Fortean Times - November 2015

the devil's breath hypno-heistson the streetsof paris

a musical history of the antsonan iphone do insects have an electrosense?kennedy assassination hopeless hold-ups theworld's dumbest criminals

alien secret agent • rat-killing monkey • horned granny • chicken dinosaurs

THE WORLD OF STRANGE PHENOMENA

ft333 noVemBer 2015 £4.25

the story of england'sstrangest family

did kenneth angercurse led zeppelin'sjimmy page?

C@ntrol MSS

COVER: ALEX TOMLINSON / ETIENNE GILFILLAN / GETTY IMAGES

Fortean Times 333

features

36 THE STRANGEST FAMILY IN ENGLANDThe story of the Sitwells

24 WALKING TALLFarewell to the world’s shortest man

51 Dancing with the Devil by Chris Saunders

52 The cryptid petting zoo by Rob Gandy

26 THE LIZARD MAN OF SCAPE ORESWAMPIn the spooky swamps of South Carolina lurks one ofAmerica’s most mysterious and menacing monsters: aseven-foot-tall reptilian terror with a taste for trashingmotor vehicles. BENJAMIN RADFORD sets out in search ofthe elusive Lee County Lizard Man…

36 THE STRANGEST FAMILY IN ENGLANDIn an extract from his new book, Great British Eccentrics,SD TUCKER tells the story of the real-life Addams Familywho wrote poems, hunted ghosts and tried to paint cowsto fit in with the crockery.

42 TRAGIC SONGS FROM THE GRASSYKNOLL: A MUSICAL HISTORY OF THE JFKASSASSINATIONThe assassination of President John F Kennedy inNovember 1963 sent shockwaves around the world, butits impact on popular music and recorded sound remainslargely neglected. DAVID THRUSSELL assesses a forgottenlegacy of discarded vinyl artefacts.

02 EDITORIAL55 REVIEWS67 LETTERS

regulars

71 IT HAPPENED TO ME79 PHENOMENOMIX80 STRANGE DEATHS

FT333 1www.forteantimes.com

forum

CONTENTS

strange days

‘Alien hybrid’ mystery man, horned granny, white wallaby onthe loose, physical mediums, hopeless hold-ups, Arkansasblack panthers, Dismaland, Ig Nobels 2015, Devil’s Breath,insect electrosense, Neolithic discoveries – and much more.

05 THE CONSPIRASPHERE14 SCIENCE

16 ARCHAEOLOGY

17 CLASSICAL CORNER

19 ALIEN ZOO

20 GHOSTWATCH

23 MYTHCONCEPTIONS

24 NECROLOG

COVER STORY

6 BEMUSEMENT PARKA visit to Banksy’s Dismaland

26 THE LIZARD MAN ATTACKS!Something nasty in the swamps...

42 TRAGIC SONGS FROM THE GRASSY KNOLLA musical history of the JFK assassination

the world of strange phenomena

48 BUILDING A FORTEAN LIBRARYNo 4. A mound of Venus

72 TALES FROM THE ILLUSTRATED POLICE NEWSNo 42. The rat-killing monkey of Manchester

76 FORTEAN TRAVELLERNo 103. Oddities of the Jurassic Coast

PRAK

ASHMATHEM

A/AFP/GETTY

IMAG

ES reports

ETIENNEGILFILLAN

ETIENNEGILFILLAN

BARON/GETTY

IMAG

ES

Why fortean?

SEE PAGE 78

Everything you always wanted toknow about Fortean Times butwere too paranoid to ask!

close-up of the world’s most elusive artist – andhe probably didn't. But Etienne’s photograph ofa car park attendant (or was that Banksy hidingin plain sight cunningly disguised as a car parkattendant?) became a tabloid sensation whenthe Daily Mail website published it alongsidean older photograph from 2008 of someonewho, er, might be Banksy. One Dismalandemployee was quoted as saying: “This is exactlythe sort of thing Banksy would do”. Perhaps

it is, but within hours themedia frenzy appearedto be over, with the Mail“revealing” that the manEtienne had photographedwas “a parking attendantfor the local council”. Sothat’s that then – or isit? Does the Mail reallyexpect us to believe thatan unnamed parkingattendant is not Banksyjust because it tells usso? Like UFO-watchersthe world over, Bansky-seekers will surely suspecta cover-up and demand fulldisclosure…

Meanwhile, inthe Times daily quiz on 23July 2015 was the following

question: “Founded in 1973, which magazine'stagline is ‘The world of strange phenomena’?”

ERRATAFT332:23 The photo of the blue devil spidershould have been credited to Carl Portman (notKarl Portman).

FT332:40 A number of FT readers and Twitterfollowers spotted a booboo we made in SophiaKingshill’s “Reclaiming the Mermaid” feature.The pull-quote on p40 turned out to be a bit ofan unintentional cliffhanger, reading: “Mostfamous of all visual interpretations is thestatue that has become a…”

The rest of the sentence should have read“national symbol of Copenhagen”.

lizARd mAn STRikES AGAinWe’d been planning to run Benjamin Radford’sinvestigation into the classic case of the LizardMan of Scape Ore Swamp (pp26-34) for sometime now, but the need to tackle various otherstories led its being put on hold for a fewmonths. It turned out to be a fortuitous delay,as in the meantime new reports – including arather astonishing photograph snapped on amobile phone – of the monster of Lee County,South Carolina, haveemerged. Sharon Hill,owner of the scepticalwebsite Doubtful News,takes a look at the latest‘evidence’ for the LizardMan (p31), but remainsunimpressed by boththe photograph and ablurry video that hasalso emerged. Regularreaders will know thatBenjamin Radford is alsoa monster hunter of thesceptical kind, and hispoint-by-point demolitionof the original Lizard Mansighting (made by 17-year-old Christopher Davis inJune 1988) is a thoroughone: thorough enough tomake it hard to believe that what Davis sawthat night – if indeed he saw anything – wasreally a 7ft-tall reptilian creature of unknownorigin.

But doubt remains, and there were numerousother Lizard Man witnesses in 1988 (andlater) whose testimony remains.The lateJohn Keel pointed out that: “There’s hardlya respectable swamp in the deep south thatdoes not boast at least one ASS.” By ASS, Keelmeant ‘Abominable Swamp Slob’, his ownname for the big, smelly critters reported fromthe marshes and bayous of the region. He alsonoted that these elusive entities – like the onethat Chris Davis believed he’d encountered andunlike the generally shy and retiring Bigfoot/Sasquatch – had a tendency to give chase,noting 16 examples in which they were saidto have approached or pursued cars. So, if theLizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp is not uniquein the fortean annals, does Ben’s explanation ofthe Lee County case hold good for these othercases too? Or is further investigation of the ASSphenomenon needed? Readers will decide forthemselves, but if you can dig up a copy you’llfind further contemporary details on this caseand others in FT51:34-37. See also John Keel’sStrange Creatures from Space and Time (1975).

FT in ThE mEdiAWhen our intrepid art director EtienneGilfillan (pictured above) set off to photographDismaland, the pop-up ‘Bemusement Park’created by Banksy in Weston-super-Mare thissummer (see pp6-7), he didn't expect to get a

editordAVid SUttoN([email protected])

foUNdiNg editorSbob rickArd ([email protected])pAUl SieVekiNg ([email protected])

Art directoretieNNe gilfillAN([email protected])

book reViewS editorVAl SteVeNSoN([email protected])

reSideNt cArtooNiStHUNt emerSoN

SUbScriptioN eNqUirieS ANd bAck [email protected]

FORTEAN TIMES is produced for Dennis Publishingby Wild Talents Ltd. Postal address: Fortean Times,PO BOX 71602, London E17 0QD.

You can manage your existing subscription throughhttp://www.subsinfo.co.uk/ – this should be your first portof call if you have any queries about your subscription.

Change your address, renew your subscriptionor report problemsUK subscriptions: 0844 844 0049USA & Canada subscriptions: (+1) 800-428-3003 (toll free)Fax (+1) 757-428-6253 email [email protected] overseas subscriptions: +44 (0)1795 592 909Fax: +44 (0)1795 414 555

licEnSinG & SYndicATiOnFortean times IS AvAILABLE FORINTERNATIONAL LICENSINg AND SYNDICATION – CONTACT:Syndication Senior ManagerANj DOSAj-HALAI TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 [email protected] ManagerCARLOTTA SERANTONI TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 [email protected] & Syndication AssistantNICOLE ADAMS TEL: +44- (0) 20 7907 [email protected]

YOU cAn REAch FT On ThE inTERnETwww.forteantimes.com

© Copyright Dennis Publishing Limited

PRinTEd BY POLESTAR BICESTER

diSTRiBUTiOndistributed in Uk, ireland and worldwideby Seymour Distribution Ltd.2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PTTel: 020 7429 4000 / Fax: 020 7429 4001Queries on overseas availability should be emailed [email protected] store distribution by Worldwide MagazineDistribution Ltd, Tel: 0121 788 3112 Fax: 0121 788 1272

STAndARd SUBScRiPTiOn RATES12 issues: UK £39.98; EU £47.50

REST OF THE WORLD £55; US $89.99 ($161.98 for 24 issues)

dEnniS PUBliShinG limiTEdGROUP FinAncE diREcTOR IAN LEggETTFinAncE diREcTOR BRETT REYNOLDSExEcUTivE diREcTOR KERIN O’CONNORchiEF ExEcUTivE jAMES TYEcOmPAnY FOUndER FELIX DENNIS

pUbliSHed bYdeNNiS pUbliSHiNg,30 cleveland Streetlondon w1t 4Jd, Uktel: 020 7907 6000

groUp pUbliSHeriAN weStwood020 7907 6000

circUlAtioN mANAgerJAmeS [email protected]

export circUlAtioNmANAgergerAldiNe [email protected]

SeNior prodUctioNexecUtiVedANiel StArk020 7907 [email protected]

AdVertiSiNg directorSteVe NicolAoU020 7907 [email protected]

SAleS execUtiVebrAdleY beAVer020 7907 [email protected]

Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations.Circulation 17,024 (jan-Dec 2011)

Printed in the UK. ISSN: 0308 5899© Fortean Times: OCTOBER 2015

Fortean Times (USPS 023-226) is published every four weeks by DennisPublishing Ltd, 30 Cleveland Street, London, W1P 4JD, United Kingdom.The US annual subscription price is $89.99.Airfreight and mailing in the USA is by Agent named Air Business,C/O Worldnet Shipping USA Inc., 149-35 177th Street, Jamaica,New York, 11434.Periodical postage paid at Jamaica, NY 11431, USA.US Postmaster: Send address changes to: Fortean Times,3330 Pacific Avenue, Suite 500, Virginia Beach, VA, 23451-2983, USA.

bob rickard

PaUL SiEVEkiNG

daVid r SUTToN

In search of ASS

Fortean Times

2 FT333

www.forteantimes.com

editorial

strangedaysa d i g e s t o f t h e wor l dw i d e w e i r d

On 17 July, the badly decomposedbody of Jeffrey Alan Lash, 60, wasfound in an SUV parked in the1700 block of Pacific Palisades,Los Angeles. Inside his house,police found a massive arsenalof weapons, worth about fivemillion dollars.There were morethan 1,200 handguns, rifles andshotguns; nearly seven tons ofammunition; bows and arrows,knives, machetes; and $230,000 incash. Many of the weapons werestill in boxes or had price tags.Some of the explosive-makingmaterial had to be detonatedbecause it was too unstable tomove. Among the 14 vehiclesregistered in Lash’s nameand kept in rented garages allover Southern California, theydiscovered several were modifiedfor combat and a Toyota SUVdesigned to drive underwater.

The story that emerged wasweirder than they could haveimagined.When Lash collapsedin a grocery store parking lot inSanta Monica on 4 July, propertymanager Catherine Nebron, hislive-in girlfriend of 17 years,along with her assistant DawnVadBunker, tried to help him,but he didn’t want to be takento a hospital or have anyone call911, so he died.The women wereconvinced Lash was a secretagent working for multipleunnamed government agencies,but was not entirely human.Theybelieved “he was part alien andpart human and was out to savethe world,” according to Dawn’smother, LauraVadBunker.

