VO Ba yo e in bel YNICH ih be might u se arch vo fo of rg uein lume ot iven e unr her fo the ser perhaps has Th riddles renaissanCe impenetr Aldaraia). the with confused Vo been past, the in has, ’ or aiinadastrologer and magician court I’s Dr of possession the ex hnigta the that thinking r ynich, ihpol fthe of profile high e ea ex is ce te sec fohrpcla and peculiar other of istence al oddities… dable rt nc Th ab Th il o alone not ainly Ho of So Uni can long a still is the into inroads make to beginning otetx,h belie he text, the to these cross-referencing illustrationsand the in plants and constellations this. identifying just By done has he claims 4o the of 14 10 decoded cou’ cto’ad‘cumin’. and ‘cotton’ ‘crocus’, including clusters, culytasaeasingle a translate actually o ipygbeih racode, a or gibberish, simply not is it that suggesting language, one ev hwta it that show nlsn h atr fapparentwo of pattern the analysing xmnn the examining the of LEFT: le oko Soyga of Book e e. si nw oha to known is is ni the if en Resear , Ap rd wev vo coasi is scholarship Vo ve re wo Tr ve rJh e,woondacopy a owned who dee, John dr ihntetx listo claims text the within s le igitc tthe at Linguistics plied ue,icuigoethat one including lumes, oko Soyga. of Book rs dtetigi t entirety. its in thing the ad ynich er oprilyobscure partially to d uld e ti probably is it ue, t fBedfordshire, of ity , Vo ch tpe a,Professor Bax, Stephen Jo ex re nc ybl and symbols ynich Vo wo nDe Elizabeth Dee, hn Vo my ulse n2013 in published fo pect sear wa nc manuscript. ynich lw h rules the llows nc Manuscript ynich rd tr u there but – stery og before go to y as nw as known (also aeu of up made s ch gr we FA ve wo ve adually r couldn’t ers CING . re enin been , rd ehas he s who ta it s PA fo wo GE: r re 2 rd al we . 1

cesar manso / afp / getty images later spent some time in Rudolph II’s as lists of conjunctions, lunar mansions, been lost. court in Prague. It was so important to and the names and genealogies of angels, Also exercising a considerable amount Dee that when his scryer Edmund Kelley none of which are unusual in occult tomes of scholarly interest and speculation is the made contact with the angel Uriel, his of the period. It does refer to a number Rohonc Codex. The nature of this volume is fi rst question was “Is my Book of Soyga of of otherwise unknown (and still missing) closer to that of the Voynich Manuscript, but any excellency?” to which he got a manuscripts such as liber E, liber Os, liber it is far less well known in Western Europe, characteristically evasive angelic answer. dignus, liber Sipal, and liber Munob, which being Hungarian in apparent origin and It was known that Dee found it impossible embody the manuscript’s tendency to with research on it being mostly published to decipher the book and that it was of reverse words: Munob is Bonum (the highest in that language. The book is 448 pages significant hermetic interest, but until good) reversed, Sipal is Lapis (stone), and, long, with each page containing between 20 years ago, it was believed lost – hence in fact, Soyga is Agyos (Greek for ‘Holy’) nine and 14 rows of symbols accompanied the speculation that the volume Dee was backwards. What is unique are 36 squares by crude illustrations. The symbols are talking about was what we now know as of letters encoding further information, similar in some ways to runes, but there the Voynich Manuscript. However, in 1994, and it was the impenetrability of these are 792 different ones – which mean the Dee scholar Deborah Harkness located two squares that drove Dee to consult Uriel. set of symbols is at least 10 times the size existing versions of the book; the one Dee Since their rediscovery though, these have of the largest known alphabet – while probably owned was at the Bodleian Library been deciphered. Researcher Jim Reeds the simple illustrations include religious, in Oxford, catalogued as Aldaraia sive worked out the mathematical formula used military and civilian scenes. These do Soyga vocor, and a second copy was at the to construct the tables, based on seed words appear to represent life in eastern central British Library under the name Tractatus given for the tables in the manuscript. 3 Europe, although aspects of them suggest Astrologico Magicus. There are minor However, while Reeds could work out what the culture it represents included Christian, differences between the two manuscripts, the squares decoded to, it still remains Islamic and Hindu symbolism. The book but they do not resemble the Voynich completely unclear what they actually surfaced in 1838, when Count Gusztáv Manuscript in any way; rather they consist mean, as they take the form of magic Batthyány donated his library, containing of incantations and instructions relating to squares popular in the cabbalistic magic of the book, to the Hungarian Academy of demonology, magic and astrology, as well the Renaissance, and their significance has Sciences; but apart from a vague reference in the library catalogue of one of the Count’s ancestors about a century before, its provenance prior to that is shrouded in mystery. Analysis of the paper upon which it is written suggests it was made in Venice in the 1530s, but it is difficult to draw any further conclusions from the physical structure of the book. Various scholars have had a go at the script over the years, coming to a variety of conclusions. One researcher decided it was written in a Sumerian/Hungarian hybrid language – primarily by turning the book upside down and spotting what looked like a Sumerian ligature, then assigning Latin letters to the other symbols on the basis of resemblance, rearranging letter order as needs be to get an intelligible result.4 This seems to have been an attempt to bolster a fringe theory that the Hungarian language is descended from Sumerian, and, needless to say, has come in for some criticism. Other scholars have interpreted it as being in an obscure Dacian/Romanian script, while an Indian researcher, Mahesh Kumar Singh, decided that the whole thing was written left-to-right, top-to-bottom, (the lines, though, are right-justified, suggesting a right-left text direction) and in a previously undocumented version of Brahmi script from India, although this has been dismissed as a hoax. More credible is that it is in a version of an old Hungarian alphabet, and concerns aspects of the New Testament, which at least is relatively consistent with some of the illustrations. In recent years, computer analysis has suggested the right-left/top-bottom orientation of the script is correct, and that, like the Voynich Manuscript, the text is some form of language and not gibberish. Work is going on to try and use analogies from the illustrations to extract meaning from the text, in a similar way employed by Bax with Voynich. Nonetheless, most literary TOP: the Rohonc Codex. ABOVE: pages from the Book of Soyga, which refers to a number of lost texts. authorities in Hungary have decided that the Rohonc Codex is a hoax created

40 ft345 www.forteantimes.com The world’s mosT baffling The Voynich ManuscripT book finds a publisher... BeinecKe rare BooK and manUscript LiBrary

hile the latest research suggests that the Voynich manuscript (Vm) is written in a language, albeit an unknown one, Wmany previous attempts to penetrate the text’s mysteries have treated it as a code or cipher. William newbold, professor of mediæval philosophy at the University of pennsylvania and a WWi codebreaker, announced he’d cracked it in 1921, asserting that the manuscript had been written by 13th century polymath roger Bacon and concerned his invention of the telescope and microscope centuries before their modern ‘rediscovery’. newbold, though, had disappeared down a rabbit hole of decoding, turning to Hebrew Kabala, mediæval catalan, and the idea that every pen stroke in every character held its own individual meaning. the drawings in the manuscript are equally baffling: botanical illustrations of unidentified plant species; astronomical and astrological drawings; female nudes with swollen abdomens immersed in fluids; medicinal roots, herbs and vessels, and so on. since newbold, other researchers have suggested that the Vm is variously: “the 16th century equivalent of the Kinsey report”, dealing with women’s ailments and contraception; the narrative of an ancient Khazar civil war, written in an archaic form of Ukrainian; a secret cathar liturgy concerned with fasting to death; and a 16th century forgery designed to con rudolf ii out of the considerable sum of 600 ducats. the Vm was in the news last month (D.Telegraph, 21 aug 2016) when spanish publisher siloe announced it had been granted the rights to print a limited edition of 898 replica copies – although the price is likely to be between £6,000 and £7,000. perhaps a better place to start is at yale’s Beinecke Library (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/collections/ highlights/voynich-manuscript), where the entire manuscript can be viewed in digital form.

ft345 41 www.forteantimes.com They tell the tale of the activities of the Aero Club, and preserve the designs of the fl ying machines they allegedly developed and built – Dellschau illustrates at least 100 different ships, with names such as Aero Mio, Aero Jourdan, Aero Trump, Aero Schnabel and Aero Mary, driven by a secret anti-gravity substance that Dellschau called “supe” that both lifted and powered these vehicles. They are equipped with other revolutionary technology too: gliding keels, generators powered by chemical reactions, bendable rubber joints, revolving shear blades, retractable landing gear. The ships have decks supported by striped balloon pontoons; there are bright-coloured helicopter-like contraptions and sinister striped war dirigibles, all crewed by smart little gentlemen, and sometimes a cat too. There are tales of their fl ying exploits, full of jolly breakfasts and exciting journeys, although there are the occasional disasters too: a stolen airship tangled in a Sequoia stepHen romano gaLLery tree, its pilot dying of a broken neck, or Jacob Mischer going down in fl ames in the by Sámuel Literáti Nemes in the 1830s. This Aero Gander. The members of the club are was a solution fi rst proposed in the 1860s, THEJOURNALS named, and researchers have traced most as Nemes was known to have carried out a of them, so it seems they did exist – even number of literary hoaxes around the time CAMETO LIGHT Peter Mennis, whom Dellschau describes that the codex fi rst appeared, despite there as the pilot of the Aero Goose and creator being no evidence at all to connect him to of the “supe”. When he died in the 1860s, the book. AFTERA HOUSE he apparently took its formula to his grave, so the club could fl y no longer and was dreams of flYing forced to disband. None of these people, It would be wrong, though, to assume that FIRE IN HOUSTON however, can be placed in Sonora at the time mysterious manuscripts only emerge from Delllschau claims they were there, although hermetic Renaissance libraries. Equally strange works of a far more modern provenance also exist. For example, there are the Journals of the Sonora Aero Club, compiled by Charles Dellschau and recording the activities of his friends in the 1850s. Sonora is in California, about 130 miles (200km) east of San Francisco, and in the 1850s was a thriving gold rush town, and if Dellschau’s journals are to be taken at face value, the home of an energetic society that met weekly in a saloon, to drink, talk and plan the building of extraordinary fl ying machines. 5 There are 12 of these journals, and they came to light in the 1960s after a house fi re in Houston, Texas. Following the blaze, the owners turfed out a large quantity of largely unburned loft junk and took it to the local landfill – from where someone rescued these 12 volumes, which ended up under a pile of carpet at Fred Washington’s OK Trading Post. It was here that a student, Mary Jane Victor, spotted them and brought them to the attention of local art collector Dominique de Menil, who acquired them. The 12 volumes are roughly bound and held together with shoelaces, and in total amount to about 2,000 pages. Each page is a double-sided collage, consisting of drawings, newspaper clippings (which Dellschau rather charmingly called ‘press blooms’), watercolour paintings, and calligraphy in a code that has only been

partially deciphered. The pages are dated stepHen romano gaLLery and numbered, with the count starting at 1601, implying that there were another TOP: an amazing fl ying machine from charles dellschau’s Recolections second part [sic]. ABOVE: one of dellschau’s astonishing collages incorporating newspaper clippings, or “press blooms” as he called them. 1,600 pages that have been lost or destroyed.

42 ft345 www.forteantimes.com there are records of them elsewhere in LEFT: the Codex Seraphinianus created by italian California, and even in Houston, where artist Luigi serafini and published in 1981. Dellschau ended up. They appear to have been a secretive bunch, though, hiding their machines and keeping outsiders means Serafini has refused to reveal, but away. In fact, there was not even any this has not stopped scholars giving it the contemporary documentation of their kind of scrutiny that’s been applied to the efforts: Dellschau’s journals were only Voynich Manuscript. Encouragement was started in 1899, after he retired, to provided by the inclusion of a booklet in preserve their history. Or so it would the back of a later edition of the book: appear. It is impossible to tell whether named the Decodex, this actually turns the club actually existed, and, if it did, out to be a series of essays on the codex whether it was anything more than a itself, which, if anything, confuses things forum for imaginative yarn-spinning. further. Analysts agree that the writing Certainly, nothing about Dellschau’s system essentially conforms to ordinary airships suggests they could practically Western-style systems – i.e. it runs left- fl y, particularly their quasi-magical to-right in rows and involves an alphabet motive power, the “supe”. It is equally with uppercase and lowercase letters. (and probably more) likely they are the Similarities with Semitic writing systems fl orid imaginings of a retired man with have been suggested; some letters only too much time on his hands. Except, appear at the beginning and end of words, there is a nagging sense that this could which is characteristic of these, while explain something, which was not lost the shapes of the letters themselves on UFO researcher Pete Navarro. 6 He reminds others of Sinhala alphabets is convinced that Dellschau’s Sonora used in languages such as Sanskrit. Aero Club held the key to the 1896-7 Very little progress has been made on mystery airship fl ap that saw sightings the actual content, but two researchers, across 18 States, including meetings with working independently, have cracked the aeronauts repairing their ships and voices numbering system for the pages, which heard coming from them as they passed turns out to be a variation of base 21. overhead (see FT115:34-38). Navarro makes unusual. The Codex is 360 pages long and However, this lack of progress may be due a connection between the one named airship written in a cipher alphabet; in addition, it to the one piece of information Serafini occupant encountered in that fl ap, Hiram uses an imaginary language and even the himself has revealed. In a lecture at Oxford Wilson, and a Tosh Wilson, mentioned by page numbers are enciphered. This text is University in 2009 he explained that he Dellschau. Navarro claims to have decoded accompanied by illustrations no less baffling intended the book to create the kind of some of Dellschau’s mysterious calligraphy, than those in the Voynich Manuscript or impression that a child, unable to read, and says it claims Tosh Wilson spent seven the Rohonc Codex: a couple making love experiences when coming upon a book, years trying to rediscover the lost “supe” gradually transform, over a sequence of and that it is written in what is known as – and eventually succeeded. He also claims illustrations, into a single crocodile, which an asemic script. 8 This is writing that has the texts reveal that the Sonora club was then climbs off the bed and wanders off the the form and structure of a real text, but no part of a mysterious larger organisation page. There is a spread showing human legs meaningful content, making it something known as NYMZA. Needless to say, other supporting bizarre shapes; a father and son akin to a written form of glossolalia. This ufologists have gone on to claim this was stand on lily pads, wearing fi sh costumes; raises the interesting question: are all these a front for aliens. Whether or not they are a reindeer/camel hybrid carrying a human/ manuscripts essentially asemic? Are they all blueprints for mystery airships emanating seedpod mutant is transfixed by light content-free examples of automatic writing from an alien-controlled secret society, bounced off a mirror mounted on a castle; rather than fi endishly complex ciphers? Is Dellschau’s artworks are now worth big bizarre Heath Robinson devices proliferate; there anything there to be decoded, or are money on the outsider art scene; when some sets of eyes peering from the sea turn out to those attempting to make sense of them of the pages became available on the open be fi sh with eye-pattern bodies and eyebrow either doomed to failure or the projection market in recent years they fetched upward tails; one chapter, on physics, is almost of their own meanings into the semantic of $15,000 each. totally abstract. And so on, page after page. vacuum? FT The Codex consists of 11 chapters, split The CodeX seraphinianus into two main sections. The fi rst appears to auThor BioGraphy More recently, there has been the Codex be describing the natural world and deals Seraphinianus. The origins of this codex with fl ora, fauna, and physics, while the ian simmons is a longtime are not mysterious: it was created by second covers various aspects of human member of the gang of fort, Luigi Serafini, an artist, designer and life, such as clothing, history, cuisine and regular ft contributor and architect, over three years from 1976-79 architecture. It closes with what looks like communications director of and published in two volumes in Italy in an index, and has something that looks like the Life science centre in 1981. 7 Its contents, however, are decidedly an afterword at the very end. What this all newcastle upon tyne.

noTes decoding of the Voynich script”, 5 rebecca J rosen, “charles aa 7 Luigi serafini, Codex http://goo.gl/QqtqQ4 dellschau dreams of flying: the Seraphinianus, franco maria ricci, 1 marcelo a montemurro, amazing story of an airship club 1981. damián H Zanette, “Keywords 3 Jim reeds, “J ohn dee and that might never Have existed”, and co-occurrence patterns the magic tables in the Book of The Atlantic, 21 mar 2013. 8 Jeff stanley, “to read images in the Voynich manuscript: an soyga”: http://goo.gl/ra27hk not Words: computer-aided information-theoretic analysis”, 6 cynthia greenwood, “secrets analysis of the Handwriting in PLoS ONE 8 (6), June 2013: 4 attila nyiri, “megszólal 150 év of the sonora aero club: a tale the codex seraphinianus (msc http://journals.plos.org/plosone/ után a rohonci-kódex?” (after 150 of Ufos, art collectors and the dissertation)”, north carolina article?id=10.1371/journal. years the rohonc codex starts to shadows of history”, Houston state University at raleigh, 2010: pone.0066344. speak?), 1996, Theologiai Szemle Press, 10 Dec 1998: www. http://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/ir/ 39:91–98 houstonpress.com/news/secrets-of- bitstream/1840.16/6460/1/etd.pdf 2 stephen Bax, “a proposed partial the-sonora-aero-club-6567727

ft345 43 www.forteantimes.com fashion victims

This month’s Fashion Weeks in London, Paris, New York and Milan will no doubt witness some strange creations, but this is nothing new. Throughout history, people have tried to distinguish themselves from the common herd by turning to fashion and cosmetics, even when the results could be bizarre, harmful and even fatal, giving the expression “fashion victim” a whole new meaning. MARIA J PÉREZ CUERVO tightens her stays and reports from the runway.

