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Legend-Tripping Freemasonry. Nor is it fascinat­ Online ing that, once the Ong founders Hello revealed the ruse as post-post­ Kitty Supernatural Folklore and the modern art, many continue to Britian's Alien Big are are still large Search for Ong's Hat believe. That was old news as Michael Kins ella soon as When Prophecy Fails, the and felid, but they're not quite so alien University Press of Mississippi-Jackson 2011 university study of a Chicago-area Hb, 2llpp, illus, notes, bib , ind, $55.00, contactee cult, was published in ISBN 9781604739831 1956. the one showing Fairfax, a black BOOKSHOP PRICE £34.00 No, what makes this book domestic 'from feral stock', At last! So much worth reading is all the material sitting on an antique writing lip-service is paid to Kinsella provides as background. desk, his tail and paws protruding unexplained phenom­ He argues extremely persuasively over both ends. Fairfax measured ena being a kind of that modern ufology, spiritual­ four feet (1.2m) from head to tail. modern day folklore, ism, modern tech-heavy ghost While feral moggies could and yet academic studies of folk hunts and such, are examples of somehow be reaching gigantic tales have seldom taken up the "legend trips" to which human­ proportions, Minter suggests any challenge. Professional folklorist ity has subscribed for millennia. Big Cats next generation black in Michael Kinsella finally does so, Whether a seance, walk-about, Britain could be getting smaller. albeit with mixed results. dream walk, "Oz state" or high Facing Britain's Wild Predator He explains that the "open sav­ First, the bad news. This book strangeness, "The performance Rick Minter annah" leopards 'popular in zoos' reads like a master's thesis, which of belief allows people to apply Whittles Publishing 2011 tend to be the bigger ones, while according to the introduction communally constructed interpre­ Pb, 214pp, illus, £18.99, ISBN 97B1849950428 "wild tropical leopards from it almost certainly is. It's often tive frameworks tht [sic] encour­ FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £17.09 Asia are often small animals ... pedantic and obscure, requir- age them to experience 'reality' under selective pressure to be ing frequent trips to Wikipedia according to the logic provided They used to be Alien Big Cats small", some only 70cm [28 in] to understand the suppositions by the game," Kinsella writes. (ABCs), although author Rick long, about right for the "large that place belief systems in the In other words, belief is merely Minter's point is that they're not Labrador-sized" witnesses context of Dadaism, of all things. a game that we have always so alien any more, and our accept· usually describe. And yet this book is a case of half really liked playing, preferably ance of them as part of Britain's Minter doesn't just quote the parts being greater than the with others. We get excited by established natural fauna may Britain's big cat experts, some - whole. each other and feed each others' be imminent. Britain's failure to such as Chris Moiser, the CFZ's Readers would be well advised beliefs, constantly adding to the accept there are big cats among Jonathan McGowan, Big Cats in to set aside the provocative, whole, creating our own waking us is a bigger mystery than the Britain's Mark Fraser - familiar titular 'Ong's Hat', dealt with reality- which wider-awake nuts­ mystery big cats themselves. to FT readers; he takes the brave in the final chapters. It was sort and-bolts theorists are then left Minter explains how hard it step of giving them two or three of a minor movement, sort of a to thanklessly deal with. is even to photograph big cats pages each to have their say, game, and also what's come to Kinsella points out that in the wild. Most leopards you'll which works well. be trendily-named "collaborative folklorists do not try to prove see in photos live in sanctuaries Facing Big Cats is beautifully fiction". It was also a hoax. ("Or or disprove fairytales. As far as and are used to people. And it written with much love for the was it?" cry the true followers.) they're concerned, Cinderella's was only on its second Himalayan subject and lots of 'Wow! I never It popped up in the 1980s on glass slipper is as real as alien expedition, part of an effort cost­ knew that' surprises. Minter notes early Internet bulletin boards. abduction. They merely study ing as much as "a small house", how Britain's otter population Multiple documents, images, and narrative and belief. Despite that a crew recently managed crashed almost to extinction in real and false footnotes all hinted this rather obvious point, one to shoot the first ever footage of the early 1980s. After that, people at the conspiratorial existence of is forcibly reminded, for exam­ snow leopards in a genuinely wild reporting otter sightings to the at least one colony on a parallel ple, of the dictum of the late environment. wildlife authorities tended to be Earth, launched by a super-secret astronomer and pioneer UFO Never mind the photos, there's ignored, until they gave up report­ cabal of scientist-spiritualists researcher J Allen Hynek: that plenty of other evidence. Big cat ing otter sightings altogether. who had created a trailer-park we have no UFOs to study, merely poo apparently isn't that hard to Years later, surprised conserv­ community in the American reports of UFOs. We need social find in the British wilderness, and ation managers announced otter ghost town of Ong's Hat- in our scientists, not more astronomers, there are numerous signs of cat numbers had 'suddenly' recov­ humble prime-reality, positioned metallurgists or biologists, to gain kills and traces of their meticul­ ered. A similar phenomenon may in New Jersey. headway. Jacques Vallee would ous dismemberment and fussy be at work with big cats. Posts by the alleged four creat­ certainly approve. eating of deer and sheep carcases. There's no index, but the layout ors of the mystery of Ong's Hat Setting aside the superfluous But Facing Big Cats isn't just and organisation of the coloured­ explained the "quantum/chaos" Ong's Hat material, this book is a about cats, it's about how we ink sub-headings, checklists and science of their time-space portal good start at studying the modern would deal with an official bullet points means you hardly in terms that make contactee folklore passing as science that admission that big cats are out need one, and make this book George Adamski's explanation Charles Fort called "the proper there. Minter examines the ideal for 'dipping' into. of 1950s Venusian spirituality thing to wear, for a while." implications of for Matt Salusbury straightforward by comparison. Jay Rath conservation (his day job), agri­ We've seen this style before, from culture and other policy areas. Fortean Times Verdict the horrific, hoaxed Protocols of Fortean Times Verdict Particularly striking among ALL BOOKS ON MYSTERY ANIMALS 10 the Elders of Zion to the rumoured A FOLKLORIST LOOKS AT 9 the numerous colour photos is SHOULD BE LIKE THIS secrets of Rosicrucians and UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENA

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