Nebron later told a friend shehad specific instructions fromLash on what to do if he died:don’t call the authorities; leavehim in a car; get out of town,and let the secret agencies heworked for take care of the body.She left his body in his SUV

time in the CIA. “Whether hereally was working undercoverfor some government agencyor not,” said Braun, “he wasconvinced he was and he hadmy client convinced.” It was notclear what, if anything, he did fora living.

Though it was only Nebron andVadBunker – along with, oddly,Nebron’s dentist ex-husband,Philip Gorin – who were withLash when he died, lawyersdealing with Lash’s considerableestate said it appeared that atleast two other women wereinvolved with Lash and believedthe story of his alien origins andsecret government involvement.Lash kept a condo in Malibuwith a woman identified only as“Jocelyn”, whose neighboursknew Lash as “Bob Smith”. Hewas also romantically linked toa third woman, Michelle Lyons.As a probate judge struggledto make sense of the JeffreyLash estate and to solve themystery of where and how hegot rich enough to afford all theweaponry, all three women werebattling Lash’s six first cousinsfor control of everything he leftbehind.

At the time of the newsreports, DawnVadBunker hadnot returned from Oregonor called her parents or herchildren. She did send a letterin which she confirmed she wasthere when “Bob” died andthat he “fought to stay alive,”according to her mother. Herestranged husband Jim Currysaid that Nebron had introducedhis wife to Lash three monthsearlier, and that she quicklybegan believing that he was,indeed, an alien-human hybrid.After meeting Lash,VadBunkerbegan insisting that she neededto eat raw meat. Lash frequentlyate raw filet mignon when hewent out to dinner.VadBunkerleft her husband on 14 July,a little over a year after theirmarriage. KTLA5, 22 July 2015.NY Daily News, Guardian,dailymail.co.uk, 23 July; inquisitr.com, 29 Aug 2015.

parked not far from their condoand decamped to Oregon withDawnVadBunker, 39, a motherof two, whose family reportedher missing two days later. Aftertwo weeks, no one had come toget Lash’s body. “When [Nebron]came back, she was shocked thatthe agencies hadn’t picked himup,” said her attorney, HarlanBraun, “so then she decidedshe’d better call police.The storyitself sounds totally crazy, butthen how do you explain all [theweaponry]? There’s no evidence[Lash] was a drug dealer or thathe stole these weapons, or hadany criminal source of incomeor stolen property.” LauraVadBunker told a radio station:

“I can’t believe this. It’s worsethan a Twilight Zone movie andwe’ve lived through hell.”

Lash grew up in a modesthome near the Los Angelesinternational airport andhad ambitions at one point tobecome a microbiologist likehis father.Then, according tohis stepmother, he largely cuthimself off from his family andbecame secretive about whathe was doing. Nebron told herattorney that it wasn’t unusualto hear Lash on the phonesupposedly talking to Secretaryof State Condoleezza Rice orformer CIA Director DavidPetræus. Braun subsequentlyrevealed that Nebron wasessentially held captive at thePacific Palisades condo for yearswhile she financed his militaryendeavours. Lash apparentlymade her drive in a separate carwhen they went out to dinner,and they always paid in cash.Police said he had cancer, buttold neighbours he suffered fromnerve gas poisoning from his

LA’s gun-totin’ alien spyConfusion over estate of supposed spook with a lethal weapons collection

“I can’t believethis. It’s worsethan a TwilightZone movie…”

ABOVE: Mystery man Jeffrey Alan Lash.

4 FT333


The Blood Moon was spectacular, evenfrom light-polluted London. Two thingsoccurred to me while watching it. First,the Moon loses its flat appearance andreally looks like a globe; if I noticed this,then I’m quite sure some people in thefar distant past also noticed it, whichmay tell us something about astronomyin the ancient world. Secondly, I foundmyself thinking that if our culture haddeveloped differently, we would all,always, have been celebrating eclipsesfor their ethereal beauty rather thanfearing them as portents of evil. Ah,well. Since the event hasn’t broughton an immediate apocalypse, despitepredictions to the contrary, we can carryon for a bit.

The conspiracy theory world has (asI’ve discussed in previous columns)evolved into a huge market, with its ownnews media and a class of experts andcelebrities selling books and DVDs to aneager audience, giving talks to packedhalls, and even arranging group holidayswith conspiracy and alternative historythemes. It represents an increasinglyimportant segment of the leisure marketand, as a market in its own right, hasdeveloped its own segmentation.

In broad terms, this marketsegmentation is about topical choice; it’sa superstore of belief reinforcement. Ifyou choose to believe in shape-shiftinglizards ruling the world, you can buyinto a range of products and services,either slick, well-packaged productssuch as the David Icke juggernaut, orlow-end, amateur efforts available onan impressive variety of sites. You canchoose products that go with your widerbeliefs; websites such as Before It’sNews, for instance, cater to a Christianaudience who like their conspiracy dietspiced with prophetic visions and biblicalreferences.

In the conspiracy news media, thissegmentation is developing into amarket one might characterise using

the traditional newspaper terms tabloidand broadsheet; part of this market alsocomprises products that might betterbe termed home-made (the equivalentof running off a few photocopies andstapling them together before sellingthem on street corners) but we’llconcentrate on the mainstream for now.The fact that conspiracy theory nowhas its own mainstream (and thus itsown fringe) is telling; both because itdemonstrates the size of the market, andbecause it means that, out there, thereare outlets that are really (I mean really)out there.

The tabloid/broadsheet divide is bestexemplified by, on the one hand, theAlex Jones media empire (Prison Planet,Infowars) and, on the other, the academicrespectability and in-depth coverage ofGlobal Research, the website started bydissident Canadian academic MichaelChossudovsky. While they regularly hostthe same articles on the same topics,there is a clear distinction in delivery, andpolitical viewpoint; Jones’s audience isgenerally right-leaning, bellicose, patrioticand intrigued by sex and violence, whileChossudovsky’s is liberal, relativelypacifist, and prefers its news shornof sensationalism and dressed in thecolours of humanitarian concern.

Have a look at their coverage ofthe crisis in Syria, global warming orthe ongoing alternative investigationof 9/11 and you’ll see, along with thecommon content, clear demarcationsof taste, politics and style. Conspiracyhas very nearly arrived as a mainstreammovement, and its pact with Mammonis the smoking gun. And if you’re lookingfor smoking guns, how about the factthat Global Research went online a meretwo days before the events of 9/11? Justputting it out there…

www.globalresearch.ca/www.prisonplanet.com/http://beforeitsnews.com/


Extra! Extra!The ConspirasphereConspiracy theorists have as many niche shopping opportunities as ordinaryconsumers. Noel rooNeY looks at mainstream/fringe market segmentation.

FT’s FavouriTe headlinesFrom around The world

paiNt itblackThe mysterypanthers ofArkansas oncanvas

page 19

hopelesshold-upsAre thesethe world’smost ineptbankrobbers?

page 18

ig Nobels2015Latest awardsfor science’smost improbableresearch

page 8

Canberra Times, 25 Sept 2014.

D.Telegraph, 26 Sept 2014.

Hull Daily Mail, 18 Oct 2014.

Daily Press, 21 Aug 2014.

D.Mail, 20 Oct 2014.

6 FT199


Dismaland Elusive guerrilla artist Banksy secretly created a pop-up artexhibition in the disused Tropicana lido in Weston-super-Mare,Somerset. The ‘Dismaland Bemusement Park’, described by theartist as “a family theme park unsuitable for children”, opened on21 August 2015 and featured 10 new Banksy pieces alongsidecontributions from a further 58 artists, including Damien Hirst,Jimmy Cauty and Jenny Holzer. PHOTOS: ETIENNE GILFILLAN


strangedays

BONEY’S REVENGE?The Wellington Monument(near Wellington in Somerset)was struck by lightning on 18June, 200 years to the dayafter the Duke of Wellington’svictory at Waterloo, which thestone needle commemorates.Western Morning News, 9 July2015.

INTO THE UNKNOWNA woman claiming to have builta fully functioning time machinein her garage in Exminster, Dev-on, posted an ad on Gumtree.com to recruit a companion totime-travel with her. She statesshe has made mice “disap-pear”, but is unsure if theanimals went back or forwardin time. “Owner drivers wouldbe a plus,” she states, “as themachine needs to be taken toa wide open space like a beachto prevent property damage.”exeterexpressandecho.co.uk,15 June 2015.

TOAD LICKERA barefoot Richard Mullins, 41,who licked a toad and refusedto stop dancing, was expelledfrom a bar in La Porte, Indiana,but returned with a secondtoad and was busted for tres-passing. Times, 26 June 2015.

ROYAL MONSTERNewly discovered papersshow that Sir Peter Scott, theeminent conservationist whoat one time led the searchfor Nessie, asked the Queenin 1960 if it could be namedElizabethia nessiæ after her –provided it was proved to exist.Palace officials were not keen,fearing the monarch couldbecome associated with anembarrassing hoax. SundayTelegraph, 6 Sept2015.

SIDELINES...

8 FT333


Improbable findings

The 25th annual Ig Nobelceremony, organised by themagazine Annals of ImprobableResearch, took place at Harvard’sSander Theatre on 17 September.These are awards to “makepeople laugh and then makethem think”. The physics prizewas given for a study showingthat most mammals take the sameamount of time to pee. Usinghigh-speed video analysis, theresearchers modelled the fluiddynamics involved in urinationand discovered that all mammalsweighing more than 3kg (6.6lb)empty their bladders over about21 seconds (plus or minus 13seconds). Their subjects includedrats, goats, cows and elephants –and although the findings reveala remarkably consistent “scalinglaw” in bigger beasts, they alsoemphasise that small animals dothings quite differently. Rats canpee in a fraction of a second, forexample. The study’s lead authorDr Patricia Yang said this maderodents a poor choice for studyingurinary health problems, butthere might be physical lessonsto learn from the adaptability

of the micturition system inbigger creatures. From watertowers to drinking backpacks,

she said, “every time we needa new function, we figure out anew design for it. But in nature,they just have one system forall different sizes. This mightinspire us – we could have ascalable design that fits differentpurposes.”

Ig winners travelled fromsix continents to accept theirtrophies. The triumphant researchincluded a chemical recipe topartially un-boil an egg, and thediscovery that the word “huh?”

(or its equivalent) seems to existin every human language – orat least in the 10 examined –although no one is quite surewhy. The conclusion was thatthis interjection “is linguistic innature rather than being a meregrunt or non-lexical sound”. Thediagnostic medicine prize wasawarded for testing whether painexperienced when driving overspeed bumps can help diagnoseappendicitis. The idea started asa running joke among surgeons,but Helen Ashdown decided totest it out while working as ajunior doctor at Stoke MandevilleHospital in Aylesbury. “It’s quite aresidential area, so it’s a town thatdoes have a lot of speed bumps,”said Dr Ashdown. “We noticedthat quite a few of the patientswho had appendicitis said howbad the journey to hospital hadbeen.” Sure enough, in a formalstudy of 101 patients, 33 of 34people who were diagnosedwith appendicitis reported paintravelling over speed bumps. “It’sa test that has high sensitivity, soit’s a good rule-out test,” said Dr

This year’s winning research into the birds and the bees

MARTINROSS

ABOVE: Professor Colin Raston of

Flinders University, Adelaide, has found

a way to unboil an egg.

Rodents area poor choicefor studyingurinary health

FLINDER

SUNIVER

SITY

strangedays

CASH WINDFALLOn 11 July, the equivalent of£130,000 in €50 notes raineddown from an oak tree at acampsite near Mirow in northernGermany, startling a group ofhikers. The money had been ina plastic bag hanging on a pipebetween two branches, but aftera heatwave the pipe bent and anelastic band tying the bag shutsnapped, causing the bank-notes to slip out. Under Germanlaw, the finders can keep threeper cent of the money – and allthe rest, should police fail tofind the owners. [UPI] 11 July;D.Mail, 13 July 2015.

MOSSAD’S NEWSTRATEGYAsghar Bukhari, a foundingmember of the Muslim PublicAffairs Committee UK, claimedon Facebook that ‘Zionists’ hadbroken into his home and stolena shoe, “to let me know some-one had been there”. Thesefurtive Zionists had form: a yearor so earlier, he had been toldby another Muslim leader thatthey had been coming into herhouse and “re-arranging things”.D.Telegraph, 15 June 2015.