A KILLER COMPLEXION LEFT: The Countess of Coventry died of Smooth, youthful skin has lead poisoning aged 27. FACING PAGE: been an ideal of beauty for Elizabeth I in white face make-up. millennia, due to its associations with health and fertility. In stop the Romans from using Ancient Greece, men favoured it everywhere: not only on the a tanned skin, the consequence skin, but also in architecture and of exercising in the gymnasion. statues. Mining mercury was a However, since women who slow death sentence, but one that worked outdoors would also have proved profitable for the Empire. been naturally tanned, pallor Lead continued to be used was considered indicative of throughout the Middle Ages, an female aristocracy, and therefore era in which a blemish, mole or a desirable trait.To fake an birthmark could be considered alabaster complexion, women solid evidence of witchcraft resorted, in the words of Greek (the so-called “witches’ marks”, poet and physician Nicander of supposedly made by the Devil Colophon (2nd century BC), to himself), with all the dire a “hateful brew compounded consequences such an accusation with gleaming, deadly white entailed. But perhaps poisonous lead, whose fresh colour is like make-up reached the height of its milk which foams all over”. Lead popularity in the Renaissance, was identified with Cronus or where a “virginal” white was Saturn and could cause acute synonymous with beauty. poisoning, known as saturnism. Venetian Ceruse – or its more Nicander described most of its poetic denomination, “the Spirits symptoms, such as hallucinations of Saturn” – became the most and paralysis, and recommended sought-after cosmetic. In A tracte purgative treatments. But critical containing the Artes of Curious voices didn’t dim its popularity: Paintinge, Carvinge and Building, lead provided an opaque Giovanni Lomazzo explains that foundation, not dissimilar to a it is “made of lead and vinegar; coat of plaster, a canvas over which mixture is naturally a which soot could be used as eyeliner and great drier”. It was not only used by women crushed berries or fl ower petals as blusher. to improve their complexions, but also “by Most contemporary sources equate the a “viRGinaL” chirurgions to drie up moiste sores”. Women use of cosmetics with the “deceitful” nature who used it, according to him, “quickly of women, which shows that things haven’t WhitEWas become withered and gray headed, because changed much over the centuries.The older this dowth so mightely drie up the naturall woman who uses cosmetics to attract a moysture of their fl esh”. younger lover became a comedic trope, and sYnonYmoUs Ceruse was also popular, both among in Xenophon’s Socratic dialogue Oeconomicus, men and women, in Elizabethan England. Ischomachus admonishes his wife, arguing Contemporary portraits of the Queen show that her pallor should be a “natural” With BEaUtY her as the ideal of beauty, with her golden red consequence of her containment within hair, high forehead and marble skin. In an era the oikos, not something achieved through petals.The fact that it was mined by slaves where pox was frequent, unblemished skin artificial means. and convicts indicates that its hazardous was a nigh-unattainable ideal. But of course, The Romans also favoured lead, but their effects (mercurialism, a disease that can we’re all the same in illness and death: the rouge of choice, cinnabar, or mercury sulfide, cause tremors, madness and death) were Queen famously suffered a bout of smallpox was less innocuous than a few crushed fl ower widely known at the time. Again, this didn’t in 1562, when she was 29. It left her skin

44 FT345 www.forteantimes.com

possession, and often the object of criminal acts.The popularity of wigs in Europe from the 16th century caused the fl ourishing of a profitable hair market, but also the rise of muggers who targeted women and children. In the 19th century, hair was worth twice its weight in silver, and 1869 saw outbreaks of hair theft in both New York and London. A letter to The Times warned readers that: “a young friend of ours has just had the whole of her hair cut off in broad daylight in Westbourne Grove”. Arguably, although the 1980s were a strong contender, peak big hair occurred in the 18th century. When Queen Marie Antoinette wore her hair in a pouf at the coronation of her husband Louis XVI in 1775, she started a trend that would define the period. Her own mother, Maria Theresa of Austria, lectured her on what was hair-appropriate in a letter written in the same year: “[The papers] say that from the roots it measures 36 pouces high and with all the feathers and ribbons that hold all of that up! You know that I have always been of the opinion that one should follow fashion moderately, but never carry it to excess. A pretty young queen full of charms has no need of all these follies.” Marie Antoinette clearly didn’t think so. Although a fashion icon of the time, she hadn’t been the fi rst one to sport this hairstyle: the previous year, the Duchess of Chartres had appeared at the opera with a monumental creation by hairdresser Leonard Autié, including decorations and ornaments such as ships, ostrich feathers and miniature animals.

LEFT: Marie Antoinette, whose elaborate coiffures marked the 18th century as the era of peak big hair. BELOW: The hairdressing excesses of the Ancien Regime are satirised in this print from around 1750:

LACMA “One must learn to suffer for one’s beauty”. scarred. 1 After her illness, she resorted to applying thicker layers of make-up. The fate of her royal skin wasn’t dissimilar to that of the commoners: lead and mercury lotions caused it to react; breakouts and impurities were covered by increasingly thicker layers, often without washing the previous layer off, and eventually the skin was corroded by the chemicals at work. This is why wearing skin patches became fashionable, as evidenced by a peddler rhyme from 1640 that offers “patches… of ev-ry cut for pimples and for scarrs”. Despite health hazards, the use of lead in beauty products continued well into the 19th century. The Countess of Coventry, a society beauty who died of lead poisoning in 1760 aged 27, was branded “a victim of cosmetics”. In 1869, several cases of lead palsy from the use of cosmetics were studied by the American Medical Association. At the same time, arsenic-based cosmetics TO were advertised everywhere, and even now, according to a report from the WHO, mercury is still used in skin lightening products. HAIR LIKE A RAT’S NEST Thick, lush hair is indicative of youth, health and fertility. Because of its æsthetic

value and its social role, hair was a valuable REN HOLMES / ALAMY STOCK PHO LO

46 FT345 www.forteantimes.com OSTINI / GETTY IMAGES AG NSE PRINT: LACMA PA JA HL CONTAINER + KO DEA PICTURE LIBRARY / DE TOP LEFT: A typical Roman unibrow in a portrait of the wife of baker Terentious Neo from Pompeii, fi rst century AD. ABOVE CENTRE: A kohl container inscribed for Queen Tiye, 18th Dynasty, Egypt 1410-1372 BC. ABOVE RIGHT: “Geisha Blackening her Teeth at 1pm”, a Japanese woodblock print of 1880.

The taller the hair, the more fashionable mixed with vegetable tannins from tea or the wearer: but such trends required a WhitE tEEth gallnut powder. In his Travels in Europe (1795), thorough dedication and industrial quantities Swedish naturalist Carl Peter Thunberg of styling pomade. Usual ingredients were describes the method: “Ohaguro... is prepared beef marrow, bear grease, mutton fat or pig WERE thE maRK from urine, fi lings of iron, and sakki: it is lard, the latter being the most expensive since fœtid and corrosive. It eats so deeply into the it had a “milder” odour. Essential oils, such as teeth, that it takes several days and much hazelnut oil, lemon and clove oil were added of savaGEsanD trouble to scrape and wash it away. It is so to disguise the stench, doubling up as fl ea, corrosive, that the gums and lips must be well moth and tick repellents.The hair was then WiLDanimaLs covered while it is laid on, or it will turn them covered with a special powder containing quite blue.” In early periods the custom was corn, wheat fl our, or milled and sieved starch, restricted to the men, women and children of sometimes dyed blue, pink or lilac. In the Renaissance, deadly nightshade the court, but it was later only applied to the The coiffure was so elaborate that it acquired the more poetic name belladonna samurai class and to married women, perhaps couldn’t be redone easily, and for this reason (beautiful woman) because it was used for as a symbol of fi delity. Lacquered black it was washed as little as possible. Women cosmetic purposes: when applied to the eyes teeth can still be seen in geisha quarters, but slept over several pillows, wearing special it would enlarge the pupil, creating a youthful also among some women in remote areas of nightcaps to protect it from mice and rats. glow and mimicking the natural effects of Vietnam, where white teeth were the mark of These caps couldn’t have stopped other sexual attraction.The drug could cause visual savages, wild animals and demons. vermin, hence the widespread use of silver distortion, sensitivity to light, increased heart In Elizabethan England, black teeth claws, often laid out with the silverware for rate and blindness. Symptoms of poisoning were also objects of desire, although guests to idly scratch their heads at dinner included confusion, hallucinations, delirium, for very different reasons. Sugar was an parties. convulsions and death. import, only affordable to the rich. Its Eyebrows have been plucked, shaved, consumption caused the upper classes to A DEADLY STARE painted and stuck on, depending on trends. sport rotting teeth, which became a status Eye make-up has also been used since Romans and Greeks favoured monobrows, symbol. However bizarre we may judge Antiquity. The Egyptians used galena which could be achieved with goat hair them now, black teeth weren’t necessarily mesdemet and khol, striking green and black attached with resin. In the Heian period in a health hazard, but the consequences of a pigments containing toxic lead and malachite Japan, the standard of beautiful eyebrows poor dental hygiene could have well been. (copper). Green was the colour of the eye was embodied in a practice called hikimayu, From the 18th century, those surgeons who of Horus, a protective amulet also known where they were shaved and redrawn as began experimenting with implants did so as Wadjet, derived from the word “wadj”, cloud-like smudges. In the Elizabethan era, by using the teeth of dead people, which or green.The practice was thought to ward eyebrows and hairlines were plucked to were cheaper than those sold by the living. off evil spirits, and women even regularly emphasise a generous forehead. Later, in the As quoted by Ruth Richardson in Death, painted the eyes of infants. Despite the 18th century, bold brows were back in fashion, Dissection and the Destitute, a professor of toxicity of these substances, recent studies and for those who weren’t blessed by nature, anatomy at Trinity College in Dublin said establish that some of the components patches of mouse fur were a popular resource. in 1831: “Very many of the upper ranks reacted against bacteria present in tropical carry in their mouth teeth which have been marshy areas, thus effectively protecting the A SMILE AS DARK AS NIGHT buried in the hospital fi elds”. Some of them wearer from infections. Eye make-up was so For a culture obsessed with teeth whitening could end up suffering the same fate of the important that it appears in the Book of the it is hard to imagine that black teeth were teeth’s previous owner, since illnesses such Dead: “Before presenting himself at the Hall once fashionable.This was the case among as syphilis or tuberculosis were unknowingly of Justice, the deceased must purify himself, Japanese aristocrats, at least from the third transmitted in such procedures. dress in white garments, make up his eyes century. The practice was called ohaguro, and anoint himself. Only then may he enter meaning “esteemed black teeth”, for which DEATH BY CORSET the realm of Osiris.” iron fi lings were dissolved in vinegar and Although in the popular imagination corsets

FT345 47 www.forteantimes.com RONTO STAR VIA GETTY IMAGES TO N ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES TO HUL RICK MADONIK /

ABOVE LEFT: A dandy being laced into his corset by his valet, c. 1800. ABOVE RIGHT: A toxic ‘A rsenic Gown’ seen in an exhibition of 2014. The striking shade of green was achieved by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, mixing arsenic and copper. BELOW: The dangers of tight-lacing illustrated in an issue of The Family Doctor, 20 April 1893.

might be regarded as a product of 19th women as maternal fi gures, domestic angels Joseph Hennella, a female impersonator, century fashion, they had already appeared in restricted to the family sphere, instead of collapsed on stage and died three hours later. ancient Crete.Tight lacing had a reputation more “mundane” human beings with earthly He was wearing a “corset tightly laced” that for causing health problems, something which inclinations. he used to conceal his “increasing girth”. is illustrated in one of the fi rst versions of Even though in popular culture corsets Hospital physicians concluded that the corset Snow White: the poisoned apple wasn’t the are linked to frivolous young women, men “‘caused a kidney trouble and induced a Wicked Stepmother’s fi rst choice for murder, also wore them, particularly dandies in the tendency to apoplexy”. but a fi nal resort after a poisoned comb and late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1821 asphyxiating bodice lace failed.The message King George IV almost fainted due to the DEADLY SHADES is clear: young girls, you’ll be punished for constriction of his corset. In 1912, stage actor The most expensive pigments have always your vanity. produced the most desirable colours, allowing Dizziness and fainting were frequent the wearer to stand out from the masses, who problems among corset users, since the wore muted, natural colours. Purple is the pressure restricted the blood fl ow. Technically, emblem of royalty because Tyrian purple, tight corsets could fracture a rib, which might obtained from certain snails, was the most then puncture a lung. Brisk movements could expensive pigment, and although there also affect vital organs such as the spleen was nothing deadly in this substance, other or the liver, and in the past, this could have pigments, such as the already mentioned been fatal.They could also cause miscarriages cinnabar, were certainly hazardous. when worn during pregnancy (they were, in Before Carl Wilhelm Scheele developed fact, used to conceal unwanted pregnancies), a new method in the Georgian era, green by inhibiting the expansion of the uterus. was achieved by overlaying blue and yellow. However,Victorian physicians blamed By mixing arsenic and copper, Scheele corsets for a long series of other ailments, produced a bright emerald green, highly such as gallstones, prolapses and the hazy toxic but remarkably intense both under and ubiquitous hysteria.They were also gaslight and natural light, which may explain thought to be responsible for weakened its popularity. In Britain, it was used in pelvic muscles and the delivery of children clothes, glass, soaps, lampshades, wallpapers, that were either crippled or developed low children’s toys, candles, confectionary and intelligence. But, asValerie Steele suggests even artificial fl owers. Mauve, the new hue in The Corset: A Cultural History, corsets were created by William Henry Perkin in 1856, also

N ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES associated with sex, so these reactions would enjoyed the same popularity. Sadly, arsenic TO have been a way of perpetuating the image of and picric acid were among its ingredients. HUL

48 FT345 www.forteantimes.com ABOVE: The fatal combination of theatre gas lamps and highly fl ammable muslin ballet skirts was illustrated by a tragic incident at Philadelphia’s Continental Theater in 1861 in which at least eight ballerinas perished. BELOW: Clara Webster suffered fatal burns whilst dancing at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 1845.

THE BALLERINA HOLOCAUST There were others after Clara Webster. NOTES Before the arrival of electricity, gaslight The solution of ammonia made the muslin 1 According to popular belief, lead poisoning also and fi replaces presented many risks for the stiff and uncomfortable to wear, giving it a made Queen Elizabeth bald, even though there fashionable. Crinolines, used to support skirts yellowish, not very attractive, tinge. Emma are sources that remark that she still had hair in in the 19th century and worn by women of all Livry, the star of the Paris Opera Ballet, died her later years. Hair loss is indeed a result of lead social classes, were highly fl ammable, and it in 1863; Julia McEwen, Fanny Smith, and poisoning, though it only appears in advanced is estimated that crinoline fi res killed 3,000 others from Marseilles, New York, Liverpool stages. women between 1850 and the late 1870s in and Naples were further casualties. the UK.The garment also caused numerous SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY bizarre accidents, dragging women into the THE HORROR, THE HORROR Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the sea or blowing them off cliffs. The list of fashion-related deaths and injuries Destitute: The Politics of the Corpse in Pre- The fatal combination of gas lamps is never-ending: the so-called ‘lotus feet’ Victorian Britain, 2001. and highly fl ammable muslin skirts was caused by foot binding; hatters afflicted by Christine A Smith, “So Tasteful: A Note About responsible for the tragic deaths of several mercurialism; collars that induced apoplexy; Iron-Gall Ink”, 2003. youngVictorian ballerinas.The papers of terrifying tapeworm diets; crocodile Valerie Steele, The Corset: A Cultural History, March 1845 mention the “Shocking death of excrement baths and face masks; powdered 2001. Miss Clara Webster”. While the ballerina was human skull concoctions to promote Carl Peter Thuberg, Travels in Europe, 1795. performing in Revolt of the Harem, splashing vigour; leeches to induce pallor; Xenophon: Oeconomicus, c. 362 BC. water on the other slave-girls, her muslin urine baths for supple skin; dress brushed against a radioactive cosmetics to “activate gas lamp and caught fi re. circulation”. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY The horrified audience, We may laugh at the excesses of among which was her mother, watched our forebears just as we shake our MARIA J PÉREZ her burn. A carpenter in the wings heads when we see the latest celebrity CUERVO is a intervened, throwing her to the deformed by cosmetic surgery or Bristol-based journalist ground and extinguishing the numbed by injections of botulinum with a penchant fi re. Despite his heroic efforts, toxin. Perhaps we should pity our for the Gothic who Webster died two days later. human condition instead, and specialises in history, The coroner advised the use of admit that this will continue for archæology, myth and a solution of muriate of ammonia as long as we are humans. Isn’t mystery. over the muslin and a network of fashion, after all, a clumsy way of A regular FT wire over the lamps to prevent asserting our unique identity, an attempt to contributor, she is on similar accidents in future. outrun eternal oblivion? Twitter as @jpcuervo.