HEAVE-HO!A US Airways flight became avomit-soaked nightmare after astrange odour filled the cabin,prompting a chundering chainreaction down the aisle. ThePhiladelphia-bound flight madean emergency landing in Romeafter take-off from Israel’s BenGurion airport on 6 December2014. Two passengers and 14crewmembers were unable tostop throwing up, while otherswere treated for nausea.MXNews (Sydney), 8 Dec 2014.


SIDELINES...

MARTINROSS

Ashdown.Dr Rodrigo Vasquez,

from the University ofChile, received the biologyIg Nobel for observingthat if you raise a chickenwith a weighted, artificialtail stuck to its arse, it willwalk like a dinosaur (morespecifically a non-aviantherapod). It is of courseimpossible to know forsure how extinct specieslike Tyrannosaurus rexmight have moved, butpalæontologists had madeeducated guesses thatare now closely matchedby the gait of these stick-tailed chickens. Said DrVasquez: “[The gait] is alittle bit crouching and the stepsare a bit longer, because thecentre of gravity of the animalis changed… and they have tocounterbalance the weight of thetail by stretching their neck alittle bit.”

The management prize wasawarded for the discovery thatmany business leaders developeda fondness for risk-taking aschildren, when they experiencednatural disasters (such asearthquakes, volcanic eruptions,tsunamis, and wildfires) that –for them – had no dire personalconsequences. Economics wentto the Bangkok MetropolitanPolice (Thailand) for offering topay policemen extra cash if theyrefuse to take bribes. (No oneattended in person to receivethat one.) Medicine was awardedjointly to groups in Japan andSlovakia for experiments to

study the biomedical benefitsor biomedical consequencesof intense kissing (and otherintimate, interpersonal activities).A couple of academics from theUniversity of Vienna took homethe mathematics prize for tryingto use mathematical techniquesto determine whether and howMoulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty,the Sharifian Emperor of Morocco,managed to father 888 childrenbetween 1697 and 1727. It helpedthat he had four wives and 500concubines.

The physiology and entomologyprize was awarded jointly totwo individuals: Justin Schmidt(Southwest Biological Institute,US) for painstakingly creating theSchmidt Sting Pain Index, whichrates the relative pain people feelwhen stung by various insects;and Michael L Smith (CornellUniversity, US), for carefullyarranging for honey bees to

sting him repeatedly on 25different parts of his bodyover 38 days, to map painintensity. The least painfulspots were the skull, middletoe tip and upper arm, all ofwhich he rated as a 2.3 ona pain scale of 1 to 10, with10 being the most painful.The most painful locations– the nostril, upper lip, andpenis shaft – received painratings of 9.0, 8.7, and 7.3respectively. The SchmidtSting Pain Index ratesonly on a scale of one tofour, but also features theentomologist’s descriptionsof 78 sorts of stings,written with the flair of asommelier in a wine cellar

with something to prove. Thebald-faced hornet, for instance,is in Schmidt’s estimation: “rich,hearty, slightly crunchy. Similarto getting your hand mashed ina revolving door.”Yellowjackets,on the other hand, sting “hot andsmoky, almost irreverent. ImagineWC Fields extinguishing a cigaron your tongue.” Both rate a two.The four-plus-rated bullet ant, incontrast, punishes a victim with“pure, intense, brilliant pain,like fire-walking over flamingcharcoal with a three-inchrusty nail grinding into yourheel”.

For last year’s awards, seeFT321:9. For full details ofwinners and publishedresearch, see www.improbable.com/ig/.livescence.com, 17 Sept;theguardian.com, BBC News,18 Sept 2015.

DIM

ASARDIAN/GET

TYIM

AGES

LEFT: At last, proof that chickens walk differently (and possibly like a non-avian therapod) with a stick attached to their bottoms.

strangedays

SUBTERRANEAN MUSICSince the summer of 2002, anumber of tourists, fishermenand residents, in and aroundthe towns of Sóller, Deià andValldemossa on the islandof Mallorca, have reportedhearing strange improvisedmusic apparently comingfrom underground, the originof which is unknown. Ling(Vueling Airlines inflight maga-zine), July 2015.

MIGHTY MOGGKenny, a massive Main Cooncat, jumped up and down onhis sleeping owner’s chestto alert him to a fire. ChrisOakley, 31, was able to putout the fire in his kitchen inColchester, Essex, startedwhen another cat turned onthe cooker. D.Mirror, 19 June2015.

IT’S A MIST-ERYAt least three people in Elm-sett, near Hadleigh in Suffolk,reported suffering swollenand itchy eyes after a mysteri-ous dust fell in the vicinity ofManor Road on 2 June. Testson the substance indicated itwas likely to be “food proteinpowder”. East Anglian DailyTimes, 4 June 2015.

EXOTIC IMMIGRANTA Peruvian giant centipede– one of the largest of itskind in the world and toxic tohumans – flew into Englandfrom Antigua as a stowawayin Jennie Esler’s dirty wash-ing. It is now at Bristol Zoo’sBug World exhibition. IrishIndependent, 13 June 2015.

SIDELINES...

MARTINROSS

10 FT333


Worms from the skiesMEDICAL BAG GirLs wiLL BE BOys, muLTipLE pEnisEs, hOrnEdwOmEn, LOOOnG TOnGuEs And OThEr OddiTiEs

GIRLS WILL BE BOYSAbout one in every 90 childrenin Salinas, an isolated villagein south-western DominicanRepublic, are machihembras– men who are born as women –also known as guevedoces, whichtranslates as “penis at 12”.Despite appearing to be girls atbirth, they are biologically male,but only develop male organs asthey approach puberty. Johnny,24, is one of the guevedoces. Hisparents named him Felecita anddressed him in a skirt because hehad no visible testes or penis andwhat appeared to be a vagina.“I never liked to dress as a girl,”he said. “When they broughtme girls’ toys I never botheredplaying with them. All I wantedto do was play with the boys.” Hisgender change happened at theage of seven. “When I changed Iwas happy with my life,” he said.

A little boy named Carla iscurrently going through the sametransformation, aged nine. Hismother noticed that from theage of five he was more inclinedtowards the rough and tumbleplay of boys. “I love her howevershe is,” said his mother. “Girl orboy, it makes no difference.” Hehas recently been renamed Carlosand had his hair cut short afterwearing plaits.

The stories of these children

featured recently in a BBCdocumentary, Countdown To Life –The Extraordinary Making of You,presented by Dr Michael Moseley.The rare genetic disorder occursbecause of a missing enzyme,5-alpha-reductase, which preventsthe production in the womb ofa specific form of the male sexhormone, dihydro-testosterone.All babies in the womb, maleor female, have internal glandsknown as gonads and a smallbump between their legs calledaa tubercle. At around eightweeks, male babies who carry theY chromosome start to producedihydro-testosterone in largeamounts, which turns the tubercleinto a penis. (In the case ofgirls, the tubercle turns into theclitoris.) However, guevdoces aremissing the enzyme that triggersthe hormone surge, so they appearto be born female. It is not untilpuberty, with another large surgeof testosterone, that the malereproductive organs develop and

their voices deepen. Many decidenot to change from their femalenames, so some men in Salinashave names such as Catherine.Other guevedoces go through anoperation and remain female.

The delayed genderphenomenon was discoveredin the 1970s by Dr JulianneImperato-McGinley, anendocrinologist at CornellMedical College. Further caseshave since been found in theSambian villages of Papua NewGuinea, although the Sambiansoften shun their children – unlikethe Dominicans, who celebratethe change. Imperato-McGinleydiscovered that the guevedocestend to have small prostates. Thisobservation, made in 1974, waspicked up by Roy Vagelos, headof research at the multinationalpharmaceutical giant Merck,which led to the developmentof the drug finasteride. Thisblocks the action of 5-alpha-reductase, mimicking the lack ofdihydro-testosterone seen in theguevedoces, and is an effective wayto treat benign enlargement ofthe prostate, a real curse for manymen as they get older. Finasterideis also used to treat male patternbaldness. BBC News, SundayTelegraph, 20 Sept 2015.

DIPHALLIAA two-year-old boy in UttarPradesh, India, was born withthree penises. Doctors describedthe extra organs as ‘soft, bony’masses, and in doing an operationdiscovered he had no anus. Theboy suffered from diphallia, anextremely rare condition thatcauses males to be born withmore than one penis. There areonly 100 cases in the medicalliterature since 1609. In a six-hour operation, doctors removedone penis and fused the tworemaining into one that could beused normally. Dr Vishesh Dixit,a paediatric surgeon at Sionhospital in Mumbai, said: “Thetwo functional penises were fusedinto one, by wrapping a massof skin around them.” Surgeonsalso performed a colostomy to

One in every90 children areguevedoces –“penis at 12”

ABOVE: Catherine and Carla, aged nine, who is undergoing the transformation.

COUNTD

OWNTO

LIFE

/BBC

strangedays

EASTER SPREEAt 2.30pm on Easter Sunday (5April), Przemyslaw Kaluzny, 41,crashed a car in a Dundee re-tail park and ran into a crowdedToys R Us store with a cricketbat. He launched an incompre-hensible tirade, lashed out withthe bat, took off his clothes,and ran naked through theshop before being pinned downby about 20 shoppers. Hefaced various charges. Scots-man, 7 April; Dundee Courier, 8July 2015.

JUST KIDDINGOn 4 March, someone rang thepolice to say they had hearda child screaming for help inCheddar Gorge, Somerset. Apolice helicopter was scram-bled from Filton near Bristol,20 miles (32km) away, butconcluded it was just a goatand her kid. Then on 9 April,a dozen members of OgwenValley rescue team raced upDevil’s Kitchen in Snowdoniaafter a hiker was reported“shouting for help”; it was goatsagain. Guardian, 6 Mar; SundayPeople, 12 April 2015.

BURIED EIGHT DAYSA woman picking herbs neara cemetery in China’s Guangxiregion heard an infant’s criescoming from underground. Shealerted the police, who dugup a muddied cardboard boxcontaining a wailing newbornboy with a cleft lip. The parentshad abandoned the baby onApril 24. Two days later, andbelieving him dead, relativesreturned and buried the child.He was buried for eight days,surviving because rainwaterand oxygen seeped into hisbox. D.Telegraph, 14 May2015.

COME AND GET MEA would-be assassin wasarrested after advertisinghis services on Facebook.Jonathan Giraldo used the alias‘Tony Garcia’ and the nickname‘Anthrax’ in an effort to evadepolice – but posted videosof himself with weapons andpiles of cash. He was bustedat his flat in Lima, Peru, whileupdating his profile.Metro, 24Feb 2015.


SIDELINES...allow the boy to pass excrementproperly. They said he should beable to father children as an adult.Metro, Sun, 26 Aug 2015.

TONGUE CHAMPIONAdrianne Lewis, 18, from TwinLake, Michigan, has a tonguemeasuring 4in (10.2cm), whichcould be the longest in the world.She can lick her nose, chin, elbow,and even her eye, if she pushesher tongue up with a finger. Atongue this long, though, has itschallenges. “I bite my tongue everysingle day,” says Lewis in oneof her videos – and often in thesame place, over and over again.Ouch. She is hoping GuinnessWorld Records will confirm she hasbeaten the current record holder,Nick Stoeberl, 24, whose tonguemeasures 3.9in (9.9cm). D.Mail, 9May; yahoo.com, 9 July 2015.

HORNED WOMANLiang Xiuzhen, 87, has grown a5in (13cm) hard mass resemblinga horn from her head.The elderlyChinese woman is a resident ofGuiyan village in Ziyang City,Sichuan province. According toWang Chaojun, Xiuzhen’s son, hismother had something resemblinga ‘black mole’ growing on herhead seven or eight years ago.“My mother complained that ititched all the time,” he said. “Wefound ways to cure her itch usingtraditional Chinese medicine, andthen let it be.”

Two years ago, the mole gave wayto a small horn-like mass the size ofa little finger. Xiuzhen accidentally“broke” the small horn in February2015, and in its place her currenthorn began growing rapidly overthe past six months. Chaojun said:“Now the horn hurts my motherand prevents her from sleeping. Italso bleeds from time to time.” Herneighbours began calling her “theunicorn woman”.