FT345 49 www.forteantimes.com THE HIEROPHANT’S APPRENTICE PRESENTS cbUilDinG a c fortean library 13. GREED, GOD, BEARDS – AnD DUELS

in billets d’état, at their nominal value, “All the world is strange, except thee and me,” said Robert Owen, approximately, to his although worth no more than a hundred business partner William Allen, “and even thou art a little queer.” We all recognise odd and sixty livres in the market.” behaviours in individuals we know, even in ourselves if we’re lucky, and find ways of It sounded like a good idea at the time. avoiding them or working around them, and sometimes even of finding ways to explain The notes became more valuable than their them. The best kind – wits, comics, unselfconscious eccentrics, certain kinds of agent face value, while there was a frenzy to buy provocateur – we find entertaining, and often don’t enquire very closely into why they are shares in the company. The latter had, in the way they are, although perhaps we should. Monsters, on the other hand, tend to be reality, nothing substantial to offer, but put under all manner of microscopes, but remain enigmatic, for all the ink spilled. The d’Orléans saw the vast profits accruing to 20th century’s superstars of depravity and depredation – such as Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol the French treasury and in stages converted Pot – persistently defy wholly credible explanation. Part of the reason for our bafflement Law’s company into a national bank and and retreat into (perhaps correct) terms like ‘evil’, is the sheer scale on which these extended its remit to a monopoly on people maimed, terrified, tortured and slaughtered; but in pondering that, we cannot virtually all France’s trade and tax affairs – avoid the profoundly discomforting truth that they required – and acquired – huge which in reality it had no hope of handling. numbers of accomplices in realising their unspeakable ambitions. As individuals we all And meanwhile, it issued amounts of paper do strange things. En masse we’re capable of doing and believing even stranger ones, money that vastly exceeded any ability some quite horrible, but to general relief by no means all of them are the product of to redeem it in metal, and at the same unalloyed wickedness. As we see in this month’s classic fortean volume. time kept devaluing the coinage. In effect, the inflated (and inflating) value of the scheme’s stocks was underwriting the paper Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the issue more than could be covered by assets currency. There was much vain resistance Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay in land, bullion, or the coinage itself. Law in parliament. Law too saw the folly of was first published in 1841; its final, (1671–1729) was a tall, handsome dandy this, and was fired for his pains. Mackay expanded edition came out 11 years later. who for years lived by gambling in the takes one lightly through the madness of Not all the many delusions it describes great cities of Europe – he had skipped what followed until, of course, it all ends were popular, and not all the madness it gaol in England after killing a man in in tears, with the largely blameless Law mentions involved crowds. But it’s a hard a duel over a lady – the while refining exiled and dying in penury. Today, what title to beat. (This is also a thick square his economic ideas and breaking the d’Orléans did would be called ‘quantitative book that’s a bit tricky to read upon the hearts (and perhaps more) of delectable easing’ (of which central banks have been interior-sprung – probably more so in a aristocratic maidens, until he happened so confidently fond of late), and the tale hammock, rowing boat or space capsule.) to be in the right place at the right time. Mackay tells is useful ammunition for those Crowds, delusions, madness and greed are Namely, Paris in 1715, when Louis XIV who would argue for a return to some kind nonetheless the themes of the first three died. His heir was but five years old, and of gold standard for currency; or even that chapters, which describe the Mississippi the Duc d’Orléans became his regent. He governments should, from time to time, at Scheme of 1719–21 in France, the British knew Law personally, and was well aware of least try to learn from history. As if. South Sea Company bubble (which hit its his ideas about paper money. Thanks to the Having covered greed in the affairs peak in 1720), and the tulip mania that Sun King’s penchant for waging expensive and failures of the Mississippi scheme, overtook the Netherlands in the 1630s. wars, France was in effect bankrupt: and South Sea bubble and tulip-mania, Mackay Mackay is better on anecdotes and the revenue from taxes, already inadequate moves to the no less economically peculiar people involved than on the financial to cover the interest on the national debt, business of alchymy (his spelling) and its intricacies of the first o,tw and his accuracy was depleted by the peculations of its many would-be practitioners. In this long on the extent and effects of the tulip gatherers. D’Orléans was sympathetic when and detailed treatment we don’t get much fad has been questioned by economists Law “proposed to the regent… to establish by way of recipes or discussion of their and historians. Wikipedia, for once, has a company that should have the exclusive cryptic language and symbols. These may a well-sourced and informative article privilege of trading to the great river have been deliberately indecipherable on the mania, for those who want to read Mississippi and the province of Louisiana, (Mackay suggests no allegedly further. Loyalists will look to erstwhile on its western bank. The country was successful alchymist would pass on his FT publisher Mike Dash’s Tulipomania supposed to abound in the precious metals; esoteric knowledge, even to his fellow (Gollancz, 1999) for a critical account. and the company, supported by the profits practitioners), on the altogether logical Mackay, however, was a journalist by of their exclusive commerce, were to be the grounds that if we could all transmute trade, and was after a good story. The sole farmers of the taxes and sole coiners base metals into gold, we’d all end up birth of the Mississippi Scheme lay in of money. Letters patent were issued, as poor as we were before. To us, having Scotsman John Law’s essentially sound incorporating the company, in August 1717. a sub-zero interest in the subject, this idea of replacing gold, silver and copper The capital was divided into two hundred omission of the impenetrable comes as a coinage with paper notes. The notes’ value thousand shares of five hundred livres relief. Instead we have potted biographies would be assured, in that no bank could each, the whole of which might be paid of alchymy’s adherents, several of which

50 FT345 www.forteantimes.com are wonderfully gossipy and LEFT: Charles Mackay: journalist, poet, scandalous, all of which end in songwriter and chronicler of folly. failure, sometimes involving fraud, or at least confidence tricks, and frequently delusion. enamoured of their curls, more- We get a good insight into the or-less willingly coughed up their charlatanry of the Comte de kopeks, much to the benefit of St Germain, who rarely quite the imperial coffers. claimed to be hundreds if not The next chapter covers the thousands of years old, or even Crusades, which Mackay justly an alchymist, but let others regards with some cynicism – infer as much from his fanciful “Europe expended millions of elaborations on his erudition her treasures, and the blood of and seemingly inexhaustible two millions of her children; memory. The really rather and a handful of quarrelsome sad tale of Dr John Dee and knights retained possession his mutually manipulative of Palestine for about one relationship with Edward hundred years!” – and doesn’t Kelly, as Mackay tells it, shirk the appalling rapacity and would make fine Sunday-night bloodthirsty antisemitism of the television. As would the most Second Crusade as it wended its entertaining section – that on way across Europe. Then follow Joseph Balsamo, better known chapters on witchcraft (or more as the Count de Cagliostro, particularly the burning and and his genuinely aristocratic hanging of alleged witches), (but fortune-deprived) wife, slow poisoners, haunted houses, whose pulchritude played no popular follies of great cities small part in their nefarious (mostly on fads in London slang), endeavours, which, like Dee’s, the popularity of thieves and sometimes involved purporting outlaws (still going strong), to raise the spirits of the dead. duels and ordeals, ending After many an adventure and with an unenchanted survey

n ArCHive / GeTTy iMAGes narrow squeak, they were of the religious relics industry.

To finally bbna ed in Italy by the Surprisingly, Mackay seems not Hul Pope as freemasons, heretics to have heard of the tragicomic and sorcerers; he was condemned to life duel between Messrs Grandpré and de imprisonment, she to immurement in a “the books Pique of Paris in 1808, so we shall regale nunnery (spot the difference, eh?). you with it. It seems that M. de Grandpré Next up in the book are chapters on that the discovered the perhaps aptly named modern prophecies, fortune telling, Mlle Tirevit, a dancer or thespian of the ‘the magnetisers’ from Paracelsus to worlD calls operatic class, tenderly ministering to contemporary ‘animal magnetism’, and the the equally well-named M. de Pique in a truly strange brief survey of the influence immoral are manner that Grandpré felt should more of politics and religion on the hair and properly have been bestowed upon his beard. Mackay starts by slightly misquoting books that own person. He demanded satisfaction. St Paul (1 Corinthians 11:14), which the Apparently considering themselves to be King James version gives as: “Does not show the of elevated mind, the pair took to the air even nature itself teach you, that, if a man in hot air balloons, of identical design, has long hair, it is a shame unto him?” worlD its specially constructed for the occasion. Read on in the Epistle, though, and it These ascended to some 2,000ft (600m) becomes a trifle clearer why Paul says own shame.” above Paris, whereupon the antagonists this, and enjoins men to pray bareheaded. opened hostilities – with blunderbusses, Paul sought to make Christianity distinct Oscar Wilde no less. M. de Pique fired first, but missed. from its Judaic parent. Jewish men wore M. de Grandpré then fired his mighty their hair long and prayed with their piece, and holed his opponent’s balloon. heads covered. Jewish women traditionally in this respect knelt before him to receive Gravity prevailed: the contraption covered their hair at all times. Paul his blessing, he would whip it out slily, plummeted from the sky, crashed into a enjoined men to shear their locks and pray and cut off a handful, and then, throwing rooftop, and splattered M. de Pique and bareheaded, and women to regard their it in his face, tell him to cut off all the his unlucky pilot across the tiles. Not hair as an ornament, but to cover their rest, or he would go to hell.” For the most an example of the madness of crowds, heads when praying. part, Europe’s royalty and aristocracy exactly, but certainly of four foolhardy From the early Middle Ages in Europe, ignored the Church’s strictures. Over the folk who provided a spectacle for a vulgar Paul’s by then hardly-relevant injunction centuries, fashion was more powerful than multitude. FT led to various ecclesiastical decrees, piety. Shorn versus luxurious locks did fulminations and anathemas against distinguish the violently opposed sides Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular men growing tresses and beards. Mackay in the bloody English Civil War, but no Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, reports: “St Wulstan [1008–1095], Bishop more than a muttering was heard from the Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1852/1932. Also of Worcester, was peculiarly indignant Establishment in the 1960s when cheerfully available in other reprints (see Amazon), whenever he saw a man with long hair. rebellious hippies, and then youth in and online from Project Gutenberg, and He declaimed against the practice as one general, went for the hirsute look. Mackay (PDF) from http://www.classicly.com/ highly immoral, criminal, and beastly. He concludes his chapter by recounting the books/memoirs-of-extraordinary-popular- continually carried a small knife in his crafty tax imposed on his hairier male delusions-and-the-madness-of-crowds/ pocket, and whenever any body offending subjects by Peter the Great. Russians, much download_in_format/pdf

FT345 51 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 A new home for the Nanteos Cup

TED HARRISON explains how the ‘Welsh Holy Grail’ has finally found a safe home in Aberystwyth

in its curative properties. A reward was TED HARRISON is a former BBC offered for its safe return and an appeal religious affairs correspondent, was broadcast on BBC Crimewatch. “I and regular FT contributor. His don’t want to say we are hunting the Holy latest book is The Death and Resurrection of Elvis Presley. Grail,” a police spokesman said, “but we are investigating a burglary”. A year later, the cup was handed he famed Nanteos Cup has a over to the police at a pre-arranged new home. After a turbulent and rendezvous. No details have been T disputed history, culminating in released and no charges have been its recent theft and mysterious brought.The family suspects the police return (see FT319:20, 331:23), it is know who was responsible, but what now safely housed in a glass case at really matters to them is that the The National Library of Wales in Nanteos Cup has been recovered. Aberystwyth. The police believe its theft was well It is barely recognisable as a cup at all planned. Might it have been taken – just a small surviving section, barely to heal someone who did not wish to 4in (10cm) across, of a wooden bowl. reveal their identity, or was the burglary Yet it is a powerful relic with reputed the first time in 1878 at a meeting ABOvE: The associated with a spate of thefts of other healing powers. Some call it the Welsh in Lampeter of the Cambrian Nanteos Cup. religious objects in the area? Holy Grail, connecting it with the cup Archæological Society, and its BELOW: George The family concluded, reluctantly, that used by Christ at the Last Supper. In reputation spread further afield. George Powell, one-time it was unwise to keep so sacred a relic in other legends, it is a cup fashioned from Powell (1842-1882), the then owner, custodian of private hands and it was offered to the a piece of the True Cross on which Jesus was an incurable romantic and loved to the Cup and National Library of Wales. embellisher of its was crucified. encourage and embellish the tales of legend. So what exactly is the Nanteos Cup For many years, the cup was owned Nanteos: one unverified, and unlikely, and how did it gain its sacred reputation? by the Powell family of Nanteos – a story is that Richard Wagner visited the The archæologist Professor David Austin, mansion and estate in Cardiganshire, house and wrote his opera Parsifal after of The University of Wales Trinity St Wales.The story goes that at the time seeing the cup. David, believes it could well be the of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, The Nanteos Cup, though, is probably cup used at Strata Florida for drinking during the reign of HenryVIII, the cup not a 2,000-year-old holy relic but the waters of the abbey’s holy well. was brought in secret to Nanteos by a mediæval mazer, a drinking bowl Over time, in local folklore the reputed seven monks from the Cistercian abbey popular with monks for use on special supernatural healing properties of of Ystrad Fflur (Strata occasions, dating from the waters came to be associated with Florida) some 15 miles the 14th or 15th century. It the drinking vessel. “Recent work at (24km) inland.They hoped has, however, never been Strata Florida now suggests an important the relic would be safe carbon-dated and the wood role for water, drawn from an anciently there; while the abbey was from which it is carved, sacred landscape, in the Abbey’s never restored, and is now wych elm, is not suitable for foundation design and purpose. Much a ruin, the cup was passed dendrological dating – so of this coincides with elements of the down the generations. the stories persist, and when tradition assigned to the famous Nanteos It was reputed to have the last family owner, Fiona Cup”. healing properties.The sick Mirylees (whose mother Whether the monks who rescued the drank from it, hoping for a had inherited Nanteos from cup from the king’s agents believed that cure, and some even chewed her cousin Margaret Powell what they held in their care was indeed the edges to ingest a piece in 1952), handed the cup the Holy Grail, or perhaps a piece of the of the relic.The Powell to the Library she said that True Cross, is now no longer known. But family would lend the cup, on request, she hoped its healing powers would they must have believed it was something but always asked for money or valuables continue to be recognised. more than an ordinary wooden cup to as surety, to be redeemed on its safe Nanteos Mansion was sold in 1961 have chosen it, of all the treasures of the return. A scrap of paper has survived, and is now a hotel, but the Mirylees abbey, to be saved. dated November 1857, showing a pledge family kept the cup and continued to “The Holy Grail never existed in the old of £1 to secure the cup and a note of its lend it on request.Two years ago, it county of Cardiganshire,” says folklorist safe return. was stolen when on loan to an elderly Juliette Wood, “but a flourishing folk The cup was shown in public for woman in Herefordshire who believed culture is alive and well.” FT

FT345 53 www.forteantimes.com forum Videogames and japanese folklore

be immortalised as a Pokémon was the Poked by a Pokémon! yokai Yuki-Onna, or ‘Snow-Woman’, a sort of succubus who became Froslass in the Nintendo games.Yuki-Onna is generally depicted in legend as a As Pokémon Go mania spreads across the world like electronic ebola, beautiful naked ghost-maiden doomed sd TUCker explores the lovable little creatures’ origins in the realms of to wander through the snowy wastes of Japan forever, after dying during a Japanese folklore and takes the opportunity to bemoan the decline of that snowstorm. Her skin is so white that, nation’s once-great videogame industry. often, the only way you can see her coming is by spotting her seemingly disembodied dark black SD TUCKER is a recovering otaku apparent modus operandi, tresses, eyes and pubic whose books include Paranormal I’d guess a rogue Drowzee. hair through the falling Merseyside, The Hidden Folk and Those otaku who know snowflakes. No ordinary Forgotten Science. He will be their ‘Mon, however, may spectre, she is a kind of soul- writing more about Japan and its fringe politics for FT soon. not have been entirely vampire who will put a man surprised by the idea of to sleep, paralyse him and Poké-rape, knowing as then drain all his life-force ombies are real – you can see they do that several of and warmth away through them, every day of the week the Pocket Monsters are sexual intercourse, much Znow, shuffling along in public, based upon figures from like Yoko Ono. In the actual eyes glued to their smartphones, Japanese folklore known game, Nintendo’s much- too busy hoovering up stray Squirtles as yokai. Little known sanitised Froslass character and Jigglypuffs to notice that they are in the West prior to the simply deals out ice-type about to stray into minefields, walk off release of the 2001 Studio attacks against opponents cliffs or blunder straight into traps laid Ghibli animation Spirited rather than molesting them for them by unscrupulous tech-literate Away, and the appearance to death, but would still be muggers who understand how to set up of FT-contributor Richard recognisable as a version a fake PokéStop. One addict absent- Freeman’s popular Great of Yuki-Onna to any native mindedly climbed a tree in search of Yokai Encyclopaedia ABOVE: The yokai gamer. rare Poké-beasts, and had to be rescued book in 2010, the yokai are the Yuki-Onna. At the top Recalling the 1990s, 16-bit heyday of by the fire brigade; another group was often very weird – and occasionally of the facing page Nintendo with its SNES, and Sega with saved by search-and-rescue teams after highly perverted – ghosts, monsters is her Pokéverse its MegaDrive, it becomes clear that equivalent, named getting lost in a cave in Wiltshire while and demons of Japanese folklore. Frosslass. dozens of games back then featured hunting underground Pokémon. Seeing For example, the adorable yellow unnoticed echoes of Japanese folk- BELOW: Pokémon Go that absurd but apparently necessary electric mouse-thing Pikachu, the zombies now shuffle culture. Why does Tails, the fox sidekick Health and Safety messages along the most famous Pokémon of all, is a along the streets of of Sega’s speedy blue hedgehog Sonic, lines of ‘Do not play Pokémon Go while mere kawaii (cute) cousin of the cities the world over, have two tails sticking out of his behind, driving’ now pop up in the game as folkloric ‘thunderbeast’ Raij , who their pale features for instance? The obvious answer was standard, it can only be a matter of time is said to fall to Earth during storms illuminated by the so he could whirl them around like the eerie light cast by before Nintendo’s smash-hit augmented- and, like Pikachu, to have power over blades of a helicopter and boost his way their phones. reality smartphone game of the summer lightning-bolts. An odder choice to through levels at top-speed, but there appears in FT’s ‘Strange Deaths’ column. So confused have some Poké-addicts now become about the difference between fantasy and reality that the imaginary monsters themselves have even begun usurping the role of Greys, Old Hags and other such chest-squatting nightmares in the realm of sleep-paralysis cases, with a young Russian woman complaining to Moscow police that she had woken up in her bed one night in August to find herself being raped by a giant Pokémon.1 According to the unnamed ‘victim’, she had been playing Pokémon Go alone in her room before falling asleep, only to awake some time later to find the human-sized cartoon creature lying on top of her body and trying to mate with her. As she shook off her slumber, the Pokémon disappeared – but spookily her smartphone could still detect its presence there on the bed. As for which Pokémon was actually responsible,

initial reports do not say – but, given its UL J RICHARDS / AFP / GeTTY ImAGeS PA