Doctors diagnosed the growth ascornu cutaneum (cutaneous horn),a keratinous skin tumour that hasthe appearance of a horn. Oftensmall and benign, the growth canin some cases be much larger andmalignant. Chaojun said doctorsbelieve they can remove the growththrough surgery, but the family hasits reservations due to Xiuzhen’sold age – and are considering other,unspecified, options. For otherhuman horns, see FT177:50-54,225:12, 254:14, 268:12. mirror.co.uk,27 Aug 2015.

WORSE THAN EARWAXComplaining of a painful and itchyright ear, 19-year-old Mr Li fromthe city of Dongguan in China’ssouthern Guangdong provincewent to Chang’an XiaobianHospital, where Dr Yang Jing saw“an insect-shaped object” blockinghis ear canal completely. Thisturned out to be female cockroach0.3in (8mm) long. Dr Yang thenfound 25 baby roaches insidethe ear canal, which he assumed

had grown from eggs laid insidethe ear several weeks earlier. Afemale roach can carry a capsulecontain around 40 eggs, with thedevelopment into adults fromegg taking around three to fourmonths. The doctor told Mr Li thatif he had come to the hospital anylater his ear “would have beendestroyed”. independent.co.uk, 28Aug 2015.

NEEDLE IN BRAINFor the past 46 years, Liu Kao,48, of Huaibei, in eastern China’sAnhui province, experiencedpainful headaches and thoughtthe problem was with her heart,but tests revealed nothing wrong.It was only when she begansuffering more headaches andnumbness in half of her body thatshe was checked into hospital,where a CT scan of her brainfound a 1.8in (4.6cm) needlestanding straight up in the lefthemisphere. The pain was “likebeing pricked with a needle,” Liuoften told her daughter. Liu willundergo a craniotomy to removethe needle.

“Mother has no recollectionof the needle being inserted inher head,” said her daughterXiaozhang, “but doctors said itmust have happened before shewas 18 months old, when herskull was still soft and flexible asa child.” Some kind of fiendishanti-acupuncture? Fox5ny.com, 8Sept 2015.

ABOVE LEFT: Adrianne Lewis’s troublesome tongue. ABOVE riGhT: Liang Xiuzhen, 87, and the horn that disturbs her sleep.

BRIDGET

TEPA

CHOLK

A/BARCROFT

USA

CEN

/EU

ROPICS

strangedays

12 FT333


SEA LION SAVIOURIn 2000, Kevin Hines, adepressed teenager, jumpedoff the Golden Gate Bridge inSan Francisco, but was savedfrom drowning by a sea lionthat repeatedly bumped him tothe surface until a rescue boatarrived. Less than one per centhave survived the jump. Spec-tators from the bridge saw thecreature circling beneath him.Hines, now 33, devotes his lifeto suicide prevention. [AFP] 5Mar 2015.

FATE’S FICKLE FINGERDaniel Askew and JessicaCroker were both born in RushGreen Hospital in Romford,Essex, on 1 May 1988. Theyshared a visitor after their birthwho knew both families. Thepair fell for each other at Haver-ing Sixth Form College withoutrealising their connection,which they only discovered ayear later after viewing an oldvideo. They were due to marryon 10 September, after beingtogether for 10 years. RomfordRecorder, 15 May, D.Express,16 May 2015.

SOUTH PAWSScientists have determinedthat wild kangaroos are left-handed – or, more accurately,left-pawed – for grooming,feeding and all observed typesof behaviour. The report, pub-lished in Current Biology, pro-vides the first demonstration ofpopulation-level ‘handedness’in a species other than hu-mans. It was found in easterngrey kangaroos, red kangaroos,and red-necked wallabies. [R]BBC News, 18 June 2015.

FAILED MAGICA Nigerian man was sentencedto 14 years’ jail for collect-ing large sums from cocainetraffickers looking to get hissupernatural protection fromthe authorities. ChristopherOmigie, a naturalised US citizenliving in Lafayette, Louisiana,provided traffickers with cardreadings, massages with magicointments, razor-blade cuttingsand various magic powders,belts, coconuts and rocks. Theyfailed to work. Times Colonist(Victoria BC), 2 May 2015.

SIDELINES...

horse trainer Caroline phillips, 41, was riding with a friend in salcey Forest, near roade innorthamptonshire, on 31 July when she saw a “white thing” at the bottom of her 16-acre field. shethought it was a piece of plastic stuck on the hedge, but as she got closer she realised it was analbino wallaby. ms phillips, originally from Australia, made a 51-second video of the unusual animal at adistance of 20ft (6m), and watched it for at least half an hour.

Then on 17 August, ronald newbould, 72, and his wife Linda, 69, were out for a walk near the villageof hanslope, Buckinghamshire, four miles (6.4km) from roade, when they spotted a white wallabybetween a field of corn and a boundary hedge about 45ft (14m) away. They watched it for almost 10minutes, and mr newbould managed to take a good photograph of the marvellous marsupial, posingunfazed with crossed paws. it was almost certainly the same beast filmed earlier by ms phillips.

On 17 september farmer nathan Chambers, 24, found an albino wallaby dead in a cornfield inpiddington, northamptonshire, around 40 miles (64km) from hanslope. it had severe throat injuries,and dark-coloured fur scattered nearby suggested that a dog was to blame. michael wells, who recordssightings for the mammal society, said the only other albino wallaby spotted in the uK was at stokemandeville station, Buckinghamshire, in december 2004. Could it possibly have been the same one?

wallabies are closely related to kangaroos and range in height from 12in (30cm) to 71in (180cm).There are colonies living in rural areas of Britain, including the Lake district, parts of the peak district,and Loch Lomond in scotland. up to 120 can be found on the isle of man after a pair escaped from anearby wildlife park in the 1970s. Experts say the latest sighting appeared to be a Bennett’s wallaby,which might have escaped from a private collection or zoo (or teleported 9,400 miles from downunder). Bennett’s wallabies’ native habitat is Tasmania and the south-eastern coastal strip of Australia.telegraph.co.uk, 3 Aug; Times, 19 Aug; D.Mail, 19 Aug, 19 Sept 2015.

White wallaby on the looseNEW

STE

AM

/SWNSGROUP

Anew viralvideo, ‘Antscircling myphone’,

shows fire antsmarching aroundan iPhone asit rings. This isnot a marketingcampaign by Apple,but supposedly ademonstration of aweird phenomenon.“I don’t know thereason why theants are controlledby the smartphone.I also don’t knowif a smartphoneis able to causeinjury because ofelectromagneticradiation,” says the video poster.Are the ants affected by thephone, or is something else goingon?

A few decades ago, thesuggestion that insects couldrespond to magnetic fields wouldhave been wild speculation.Although migrations of many typesof animal, including insects, hadbeen studied for centuries, therewas no indication of how theywere navigating. Now researchershave shown that not just birds,but creatures as diverse asturtles, trout, wood mice andinsects including cockroaches,fruit flies and indeed ants have amagnetic sense.

Birds have a compass intheir eyes. They have receptorsthat are affected by changingmagnetic field, so a bird may seedirection in terms of getting lighteror darker. Trout, by contrast, havea nose for direction: cells in theirnasal passages contain particlesof magnetite, and changingdirection causes these to moveand stimulate the cells they areattached to. Given the location,trout may perceive north as aparticular smell.

Further, this electric sensemay be affected by externalfactors. In 2009 a team atMasaryk University in the CzechRepublic published a paperwith the descriptive title “Radiofrequency magnetic fields disruptmagnetoreception in American

cockroach,” describing how theinsects lost the ability to orientthemselves when exposed to afield of a particular frequency.

US Patent 7712247 B2,“Use of electromagnetic fieldsto affect insect movement”,aims to harness the effect fora cockroach trap, using anelectromagnetic field to drawin the insect to where it can bepoisoned or electrocuted.

The electric sense was firstidentified in sharks, providedby a series of jelly-filled poresknown as ampullæ of Lorenzini,which are believed to sense theelectrical activity of musclesthrough the water over shortdistances. When prey is thrashingabout, completely obscured bya cloud of blood, the ampullæallow sharks to bite with deadlyaccuracy. This electrosense wasonly discovered in the 1960s.More recently researchers havefound that insects have their ownelectrosense.

Bees build up a static chargein flight, which helps pollen stickto them. When a bee lands ona flower, some of the charge istransferred. The charge on theflower remains for some time,only leaking away slowly. In 2013Daniel Robert of the Universityof Bristol showed that beespreferred to visit flowers withno charge, suggesting that theycould sense the difference andwent for blooms that had not

been visited recently by anotherbee.

Fire ants – the type shownin the iPhone video – have areputation when it comes toelectrical equipment. They oftenchoose electric junction boxesand transformer equipmentas nesting sites, as well astraffic lights, electric pumps,air conditioners and similarequipment. Some have suggestedthat the ants are attracted by theelectricity, but a warm, dry spacewhich is enclosed and protectedfrom the elements and frompredators is inherently appealing.

The problem comes when anant chews through insulation orotherwise causes a short circuit,getting shocked in the process.When this happens, the dying antreleases a distress pheromone,a chemical signal to other ants.More ants arrive, are shockedon contacts with the first ant,and release more pheromone.The end result can be a ball ofthousands of dead ants extendinginto contact with other parts ofthe electrical circuit, causing amajor meltdown.

Another species of ant,Nylanderia fulva, known as thecrazy ant, has recently startedcolonising Texas. It is causinga much higher rate of electricalproblems and again, somesuggest this is down to an innateattraction to electricity. However, itis known as a crazy ant because

of its rapid and seemingly randomforaging pattern, which is morelikely to bring it into contact withelectrical components in the firstplace.

Given that ants do have amagnetic sense fornavigation, and thissense may be disruptedby electromagneticradiation – such asthe radiation from asmartphone – and thatfire ants are especiallyinterested in electricity,the video appears tomake sense. On theother hand, we shouldnot give too muchcredence to randomvideos posted onYouTube, especiallywhen they are linked toscaremongering aboutmobile phone radiation.

There are a wholeseries of bogus YouTubevideos showing eggsapparently cooked by

phone radiation. As the MobileManufacturers Forum pointsout, a phone’s radiated powerof a quarter of a watt is muchtoo feeble for such microwavecookery.

Similarly, the ant video appearsto be a hoax, though it shows agenuine unusual phenomenon.The ant mill or death spiral is acuriosity of ant behaviour, causedby the way they tend to followthe pheromone trails left by otherants. The more a trail is used,the stronger it becomes, and themore strongly ants are impelledto follow it. This helps ensurethat more ants are drawn to atrail that leads to a food sourceand is generally very efficientfor foraging. However, if the trailloops round in a circle, ants canbecome trapped, constantlyreinforcing their own trail so theyare unable to leave it. Someants can die of exhaustion whentrapped this way.

This, then, is the likelyexplanation for the video.Someone saw ants circling aroundin a mill, with a space in themiddle. They put their phone inthe space and filmed the results.The ants are certainly circling,but it is doubtful whether thephone has anything to do with thebehaviour.

The only way to be sure,of course, would be a littleexperimentation. Which is exactlyhow real science works.

ANTS AND elecTroSeNSeeven though a recent viral video of fire ants circling an iPhone is most likely a fake, manycreatures – ants included– respond to magnetic fields. DAVID HAMBLING investigates.

MATTPATTINSON

ScIeNce

14 FT333


ELONGATED SKULL FOUND INRUSSIAThe remains of a woman with a strangelyelongated skull have been unearthed at aRussian archæological site called Arkaim, nearthe city of Chelyabinsk and known as Russia’sanswer to Stonehenge. while the skeletonappears to be only about 1,800 years old, thesite dates back about 4,000 years. In thosedays, it was a settlement of the Sintashta-petrovka culture and covered an area of about

20,000m2 (about 215,000ft2). discoveredin 1987, it allegedly comprises a primitiveastronomical observatory and a village fortifiedby two large stone circular walls, with a centralcommunity square. In its heyday, it was hometo around 1,500 to 2,500 people.when pictures of the egg-shaped skullemerged, some of the less restrainedufologists announced it was proof that alienshad once visited Earth; but archæologists saidthe skull was elongated because the culture

of that time involved binding the head tomake it grow out of shape, a phenomenonalso found in Africa and Australia – andin a 1,000-year-old cemetery in Mexico[FT305:20]. The Huns also did it, and itwas taken up by various germanic tribesthat came under Hunnish rule. ResearcherMaria Makurova said: “I would not excludethe possibility that the skeleton belongs toa woman from the Sarmati tribe that livedin the territories of what is now modern dayukraine, Kazakhstan and southern Russia.Her skull was elongated because thetribe did so by tying up the heads of theirchildren with rope. It was clearly a traditionin the tribe.” The ufologists, however, didn’tconcede the argument; they suggested thetribe was doing this as a way of mimickingthe elongated skulls of the alien visitorsto the area. express.co.uk, 27 July; YahooNews, softpedia.com, 29 July 2015.