54 FT345 www.forteantimes.com forum Videogames and japanese folklore

was more to it than that; in like river-dragon called off and hypnotise shop staff with his Japanese myth, after living Gyarados; a surprise for wobbly belly to gain discounts on for 100 years an ordinary fox Western gamers, but not goods and services, and bizarre plots becomes a god-like kitsune- for those who know the old involving time-travelling nuns, parodic fox, developing an extra tail oriental legend of ordinary carp mechanical versions of the Street and various supernatural leaping over China’s Fighter II cast, and a nefarious alien abilities (see FT214:30-37). mythical waterfall- plan to transform mediæval Japan Tails must have been one topping ‘Dragon Gate’ into a gigantic, never-ending stage- of these. Another puzzling and being transformed musical with the entire population as conundrum was why Mario similarly. One of the forced cast-members. Despite their developed the ability to fl y most fi endish puzzles in ABOVE: Super evident brilliance, however, only fi ve mario transformed after donning his raccoon- Nintendo’s much-loved into Tanooki mario. of the 25-plus games in the series suit power-up, as depicted 1991 adventure Zelda ever earned a Western release. And on the front-cover box-art of III: A Link to the Past, BELOW: magikarp. therein lies the problem: the most Nintendo’s 1988 NES classic Super meanwhile, centred BOTTOM: A clearly ‘Japanese’ of Japanese games Mario Bros 3. Mario donning a cape around knowing how to Drowsee; prime didn’t sell that well here even during supsect in the enabling him to fl y like Superman gain the ‘earthquake medallion’ attempted rape the 1990s, when the words ‘Japan’ and in 1990’s SNES sequel Super Mario necessary for your quest. So difficult of a Russian ‘videogames’ were almost synonymous. World made sense, but raccoons can’t was the solution that the UK version Pokémon Go Nineties gaming magazines, like the fl y… can they? They can in Japan. came with a sealed booklet, telling player. much-lamented SuperPlay, might have A rare version of the same power-up players what to do – if you wanted the come with lovely hand-drawn manga- transformed the heroic Italian plumber medallion’s power to cause tremors, style covers by the artist Wil Overton into Tanooki Mario, who had the you had to visit a giant catfish lurking and featured reviews of anime fi lms additional ability to transform briefly in a river and make him an offering. at the back, but in the long term such into an invincible statue.This was a An obscure solution to a Western associations were doomed. Gaming reference to the Japanese raccoon-dog, gamer, but not to the Japanese, once provided a window into another or tanuki, a real animal credited with raised as they are on tales of the culture, in some ways far different several different magical abilities in Jishin Namazu, a legendary world- from our own, which seemed exciting, Japan’s legends, such as fl ight and spanning catfish whose writhings new, amusing, and often unbelievably shape-shifting. By adopting the guise beneath the sea are said to cause bizarre – sometimes unacceptably of the tanuki, Mario took these self- the earthquakes which so often so, as in the deeply dubious same abilities upon himself, like a hit Japan. I also recall being genre of ‘witch-touching’ chubby 8-bit shaman. 2 What Nintendo somewhat bemused in the games which involved players never made explicit, however, was the middle of the 1998 N64 title prodding underage schoolgirls source of the raccoon-dog’s powers Legend of the Mystical Ninja all over their bodies with their – his enchanted testicles, which can Starring Goemon, when asked Nintendo DS stylus, with the grow to massive size, fi lled as they are to feed a green water-monster precise nature of their pubescent with pure magic. Other references to a cucumber in order to progress squeals as you rubbed their sensitive Japanese forteana were more fl eeting; further on my journey. This was an zones indicating whether or not they Konami’s exhilarating SNES platform- unexpected request to me, but not were in league with Satan. From the shooter Super Probotector: Alien Rebels, to Japanese players who would have noTes 1980s to the mid-2000s, Japanese for instance, features some fearsome recognised the creature instantly 1 www.dailymail. gaming ruled the world; but then, human-faced dogs, seen rummaging as a kappa, a type of watery yokai co.uk/news/ with the rise of Microsoft’s X-Box in trashcans on the very fi rst level. notoriously addicted to cucumbers. article-3734361/ and the changing economics of the Woman-tells-police- Just hideous aliens? Perhaps not; in Konami’s Mystical Ninja titles are RAPeD-Pokemon- industry, things changed, with the the 1980s, an urban legend spread worth examining as models of how character-felt- centre of development shifting to across Japan that a human-faced dog the weirdness of Japanese tradition assault-virtual- North America. Modern HD games called the Jinmenken had been bred once fl owed through that country’s reality-game- cost so much to make compared to 2D detected-creature- in a laboratory from which it had later videogames. Ishikawa Goemon bedroom.html 16-bit titles that they have to appeal escaped.The most famous alleged was the Japanese Robin Hood, Old 2 www. worldwide to make any real profit, sighting of it was outside an urban Nippon’s ‘Prince of Thieves’. Konami’s nintendolife.com/ thus becoming ever more generic restaurant… rummaging in some reinterpretation of the legendary news/2011/11/ and ‘safe’, with fi rst-person shooters trashcans. fi gure was not entirely true to feature_how_ increasingly predominating. Shooting japanese_folklore_ Knowing your life, with Goemon suddenly inspired_marios_ strangers in the head can often be just folklore could actually sprouting spiky blue hair and tanooki_suit as much fun on-screen as it is in real help you complete tackling his enemies either life, but personally I’d rather feed a some old games. In by hitting them seleCTed kappa cucumbers any day. Even the the original GameBoy with a large soUrCes titles of old Japanese games were more titles, the Pokémon ornamental pipe, Richard Freeman, interesting than current bland fare; Go! Magikarp seems initially or else by throwing The Great Yokai Go! Troublemakers! or Jesus: Dreadful to be a useless river- stolen coins at their Encyclopedia, CFZ Bio-Monster would never get past fi sh, who fl ops around heads until they simply Press, 2010 marketing departments today. We’re helplessly during team- died. Konami’s games NGamer Presents: all Americans now; even in the virtual The History of battles. However, train also featured giant Everything from world. Pokémon Go may be published it up to Level 20 and robots, an obese ninja Atlus to Zelda, by Nintendo, but its actual developers Magikarp will evolve named Ebisumaru Future Publishing, are a company called Niantic… who into a powerful snake- who liked to strip 2010 are based in San Francisco. FT

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SEND REVIEW COPIES OF BOOKS TO: BOOK REVIEWS, FORTEAN TIMES, PO BOX 2409, LONDON NW5 4NP, UK. Thisreviews month’s books, films and games Holographic mind and death Occasionally, an anomalous event or experience will crack open the doors of perception, allowing us a small hint of something a lot less mundane…

may mean nothing to the diehard an Uncarved Block, pregnant materialist but often seem “Peake claims to with myriad forms awaiting profound and even life-changing have found hints revelation by the sculptor. While to those that experience them. the block itself contains near Peake’s The Out-of-Body Experience that deserve serious infinite possibilities, the action (2011) and The Labyrinth of of sculpting (our interaction with Time (2012) explore OBEs, research and the world) whittles away the Opening the Doors Near-Death-Experiences (NDEs) investigation” potentiality; in this it can be said and anomalous experiences of to be ‘inhibiting’ that potentiality, of Perception time. His conclusion – that our confining or restricting it to a Anthony Peake experience of time as a mentally- single ‘fixed’ form. However, the Watkins 2016 constructed illusion – is in line brought together and considered hypothetically ‘infinite’ potential Pb, 267pp, refs, bib, ind, £10.99, ISBN 9781780289083 with the wisdom of ancient sages, intelligently – interesting lines of a newborn’s life does not follow but is here argued through reason of inquiry. Peake claims to have a single linear path as, at each Anthony Peake is engaged and examples rather than through found not evidence or proof, but and every micro-moment, it faces in one of the most important mystical revelation. rather signposts and hints that a new universe of potential. strands of ontological inquiry of The entire argument is may turn out to be significant and Thus, as in physicist Hugh modern times, nothing less than rehearsed and reinforced in therefore deserve serious research Everrett’s ‘many worlds’ theory, unravelling the Gordian knot that Peake’s next two books – The and investigation. all of us are spinning off myriads is the mystery of our existence. In Infinite Mindfield (2013) and The While physical materialism of time-lines, the consequences 2009, his study Is there Life after Immortal Mind (2014) written steadfastly confines that most of different choices or actions. Death? explored what science with fellow researcher Ervin Lazlo mysterious and wonderful In Peake’s model the function can tell us about the process of – collated with new evidence from thing – consciousness – to the of our Eidolon (our person) is to dying and the more controversial the pharmaceutical, neurological brain, the historical wealth navigate a single route along the evidence that physical death and psychiatric sciences, and of well-documented narrative branching timeline, this is our may not necessarily implicate by comparing ‘normal’ and experience (once fraud, immediate experience of daily the entity that comprises our pathological conditions and delusion, misperception and life. The Dæmon, however, is not persona. The Dæmon (2010) took experiences with those we call misunderstanding are eliminated) a part of everyday awareness but an equally radical appraisal of anomalous. would have us believe otherwise. that part of us, somehow ‘above’ our knowledge of the brain, that Time and again we return to Peake extrapolates several (separate or Platonic ‘immortal’), enigmatic interface between the the observation that some people important strands of scientific that manages the many branching body and the mind – the ‘inner’ have subjective experiences research: that consciousness Eidolons on their many timelines. and ‘outer’ – worlds. Peake made which transcend our familiar may be a distributed function In this model, each of us can be a case for there being two distinct understanding of time and space (a biological equivalent of the seen as experiencing many variant modes of consciousness, mirroring – the sensation that, somehow, computing technique), that lives (possibly simultaneously as (but not necessarily confined to) a part of us exists outside time the physical nature of ‘reality’ sequentially has no meaning in the bicameral brain. An effect of and space. This is the theme of at the quantum level seems to this context); each necessarily this is that time is experienced his latest report. Taking his cue have holographic aspects or unaware of the others, we differently in each aspect: one from Aldous Huxley’s exploration behave like a hologram, and that presume, so that the full potential – he dubs the ‘Eidolon’ – is the of the nature of consciousness, the deeper inquiries are made of ‘reality’ can be experienced in familiar reactive part that deals Peake throws open ‘the doors into the building-blocks of the all its variations. Yet, on occasion, with everyday life; the other – of perception’ and invites us to physical world the more the an anomalous event or experience the ‘Dæmon’ – has aspects that take in the profound vista that is results (or effects) challenge our will crack open our perceptual might be called ‘unconscious’ and revealed to us. understanding of the nature of doors enough to hint at something transcend mundane limitations. He is not afraid of tackling time and space. far more wonderful than the Significantly, Peake argues, some of the most profoundly The implication of a mundane. the Dæmon is the vector for entrenched ideas about the holographic model of the mind- Consciousness, then, is not out-of-the-body experiences mind–brain interaction and, in brain function is very interesting. confined to the brain but is, (OBE), or of extra-temporal reviewing the current literature For me it resembles the Daoist potentially, everywhere, only ‘memories’ such as of ESP, past on neuroscience and physics, he depiction of the fundamental lives, precognition etc. These has found – and more importantly, potential of our existence as Continued on page 58

FT345 57 www.forteantimes.com reviews BOOKS

Continued from previous page format softback, reminiscent of some role-playing game rulebooks. Pain and gain limited to the here and now by None of the many pictures have the brain. We have not one life, source attributions, and few even Surgery sans pain relief was surprisingly but potentially many, limited have captions. Many are just to the current one only by the fantasy artwork of a low standard. successful, but what happened to dwale? immediacy of experiencing and What value is a pencil sketch of a surviving in the here and now. Our Nazi UFO over a Norwegian fjord perception and experience of time based only on imagination? (Apart pre-19th century surgery. Barber- and space could be unlimited, but from filling a page, that is.) surgeons didn’t have modern is limited only by focus on our The book is incoherent, analgesics or anæsthetics and the daily life. Mystics and shamans repetitious and self-contradictory. procedures were excruciating. have told us this through the We are told over and over again But a 12th-century manuscript ages, and now Anthony Peake that the chief Nazi rocket scientist suggests dwale – a cocktail of and his colleagues are beginning was Werner von Braun. Thank wine, hemlock, opium, henbane, to quantify the process. This is you, but once was enough. On lettuce, pig’s bile and vinegar – crucial to forteans’ understanding one page the occupants of UFOs to induce sleep during surgery. of the nature of perception and are grey aliens of the familiar Crucial Interventions Pharmacologically, it probably of ‘normality’, the better to judge sort, on another they are blonde helped, and I wonder what other what is ‘anomalous’. Aryans with German accents. An Illustrated Treatise on the pearls of wisdom were lost in the Boldly researched, detailed No argument is developed, and Principles & Practice of Nineteenth-Century Surgery intervening centuries. and with clear examples of there is precious little about And despite a lack of experience anomalies, this highly time travel. The final chapter is Richard Barnett antiseptics and antibiotics, the commendable book underpins his simply a rehash of an anonymous Thames & Hudson 2015 prognosis wasn’t as bleak as you non-magical model of immortality. piece of fantasy fiction copied off Hb, 256pp, illus, ind, £19.95, ISBN 9780500518106 might expect. A 17th-century Bob Rickard some website. If the Nazis had It’s easy to forget just how German barber-surgeon reported developed time travel, they might barbaric surgery once was. that 95 per cent of the 200 Fortean Times Verdict have made better use of it, but Crucial Interventions brings the patients he treated during one BOlDly reSeArCHeD AND WITH any sort of intelligent critique is horror home with savage clarity. year survived. Of 400 operations CleAr exAmPleS OF ANOmAlIeS 9 beyond the scope of this book. Early 19th century surgeons performed by a London surgeon Nazi UFO Time Pretty much everything is worked without anæsthetics or in the same century, 265 were speculation from rumour or antisepsis. Patients were often cured, 62 improved and 53 died. Travelers unattributable anonymous drunk and needed to be held About half suffered from venereal Do We Owe the Future To The sources. Evidence there is none. down. Robert Liston operated diseases, which surgeons treated Fuhrer? The authors show no critical with a knife between his teeth at the time, injecting, for example, Timothy Green Beckley, Sean Casteel, Tim R ability to weed out well-known and could amputate a leg in less mercury into the urethra. But an Swartz & Brian Allan hoaxes. It will come as a surprise than three minutes. Despite the 81 per cent success rate isn’t bad. Global Communications 2016 to many to learn that Adamski’s speed, operations were terrible. The pictures, drawn from the Pb, 150pp, illus, $18.00, ISBN 9781606112205 famous UFO photo is in fact a For months after novelist Fanny Wellcome Collection, are always Hannebu Class II Nazi saucer Burney underwent a mastectomy beautiful, often disturbing If you have never minus the insignia. (See also without anæsthetics in 1811, she and sometimes chilling. They seen Iron Sky, a low- http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/ could be “disordered by a single underscore the old adage in budget sci-fi comedy, HAUNEBU.htm). question” about it. Nine months biology that you see more in a I recommend you What makes these tales of Nazi later, Burney wrote she had “a drawing than a photograph; the get hold of a copy. UFOs so unbelievable is that in headache from going on with the procedures are revealed in an The plot revolves the case of one experimental account”. She couldn’t even read almost terrifying ‘high definition’. around the idea that in 1945 aircraft – the rocket-powered it over because the “recollection is Barnett’s narrative is eloquent, Nazis escaped to the Moon in Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet – we still so painful”. But she survived fascinating and insightful. UFOs, and are now about to do know a great deal about it, the procedure, dying in 1840. In the forward, surgeon come back and conquer Earth. I which suggests if any disc-like Surgery changed almost Professor Roger Kneebone particularly liked the scene in the aircraft were ever developed beyond recognition practically, remarks “This book combines a United Nations, where the North by the Nazis during WWII, scientifically and socially during gripping narrative with beautiful Korean ambassador announces they would be equally well the 19th century. Anæsthetics and often uncomfortable that all the UFOs that have been documented. arrived during the 1840s. illustrations”. When my fashion sighted originate in North Korea, Which is where Iron Sky comes Lister published his pioneering designer daughter Yasmin picked and were designed by the Dear in – one could equally well write work into antisepsis in 1867. up the book, she commented Leader. Everyone else in the room a sequel called North Korean UFO Surgeons developed innovative “That’s so gross… but really cool”. falls about laughing. Time Travelers: Do We Owe the equipment. By the end of the Take your pick of Kneebone or Sadly, there are no laughs in Future To The Dear Leader? with century, surgery “was claimed Yasmin: either way, I couldn’t have Nazi UFO Time Travelers, not even an equal absence of evidence for as the outstanding achievement put it better myself. unintentional ones. The subtitle anything. But of course, North of imperial civilisation – and Mark Greener ‘Do We Owe the Future To The Koreans are not as bankable as a justification of the global Fuhrer?’ is one of those questions the Nazis, with their sexy Hugo reach of the British Empire”. Fortean Times Verdict to which you merely have to Boss uniforms. Nevertheless, Barnett challenges eITHer A CUT ABOve Or ICKy, answer ‘no’ and you’re quids in. This book is not totally useless, many preconceived ideas about DePeNDINg ON yOUr POINT OF vIeW 9 This is a well produced large- in that it could be used for source

58 FT345 www.forteantimes.com reviews BOOKS

material by someone looking to after death, hoping for a digital write a steam-punkish thriller, copy of his brain to be uploaded but frankly, one could get much one day. Many of his assumptions mersey tales the same information in an are based on the idea that nobody afternoon’s poking around the minds dying if they can be copied. Liverpool and Merseyside voices come Internet. I do not think there will be many Roger Musson takers among non-economists. to life in this collection of urban legends Under ‘sexuality’, Hanson Fortean Times Verdict suggests that ems might like DISOrgANISeD SPeCUlATION to castrate themselves because entrée into the world of the ABOUT NAzI UFOS 2 historically eunuchs have been weird and wonderful was in better at multi-tasking. In the real adolescence. His desire to place The Age of em world, self-castration has been Liverpool and Merseyside in the Work, love and life When robots surprisingly unpopular given its premier league of paranormal rule The earth obvious economic benefits. Ems encounters is demonstrated with Robin Hanson might prefer endless hyperreal energy and enthusiasm. He treats