MUTTON DRESSED AS LAMBAll that glistered was not gold in Anglo-SaxonMercia. Research on the seventh centuryStaffordshire hoard, the largest cache ofprecious metal from the period ever found,has revealed a secret technique that gave12-18 karat gold the appearance of 21-23 karat gold of a rich deep yellow. Thetechnique was not written down in Anglo-Saxon times, and has never previously been

LudwIg

BoLTzM

ANNINSTITu

TE

MATTpATTINSoN

16 FT333


PAUL SIEVEKING presents our round-up of archæological discoveries, including a giant megalithic ritual site thatmay overturn our previous assumptions about Stonehenge and the Neolithic world...

ARCHÆOLOGY

SUPERHENGE UNEARTHEDThe big news in British archæology is thediscovery of a huge ritual monument lessthan two miles from Stonehenge, dwarfingthe world famous megalithic circle, andprobably predating it. durrington walls,a roundish landscape feature, had longpuzzled archæologists because the south-eastern side is straight while the rest ofthe structure is curved – suggesting toone historian in 1810 that it had been“much mutilated” by agriculture. ground-penetrating radar has now revealed thatthe straight edge is actually aligned over arow of up to 90 standin=g stones – about30 still intact – that once stood 15ft (4.6m)high, and formed one side of a C-shapedarena, aligned like Stonehenge with thesetting Sun on the winter Solstice, andhidden for millennia. It is thought the stoneswere pushed over and a bank built on top,but both their significance and burial arecurrently a mystery – nothing else like itexists in the known Neolithic world.

durrington walls, near Amesburyin wiltshire, the largest known hengemonument in Britain and possibly in allEurope, was built at least 4,500 yearsago and measures about 1,640ft (500m)

in diameter. It is surrounded by a ditchup to 54ft (16m) wide and a bank over3ft (90cm) high. “This is archæology onsteroids,” said Vince gaffney of Bradforduniversity, who leads the StonehengeHidden Landscapes project. It was oncesuggested that the builders of Stonehengelived at durrington. woodhenge nearbywas thought to represent the land ofthe living, and Stonehenge the realm of

the dead. However, the new discoverysuggests that durrington walls had anearlier and less domestic history. In fact,all our assumptions about wiltshire’smegalithic complex will need revising. Lastyear, researchers found the remains of17 new chapels and hundreds of otherarchæological features scattered across the4.6 square mile (12km2) ritual landscapeof Salisbury plain. D.Telegraph, Guardian, 7

ABOVE: A computer recreation of the row of standing stones at durrington walls.

ABOVE: The elongated ‘alien’ skull unearthed at the Russian archæological site of Arkaim.

detected in metalwork from the period,but a similar technique was known fromRoman accounts. It involved taking goldthat was alloyed with up to 25 per centsilver, and heating it in a weak acidsolution, probably ferric chloride, sothat at the surface the silver and otherimpurities leached out and could beburnished off. The ferric chloride wasprobably made by heating up a mixtureof water, salt and iron-rich clay – or dustfrom crushed-up old Roman tiles.

“They knew what they weredoing,” said Eleanor Blakelock, thearchæometallurgist who discovered theirsecret. “This wasn’t something that couldpossibly have happened by accident.”She found the technique was sometimesused æsthetically to change the colourof the surface and create contrastingdecoration. However, she and the expertsat Birmingham Museum, where some ofthe hoard is displayed, believe it mustusually have been done to disguise lowerquality gold. The Staffordshire hoardwas found in a field near the village ofHammerwich, near Lichfield in 2009(with more finds in 2010 and 2012). Itcomprises more than 3,500 items, 839of which are gold. Nearly all are martialin character, largely for use by elitewarriors. By contrast, artefacts made forAnglo-Saxon royalty, rather than for merenobility, were made of high karat material,with no need of ‘surface enrichment’.These include the Sutton Hoo artefactsand six items from the Staffordshirehoard. Guardian, Independent, 17 Oct2014.

CHRISTo

pHER

FuRLo

Ng/gET

TyIM

AgES


First, ancient history of a different sort.One of the BBC comedies I grew up withwas ‘Educating Archie’ (1950-58). Apartfrom the blazer-clad wooden hero, it was aforcing-ground for such future luminariesas Julie Andrews (no relation to Archie, butdifferently wooden), Max Bygraves, BernardBresslaw, Dick Emery, Bruce Forsyth, BennyHill, Beryl Reid, Harry Secombe, and the Ladhimself – Tony Hancock.

Archie’s manipulator was Peter Brough,a notoriously bad lip-mover. So, too, washis American predecessor Edgar Bergen(creator of Charlie McCarthy, Effie Klinker,and Mortimer Snerd). To conceal their labialinadequacies, both Bergen and Brough tookrefuge in the airwaves.Ventriloquists on thewireless – you couldn’t make it up...

‘Ventriloquist’ derives from the Latin wordsfor ‘stomach’ and ‘speaking’, but there’s nosuch actual noun or verb in Roman literature.Our other term, ‘Gastromuth’, comes fromGreek ‘engastrimuthein’ (‘To speak from thestomach’).

The earliest adepts were not stageperformers but religious ones, theirbombinations being thought to be those ofthe un-dead resident within their bellies. Acognate feature was their supposed ability topredict the future. Much scope, then, for fameand fortune as oracle-mongers and conductorsof séances.

Many objurgations are aimed against themin the Old Testament: Leviticus 19. 31, 20. 6& 27; Deuteronomy 12. 11; 1 Samuel 28. 3-8(the Witch of Endor, whence Endora in the oldAmerican sit-com Bewitched). ‘Belly-speaking’of one kind or another is also mentioned byConfucius; cf. Roger Ames, Confucian RoleEthics: A Vocabulary (Hong Kong, ChineseUniversity Press, 2011), with concomitantonline reviews and symposia.

Wikipedia and company trace Greek andRoman ventriloquism from the Pythianpriestess of Apollo at Delphi. She seems (thesources are discrepant) not to have been a

gastromuth as such. However, the girl divinerwhom Paul and Silas ‘cured’ (Acts 16. 16-18),to the fury of her owners who’d been makinghuge profits from their tame prophet, isdescribed in the Greek as “having a Pythonspirit”.

Plutarch (‘Decline of Oracles’, ch9 =Moralia, ch2 para414e) says: “Those whoused to be called ‘Eurycleis’ are nowknown as Pythones.” Eurycles was the firstfamous Greek gastromancer. Along with thepuppeteer Potheinus (perhaps throwing hisvoice into a dummy), he was honoured witha statue in the Athenian theatre (Athenæus,Learned Men at Dinner, bk1 ch1paraE).His fame is confirmed by the mockery ofAristophanes (Wasps, vv1016-20) and Plato(Sophist, para252C).

The geographer-historian Strabo mentionsthat some people thought the famous ‘SingingStatue’ of Memnon was actually a ventriloqualfraud by “some locals” (guides or priests outto make a quick drachma? (cf. my articlein Prudentia 15 (1983), 53-7). Not hard toimagine similar tricksters being responsiblefor (e.g.) the statue that talked to Camillusor the one that laughed at Caligula (see theirLives, respectively Plutarch, ch6 para2, andSuetonius, ch57 para2); cf FT145:18, alsoF Poulsen, ‘Talking, Weeping and BleedingStatues,’ Acta Archaeologica 116 (1945), 178-95.

The most elaborate hoaxes were the‘autophones’ of Alexander of Abonoteichus(see Steve Moore’s excellent account,FT276:46), connected (so Lucian’s biography,ch26, says) to a faked head of Asclepius by atube made of cranes’ windpipes running toan accomplice in the next room who utteredthe prophecies, a common trick in laterantiquity (Hippolytus, Refutation of All theHeresies, ch28), revived by Thomas Irson’ssimilar duping of Charles II (A Harmon’sLoeb Lucian, vol4 p211 n2), all prefiguring TheWizard of Oz.

“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansasanymore.” – You Know Who...

192: DON’T READ MY LIPS

CLASSI CALCORNERFORTEANA FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD COMPILED BY BARRY BALDWIN

ABOVE: An intricately decorated gold artefactfrom the Staffordshire Hoard.

strangedays

videotape it, post the picture ofthe letter and do that all to cometo jail,” he said. Bless! Times,8 May 2015.

• A burglar was caught afterhe took a selfie on the iPad hehad just stolen and sent it tothe owner’s mobile phone bymistake.YanziYing, 27, wasstunned to see the photo flashup on her phone soon after theiPad and cash were taken fromher home in Zhangpu county,south-eastern China. She postedthe picture on social media, andthe thief,Wu Cai, 35, was soonarrested after a tip-off. Metro, 1May 2015.

• A similar farce played outin Leyton, east London, on 5August.The mugger accidentallysent a selfie to his femalevictim as he tried to unlockthe smartphone he had stolenfrom her.The victim told policeshe had downloaded an appthat takes a photo of the userwhen the pin code is enteredincorrectly – and sends theimage to the owner’s email.The mugshot was published inthe press and FT presumes thesuspect has been identified bynow. D.Telegraph, 18 Aug 2015.

• A robber was arrested when hereturned to his victim in Miami,Florida, to complain that a goldnecklace he stole was a fake.Sun, 11 May 2015.

phone sometime during therobbery, he placed a call to policeto inquire whether it had beenturned in. Unsurprisingly, thisquickly led to his apprehension.During his trial at NewcastleCrown Court on 8 May, where hewas sent down for two years andfour months, he was describedas “stupid”, “incompetent” and“unsophisticated”. [AP] 11 May2015.

• A mugger in Sweden demandedhis victim transfer money to hisaccount using a popular smartphone app.The app enablesmoney transfers to be done usingmobile phone numbers, givingthe police all the informationthey needed to catch the culprit,who now faces six years inside.D.Telegraph (Sydney), 1 Aug 2015.

• A bank robber inVirginiaBeach posted his hold-up note onthe Internet. Dominyk AntonioAlfonseca, 23, uploaded toInstagram a picture of the notedemanding cash that he handedto a teller.The note concluded:“I would appreciate if you Ringthe alarm a minute after I amgone…Make sure the moneydoesn’t blow up on my way out:-)” Alfonseca was arrestedsoon afterwards, with a bag fullof cash. He told a TV stationhe believed he was innocent,because asking for moneypolitely was not a crime. “If it wasa robbery, I don’t think I would

slip back, and left.The policereleased surveillance photos ina bid to find the suspect, andoffered a $5,000 reward. newser.com, 2 Sept 2015.

• One early morning in March,a 25-year-old man mugged awoman in a Sunderland streetand stole her bag. Later that day,realising he dropped his mobile

A man tried tohold up a bankwith a drawingof a gun

ABOVE: Dominyk Antonio Alfonseca posted his hold-up note and wads of stolen cash on Instagram. BELOW: The unknown would-be robber foiled by the language barrier.

crime croppers A furthEr finE sELEctiOn Of fruitLEss fELOniEs, ridicuLOusrOBBEriEs And hOpELEss hOLd-ups frOm ArOund thE WOrLd

18 FT333


In a wonderful news reportredolent of Dada and conceptualart, a man tried to rob a bank inWarsaw by holding up a drawingof a gun.The unnamed 33-year-oldBriton entered the bank on thecentral Jerozilimskie Avenue at9am on 11 August and showeda female cashier the drawing.He then brandished a secondsheet of paper, on which he hadwritten in broken Polish: “Thisis a robbery I have a gun giveme all the money.”The womantold him to wait at the back ofthe queue, and he duly obliged.In the meantime, she called thepolice and the slow-witted chapwas arrested shortly after. Polishpolice provided few details,saying merely that he had lived inGermany for a year and had onlybeen in Poland for a few hoursbefore trying to rob the bank. Hepleaded guilty and was jailed forthree years. D.Telegraph, 15 Aug;Metro, 17 Aug 2015.