Oxford University Press 2016 digital sex, uneconomic as it is. his subjects with a humorous Hb, 448pp, £20.00, ISBN 9780198754626 Hanson suggests that preventing distance and foregrounds the intellectual property crime and tales with success. I found the This book is ‘mind theft’ (unauthorised copying glimpses in the liminal and urban landscapes of unbelievable, and not of ems), will require complete the tales – ‘The Day the Black in a good way. The access to every computer. Also, Twilight Sun Came’ and ‘Baleful Echoes Age of Em explores to check there are no hidden True-life ghost Stories and from the Blighted-Winter Earth’ – what might happen computers, authorities will impose modern-Day Urban legends from particularly effective, capturing a when human brains complete surveillance of the entire the Haunted Heart Of merseyside Nigel Kneale(esque) otherness to can be emulated with computer planet and “and also hundreds of Lee Walker great effect. software, creating digital copies metres underneath it.” At present, Fortean Words 2015 Being from Liverpool myself, of people in a virtual world. the authorities cannot see inside a Pb, 324pp, illus, notes, £12.99, ISBN 9781909488342 I found specific locations and The difficulty of creating smartphone without the password, places took on, perhaps, a artificial intelligence from never mind find computers in tax Liverpool has its fair share of more embodied form, but the scratch has promoted research havens. tales of matters supernatural and amount of detailed description into copying brain functions Hanson acknowledges that the extraordinary events. Given the Walker proffers would allow any into computer hardware without rapid pace of life in the em world number of works that document reader to feel fully immersed necessarily understanding them. means that ems would be replaced true life supernatural experiences in any of his tales. All to the This should eventually lead by more advanced artificial familiar to forteans (Silent good, as throughout the book to whole brain emulations (or intelligences in a year or two. So Watchers, UFOs, death-predicting an arching narrative emerges ‘ems’), but what happens after his predictions are only intended hounds…), one wonders how that addresses the author as a that is pure speculation. to represent a wafer-thin slice of Walker can give these and similar subject within the book and his That someone might be copied time. tropes an engaging twist. Hasn’t personal responses to defining thousands of times, that a dead The Age of Ems does not deal Merseyside’s ‘bard of the bizarre’ moments of Liverpool’s recent person might be recreated from well with issues like social justice, Tom Slemen covered them in his history – he mentions his sense of a backup copy, that virtual capitalism versus socialism, regular digests for the local press? loss over the death of John Peel people could be accelerated to the developing world, or global Walker brings a breath of and James Herbert, for example, experience life thousands of ecology. Hanson is mainly fresh air to the eyewitness and and – more whimsically – his own times faster than those in the concerned with economics, even ‘friend of a friend’ narrative. He rock ’n’roll lifestyle with his band real world, are interesting (if looking at ‘retirement strategies’ offers an insight not only into The Lids. However, it is in his unoriginal) movie scenarios. for ems; at least he doesn’t the specific event but also into emotionally wrought description Economists are often divorced calculate how many can dance on the personalities of speakers and of the commemoration of the from reality, but Hanson seems the head of a pin. their community. He presents a Hillsborough dead that we see barely to have flirted with it. “I Darker stories are left largely formidable amount of social and the integrity of Walker as a writer expect at least 30% of future untouched by Hanson’s econo- historical background, and – when engaged with both his city and its situations to be usefully informed techno-optimism: digital slavery, necessary – folkloric material. By storytellers. by my analysis” is a bold claim, virtual torture, computer-aided presenting his material verbatim As an anthology of weird and especially when his section on totalitarianism and greed (and with many digressions wonderful encounters Glimpses religion concludes that “most unchecked by existing laws all voiced in vernacular Scouse), he certainly holds its own. As a of the major religions of today... seem to be all too likely in em encourages an empathy with the piece of incidental biography, have peacefully accommodated world. characters telling their tales, even most certainly. But as a pæan to almost all of the vast changes Whatever reality has in store, though the stories themselves – Liverpool – a city larger than life that have appeared since those it will be weirder – yet more and I cite ‘Spring-heel Jack’ and and replete with its own people- religions began.” Hanson expects familiar – than this dry economic ‘The Sinking of the Lusitania’ – next-door myth makers – most all religion to “comfortably speculation. may be very old ground. definitely. adapt” to the em world. Just as David Hambling Walker also includes elements Christopher Hill they have comfortably adapted of his own “encounters” into today? Fortean Times Verdict the framing narratives, and Fortean Times Verdict Hanson has paid for his body eCONOmIC SPeCUlATION FAIlS TO his biographical material will eNjOyABle AND lIvely – eveN FOr to be cryogenically preserved eNgAge WITH POSSIBle reAlITy 3 resonate with anyone whose NON-SCOUSe FOrTeANS 8

FT345 59 www.forteantimes.com reviews BOOKS

The Holy Clone Subaquatic curios Has Christ returned? RA Duggan

RAD/Fast-Print Publishing 2014 Russia has had tales of submersible objects for centuries, but Pb, 203pp, illus, ind, £14.99, ISBN 9781784561253 reports of USOs have intensified in the last 100 years A genuine oddity, this; a cross between a post-English Civil of the Agamemnon brig whilst phenomena seen emanating War millenarian sailing in the Baltic Sea near from the depths and reports of Ranter’s chapbook Bornholm Island, saw a ‘powerful giant spheres and discs visiting and a 1970s punk flame bursting out from the water lakes, with the intent of warning fanzine. with numerous sparkles’. One against making any ‘unnecessary The common denominator explanation was that this was encounters’. is self-published, uncensored caused by an underwater volcano, That is certainly one of the best Apocalypse, and the author – an but Admiral Mikhail Petrovich ‘one that got away’ stories and art tutor and artist of some russia’s USO Lazarev thought it was linked makes us wonder if it is any more accomplishment – appears to to a sighting of a meteor on 13 literally true than the story of have undergone his own personal Secrets August near Dagerort Lighthouse, the terrifying child thrown back Revelation during a period of Unidentified Submersible Objects hurricanes and northern lights into the river by those frightened Bible study with the popular in russian and International seen in Stockholm. Ufologists fishermen. charismatic Christian Alpha Waters have also lumped these Navy personnel also reported Course. Paul Stonehill & Philip Mantle phenomena together to conclude USOs moving too fast, deep and Predictably, the Book of that UFO craft crashed into the irregular to be conventional Revelation features extensively Richard Dolan Press 2016 Pb, 186pp, ind, £13.77, ISBN 9781532898402 Baltic Sea during the summer of craft in the area of the Bermuda throughout, its prophecies linked 1845. Triangle. Similar sonar contacts to Hitler, the Holocaust and the We live on an ocean planet, so it In our modern era, many also troubled the Russian nuclear atom bomb. is not surprising that UFOs are sightings of UFOs have been submarines of the Northern Fleet. But the author’s USP is seen over or in the vicinity of made over or near Russian To satisfy the KGB, which always his argument – backed up by the great expanses of water that waters. These sightings drew wanted ‘explanations’, these Zechariah Sitchin, scriptural surround us. Certainly it would the attention of the USSR Navy, detections were explained as quotes and his own striking make sense that alien visitors no doubt due to the possibility marine life. Xerox-ed artwork – that biblical would want to explore them, and that they were enemy craft. On 2 August 1965, there was prophecies of Christ’s return some ufologists believe that they Yet, some high-ranking officers no ambiguity about the origin of and of the Last Judgement have have built underwater bases. believed that they were of an the USO spotted by the crew of already come to pass, and that Stonewall and Mantle show extraterrestrial origin. For the steamship Raduga. They saw a Christ is already here on Earth at that USOs are not a new example, Major-General V. 60m (200ft) diameter sphere blast the time of writing. phenomenon. For example, in Demyanenko, commander of the out of the water and hover 150m The potentially distressing AD 1065, in ancient Ukraine, Russian Military Diver Service, (430ft) above the Red Sea. Some nature of this book’s claims are a star was regularly seen after alleged that during exercises local fishermen in a motorboat offset by the author’s powerful sunset in the west, projecting in Lake Baikal during 1982 his were much closer to the object, art, reproduced throughout. blood-red rays. In the same period frogmen had seen a group of and it caused so much turbulence ‘Readymade’ sculptures fisherman rescued a terrifying- underwater swimmers. These in the water that one of them and installations, doctored looking child from their nets. It swimmers were 3m (10ft) tall was drowned. A few months later photographs and collages, was so frightening in appearance humanoids, who only wore tight- three of the fishermen died, many of them self-portraits, that they threw it back in fitting silvery suits and sphere- which might have been due to accompanied by biblical the river Setoml, and the sun like helmets. They were at a depth their exposure to the USO. quotations and references – but subsequently dimmed. of 50m (164ft) in freezing water. These intriguing reports are with unexpected humour and Later, on 15 August 1663, a Therefore, it was impossible they divided by region, and for better irreverence. great noise was heard over the were of a human origin. clarity it would have been handy Highly original, and possibly Robozero Lake, 50 km (30 miles) A team of seven divers was to have included a few more the only book connecting Millwall southwest of Belozersk, followed assembled to investigate the maps of the sighting locations Football Club with the Book of by a huge 40m (130ft) diameter matter, and they were able to and a chronological listing of the Revelation, or to suggest that “the flaming sphere that sento tw capture one of the swimmers in types of sightings. I would also South London area of Lewisham beams of light into the lake. The a net. Unfortunately, a powerful have liked a bit more analysis [is] a likely location for the sighting could have been due to force threw the divers to the of the reports, but these are Second Coming of Christ.” a meteor or ball lightning, but surface and the creature got minor quibbles as it does meet As to the exact identity of an expedition led by Candidate away. Even worse, the rapid the authors’ goal of providing us the newly-incarnated Christ- of Science E Gorshkove in 1982 decompression they experienced with an impressive review of the individual, readers will have to found evidence that something caused three of the men to die evidence for Russian USOs. buy the book to find out. had discharged high levels of and the rest to become disabled. Nigel Watson Chris Josiffe energy in the area where this was As a consequence, the USSR seen. Ministry of Defence produced Fortean Times Verdict Fortean Times Verdict Nearer our own time, on 9 a bulletin listing sightings USO HAve mADe A SPlASH IN A mAgICAl AND FASCINATINg August 1845, the commander of similar creatures, light rUSSIA FOr CeNTUrIeS 8 BOOK 6

60 FT345 www.forteantimes.com reviews BookS

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

Black Dog Traditions of England excel at interviewing researchers or practi- Ian Humberstone & David Chatton Barker tioners of culture-specific magic and lore; Folklore Tapes (www.folkloretapes.co.uk) 2016 for example, Muslim scholars on nature of LP, DVD, 80pp book, posters, £58.00 djinn, or the spirit-healing shamans of South America. Ian Humberstone and David Chatton Barker aim to revitalise general interest in regional How to Talk to an Alien folklore by combining archival research with Nancy du Terre fieldwork at the locations of hauntings, leg- New Page Books 2016 ends and fortean incidents. Pb, 186pp, bib, ind, $15.99, ISBN 9781632650214 The topic of this ‘reliquary’ is the Black Dog, a large, black, spectral hound with Self-professed psychic detective, remote huge and sometimes flaming eyes. The viewer and media star Du Terre is full of legends are often associated with witches questions: Can aliens speak English? or demons, and they go by different local With an accent? Can they read minds? Do names. The collection comprises a DVD they have DNA? You get the drift… She is and an audio tape, a 16mm ‘art’ film, post- convinced UFOs (whatever they are) are full ers and photography. Also included is an of “pilots, crew and passengers”, so they illustrated booklet presenting local narra- must communicate, right? Her entire book tives and references. (Curiously, there is no is based on this totally presumptuous idea mention of the works of either Janet Bord or which is based upon other presumptuous Norfolk folklorist Ivan Bunn.) ideas – that and how everyone these days is Previous issues have focused upon the getting channelling messages from visitors Pendle Witches, the folklore of Devon and from other worlds (including the Otherworld). Lancashire, the stone circles of Iona, tun- Aliens ring her up on the phone to explain nels and other underground infrastructures; and she is happy to chat for hours about they also put out a bimonthly recorded all this. ‘newsletter’. The real mystery is why veteran ufologist and nuclear scientist Stanton Friedman Real Visitors wrote the introduction. Voices from Beyond [This review ends there as our reviewer left muttering something about losing the Brad Steiger & Sherry Hansen Steiger will to live.] Visible Ink 2016 Pb, 432pp, illus, bib, ind,$16.95, ISBN 9781578595419 Prisoners, Lovers & Spies This is the ninth encyclopædic anthology Kristie Macrakis on the paranormal the Steigers have put Yale University Press 2014 together for Visible Ink. This one is loosely Hb, 377pp, illus, notes, ind, $27.50, ISBN 97803000179255 themed around encounters with unearthly entities – ghosts, spirits, demons, gods, and Mackrakis – a professor of history and tech- elementals – by shamans, mediums and nology at Georgia Tech – presents a fascinat- others, some summoned and some quite ing history of secret writing, from the simple unexpected. Gathered here is lore on differ- codes and ‘invisible’ inks used by lovers ent types of entities, their habitats, energy and spies in earlier times to the complex types and domains. modern world of digitally disguising or hiding The Steigers never stray too far from their images and messages for transmission elec- central tenet: the aliens associated today tronically or over the Internet. The American with UFOs are a modern manifestation of Revolutionary War and World Wars get chap- spiritual and psychical phenomena that have ters, as do the efforts of spy catchers, stage been recorded since ancient times – though magicians and terrorists. over time and between cultures the underly- The last chapter could be the most dis- ing entities and forces have been perceived turbing, given the fascination with high-level, according to the local culture. occult or murderous conspiracies and their Given the breadth of their coverage, it is need to keep communications ‘hidden’; pretty scattershot with little account given someone has to sort out the real and to the citation of adjacent cases when they imagined when codes are reported to be come from different times and peoples. It concealed in porn sites or commercial com- is, nevertheless, worthwhile, as many of the panies surreptitiously resort to subliminal examples are unfamiliar and the Steigers advertising. reviews FILM & DVD

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society which requires them to remain covered while in public, or women living in a male-dominated society. Shideh, of course, falls into each one of these categories. She has a relatively liberal life- style, behind her own front door at least. She does her Jane Fonda workout every morning, wears Western clothes, and watches vide- otapes. However, at the beginning of the film, she is attending an interview at her old university; a medical student at the time of the revolution, she dropped out to get more involved in radical politics and now, some years down the line, she is hoping to get her place back. However, it is made crystal clear to her that this is absolutely out of the question, now and forever. “Every mistake,” she is told by the (male) administrator, “has conse- quences.” A frustrating situation is made worse by the fact that her husband, whom she met on the course, is now a doctor; during a row he reminds her how she berated him for being so timid as Hunt for the Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and Uncle Under the Shadow to continue with his studies while

Wilderpeople Hec (Sam Neill). In fact, once Dir Babak Anvari, Iran/Jordan/Qatar/UK 2016 she was trying to change the world. Dir Taika Waititi, New Zealand 2016 Ricky comes out of his shell, he’s a On UK release from 30 September Very early on, then, Shideh’s On UK release from 16 September bit of a sweetie, adapting to coun- judgment is called into question try life, amusing the crusty Hec Set in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq by two male characters; and this is I hadn’t come across New Zealand with obscene haikus (“Kingi you conflict, Under the Shadow con- important because, without want- director Taika Waititi before catch- wanker”) and gradually respond- cerns young mum Shideh (Narges ing to give too much away, Under ing the wonderful low-budget ing to the warmth of the eccentric Rashidi), who is home alone with the Shadow is one of those films mockumentary What We Do in the Bella. When this idyll goes tits-up daughter Dorsa (the super-cute where it is left to the viewer to Shadows, which he co-wrote, co- and the boy is threatened with Avin Manshadi) while her doctor decide whether the threat is real directed and co-starred in with his being rehomed, Ricky and Hec husband Iraj (Bobby Naderi) is or imagined. In a strictly ‘enter- old comedy troupe chum Jemaine (along with Tupac the dog) go away serving in the military. With tainment’ sense of course, it’s Clement, of Flight of the Conchords on the run and find themselves Tehran threatened by regular immaterial: director Anvari has to fame.This fly-on-the-wall look having to survive deep in the New air raids Iraj wants his family to generate and sustain the atmos- at a contemporary Wellington Zealand bush as the authorities leave the city and stay with rela- phere either way, and he does so house-share in which all the ten- mount a full-scale manhunt. tives in the north, but the fiercely with real skill. ants are vampires was one of the The comedic chemistry between independent Shideh has dug her But in planting the seed of unexpected gems of 2014 – smart, Neill (who has never been better) heels in. doubt, he is subtly promoting one inventive, laugh-out-loud funny, and Dennison is a delight through- When a missile strikes the roof of his film’s themes: that of how and curiously charming despite out, and Waititi surrounds them of their apartment block but fails a woman living under such condi- the copious bloodletting involved. with a cast of equally oddball to detonate, mother and daughter tions might attempt to define a Waititi’s latest film, Hunt for characters and weird vignettes are left living on their nerves. role for herself. Denied any real the Wilderpeople, seemed a rather (including his own hilarious turn Dorsa develops a fever, begins to responsibility or personal free- different proposition – a family- as a minister) that somehow have vivid nightmares and loses dom, does Shideh conjure, if you’ll friendly film based on a popular remain emotionally grounded. It’s her favourite doll. Worse still, she pardon the expression, a situation Kiwi novel by Barry Crump – but very funny, and full of heart, even has been spooked by the little boy whereby she and her daughter Waititi takes an essentially formu- if it does go slightly off the boil on downstairs who has warned her are in grave danger and she must laic odd-couple story and injects the home stretch. It’s going to be of approaching djinn, evil spirits assume a dominant role? Good, it with the off-kilter characterisa- fascinating to see what this unique of folklore which travel on the meaty stuff, then, and a significant tion and storytelling quirks that director brings to his next project, winds, drawn to fear, anxiety and departure from many contempo- made Shadows work so well. Marvel’s epic Thor: Ragnarok, cur- disharmony. rary horror films that are content Ricky (Julian Dennison) is a rently shooting, but meanwhile, It is typical of the multiple to merely scare us; assuming they problem child from the city – fat, don’t miss this lovely film. layers on which the film works can even manage that. foul-mouthed, and “a very bad David Sutton that its title could be taken to Daniel King egg” according to the batshit crazy refer variously to Iranians living child services worker who drops Fortean Times Verdict in a war zone, Iranians living in Fortean Times Verdict him off at the remote rural home heartwarMIng oDDbaLL a strict religious society, Iranian best IranIan FeMInIst of his new foster parents, Aunt aDVenture: recoMMenDeD 8 women living in a strict religious horror FILM oF the year 8