• On 1 September, a womanwalked into a bank in SanAntonio,Texas, asked for ateller who spoke Spanish, andthen handed over a deposit slipwith the words “dame dinero”(Spanish for “give me money”)written on it.The Wells Fargoteller thought it said “Damien”and started looking up accountsunder that name.When the tellerasked the suspect to confirm thename, she apparently got tiredof waiting for cash, took the


Karl ShuKer presents hisregular round-up from thecryptozoological gardenALIENZOO

AMERICAN BLACK PANTHERARTWORKIn previous Alien Zoo reports and FT feature-length articles, I’ve documented severalfascinating examples of apparent cryptidsdepicted by famous artists. Here’s anothersuch example, one that may not haveattracted any cryptozoological publicity before.I am grateful to American correspondentDavid McAvoy for bringing to my attention aremarkable painting on display at the MemphisBrooks Museum of Art in Tennessee. Entitled‘Story Told By My Mother’, it was produced in1955 by highly acclaimed Arkansas-born artistCarroll Cloar (1913-1993), and depicts a snowscene in which a woman is stepping brisklyaway from a very large black panther-like catstanding at the edge of some trees. Davidinformed me that it was inspired by tales thatCloar had heard from his mother concerningblack panthers that had once roamedArkansas.

Moreover, David himself hails fromArkansas, and he mentioned that he hasheard such stories for as long as he canremember. Indeed, mysterious, unidentifiedbig cats of black panther-like appearance (i.e.resembling melanistic leopards) have beenreported all over North America for centuries.Leopards of course are not native to the NewWorld, so if such beasts are indeed roamingthe wilds here, they can only be escapee orreleased individuals from captivity. However,their eyewitnesses often claim that thesecats are not black leopards anyway, but areinstead black pumas. Yet no such cat formhas ever been scientifically confirmed fromNorth America, only two such specimens have

been procured in tropical Latin America, andno captive individuals are currently known toexist anywhere. (I have documented elsewhereone possible example exhibited at London Zooduring the 19th century.)

In short, even if they do occur, black pumasare exceptionally rare as far as physicalevidence for their reality is concerned.Countless normal-coloured (tawny or grey)pumas have been shot in North America,and there are numerous reports of blackpanther-like cats on file from this continent, sowhatever this cat form is it does not appear tobe especially rare; so why have no specimensbeen found if it is indeed a melanisticversion (morph) of the puma? This apparentparadox remains a major riddle for Americancryptozoology – but at least we do now have anadditional and most interesting, unexpectedpiece of evidence supporting the existenceof black panther-like cats in North America,regardless of their identity. David McAvoy, pers.comm., 9 Aug 2015.

WHERE TO GO FORWEREWOLVESA three-day conference devoted towerewolves and the fascinating, albeithighly controversial, subject of lycanthropytook place on 3-5 September 2015 atthe University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield.Entitled ‘The Company of Wolves’, its eclecticofferings included workshops, walks with realwolves, picnics alongside the Berkhamstedgrave of Peter the Wild Boy from the 18thcentury [FT161:36], a keynote speaker, andan international array of papers featuringsuch memorable titles as ‘I’m Hairy on theInside’, ‘Rabid Bitches and Fanged Whores’,

and ‘BarebackingWerewolves in RuralAmerica’. Interest inthe UK’S only werewolfconference wasconsiderable.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-3397154622 Aug 2015.

TEARING APART APTEROSAURFor decades,cryptozoologists,creationists andiconographyresearchers havebeen discussing thelikely identity of thetantalisingly pterosaur-like creature, brightred in colour, depictedin ancient artworkdecorating BlackDragon Canyon inUtah. True, there isindeed a resemblanceto a pterodactyl withoutstretched wings and

even a possible crest on its head like somelatter-day Pteranodon, which had led somecryptozoologists to suggest that it offeredproof of modern-day pterosaur survival in NorthAmerica.

However, new research has effectively tornapart this visual testimony. Dating back tothe agrarian Fremont culture (c. AD 1-1100)but remaining undiscovered in modern timesuntil 1928, this ambiguous artwork has beenrevealed by researchers co-led by freelancearchæologist Paul Bahn to be a compositepictograph, not a single one as previouslyassumed. In fact, the ‘pterosaur’ is actuallya combination of no less than five separatepictographs, respectively depicting a sheep,a dog, a tall person with protruding eyes, asmaller person, and a snake-like entity.

In 1947, a certain John Simonson tracedover what he believed to be the outline of theone, single pictograph with red chalk, yieldingthe pseudo-pterodactyl image, but this artefactwas recently exposed by Bahn and companyusing a portable X-ray fluorescence deviceand a special program/tool called DStretch.This enables researchers to photograph apictograph, upload it onto a computer, andthen highlight its original pigments (evenif invisible to the naked eye) while alsodistinguishing pigments that have been addedlater. So when DStretch removed the confusingeffect caused by Simonson’s red chalk, thetrue, five-piece artwork was duly revealed,with the pterodactyl of Black Dragon Canyonunceremoniously jettisoned into the dustbin ofhistorical howlers.www.livescience.com/51886-winged-monster-rock-art-deciphered.html 18 Aug 2015.

MEM

PHIS

BRooKS

MUSEU

MoFAR

T

“The history of physical mediumshipis the history of fraud!” declaredProfessor Peter Mulacz from Austria atthe joint international conference ofthe Society for Psychical Research andthe Parapsychology Association held atGreenwich over 16-19 July 2015.

His comment was part of ablazing controversy among psychicalresearchers still raging this autumn,ignited by the reports surrounding aGerman physical medium, Kai Müggeof Hanau. Mügge has gained anincreasingly high profile in the last fewyears with claims that he is producinga wide range of séance manifestationsincluding ectoplasm, floating lights andthe materialisation of small objectsduring sittings of his ‘Felix Circle’(so-called after the name of the firstspirit to make contact).The judgmentof Professor Mulacz is drawn from hisextensive knowledge of the history ofthe topic and his own opinion after onesitting with Mügge at which he noticeda distinct lack of controls.The inability tocontrol proceedings – especially in the dark– obviously risks the manifestations reportedaround Mügge being manufactured.

This is unfair, say defenders of Mügge whohave been convinced by his mediumship,with the dispute spreading into the pagesof the Paranormal Review published bythe Society for Psychical Research. Bothsides in the argument have been given theopportunity to ventilate their views by theeditor Dr Leo Ruickbie who has interviewedMügge at length and also attended one of hisboisterous and noisy séances, concluding thatfor the moment the circle is best studied froma social science perspective, as a sociologicalrather than psychical phenomenon (See‘The Séance’ by Leo Ruickbie in ParanormalReview summer 2015, issue 76).

The dispute centring upon the FelixCircle is a crystallisation of wider argumentsthat have repeated themselves in everygeneration since the beginning of modernspiritualism at Hydesville, NewYork State, in1848. Initially, all spiritualist manifestationswere of the physical variety, consistingpredominantly of knocks, raps and tablemovements, progressing to flying objects,eerie glows and the materialisation ofspirits. Effects were presented as objectivemanifestations by spirits, later claimed asbeing registerable on camera and measuringapparatus.

In his comment, Peter Mulacz was echoingthe hard-line approach of original SPRpioneers of the 19th century whose philosophycould be summed up as “one strike andyou’re out”, whereby mediums were droppedas subjects as soon as any fraud was detected,or if they refused to comply with stringentexperimental controls. Offending mediumswere almost invariably refused the benefit of

any doubt – although eventually this policywas marginally relaxed with acceptanceof unconscious fraud in altered states ofconsciousness, it being acknowledged thatwhilst in a trance a medium might behavesuspiciously or fraudulently, rather like asleepwalker.

Unfortunately, the number of mediumswilling to be subjected to rigorous controlshas declined enormously since 1945,coinciding with the wider availability ofinfra-red photography to penetrate thedarkness of the typical séance.

Can all physical mediumship be attributedto the stunts perpetrated by quicksilverconmen and women? History shows this isnot an easy question to answer and it must besaid at the outset that the least reliable placefor information is Wikipedia and the Internetwhere information is all too often filtered,biased, partial, inaccurate and chronicallylimited in its treatment of sources. One mustgo to original sources.

Mediums themselves have warned againstchicanery in the dark.The outstandingphysical medium of the 19th century,Daniel Dunglas Home, warned againstsuch deceptions in two chapters in hisLights and Shadows of Spiritualism (1877),condemning ‘dark séances, puppet shows,and third rate jugglery’ (p412). Home madea point of performing in good light and hisreputation has largely survived, despite theefforts of generations of critics denouncinghim.Although hated and despised, the factremains Home was never detected in fraud,which even the most grudging sceptics haveto admit, rather to their annoyance (e.g. RuthBrandon The Spiritualists, 1983).

Another (and unjustly forgotten) physicalmedium was the Revd. Stainton Moses(1839-1892). But he warned regardingmaterialisations and psychic photography;

there were people for whom a “broomand a sheet are quite enough to make upa grandmother for some wild enthusiastswho go with the figure in their eye,and see what they wish to see... I havehad pictures that might be anythingin this or any other world sent to me,and gravely claimed as recognisedportraits”. (Human Nature, May 1875).Difficulties with eyewitness testimonyin emotionally charged proceedingsremain with us, posing a problem for thehistorian, as with medium Helen Duncantried in 1944 under the Witchcraft Act1735 and convicted by an Old Baileyjury (see FT103:24, 107:13 and MalcolmGaskill, Hellish Nell, 2001). Of course,eyewitnesses can be mistaken, duped orbe victims of wishful thinking. But it isonly because eyewitness testimony hasbeen established as reliable and accurate

on other occasions that we can ever considertrusting it to begin with. Unfortunately,there may be profound difficulty withpersonal testimony, no matter how sincere orauthoritative the witnesses.

An example is a remarkable storyinvolving the psychical researchers FredericMyers and Sir William Barrett, early intheir careers. In the 1870s the artist Williamde Morgan held séances at his studio inCheyne Row, Chelsea. One of the mostfascinating was when a medium named Huskmaterialised the spirit of a pirate, John King.The séance was held in an almost bare roomfurnished with a small deal table about 3ftby 5ft (90cm x 1.5m), and a few chairs. Myersbrought Husk to the studio by hansom cab,and the group comprising William de Morgan,his mother and sister, Myers and Barrett satdown with the medium at the table, the wristsof all present being loosely joined togetherby silk thread. Husk went into trance afterthe candle was extinguished by Barrettwho recalled how “lights, very like fireflies,were seen darting about over our heads, themovement of some objects in the room washeard, and a deep guttural voice spoke to us.”

A violent convulsion of the mediumoccurred, and Barrett recalled that “right infront of me appeared a clothed human figurefrom the waist upwards: the lower part of thebody might have been concealed by the table.The face was illuminated by a bluish lightwhich seemed to issue from an object held inthe hand of the materialized figure.”

Barrett stated: “The face was undoubtedlya living one, for I saw its eyes open and closeand its lips move; I asked who it was and theguttural voice said, ‘John King.’” Barrettdescribed the face as “a dark, bearded andrather unpleasant face, quite unlike that ofthe medium.” Barrett exclaimed,“Do you

LEFT: ‘Ectoplasm’ emerges from the mouth of

medium Marthe Beraud (aka Eva C) during a

séance, circa 1910.

hultonar

ChivE/GEtty

iMaG

Es

MATT

PATTINSON

20 FT333


GHOSTWATCHALAN MURDIE reports on how physical mediumship continues to cause controversy today

all see the figure? I am going to light thecandle”.The figure vanished the momentthe match was struck, and the medium wasfound in deep trance, lying back in his chairand groaning. Barrett and Myers found itimpossible to reproduce the appearance andagreed “it was extremely difficult to explainthe phenomena by trickery on the part of themedium.”

Barrett was one of the few SPR pioneersshowing interest in physical mediumshipand poltergeist phenomena. Unfortunately,many early SPR leaders disliked physicalmediumship because it was seen asdisreputable and vulgar, with Societyfounders Professor Henry Sidgwick andhis formidable wife Eleonore wanting todistance the organisation from spiritualism.Thus, Barrett, who received a knighthoodfor his work as a physicist, did not publishhis account of the Husk séance until 1924,having been discouraged by the reception tohis reports on poltergeist cases. By this timeMyers had been dead a quarter of a centuryand the delay in publicising his experiencemight cast doubt upon his recollections.Yet would we doubt Barrett if he had beenrecalling his laboratory experiments onthe properties of flames? (William Barrett,‘Reminiscences of fifty years’, Proceedings ofthe SPR 1924, v.34).