62 FT345 www.forteantimes.com reviews FILM & DVD

The Girl with all the Gifts

Dir Colm McCarthy, UK/US 2016 The Reverend’s Review On UK release from 23 September FT’s resident man of the cloth reVerenD Peter Laws dons Locked in an isolation cell, his dog collar and faces the flicks that Church forgot! Melanie (Sennia Nanua) hides (www.theflicksthatchurchforgot.com; @revpeterlaws) a picture of a kitten under her mattress before soldiers come and strap her to a wheelchair. She NIGHT GALLErY: THE on original release. certainly seems to be sugar and CoMPLETE SErIES The sheer quantity of stories spice and all things nice, but then Created by Rod Serling, US 1969-73 means that quality is crazily she is taken to join row after row Fabulous Films, £49.99 (DVD) inconsistent. Serling himself was of children similarly restrained in reputedly less than impressed wheelchairs in a windowless class- Perhaps Rod Serling’s name with many of them. The frequent room. It’s a sinister image that cre- will always be tethered to his super-short sketches are par- ates a real sense of unease at the breakout TV show The Twilight ticularly dire. An example would beginning of The Girl With All the Zone, and fair enough too. After be one on which a posh guy in Gifts, and one that bodes well for a all, the series contained some a cape turns up at a blood bank film riffing on otherwise familiar of TV’s finest sci-fi moments. Yet not to make a deposit – but a zombie tropes: perhaps there will when you talk to horror fans (and withdrawal! Cue flashing Dracula be something new here. interestingly many horror writers teeth and comedy kettle drum. When the class is joined by the and directors) you’ll notice they Haw haw haw! These comedy kindly Helen (Gemma Arterton) just as often link Serling with moments are often the very the silent bond between teacher his lesser known short story definition of the facepalm. And and her star pupil Melanie, the series from the Seventies: Night yes, some of the serious stories titular ‘girl with all the gifts’, is Gallery. Each episode opens are pretty mediocre too. Yet clear. A touching scene is brutally with Serling in his signature suit, there are enough genuine gems interrupted by Paddy Considine’s strolling through a collection of in here to warrant buying the romantic loss. But Serling wasn’t Sgt Eddie Parks, who reminds intense paintings that tease out entire box set and firing through the only writer who hit gold Helen – and the audience – the stories to be told. And what it like an intrepid explorer of the here. Many of the segments are exactly what we are dealing with brilliantly morbid paintings they televisual macabre. based on short stories, like a here. A slurp of saliva on a bare are! (It should be noted that There are definite scares to stunning entry from Season Two arm is proffered to a child and recreations of these works are be had. “The House” or the sim- narrated by Orson Welles. “Silent suddenly the kids are all baring to be found on eBay if you’re a ple and absurd “Green Fingers”, Snow, Secret Snow” is so inno- their teeth, jaws snapping reflex- hardcore Gallery fan. for example, really creeped me vative in its theme and execution ively like those of cats transfixed Unlike the half-hour Twilight out. But Serling is at his most that it helps you realise that by a sparrow outside a window. Zone, Night Gallery aired for an profound when he’s tugging at the Night Gallery, in the end, is While the world outside is hour and so crammed in any- your heart strings as well as like all galleries: storehouses overrun with zombies of the thing from one to four stories your nerves. Stories like “They’re for more than a few duds, but mindlessly ravenous kind, these in each episode. Now that the Tearing Down Tim Reilly’s Bar” or also home to plenty of bona fide ‘Hungries’, although afflicted by aptly named Fabulous Films have “The Messiah on Mott Street” masterpieces. the same fungal infection respon- released every single one as a had me wiping away sentimental sible for the demise of most of the 10-disc set, it’s like stumbling tears. Even his adaptation of Fortean Times Verdict human race, retain their normal over a mahoosive collection of HP Lovecraft’s “Cool Air” adds faculties until exposed to the 1970s anthology movies that something that the original a coLLectIon oF seVentIes tV treasures FroM roD serLIng 8 unmasked scent of human flesh. you never got the chance to see author skipped past: emotional, Dr Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close, slumming it in fatigues and a symbolically harsh buzz-cut) is ruthlessly single-minded in her experimentation upon the chil- dren in the hope of finding a cure. This puts her at odds with Helen (so nice she’d take the tea-and- sandwiches approach with ISIS). But before Dr Caldwell can get Melanie on the dissecting table and dig around inside her for an answer, the facility is overrun by the infected and everyone has to flee and fight to stay alive outside. Directed by Colm McCarthy (whose credits include episodes of Peaky Blinders, Ripper Street, Doctor Who and Sherlock) and

FT345 63 www.forteantimes.com reviews FILM & DVD

adapted by MR Carey from his own Blair Witch highly-regarded post-apocalyptic Dir Adam Wingard, US 2016 SHorTS novel of the same name, The Girl On UK release from 12 September with All the Gifts hinges upon the So it’s back to the Maryland woods in that coLD Day In the ParK tension generated by the question it this direct sequel to the 1999 horror Eureka, £14.99 (Dual format poses: exactly who are the monsters found-footage classic The Blair A wealthy young spinster who has “Never experi- here? For while the adults make Witch Project (let’s not mention the enced a man!” (shouted the poster) spots a guy conscious choices in pursuit of their disastrous Book of Shadows, released out her window, sitting in the rain. She invites him own survival, the children are essen- the following year, before the direc- in to dry off, then quickly decides his stay should be tially victims of their uncontrollable tors gave up on it and devolved permanent. Sandy Dennis shines (and horrifies) as instincts.This tension is played out their franchise mainly into what the the love-hungry lead. Props to an actress who can across a London of decaying tene- industry call ‘ancillaries’). The Blair balance awkwardness, melancholy and frightening psychosis ments and concrete estates which Witch Project remains one of the in pretty much every scene. Put it this way: I cared enough to nature has clearly been in the pro- most successful independent films of involuntarily call out “Don’t!” when I realised what she was about cess of reclaiming for a very long all time and there’s always been the to do. She drives the plot, so it’s no shock when it takes a turn for time: the creepers reach all the way notion that it’s a prime candidate for the weird. Think of it as a mash-up of Polanski’s Repulsion and to the tops of the tower blocks. a reboot, especially since technology King’s Misery, but know that as a story of a sad psycho-lady look- Not having read Carey’s original has moved on since 1999 and the ing for company, it stands firmly on its own creepy heels. PL 8/10 source material I cannot compare various forms of possible ‘found foot- the way the book handles the ante- age’ are now vastly more elaborate. the chILDren oF green Knowe cedent tropes a story like this can’t Director Adam Wingard (The Guest, Simply Media, £19.99 (DVD) help but play upon; but in this film A Horrible Way to Die) has cheerfully A young boy, Toseland (Tolly) Oldknow (Alec adaptation they are often glaringly borrowed from the numerous ghost Christie) goes to spend Christmas with his great- clear, be it conflict between the mili- and paranormal shows that infest grandmother in her ancient home. Generations tary and scientists, as in Day of the US cable TV, for example, the use of of the family have grown up there, and Tolly gradu- Dead; rampaging ‘London zombies’, drones in Jack Osbourne’s Haunted ally encounters three children from the time of as in 28 Days Later; the last stand for Highway. But the truth is that new Charles II. Tolly’s granny tells him stories about a human cure, as in I Am Legend, or technology means better detail and past children in the family as if they’re all still alive, and as if she the sort of routine foraging in aban- less room for the imagination to personally knew them all, even those from the 17th century. As doned shops that leads to immedi- roam. he begins to hear the previous children playing, then catches ate peril, as in The Walking Dead. The new storyline? We follow glimpses of them, the story blurs the boundaries between play Threatened by a pack of infected Jack (The Walking Dead’s James and fantasy and dream and myth and story and reality. It takes a feral children, Melanie becomes Allen McCune) in search of his sister little while to get into; it feels dated from the start, partly because the uninfected humans’ only hope Heather, lost on the previous expe- it’s set in the 1950s (though it feels more like the 1930s) but of survival in more ways than one. dition, after an Internet site posts partly because in style it seems much older than 1986 when it Sennia Nanua, like certain other apparently new found footage that was broadcast. Adapted from the 1954 novel by Lucy M Boston, young performers, brings to the role seems to show she may still be alive. this BBC production is a gentle and very old-fashioned story, a sort of rapt focus that provides the After much coaxing of the website though none the worse for that. David V barrett 7/ 10 fulcrum for the drama and holds owners, nervy and possibly deceit- much of the film together. There is ful backwoods goths to a man and KnIght oF cuPs a nifty reversal in fortunes at the woman, they mount a joint expedi- Studiocanal, £15.99 (Blu-ray), £12.99 (DVD) conclusion, which leads you to con- tion to locate the house where the sider that whatever existence is, it witch and the sister might be found. Oh for the days when the busy Terrence Malick only remains in the eye of the beholder; There’s plenty of atmosphere, managed about one movie a decade! Starting with one of Vaughan Williams’s Pilgrim’s Progress set- and that nature doesn’t really give a plenty of jumps, feints and misdi- tings – John Geilgud intoning Bunyan’s words over stuff one way or the other. rections, with unpleasant moments music that would eventually become the luminous For all that, I was left with the dropping on the storyline like ticks Fifth Symphony – it’s clear that his latest film is feeling that any deeper philosophi- from the trees.The denouement is about a spiritual journey of some kind. Trouble is, the journey is cal musings and resonance were ferociously loud and dynamic after that of a sulky-looking Christian Bale, having some sort of mid-life somewhat lost in the transference the silence of the woods, and the set crisis while he continues to move through the successful Hol- from page to screen; and that sense design of the witch’s house impres- lywood milieu in which he appears to work (at what, I wasn’t sure; of deep unease I felt at the outset sively decayed, seemingly drawing all he ever does is go to decadent parties, or the beach, where was effectively replaced by a lot of on films such as REC. It is objectively he broods and has sex with a series of drop-dead gorgeous walking, running and shooting for much better directed than the young women; tough job, but someone’s got to do it, right?) This the film’s duration. Although light original, but what it makes up for determinedly oneiric film is structured around a Tarot reading – an on outright gore, there is more than in modernity and professionalism attempt by the protagonist to find meaning in his empty life – con- enough tension and conflict (includ- it also loses in amateurish poetry. tains the greatest number of symbolic images of water ever seen ing all that walking and running and Favourite line? “Yeah I faked it in a movie, and is densely allusive – Eliot, and Pasolini, as well as shooting) to make this an effective because it’s real”. Few things sum up Bunyan and the Bible – but to patchily impressive effect. Every excursion for zombie lovers. the modern age quite so tartly. shot strains for significance, teeters on the brink of revelation Nick Cirkovic Roger Clarke – before we remember that we don’t actually care about Bale’s first-world problems enough for any of it to matter. One applauds Fortean Times Verdict Fortean Times Verdict the ambition of creating a spiritual cinema, but while Malick does Vanity Fair well enough, he can’t reach the Celestial City. Ds 5/10 FungaL zoMbIes LIVen uP a the seMInaL shaKy-caM Post-aPocaLyPse LonDon 7 Cellscare-Fest gets a reboot 7

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Bigfoot lowdown 1916. It makes little sense to point out that Liz Greene was (unlike I work for Hilton GrandVacations. Dan Brown) not ‘sued’ for her novel Recently, I spoke with a guest – with similar themes, given (as the we’ll call her Mary – fromYakima, article rightly says) it was pub- Washington. Jokingly, I asked her lished before the work by Lincoln, if she had ever seen a Bigfoot. She Baigent and Leigh (although some replied that she knew the man who of the Chronicle TV documentaries wore the gorilla suit in the movie had been broadcast). De Sède’s Le they made way back when. “What Trésor Maudit de Rennes le Château movie was that?” I asked. “The was published in 1968, not 1977, one where the Bigfoot is walking a date which fi ts more accurately through the woods in California”. with the correct point made that “What was his name?” “Heironi- the book set Lincoln on his way on mus. Bob Heironimus. He was my this theme. neighbour.” So there you have it I was amused to see the word – the truth is out and Hilton guests ‘hypothesis’ used: on one of my do not lie! many trips to Rennes le Château I Now that we are sharing our Simulacra corner met Henry Lincoln, who looked me world with interdimensional enti- in the eye and with a mischievous ties, we should at least learn how Stuart Lloyd noticed thus simulacrum of a horse’s head (or is it a wink said the book was “a hypoth- to communicate with them. In his duck’s head?) among the roots of an ancient yew tree in Berkham- esis, dear boy, a hypothesis”. book Silent Invasion: The Pennsylva- sted, Hertfordshire. Tom Heywood nia UFO-Bigfoot Casebook, Stan Gor- We are always glad to receive pictures of spontaneous forms and By email don cites an encounter between a fi gures, or any curious images. Send them to the PO box above (with a woman and a Bigfoot she surprised stamped addressed envelope or international reply coupon) or to sievek- Hand of Glory in her backyard.The woman said [email protected] – and please tell us your postal address. “the big hairy ape” was extending Your readers may be interested its arms over its head – she thought to learn that a Hand of Glory it was going to attack her, so she Often, however, imagination took [FT342:14] features prominently shot it.The hairy biped disap- Cut’n paste astrology wing and truly bizarre guidance in the Fighting Fantasy paperback peared in a bright fl ash of light. was offered. “Whatever you do,” I Moonrunner, number 48, pub- Recently a witness reported on a Your obituary of the pop astrolo- warned one twelfth of the nation lished in 1992 and written by the website how he communicates with ger Jonathan Cainer [FT343:24] in a star-sign forecast, “do not step aptly named Stephen Hand. In Bigfoots who gather to “party be- reminded me of the regrettable outside your door today.” It was so- the adventure, which has a loosely hind his house on a full Moon”.The goings-on that followed the sudden bering but gratifying to get a letter Victorian feel, the player has to witness claims that when Bigfoots death of Tina Kaye, one of his pre- from a reader a few weeks later: remove a wooden hand from a hold their arms up over their heads decessors on the Daily Express and “I always check my horoscope and hanged felon and have it en- it is a form of welcome or greeting. Sunday Express in the 1980s.Tina, take care to do what it says, so I chanted by a necromancer in order Maybe hunters, hikers and campers whose hat and coat appeared to stayed in all day just in case. But to provide protection from a later should keep this in mind in case be made of the skins of turquoise my neighbour’s son, who has the magical attack.The hand itself they encounter one. budgerigars, failed to predict her same star sign as me, went out exudes an aura of sleep that affects own demise and left the newspa- on his motorbike and had a fatal the player and others throughout • ‘Blow Me!’ [FT342:9] reported pers without a horoscope column accident. So hats off to the Sunday the book. It is specifically referred that two pilot whales were killed until a new soothsayer could be Express!”. to as a Hand of Glory by the when they choked to death trying found. Nick Guitard author. We also encounter a pair of to eat a fi sh that became trapped in In desperation, the Sunday Poundstock, Cornwall untrustworthy Irish grave robbers, their blowholes.This cause of death Express editor, the great Sir John sinister vaudeville showmen and is mistaken since the œsophagus of Junor, told his sub-editors to Just a hypothesis more than a few nods to Jack the a cetacean is not connected to its cobble one together every week Ripper, alongside more incongru- breathing passages and blowhole. for the emergency. I was one of A few errors in the otherwise inter- ous lifts from Fu Manchu, The Inva- This makes the incidents all the them and am ashamed to say we esting piece on The Holy Blood and sion of the Bodysnatchers, Halloween more bizarre since the fi sh must carried out our instructions with a The Holy Grail [FT343:52-53]. I’ve and er... Predator, hence the kind have swum directly into the whales’ deplorable lack of gravity that may never seen Saunière’s name pre- of Rastafarian / Medusa hybrid on blowholes. Humans often choke have had something to do with an fi xed by a ‘de’ before and suspect it the front cover. Slightly uneven in on food and liquids when we say it equally deplorable excess of beer. is indeed just Saunière.The (origi- tone, the game book does have a “went down the wrong pipe”, but If time was short we just raided nal) book as published by Jonathan few nice set pieces, not least the it is impossible for a cetacean to the back columns from a decade Cape is called The Holy Blood and Hand’s enchantment, which I will choke like this. or more earlier, jumbling up the the Holy Grail; the US publisher not spoil further. Greg May predictions with scissors and paste changed the title to Holy Blood, Holy Ryan Shirlow Orlando, Florida to give them engaging new twists. Grail. Saunière died in 1917, not Leeds, West Yorkshire