Assessment is even more complicated inthe case of Eusapia Palladino (1954-1918),one of the most extensively tested mediumsof the early 19th and 20th century. Eusapiathrived on attention, admitting fakingphenomena herself during experiments,claiming she could not help it.Yet a widerange of observers were also convinced shecould produce genuine effects such asknocking sounds, object movementsand the materialisation of spirit hands.The Palladino case provides a difficultone for sceptics when the totality of theevidence is addressed, the evidentialtestimony being not only that of“hordes of hard-headed academics, butalso that of the sceptical conjurors”.(See Adrian Parker ‘A ScepticalEvaluation of A Skeptic’s Handbook ofParapsychology’ in Journal of the Societyfor Psychical Research 1988Vol. 55, No.811).

Hereward Carrington (1880-1958),a prolific author and investigator whospent many years detecting fraudulentmediums, was convinced by Palladino,producing a book on her mediumship(Eusapia Palladino, 1909) followingextensive testing in the GrandVictoriaHotel in Naples by SPR investigatorsthe previous year. In 1910 Eusapia wascaught cheating in the United States,marking the end of her career.

Her case still provoked passionatearguments 80 years later.An extensivediscussion in the SPR Journal in 1991-94 saw Dr Richard Wiseman proposingthat deceit was achieved by meansof a hidden trapdoor through which

an accomplice popped up like the DemonKing at a pantomime, yet unnoticed by anyinvestigator. Notably, the limitations of this“undetected accomplice” theory are soonexposed as soon as one asks basic questionssuch as “How wide was the trapdoor?”“Wasthis accomplice male or female?”, revealingthe trapdoor and the mysterious accomplicetheories as mere suppositions, unsupportedby any actual evidence.

Regrettably, neither side in this argumentwas prepared to attempt the obvious (at leastto me) forensic step of testing the hiddentrapdoor theory by establishing if the buildingthat formed the GrandVictoria hotel inNaples had survived (the city was bombedheavily in World War II), or finding outwhether architectural plans or records existedwhich might shed light on the existence ofany trapdoor. (See Richard Wiseman, ‘TheFielding Report A Reconsideration’, JSPR vol58, 1991-1992 128-58; and JSPR vols 59 and 60for discussion).

Some of the most impressive evidence ofphysical mediumship accumulated during10 years of testing conducted between 1923-33 on two teenage mediums, Rudi and WilliSchneider from Braunau am Inn,Austria –infamous as the birthplace of Hitler. In thedifficult times following World War I, theSchneider family had begun experimentingwith séances as an evening entertainment,with their sons showing marked mediumisticabilities. Josef Schneider, their father, made acareful record of these from 1923, in additionto those made by others who attended.AHerr Kogelnik, a sceptic, was stunned bywitnessing manifestations and called in BaronSchrenck-Notzing, then Germany’s leading

psychical researcher. Schrenck-Notzing testedthe boys after Rudi was content to have somelevel of illumination at séances where objectmovements and materialisations of hand-likeapparitions were observed.

In 1929 Harry Price brought Rudi toEngland for a series of tests, inviting a widerange of people to some 26 experimentalsessions, including the actors StanleyHolloway and Laurence Olivier, along withscientists and professional conjurors, manyof whom testified to witnessing inexplicablemanifestations.Though Price was condemnedfor having such an eclectic mix of peopleattend séances with Rudi, I find it significantthat no one claimed to have detected anyfraud, the sheer diversity of individualsruling out a giant conspiracy. Price offereda £1,000 reward for anyone reproducing theSchneider phenomena under comparableconditions; there were no takers. Scepticseither ignored these invitations or if theyattended were baffled by Rudi. Pricerushed out a book Rudi Schneider (1933)and experiments continued in 1930-32 withDr Osty in Paris involving infra-red beams.However, it appears that when Price felt hewas being shut out of experiments by otherresearchers, he retaliated by releasing aphotograph to the press suggesting that Rudihad freed his hand to fake phenomena atone session.The resulting publicity had theeffect of discrediting the entire mediumshipin the eyes of many. But by this stage Rudi wasbecoming a healthy, robust youngster, moreinterested in cars, football and his sweetheartMitzi than further testing, so the séances soonceased. Star psychic subjects getting fed upwith endless testing rounds was repeated in

the case of Matthew Manning and UriGeller in the 1970s. (See The Strange Caseof Rudi Schneider, 1985, by Anita Gregoryand FT229:28-36).

Ultimately, the position that one takeson physical mediumship is likely to bedetermined by pre-existing beliefs. Evenwith sophisticated technology, debateon trickery by mediums is inevitablyset to continue; indeed, a paper on theprosecution of fraudulent UK mediumswas presented by Mark Norman at theFolklore Society’s Conference ‘Law andCrime in Legend andTradition’ over5-6 September 2015 at theTown Hallat Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.As anaside, whilst attending this event, I spokewith a caretaker of the building, whotold me of his experience of seeing theunexplained apparition of a woman withblonde hair looking out from an upstairswindow one winter’s evening after hehad checked and locked everythingsecurely. Hearing his story, it occurredto me that whilst phenomena occurringwithin group settings in dark séancerooms remain contentious, the properexperience of seeing a ghost is morelikely to come your way when you arealone, simply going about your ordinary,daily business.

ABOVE: Eusapia Palladino levitates a table in Milan in 1892.


strangedays

DEVIL’S BREATH[FT60:32, 79:48]

In late August, two Chinesewomen, aged 42 and 59, werearrested at the entrance to aMetro station in Paris’s 20tharrondissement, accused ofstealing millions of euros fromunsuspecting victims by blowing apowerful hypnotic drug – recentlydubbed “devil’s breath” – intotheir faces. “The victims targeted,very often old, were accosted inthe street by a first woman,” saida source close to the investigation.“This person claimed to belooking for a mysterious ‘DoctorWang’ before being joined byher accomplice.They managedto isolate their victims, then gotthem to breathe in a mixtureof plants on the grounds theyhad powerful curative qualities– even protecting them frommisfortune… They then tookadvantage by getting the victimsto take them to their home, wherethey asked them to put all theirjewellery and money into a bagand hand it over to them.” OneParisian victim lost €100,000(£73,500) worth of valuables andcash in this way.

The pair had reportedly beenoperating in Paris since thespring. In a subsequent raid ontheir hotel room in Seine-Saint-Denis, a north-eastern suburb,police discovered an array ofvials including “various Chinesemedicinal substances as wellas weighing scales, filters andgloves”. Analysis of the hypnotic’singredients was under way at thetime of the report. A third suspect,a 56-year-old European man whoallegedly prepared the drugcompounds, was later arrested.Chinese authorities informedtheir French counterparts thatthe trio belonged to a notoriousChinese Triad-style criminalnetwork, which “acts aroundthe world and specialises in

mental submission with the aid ofunknown products,” according toLe Parisien. Other members havereportedly been arrested in Chinaand South Korea.The two women’spassports suggested that they hadrecently travelled to Madrid andMexico.

The basic ingredient of ‘devil’sbreath’ is said to be scopolamine.It can be obtained from henbane,datura (thorn apple) or a shrubof the belladonna family knownacross northern South Americaas el borrachero (‘the intoxicator’).In the early 20th century, it wasadministered by some doctors asa pain-relief drug – or rather adrug that led to the forgetting ofpain – in childbirth. It was noticedhow women who had been givenit answered questions with rarecandour. Dr Robert House, a Texasobstetrician, was so astonished bythis side effect that he managedin the 1920s to persuade theauthorities to let him use the drugon two prisoners in Dallas CountyJail. He found their protestationsof innocence had not changedand, since they were (supposedly)unable to lie, they were acquitted.A local newspaper coveringthe case coined the term ‘truthserum’.The drug ceased to beused in court cases in the 1930safter subjects reported horrifyinghallucinations and depression –but both the Soviet authoritiesand the CIA reportedly used it asa truth serum during the Cold War.Dr Crippen is believed to have

killed his wife Cora in 1910 usingthe drug before trying to flee toCanada.

Also known as hyoscine,scopolamine is used as a sedativein cases of mania and delirium,in the treatment of Parkinson’sdisease, and in patches thatprevent travel sickness. Largerdoes can lead to disorientation,memory loss, hallucinations, greatsuggestibility and convulsion.In ancient Greece, the priests ofApollo used datura to achievesubliminal, prophetic states.Indian dacoits (bandits) wouldput datura leaves on campfires toknock out their victims or makethem more co-operative.WhenCristoval Acosta visited India in1578, he learned that datura seedswere used by “mundane ladies”(prostitutes) to sedate and robclients; a similar stratagem is usedtoday by Bangkok’s sex workers[FT72:9].

Food secretly laced withscopolamine was said to havebeen fed to British soldiersduring the 1676 Bacon’sRebellion, when settlers inVirginia revolted against theirGovernor, Sir William Berkeley.The result was that they spent“several days making monkeyfaces and generally acting likelunatics”. One soldier was found“stark naked, sitting in a cornerlike a monkey, grimacing at hiscomrades.”They sobered up after11 days (!), “not rememberinganything that had passed”. In

ancient times, we are told, thedrug was given to the mistressesof dead Colombian kings to makethem enter their lovers’ graves tobe buried alive.

Since the 1950s, Colombia hasallegedly led the world in thecriminal use of burundanga, anarcotic preparation includingscopolamine, as an instantzombie powder. In the previousdecade, Joseph Mengele, thenotorious Nazi physician, had itimported from Colombia to use ininterrogations. Early practitionershad to contend with an aggressiveresponse the drug often provoked.Many victims died, not from toxiceffects, but from the beatingthey were given to subdue them.Around 1982, rogue chemistsadded the barbiturate Ativanand came up with new, improvedburundanga – although anysufficiently strong tranquilliserwould have done.The highlysoluble white powder with notaste or smell can be slipped intoa drink or blown into the face of achosen victim.

Dementia Black, a drug dealer(we do so hope that’s a real name),told the news websiteVice Newsthat the effects of blowing ‘devil’sbreath’ into someone’s face arealmost instant. “It works in aflash.You wait for a minute for itto kick in and then you know youown that person.You can guidethem wherever you want. It’slike they’re a child.” Intoxicationinduces obedience and acondition similar to transientglobal amnesia. According to theUS State Department, unofficialestimates put the number ofannual scopolamine incidentsin Colombia at approximately50,000. “Scopolamine can render avictim unconscious for 24 hours ormore,” its website warns. “In largedoses, it can cause respiratoryfailure and death. It is most oftenadministered in liquid or powderform in foods and beverages.The majority of these incidentsoccur in night clubs and bars,and usually men, perceived to bewealthy, are targeted by young,attractive women.”

Some experts remain deeply

VIN

AYRAJ

/C

REA

TIVE

CO

MM

ON

S

ABOVE: Scopolamine can be obtained from most species of datura.

22 FT333


fortean follow-ups Parisian hypno-heist, jumping lice vs Japaneseknotweed and more of those creepy clowns

sceptical. If ‘devil’s breath’ isso effective, why isn’t its useubiquitous? “You get these scarestories and they have no toxicology,so nobody knows what it is,” saidVal Curran, of University CollegeLondon’s Clinical PharmacologyUnit. “The idea that it isscopolamine is a bit far-fetched.The degree to which any of thisstuff is true is unknown.There’s alot of myth.”What’s more, ‘hypno-heists’ can apparently occurwithout the use of any drug (see,for instance, FT323:9). telegraph.co.uk, 1 Sept; D.Mail, Guardian, 3Sept 2015.

JAPANESE KNOTWEED[FT138:14, 314:22]

Japanese knotweed (Fallopiajaponica) grows up to 4in(10cm) a day, with roots15ft (4.5m) deep. Pluckedfrom the sides of Japanesevolcanoes, it was namedthe “most interesting newornamental plant of the year”in 1847 by the Society ofAgriculture in Utrecht. Firstrecorded in the wild in Britainat Maesteg, South Wales, in1886, it is today one of thecountry’s most invasive anddestructive plants. It pushesthrough concrete and roadsurfaces, chokes riverbanks,weakens flood defences andrailway embankments, invadeshouses, blights developmentsites, and crowds out allother vegetation. Knotweeddamage costs the UK economyaround £166 million a yearin weed control and propertydevaluation. Homeowners whoignore orders to control it canbe fined up to £2,500.