FT345 69 www.forteantimes.com letters

Spooky telly ready to fund and produce it, but terrestrial-probably-not/) UFOs seem to crash, as rumour following the de-regulation of UFO crashes, by extension, suggests, leaves us with many I much enjoyed Stu Neville’s British TV and a growing demand would also seem to fit this para- more questions about the phenom- take on TV ghost-hunting shows for new shows, that wasn’t such a digm: that is to say, they also are enon than answers. But perhaps [FT342:54-55], which brought back daft notion. Simon was certainly not what they seem. In fact, apolo- that’s the whole point. It’s not so a memory from (I think) late 1995. I sufficiently serious about his gists for the alien/UFO connection much about the driving skills of attended quite a few fantasy/horror proposal to send it to one of the jump through all sorts of hypo- the pilot(s) involved but rather conventions at that period, and got independent TV companies. Alas, thetical hoops to explain how an what our species learns about to know Doncaster author Simon personal events took me out of alien spacecraft could traverse the itself when writing up the ticket. I Clark. Over a few drinks in a hotel his company and I never heard millions of light years necessary have had a number of experiences, bar, he set out a brilliant idea he exactly how it was received or to reach our particular spot in the including a missing time incident, had conceived for a new kind of TV what followed. In the event, in Orion-Cygnus Arm of the Milky that fit the stereotypical ‘alien series – each week a team of dedi- 1996-67 the Discovery Channel Way when there’s no need. UFOs, encounter’ reports, but in some cated ghost-hunters (led by himself) aired the British series Ghosthunt- one might reason, have always ways do not. would visit a notoriously “haunted” ers, based on ideas undeniably been here.The pioneering UFO/ Trevor Ouellette location, discuss the history and similar to those we had discussed. USO researcher Ivan T Sanderson Ontario, Canada traditions of any manifestations Perhaps it was just a concept certainly thought that this might and spend the night there in the whose time had come, but I still be the case and concluded that Re saucer crashes: even for hope of catching something spooky regret that our version wasn’t the UFO/USOs are, in fact, here and advanced civilisations surely on camera. one that got made – just think have been for quite some time; these craft are costly to produce, The inspiration for this was, of what fortean mischief I could either having originated on this assuming such crashes are real course, StephenVolk’s 1992 mocku- have concocted! planet or having arrived from in the first place.We wonder if mentary Ghostwatch, of which we Gail-Nina Anderson somewhere else and setting up the crashes are small in number were both great fans. I pointed out Jesmond, Newcastle-upon-Tyne occupancy in our oceans, long ago. compared with those who observe that any shows concentrating on If Sanderson is right, then UFO us or pass by, presumably cloaked a ghost vigil would make tedious Staged crashes? crashes are even more anomalous in invisibility shields, and if the viewing, as the highlight of such than they might otherwise seem. relatively rare crashes are due to events tends to be occasional creak- While I enjoyed Roger Musson’s It’s a fact, no matter how you malfunctions which also cause ing floorboards and regular tea- speculative forum piece, “Ac- slice it, that the 1950s and 1960s the craft to be then visible. Even breaks.We debated the possibility cidents on the Cosmic Highway” saw a rapid technological revolu- ‘superior technology’ might go of including mediums and séances [FT341:55], I can’t help but feel tion – a revolution that some UFO pearshaped. to liven things up, but decided that that the three possibilities that he conspiracists have associated with E Beckett and K Bell on-site dramatisations (firmly la- concludes as conceivable reasons the recovery of downed alien craft London belled as such) of stories relating to for UFO crashes – enemy action, that occurred a decade earlier. the haunting or of earlier sightings technical malfunction, and/or Could these ‘crashes’ have been Regarding Roger Musson’s mus- would represent a more honest ap- pilot error – is a bit limited in planned as part of the evolution- ings on the improbability of alien proach. As I recollect, my role in all scope. If UFO crashes do occur, ary advancement of our species craft crashing, he will probably this would be that of researcher. in the way that UFO pundits by a concerned ‘parent’ that felt be glad to hear that somebody Needless to say, like most claim that they do, then a fourth we weren’t quite living up to our at Disney/Pixar already had the alcohol-fuelled ideas, this was option needs to be considered: the potential? A kind of evolutionary same idea. I refer to their short pie-in-the-sky unless someone was crashes are staged. ‘kick in the pants’ that sought to film Lifted (readily available on As John Keel, Nick Red- preserve the ‘Prime Directive’ via YouTube), which never fails to fern, and a few others have a messy, but otherwise accept- reduce me to helpless laughter. pointed out, CE3 encounters able, method by our frustrated Well worth a watch for all forteans (specifically those of Bloech- forebears to get us going? Or, with a sense of humour. er subtype C), seem weirdly perhaps, such crashes are part Dr Nicola Senior hyperbolised: “There’s of the “paranormal performance University of Exeter the nature of the entities art” that Canadian Redstar Books themselves: they practi- publisher Paul Kimball believes More things in cally overemphasize who, some non-human intelligence or what, they claim to be. has created to inspire us to think Heaven and Earth... Take, for example, all those about our sum total as existential ‘soil-sampling’ aliens of the beings. Further to that line of The Forum article by Roger Mus- 1950s and 1960s.You know speculation, there’s also the Jun- son [FT341:55] regarding rookie the ones: someone is work- gian idea that the UFO represents ET pilots who are always crashing ing in their field, or driving a psychic disturbance of sorts.To demonstrated a lack of knowledge down a stretch of road, when Jung, the mandala-shaped UFO on this subject. Please allow a they encounter a couple of is a symbolic projection of our long-time ufologist to comment. I diminutive aliens collecting unconscious desire for God in an was born in 1950 and have had a specimens of local plants, increasingly atheistic society; a lifelong intuitive belief and fasci- flowers, and vegetables. tulpian manifestation of a deep- nation in the subject, subscribing ET on a scientific mission, seated religious longing for some- to Flying Saucer Review in 1965.

MARTIN ROSS right? No, not in my view.” thing larger than ourselves. So to I have travelled around Great “Suction!” (http://mysteriousuni- see it crash and burn...? Britain, and as far afield as Puerto verse.org/2016/04/ufos-extra- Whatever the case, the fact that Rico and Nevada to research re-

70 FT345 www.forteantimes.com letters

ported experiences, learning some Shuttle footage of STS-48, show- astounding things. ing a bright controlled object Firstly, Mr Musson writes: “Now- approaching Earth’s atmosphere adays we know that none of the when a massive flash (warning other planets in our Solar System signal) is seen.The apparent UFO are capable of supporting life”. does an instantV turn to avoid a Most astrophysicists agree that missile or beam weapon aimed Mars once was a thriving world at it from the Earth.The Earth- with all the attributes of Earth. For based weapon carries on its path some reason(s), it lost most of its directly through the UFO’s original atmosphere. What happened to its trajectory. STS-80: an Earth-based assumed inhabitants? If they were missile with an exotic propulsion technologically advanced enough system, estimated speed 500 miles they would have had time perhaps a second, was reverse-tracked by to tunnel inside their planet, or computer engineer and specialist build covered areas with artifi- in digital imagery analysis Dr Mark cial atmospheres inside. Some Carlotto to the Caribbean island of Martians may still be there. Many Vieques, which belongs to neigh- believe that intelligent life is com- desolate but “dynamic and beauti- So some UFOs are actually of bouring Puerto Rico. Both islands mon throughout the Universe and ful”, the complete opposite of terrestrial origin. I don’t doubt the are part of the American Common- naturally evolves or is designed, NASA’s mantra. In Footprints on the Secret Space Programme for a mo- wealth and were used extensively seeded and nurtured by biogenetic Moon by Associated Press, colour ment. Does any freethinking per- as military bases up until 2004. engineering programmes wher- photos taken on the Apollo 8 mis- son imagine that world powers still Thanks to local ufologist and ever possible. sion reveal a brown, almost desert- have to rely on fuel rockets and tin journalist Jorge Martin, we know NASA has lied about the true like landscape with vegetation cans (e.g. the International Space of the startling amount of sup- Moon situation, choosing to (certainly green-coloured) growing Station) for their journeys into the posed ET phenomena in that part perpetuate the Dead Moon Myth. in shady areas of hills and craters. cosmos? Technology has advanced of the world.The estimated speed Jose Escamilla’s films Celestial and Does this sound like the grey, incredibly in all other fields, apart of the above missile would put it Moonrising (YouTube; pictured atmosphereless, featureless lump from Space missions; it doesn’t add in the ‘EM containment plasma above) show the true colours of of rubble that NASA portrays? up. If anything they’ve regressed fusion rocket engine’ league. David the Moon.Vast areas of blues and From my Wake Up! Files: USAF since the days of the Moon land- Adair, take a bow. Taking heed of greens are seen in footage taken Space scientist Jerome Pearson ings 45 years ago. Who are they erstwhile Canadian Secretary of by the USA Clementine orbiter at Wright Patterson Research kidding? There are of course a Defence Paul Hellyer’s informa- of 1994 plus film from amateur Centre told the International lot more claims by many insiders tion that “UFOs are as common as astronomers with state-of-the-art Space Conference in Brighton regarding advanced, secret Space planes above our heads”, the UFO telescopes. Astronauts’ statements in October 1987: “The Earth and drive propulsion systems. situation is now as controlled as during the Apollo missions hint at Moon are a double planet system”. Two other queries can be cov- possible. a Moon different from the official If NASA lies about the Moon and ered together: “Why do the ruddy The USA has certainly worked line. From Moongate (1982) by Wil- Mars, there must surely be many things crash at all?” and “I doubt if out the physics even to the extent liam L Brian II, we learn: “On the structures and artefacts still vis- any terrestrial military is going to of interdimensional crossovers. Apollo 11 mission, less than 13,000 ible, then why should we believe fire on a non-aggressive UFO”.The You would think (hope) that our miles before reaching the Moon, their version ofVenus (a poisonous conclusion reached by many seri- visitors from whatever realms Armstrong stated, ‘I can see sky all atmosphere with no possibility of ous researchers on crash retrievals would have far superior technol- around the Moon, even on the rim any sort of life)? So, if we just look (see the work of the late Leonard ogy to cancel out the Americans’ of it, where there’s no earthshine in our immediate Solar System Stringfield for excellent coverage) lethal tactics. Unfortunately, the or moonshine’.”(Indianapolis neighbourhood we can see that Mr is that radar introduced towards capabilities of the Secret Space News, 19 July 1969) Musson’s assertion was mislead- the end of WWII and since brought Programme must be immense, both From Don Wilson’s book, Our ing. “UFOs, if craft they be, must them down.This was accidental, in operational technologies and the Mysterious Spaceship Moon (1975) – be capable of interstellar travel us- but the pulsed microwaves didn’t ability to keep the lid of Pandora’s Apollo 16, Duke speaking from LM ing technology that we can barely actually destroy the alien craft but Box tightly shut. Orion resting on the Moon: “If this imagine the workings of.” There interfered with their force fields, Mike Prentis place had air, it’d sure be beauti- is a famous quote by Ben Rich of disabling them. Once world pow- Nottingham ful. It’s beautiful with or without Lockheed Martin Skunkworks ers realised this, particularly the air, the scenery up on top of Stone dept. He said prior to his death Americans, more powerful electro- Not a Mason Mountain, you’d have to be there in 1995: “Reverse engineering magnetic beams were weaponised to see this to believe it.Those energy and propulsion systems deliberately to target UFOs and To avoid any ambiguity I should domes are incredible!” From Alien [from ET] had been mastered bring them down in chosen mostly perhaps mention that the standfirst Bases on the Moon (1981) by Fred between 1954-57 [..] We already uninhabited regions. One assumes for my article “Three Centuries Steckling: The February 1972 issue have the means to travel among ETs overcame the original radar of English Freemasonry” (FT 344: of National Geographic magazine the stars, but these technologies problem reasonably quickly, but 14-15), beginning “DavidV Barrett reported Apollo 15 findings that are locked up in black projects and the directed EMP weapons and is definitely on theve le l...”, should the Moon has a magnetic field and it would take an Act of God to ever even more advanced SDI (Star not be taken to imply that I am a it does have a thin atmosphere. get them out to benefit humanity Wars) arsenal are able to locate Freemason. It also stated that the Apollo 11 [..] Anything you can think of we and destroy the unaware. David V Barrett crew found the Moon not barren or already know how to do”. A perfect example is the Space London

FT345 71 www.forteantimes.com letters

Trickery denied According to the account of Mary Ricketts, “after Midsummer In a recent and interesting letter [1771] the [ghostly] noises became [FT342:73], Andrew Summers every night more intolerable.” mentioned the alleged haunting of They began before she went to a manor house at Hinton Ampner, bed, and – with intermissions – Hampshire, in the 18th century, “were heard till after broad day and quoted from chapterVIII of in the morning.” Therefore, if the Allan Fea’s long out-of-print Secret phenomena at that time were Chambers and Hiding Places. 1 Fea being generated by one or more suggested that, for years, servants pranksters, the individual(s) con- had fabricated ghostly phenomena cerned must have been devoting a without detection, and that when truly prodigious amount of time to the property was demolished, nu- the mischief. merous secret stairs and passages, The late Ralph Dutton, the 8th not known to exist, were brought to Lord Sherborne, who bequeathed eNDLAND / CReATIve COMMONS light, “which had offered peculiar his Hinton Ampner estate (in- Rw facilities for the deception”. A more than conjecture or rumour, Mrs Ricketts seems to have cluding the present-day Hinton footnote stated that a full account Duthy asserted that “the domes- been an astute and intelligent Ampner House) to the National of the supernatural occurrences at tics of [the] family were the con- woman. Assuming that she wasn’t Trust, seemed to accept that the Hinton Ampner could be found in a trivers of the artifices”; and, with- lying or mentally ill, she appears old house was indeed haunted. biography of Richard Barham. 2 out citing any source, he claimed to have provided important first- In his book Hinton Ampner: A However, the relevant part of the that “it was [..] discovered [during and second-hand testimony; but Hampshire Manor, 7 he refers to Barham biography (v.1, pp.305-315) the demolition of the house] that Fea doesn’t seem to have been the demolition of the old house makes no mention of secret places in the thickness of the walls were fully conversant with it, or maybe (pp.51-52), but makes no reference being found when the house was private passages and stairs, not he chose not to reflect it accurate- to the discovery of secret stairs demolished, nor of shenanigans generally known to exist, [which] ly. He stated that “a female figure and passages. by servants; and it seemingly falls offered peculiar facilities for car- was often seen to rush through far short of providing a full, clear rying on, without detection, the the apartments” [my emphasis]. NOTES and accurate account of what hap- mysteries of a haunted house.” He However, Mrs Ricketts herself 1 SH Bousfield, London, 1901. This book pened. It doesn’t explicitly identify also mentioned a “story whispered recorded only one such sighting is freely available online at: the location as Hinton Ampner, and among the old inhabitants of the of a mysterious female figure http://www.gutenberg.org/ it states, incorrectly, that Mrs Mary neighbourhood”, according to during her occupancy (apparently files/13918/13918-h/13918-h.htm Ricketts (see below) went there which, “one wintry night”, the not witnessed by her personally). 2 Fea doesn’t name or reference this almost immediately after her hus- brother of Mrs Ricketts caught Furthermore, various aspects of two-volume work fully. It is: The Life and band had departed for Jamaica on a female domestic fabricating her account don’t accord well with Letters of the Rev. Richard Harris Bar- ham, Author of The Ingoldsby Legends: business. According to an account phenomena, which she’d allegedly the contention that mischievous With a Selection from his Miscellaneous written by Mrs Ricketts herself, done before, whereupon she was servants had concocted the phe- Poems. The author was his son, RHD which is reproduced in books by dismissed – although, for some rea- nomena. For example, there was Barham, and it was published in 1870 by Harry Price and Sacheverell Sit- son, the detection of her mischief apparently a turnover of servants, Richard Bentley of London. well, 3,4 her family and servants had wasn’t generally made public. with Mrs Ricketts noting that, at 3 Harry Price, Poltergeist: Tales of the been in residence there since Janu- Duthy’s book doesn’t name Mrs the time of her leaving, she didn’t Supernatural, pp.129-144. Bracken ary 1765, well before her husband Ricketts as such, but states that have any servant who’d been Books, London, 1993. (First published as Poltergeist over England by Country Life left for Jamaica in late 1769. And having come to believe that the with her from the outset of her in 1945.) she reported that ghostly phenom- phenomena were supernormal, occupancy. 4 Sacheverell Sitwell, Poltergeists: An ena had been occurring since early she couldn’t be easily convinced The supposed existence of Introduction and Examination followed in their occupancy, well before her they were caused by mischievous secret passages and stairs in the by Chosen Instances, pp.230-267, husband’s departure. domestics; but judging from old house was, I suspect, simply 1940; reprinted by Dorset Press, New Fea cites no specific sources for Price’s book, her brother, Captain sceptical conjecture, aimed at York, 1988. [Although the titles of the his contentions about the detec- (later Admiral) Jervis, first got explaining away the reported Price and Sitwell books contain the word ‘Poltergeist’ or ‘Poltergeists’, some of tion of secret spaces in the house to hear about the disturbances manifestations. Somewhere along the cases they discuss, including the and the fabrication of phenomena during a visit to the house in the the line, their rumoured exist- one at Hinton Ampner, would be better by servants; but I suspect that he summer of 1771, and soon after ence and the supposed trickery by described as hauntings.] was drawing on the questionable experienced anomalous auditory servants may have been wrongly 5 It was republished by Laurence Oxley assertions of John Duthy, the author phenomena there himself. He accepted as established facts. of Alresford, Hants, in 1972. The relevant of Sketches of Hampshire, originally apparently left the house before 9 However, even if the house did pages are 22-24. published in 1839. 5 Duthy claimed August that year, with “his sister contain secret stairs and passages, 6 According to Sitwell, op cit, p.264, that the present-day mansion in and her children [departing] very it doesn’t necessarily follow that Mrs Ricketts seems to have subsequent- Hinton Ampner was built on the soon after” (p.130). If so, it seems some of the servants knew about ly returned to the house once, and heard a sound that caused her indescribable site of the old (supposedly haunted) unlikely that Jervis could have them, and used them to simulate terror. one. However, although close, the detected a prankster on a “wintry ghostly effects. Equally, an oc- 7 Published by the National Trust, new mansion isn’t on the exact site night”, unless, of course, we’re to casional prank by a member of the Swindon, 2010. of the old house [see FT312:68, assume that the family returned to domestic staff wouldn’t entitle us 336:74]. the house with servants at a later to infer that all of the phenomena Peter A McCue Apparently relying on nothing point. 6 had been fabricated. By email

72 FT345 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

A fog in Wigan and I was overwhelmed by claustrophobia. I creatures as you would treat yourselves, there almost ripped the door off its hinges getting out is no hope for you.” After that dream, I turned One night in 1991, I was driving around the of the bedroom. To this day, my fear of being vegetarian for a couple of years. I went to wigan area [in Greater Manchester] testing trapped in confined spaces is beyond belief. see a psychologist, who suggested hypnosis. walkie-talkies for range. My wife was at home My wife reckoned that I was “missing” for After coming out of hypnosis the therapist with one of the radios and I had the other. exactly 30 minutes, although I was unaware said that he had taped the conversation and Reception was good. As I drove down a country of a time-loss and had no clue what had wanted nothing further to do with the matter. lane in Red Rock, near wigan, I noticed a bank happened to me. I felt so ill that I visited my He left the room and suggested I listen to the of fog. Reception on the radio was still OK and I GP, who sent me for tests at our local hospital. recording. I couldn’t believe my ears! My voice continued to speak to my wife. My blood count was dangerously low; as for was saying that I had been abducted by aliens. As I drove into the fog, I was bombarded by the “sunburn”, the consultants just asked It seems that as I hit the fog bank, my car a high-pitched whistle, which got louder and me if I had fallen asleep under a sun lamp. and I were lifted into a UFO. I was stripped, louder and became so painful that I became One of them asked me if I worked near strong placed on a ‘table’, and attended to by several disorientated. I made sure that the car radio magnetic fields, such as a power station. I told small grey creatures and one that looked was off and I also thought I had switched off him that the nearest I had been to a power human. They did various tests on me. The the walkie-talkie. However, the noise got worse. station was a 13amp-wall socket. ‘room’ was quite big and there were a lot of I found that my left ear was bleeding and I also Since the experience, my health got very ‘greys’ messing about with other people. Next had the distinct impression that there was bad. I started to have weird and sometimes to me on a similar table was a naked young ‘someone’ in the passenger seat. I couldn’t scary dreams, such as images of skinned girl. She was terrified and kept asking me if understand what was happening. Suddenly, I animals on hooks. Creatures with big black she was dreaming. I told that I didn’t think found myself driving out of the fog, with my left eyes told me that the images were a warning so. She calmed down a little and told me that ear hurting and the left side of my face burning. for mankind. One pointed at the pitiful (and she came from the Parbold area of wigan, and I then heard my wife shouting over the walkie- still living!) animals on hooks on a sort of wanted to know where she was. I got agitated talkie. conveyor belt over a street with children playing as a man was being led past me by the ‘greys’ “Bill, come in! where are you? why are you and mothers smiling and happily gardening, toward a metallic spiral staircase that led to not answering?” oblivious to the plight of the animals that were a semi-circular door, quite high up to my right. “Not answering? I’ve never stopped talking going for processing. The belt led down into a Images of Nazi atrocities flashed through to you.” beautiful valley to a factory, belching steam. my mind and I had the impression that they “I’ve been shouting my head off for the last The creature said: “Man, this is you, this were going to do something horrible to him. I half-hour and you’ve not replied. I was worried is what you are. Until you learn to treat other thrashed about and shouted, and the ‘human’ sick. what’s going on?” approached me. He was in his fifties, quite Driving home was difficult as I felt unwell normal in appearance, and seemed to be in and the car, usually so reliable, was acting up. “As I drove into the charge. He didn’t speak to the ‘greys’, although My wife was shocked at my dishevelled and he appeared to control them. The ensuing bloodied appearance. My ear was bleeding fog I was bombarded conversation seemed to take place in my head. and the left side of my face was sunburned. I “Don’t worry,” he said, “everything’s OK, the spewed up masses of a clear liquid, like water by a loud high- man you see is going back to where we picked but thicker. I felt very tired and went to bed. him up. All that we’re doing is preparing him. After troubled dreams I awoke with a jolt, not pitched whistle” Unfortunately, the device we use to get you knowing where I was; real terror swept over me out of your bed or wherever and into our ship is quite stressful to humans. You are not very strong and it can be dangerous, so we have to prepare your bodies for the trip. Don’t worry, as you will be going next.” “How do you pick us up?” “The best way I can explain it is that we shift you in time... well, more like inter-dimensionally. we can’t put you back at exactly the same time as we picked you up but we can pick you up from anywhere we want to.” “what do you call the machine?” “It’s called a dimensional shift device.” I heard all this but his lips never moved. when I say I heard him it was more like pictures in my head, but it seemed to be in my ears. I believed him and calmed down. Since that day, other odd things have happened and I am convinced that I have been abducted several times. I have awoken with bruises, long spindly finger marks on my arms and torso, my pyjamas on inside out, and so forth. Bill Eatock By email

FT345 73 www.forteantimes.com STRangE anD SEnSaTiona

His father later remarried and took Feodor In early February 1905, Feodor and his Jan BonDESon presents more back; in his second marriage, the father sired manager Oscar Bollinger travelled from sensational stories and startling three children of normal size. Not much is Berlin to London in a specially chartered known about Machnow’s early years, except saloon.The journey was not a particularly Victorian images from the that already as a schoolboy, he grew to be pleasant one, since due to his height and very tall. In 1902, when he was 24 years old, bulk, the giant had to travel in a reclining "worst newspaper in England" he married the local schoolmistress Efrosinja position, on both land and sea. His wife and Lebedeva, and soon was the father of a child travelled with him. He was contracted – the illustrated Police news. healthy young daughter. A local impresario to be exhibited at the Hippodrome, and made plans to have the 7ft 10in (239cm) tall the management of this establishment had giant exhibited for money: in 1902, Machnow hired a very large carriage to pick the giant went to Moscow, and in 1903 and 1904 he was up atVictoria Station.There was much 50. machnow ThE gianT exhibited in Berlin and Paris to great acclaim. consternation when Machnow stepped out His management exaggerated his height, into the Strand, to be measured for a dress Feodor Machnow was born in 1878 in the claiming that he was 9ft 8in (294cm) tall, and suit at a tailor’s shop: it required 15 yards of village of Kasciuki, nearVitebsk, in what is they made him dress in a Cossack outfit, with double width cloth, five times more than for today Belarus. After his mother had died in high boots, an embroidered greatcoat, and a an ordinary man. When Feodor wanted some childbirth, he was raised by his grandparents. tall fur hat. refreshments after being measured, he was

ABOVE: A feature on Feodor Machnow, from the Illustrated Police News, 18 February 1905. TionaL SToRiES FRom

ABOVE LEFT: The London Hippodrome in an old postcard. ABOVE RIGHT: A French postcard records Machnow's Paris appearance. BELOW: Machnow in Germany.

given a jug containing five pints of milk, in Luncheon was served at 12 noon: he ate two which were beaten 33 eggs; the thirsty giant to three pounds of meat and five pounds drank the cholesterol-rich contents of the of potatoes, and drank two pints of beer. jug with audible satisfaction. Machnow was Dinner was served at 5pm: a large bowl of a great success at the Hippodrome, where soup, three to five pounds of meat, fowl, he was greeted by full houses.The Prince fish and vegetables, three pounds of bread, and Princess of Wales came to see him on 6 and three pints of beer. Supper was at 9pm: March. When Feodor was taken to Brighton two pints of tea, between 10 and 15 eggs, in a motor car, he was insured for £5,000. He and bread and butter. Before and after went in a 24 hp Napier, and his wife followed each performance on stage, he drank three in a 10 hp de Dion.The giant enjoyed his pints of strong broth.This unwholesome ride, and he drank quantities of hot milk and calorie-rich diet ensured that Machnow and port wine, although he worried about was as sturdy as he was tall: he steadily his wife and child, and refused to take any increased in weight, and soon reached 365lb food in their absence. (166kg). Machnow was somewhat feeble-minded, Machnow remained at the London and his linguistic ability was limited to Hippodrome at least until April 1905. He the Russian dialect spoken in his native was exhibited in Paris in June the same year, village and a few words of German. His and then went on to Belgium, Holland and wife supervised the giant’s interactions Italy. There is a story that while in Rome, with the outside world, but he could only he was received in audience by the Pope, communicate through a Russian interpreter. who gave the giant’s pretty little daughter He lived at the Hippodrome, something a gold cross on a chain. In March 1906, the that was cheap and convenient for the giant was exhibited in Cardiff, and the management, who did not want any person following month, he was back in London. to see the giant for free. Picture postcards of Machnow had been seen by an agent of the ‘Hippodrome Giant’ enjoyed excellent William Hammerstein’s music-hall in New sales. One of them had the giant’s menu York, where a plethora of human and animal on the reverse: he breakfasted at 9am, performers were being exhibited.The giant’s drinking two pints of milk and a pint of management was approached with an offer, tea, and eating 16 hard-boiled eggs and six and it was agreed that he should cross the to eight small loaves of bread and butter. Atlantic in June 1906, when his tour of ABOVE: A postcard showing Machnow and his car in front of the Hippodrome, with the giant’s daily menu on the reverse.

France and Britain had been completed. It arrested, wept and cried, but the giant would was arranged that on 4 June the giant would hE STuck To a SimPLE still not sign. In the end, the wife, who was embark on the liner Pretoria for New York. the only person who could communicate with Machnow was transported to the Prince the muddled giant, said that if he would not of Wales dock in Dover, but when it was anD RuSTic DiET oF sign the document, he would surely die in the explained to him that he was about to cross cells, and then the American doctors would the Atlantic, he refused to leave the carriage, mEaT, PoTaToES, steal his bones.This prospect frightened the since he was very fearful of the sea. In spite giant so much that he agreed to sign it, and of the tearful entreaties of his wife, he would he was free to go, returning to the music-hall not budge. His management team then called LaRD anD caBBagES in the automobile, greatly relieved that his for the service of 20 sailors, and the giant children had not been taken away from him. was forcibly pulled out of the carriage and William Hammerstein also arranged carried on board the liner. A band was playing in Central Park, but the for Machnow, who had previously met the He had an unhappy time on board ship, music stopped when Machnow stepped out German chancellor, the Prince of Wales, since everything was too small for him and of the automobile. A crowd of people soon and the Pope, to be taken to Washington he suffered badly from sea-sickness. He slept formed around him, and he greeted some to be introduced to President Theodore on a number of mattresses on the floor of the small children, who were quite frightened Roosevelt. Feodor found it hard to believe stewards’ cabin. Since the other passengers by this towering colossus. When he wanted that the President really lived in the White protested against dining in the same room as to shake the hand of a timid old lady, she House, since there were no soldiers there. the giant, he ate alone. When the ship arrived dropped in fright on a bench. A number of An interpreter was present, and the giant at Ellis Island, Machnow was detained by policemen made an appearance, accusing addressed Mr Roosevelt as “King and the immigration authorities, since some Mr Hammerstein and Machnow of causing a Emperor of all the Peoples of the World”. mean-spirited person in Newcastle had crowd, and calling for the people to disperse. He wanted to kiss the President’s hand, written an anonymous letter stating that Hammerstein was forced to sign a bail bond but this was not allowed. As Machnow was the giant was weak-minded, and that he had by an officious police sergeant, but when the transported back to the railway station, been compelled to cross the seas against his giant was asked to sign it, he refused to do his wife threw a tantrum, since she did not will. But Hammerstein had a tame doctor in so. The timid Machnow had been frightened believe that the man with the eye-glasses readiness to vouch for Machnow’s sanity, and by the policemen shouting and blowing they had just met was really the President, the giant and his wife and children were set their whistles, and he had got it into his since he was not surrounded by soldiers and at large in New York. head that if he were to sign the bail bond, he his portrait was not on the money she had In July 1906, William Hammerstein would be signing away his children, and he seen.They had been fooled, she exclaimed, arranged a publicity stunt for his music-hall: would rather die in a dungeon than do that. and demanded they be taken back to New the giant would be taken for a ride in an The police sergeant then arrested the giant York straight away. automobile to Central Park, where he would and took him to the police station in their The giant remained in New York take a walk and meet some of his admirers. patrol wagon. Machnow’s wife, who was also for several months, being exhibited at ABOVE: Two postcards of Machnow at the London Hippodrome, resplendent in 'Cossack' dress, with an embroidered greatcoat and tall fur hat.

Hammerstein’s music-hall, before making landowner. Byrne (1761-1783) also claimed that he was a tour of the provinces.There were many The stalwart Otto Bollinger persuaded him 8ft 4in (254cm) height, although he was newspaper articles about him, and some to return to Britain in June 1908 for another ‘only’ 7ft 10in (239cm). In the photographs of of the reporters were allowed to interview stint at the London Hippodrome, followed Feodor Machnow, care was always taken to him through an interpreter. They found him by a long tour of the provinces, including make sure that the giant was wearing a tall childlike and wholly reliant on his wife when Burnley, Nottingham, Sheffield, Manchester hat or an enormous fur cap, and that he was dealing with the them. He had little strength and Birmingham.The giant’s wife and two surrounded by very short people. According and little courage, and the only areas in children, a boy and a girl, were with him to the American newspapers, Machnow’s which he showed talent were in eating throughout this tour. His unwholesome wife was 5ft 4in (163cm) height, and analysis and smoking cigarettes. In spite of being diet made sure that he was slowly but of four photographs where she is depicted surrounded by various American delicacies, steadily increasing in weight; his even more next to her gigantic husband would indicate he stuck to a simple and rustic diet of meat, pernicious smoking habits led to attacks of that Machnow was around 7ft 8in (234cm) potatoes, lard and cabbages, with plentiful bronchitis with incessant coughing. tall, and definitely no taller than 7ft 10in helpings of eggs with every meal. He used to The ailing Macnow returned once more to (239cm), the height given for him in his smoke 80 strong Russian cigarettes each day. his home country with his wife and children. Wikipedia entry. Thus, although Machnow He was meek and vacillating, and as long he He suffered from circulatory problems in his was definitely a true acromegalic giant, he had a good supply of food and cigarettes, his huge feet, and from chronic bronchitis that was far from one of the extreme examples, wife could boss him about at will. Machnow’s eventually led to his death, from pneumonia, and there is no question of him challenging greatest fear was that the American doctors in 1912. His wife made sure that a fine Wadlow’s height. would murder him, so they could get hold gravestone was erected to celebrate the giant of his skeleton and exhibit it. While he was and his unique career; it is still standing in New York, a certain Dr Carleton Simon today. Jan Bondeson's collection of had offered $1,000 for Machnow’s brain, A key question is, of course, how tall stories from the Illustrated Police since he wanted to examine the pituitary Machnow really was. In 1903, he was stated for abnormalities, and the fearful giant to be 10ft 6in (320cm) tall, in London in 1905, News, Strange imagined that the medical man would 9ft 8in (294cm), and in America in 1906, 9ft Victoriana, is kidnap him to saw his cranium open and take 2in 279cm). A website celebrating the giant now available out the brain. claimed that he was 9ft 6in (290cm) in height from Amberley Fearing the American doctors, Machnow and thus the tallest person to have walked left the United States, and returned to his the earth.The objection is, however, that Publishing, home in Russia. He had been allowed to keep giants on show have always exaggerated priced £20. a proportion of the earnings from his long their height. Daniel Cajanus, the ‘Swedish (www.amberley- tour, enough for him to buy a large amount Giant’ (1704-1749) used to claim that he was books.com) of land near his native village: he was now 8ft 4in (254cm) tall, whereas in reality he was a peasant no longer, but an independent 7ft 8in (234cm), and the ‘Irish Giant’ Charles 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. 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COMING Strange deathS NEXT UNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL

A mummified man was found hugging rare that a case study was published in a pine tree in the northern outskirts the World Journal of Clinical Cases. The of Tomsk, Siberia, sitting on a branch bacterium Pasteurella multocida, which MONTH some 50ft (15m) above the ground. lives in many pets’ mouths, caused a 4in It is thought he climbed the tree in (10cm)-wide aneurysm in the abdominal winter and died of hypothermia, with section of the man’s aorta (the large both arms hugging the tree. The mummy vessel descending from the heart to the was spotted on 1 July by local man Pavel abdomen) that ultimately ruptured. A portion Petrov, near a road leading to the ‘closed city’ of the aorta was fixed using a tube graft, but of Seversk, from which foreigners are banned, 13 days later the man developed septic shock where Russia enriches and reprocesses and died. When his wife mentioned – upon the uranium and plutonium. “My father and I found his admission to the hospital – the four-week- the body,” he told The Siberian Times. “He was old cat bite whose local infection had since sitting on a pine tree some 50 metres [164ft] healed, doctors dismissed it as the cause of away from the road.” The man was dressed in his symptoms, which included elevated heart- a navy vest, a sweatshirt, trousers and valenki rate, low blood pressure, abdominal pain, and – traditional Russian felt boots. The man, yet sudden weight loss. “Sometimes as physicians to be identified, died in about November 2015 we roll our eyes at information that seems according to a preliminary examination. Daily to be extraneous,” said study co-author Dr celluloid inferno Mirror online, 6 July 2016. Dennis Cho. “Only looking back did we realise dante and depictions of hell this was probably the key to unlocking the true On 22 January, police found a man’s body diagnosis.” USA Today, 2 July 2026. on the silver screen concealed in the branches of a 25ft (7.6m) fir tree just yards from a school’s front gates in On 16 May, a severed head was found at Romford, east London. The dead man, named the Block Fen Drove quarry in Mepal, near locally as Peter Usher, 39, was last seen in Ely in Cambridgeshire. The worker who found Romford on 29 December. “He was in the tree the head after taking the cover off a skip right at the front of the school,” said Mary initially thought it had come from a discarded Morrison, head teacher of the 700-pupil Bower mannequin, but then realised it had eyebrows Park Academy. “It’s quite a dense tree but it’s and hair, and was an actual human head, bizarre none of us saw anything. Thank God no possibly from a woman in her 30s or 40s. “He children did.” Sun, 23 June 2016. said it had blood all over and was covered in dirt, but didn’t look like it had disintegrated,” Joshua M Burwell, 33, of Sheridan, Indiana, said a colleague. The Mepal site is used for stopped his car in San Diego, California, to landfill and recycling as well as the supply of photograph the sunset, but was so distracted aggregates such as limestone and gravel, and by the camera phone in his hands that he mixing concrete. The skip had been picked up plummeted over Sunset Cliffs and was killed. from a construction site below a railway bridge abducted by animals cnet.com, 27 Dec 2015. in Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire, 40 miles (64km) away. Experts from the Natural History Museum invasion of the beastly A seven-year-old girl died on 26 July at Rabat determined that the head came from a man baby-snatchers! Zoo in Morocco when an elephant, a female [sic] aged between 30 and 50. The prevailing called Assia, picked up a large stone and hurled hypothesis is that he was decapitated by a it more than 10 yards over a huge ditch and passing train in an unreported accident at a wooden barrier toward visitors. The girl, who least a decade ago and possibly as long ago + was sitting on her father’s shoulders posing for as the 1960s. (No one mentions what might a photograph beside the elephant enclosure, have become of his torso.) It is thought the gateways to hell, was struck on the back of the head and died head then became lodged in the railway bridge dragon sightings, in hospital hours later. Phyllis Lee, Scientific and remained there unnoticed before coming Director of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, loose when the structure was cleaned. It was putin vs pokémon, says that targeted throwing of stones and then scooped up in material and taken to the and muCh more… branches by elephants is very unusual. “It Mepal site. No DNA matches were found at can happen when elephants are frustrated or the National Crime Agency’s missing person’s bored,” she said. “In my opinion, it’s unlikely database. It’s a puzzle how hair and eyebrows the elephant was directly targeting the girl – but could survive in the open air for a decade or exhibiting frustration. You can’t predict what more, presumably attached to a fragmentary fortean animals in captivity will do.” BBC News, 28 July; scalp. Western Mail (Cardiff), D.Star, 18 May; CBS News, Metro, D.Mail, 29 July 2016. D.Telegraph, Cambridge News, 25 June 2016.

An elephant in Java charged at Octavia It was curtains for a 58-year-old delivery driver in Warahapsari before picking her up with its trunk New Jersey when a tape measure fell 50 storeys TIMES and trampling her to death. The 25-year-old vet and hit him on the head. Sun on Sunday, 21 had been caring for two endangered Sumatran June 2015. elephants at the Gajah Mungkur reservoir and was taking photographs of them on 11 May Sam Sommerville, a 36-year-old chef, on holiday when one of them charged at her. Metro, 12 at a caravan park in Unstill, East Yorkshire, May 2016. died on 15 August 2015 after falling on his 346 wine glass. He bled to death after the glass he A 68-year-old Toronto man died after a cat bit was holding pierced his neck. D.Mirror, 12 Dec him on the right thumb – but the cause was so 2015. ON SALE 13 OCT 2016 How to Become a Your Photo Successful Writer! Here By Marian Ashcroft

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