The Government hasnow admitted defeat in theknotweed war, as eradicationwould be prohibitivelyexpensive at £1.56 billion.For a while, hope was pinnedon the introduction of thepsyllid Aphalara itadori– small jumping lice thatcontrol knotweed in its native

Japanese habitat by suckingits sap – but environmentminister George Eustace hasadmitted that the strategy hadfailed “because only smallpopulations of the psyllid havesurvived in the wild.” However,scientists are planning torelease more of the jumpinglice in area with above-averagehumidity in the hope thatthey will live long enough tostart feeding on the weed.Perhaps the little critters canbe bred to resist the vagariesof British weather. Independent,20 Oct; D.Telegraph, 25 Oct2014; D.Mail, 27 July; SundayTelegraph, 26 July 2015.

MORE SINISTER CLOWNS[FT321:4, 322:16]

Last July, Julia Graham and herhusband were driving throughChicago late at night when theysaw a figure dressed as a clownwith shiny trousers runningtowards the Ravenswood Avenueentrance of Rosehill Cemeteryand scaling the 7ft (2m) gate,quite a feat for anyone, let alonesomeone in a clown suit. “I mean,this was somebody putting fortha lot of effort, and being reallyweird,” said Mrs Graham. Herhusband managed to film thestrange figure on his cell phone,and the result was posted onYouTube. Such clown sightingshave occurred at other cemeteriesaround the US, apparently.chicago.cbclocal.com, 23 July;Raycom News Network, 24 July2015.

At 4.30am on 7 August, a manwearing a clown mask and amulticoloured wig knocked on awoman’s door in Hickory, NorthCarolina, and swung an axe at her.She was not hurt, and managed toremove his mask and recognisedhim as an acquaintance before heran off.The next day she reportedthe incident to the police andrequested the man’s arrest.Victimand perpetrator were not named.No motive for the attack wasgiven. [AP] 10 Aug 2015.

The “truth”Although rebreathing is still prescribed by many doctors and nurses,first aid experts have long opposed it. Not only is it unlikely to doany good, they argue, it might make matters worse – and in somecircumstances reducing oxygen and increasing CO2 can actuallybe dangerous. There are cases on record of people mistaking thesymptoms of asthma or heart attacks for hyperventilation, using thepaper bag technique, and dying. Various studies have shown thatrebreathing is no more effective against hyperventilation than ordinarybreathing, while some have suggested a link between anxiety attacksand too much CO2.

Sourceshttps://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/meat/INT-what-meat-color.html;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/health/13real.html?_r=0; http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/interactive/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=1630;

DisclaimerAs always, this column makes no claim to medical expertise, andwelcomes corrections and further discussion via the letters page.

UpdateIn FT151:26 we discussed “burglar’s signs” – those mythicalchalk marks supposedly left outside houses by cooperatively-minded criminals to help their peers decide which propertiesare and aren’t worth robbing. In an interesting twist to the usualstory, a Neighbourhood Watch leaflet distributed in Nailsea, NorthSomerset, describes the secret code apparently used by crookswho specialise in stealing dogs. The pet-pinchers are said,for instance, to mark people’s doors with a “pink cross”to signify that a small dog lives there, and a red onefor big dogs. Numerous dogs have gone missing, saysthe leaflet, and anyone finding a crayon markon their front door should call the police. Thepolice response is hilariously weary: no dogthefts have been reported in the area, saythe cops – and anyone finding such markingsis advised to “wash them off”. Western DailyPress, 3 Sept 2015.

Mythconceptionsby Mat Coward

Western Daily Press, 3 Sept 2015.

out now onlIne anD In all GooD BooKsHopsDon’t MIss MYtHConCeptIons t

He BooK

93: tHe MIraCulous Brown BaG

The mythWhen you’rehaving a panicattack, youshould breatheinto a paper bag.

This is becausehyperventilatingcauses your

levels of carbondioxide to fall,so that whenyou practise

“rebreathing” youare taking expelled

air back into your lungs,thus rebalancing the mix

between oxygen and carbondioxide.


strangedays

24 FT333


This month we say goodbye to the world’s shortest man, the biochemist who became thepublic face of vodou and the mild-mannered master of modern horror moviesNECROLOG

CHANDA DANGIDangi, 21.5in (54.6cm) tall, wasrecognised by Guinness WorldRecords as the shortest living manin 2012 – and also the shortesthuman adult in recorded history[FT286:6]. Since his Nepalesehome village of Reemkholi (orRhimkholi) was so remote, he hadnot gained notice until 2012. Hebeat the previous record set byGul Mohammed from New Delhi,who was 22.5in (57.2cm) tall anddied aged 40 in 1997. Dangi,who had a normal-sized head andweighed just 26lb (11.8kg), usedhis trips abroad to raise moneyfor Reemkholi. Before winning theworld record he made placematsand namlos (jute headstraps forcarrying heavy loads). Three ofhis five brothers are less than 4ft(1.2m) tall, while his two sistersand two other brothers are ofaverage height. Last November inLondon, Dangi met Sultan Kösen,a Turk reportedly the world’s tallestliving man (98.75in/251cm).Chanda Bahadur Dangi, world’sshortest human, born Reemkholi,Nepal 30 Nov 1939; died frompneumonia in American Samoa 3Sept 2015, aged 75.

MAX BEAUVOIRBeauvoir was born in Haiti in1936, the son of a doctor andgrandson of a houngan (vodou/voodoo ‘priest’). In 1958 hegraduated from City College, New

York, with a degree in chemistry.In 1962 he took another degree,in biochemistry, at the Sorbonne,after which he became a researchscientist in the US, synthesisingmetabolic steroids. He returned toHaiti in the early 1970s to conductexperiments on traditional herbalremedies, but shortly after hisarrival he was summoned to thebedside of his dying grandfather.“Grandfather turned to meand said, ‘You will carry on thetradition.’ It was not the sort ofthing you could refuse.”

In 1974 Beauvoir founded LePéristyle de Mariani, a hounfour(vodou temple) in his home inHaiti, and established himselfas the public face of the popularreligion. One writer describedthe hounfour as a “bizarre mixof an ancient temple, a touristy

cabaret, a sacred, secret voodooceremony and Rick’s Café fromCasablanca”. Bill and Hillary Clintonvisited Beauvoir’s hounfour on theirhoneymoon in 1975, where thesaw a man walking on hot coalsand a woman biting the head offa live chicken. Beauvoir insistedvodou has a genuine effect: “Itdoes work, 100 per cent. It alwaysworks.”

Vodou, originating in the17th century, is centred ontrances said to be induced byspirit possession and includesanimal sacrifice, dancing, drum-beating and elements of Catholicliturgy. In this fusion, Christiansaints became vodou spirits.The 400-strong vodou pantheonincludes Kouzin Zaka (St Isidor)and Papa Lekba (St Lazarus). ThePeruvian St Martin de Porres wassyncretised as Baron Samedi,usually depicted as a corpsedressed in top hat, dinner-jacketand dark glasses; he is knownfor obscenity, debauchery, anda fondness for tobacco and ruminfused with hot peppers. Beauvoirhimself sometimes assumed thespirit of Papa Ogou (St James theGreat), one Western witness of hisperformance describing how thespirit “through Beauvoir, downeda bottle of what the celebrantstold me was the spirit’s favouritescotch, Johnnie Walker. Then, hisbalance intact, Beauvoir resumeddancing.”

Vodou houngans (and mambos,their female counterparts) areoften the most influential peoplein Haitian communities, acting ashealers, soothsayers, exorcistsand counsellors – and in remoterplaces, even as mayors andnotaries. Francois ‘Papa Doc’Duvalier (President of Haiti 1957-71) relied on vodou to bolstersupport for his regime andrecruited houngans for the TontonsMacoutes, his brutal secret police.Papa Doc’s son, Jean-Claude ‘BabyDoc’ Duvalier, had a more strainedrelationship with vodou, thoughafter he fled Haiti in 1986, mobskilled more than 100 houngansand a crowd even gatheredoutside Beauvoir’s walled estate,demanding his death.

Intrigued by the tale of theresurrected man, ClairviusNarcisse [FT78:28-30], WadeDavis, a Harvard professor ofethnobotany, in 1982 visitedBeauvoir, who introduced him toa bokor (sorcerer) called MarcelPierre. Pierre gave Davis a couppoudre (‘zombie powder’) recipewith the power to resurrectthe dead and turn them into‘mindless slaves’, a conditionreinforced with regular dosesof Datura stramonium, whichcauses amnesia, delirium andsuggestibility (see page 22).The most significant ingredientof the coup poudre came froma poisonous puffer fish whoseliver and reproductive organscontain tetrodotoxin, a nervetoxin about 500 times strongerthan cyanide. Convinced by thewonder powder’s effectiveness,Davis wrote The Serpent and theRainbow (1985), which Wes Craven(see below) turned into a movie in1988, sparking a new interest inthe traditional zombie in movies,myths and horror stories.

In the 1990s Beauvoir movedto Washington, where he set towork ‘demystifying’ vodou forAmericans. In 2008, when Haiti’s6,000 houngans formed a nationalfederation, Beauvoir was invitedback to assume the newly createdposition of ‘Ati’ or supreme chief ofthe religion. After the terrible 2010earthquake, he urged his networkof houngans to help with therecovery effort; but in Decemberthat year he appealed to theauthorities to intervene to stop thelynchings of vodou priests, whosescattering powder and spell-casting were blamed for causing acholera outbreak. He believed thatvodou was a solution to Haiti’sproblems and he called for thecountry’s houngans to be given aformal role in government.Max Gesner Beauvoir, biochemistand vodou ‘pope’, born Haiti, 25Aug 1936; died Port-au-Prince,Haiti 12 Sept 2015, aged 79.

WES CRAVENThe so-called ‘Sultan of Slash’made his living out of scaring thewits out of people. Later, he poked

PRAK

ASHMATHEM

A/AFP/GETTY

IMAG

ESCHIP

SOMODEV

ILLA

/GETTY

IMAG

ES

strangedays


pixy-ledplusBM was, in 1935, a 19-year-old Irish girlworking in a house at the base of the fortof Lis Ard in County Mayo. One afternoon,she went out for a walk that took her upthrough the fort, and there onthe heights she had a strangeexperience. Crossing the fort,she walked through a narrowgap into a prehistoric ditchand then along that ditch. Atthe end of the ditch she felta ‘muscular jerk’ and foundherself involuntarily returnedto where she had come from.She tried again and again toescape from every point of thisditch but there was an invisiblebarrier around the area.

“Like a wild animal in acage, she kept moving upand down that stretch of ditch and probingthe bank in a ceaseless effort to find a waythrough the magic wall which inexorably shuther in”. The magic wall not only trapped herbut apparently kept others out. Many hourslater, BM saw a rescue party sent to find her,but they could not hear her cries, though shecould see and hear them. In fact, she wasjust feet away when they walked past her,quite oblivious to her presence. The ‘magicwall’ finally disappeared a little before 11pmand she made her way home: BM had beentrapped for as long as 10 hours in a ditch ona hill.

The account appears in Dermot Mac

Manus’s The Middle Kingdom, one of ourbest collections of ‘raw’ fairy experiences.Should we associate this, as Mac Manus does,with ‘the stray sod’, an Irish version of beingpixy-led? We have looked at being pixy-ledpreviously (FT323:25) and that experiencetypically involves stumbling around a known

place that suddenly becomesunfamiliar. What happenedto BM might be better called‘pixy-led plus’: involuntarymovements, invisible walls,an inability to communicatewith people who are walkingclose by and invisibility tothose outside the space. Someof these features turn up inpixy-led experiences – thereis, for example, a terrifyinginstance of a bark stripper nearTorrington who was paralysedin a wood in 1890 – but they arenot common.

In fact, the most interesting parallels wouldbe with a number of the missing persons casesgathered together by David Paulides in theUnited States under his 411 series. Paulides’smaster thesis is that something is kidnappingpeople in America’s national parks: heartfully avoids the question of what. ButPaulides has done a very good job at bringingtogether witness accounts of temporarilymissing people who have experiencedextreme disorientation: in one case a womansaw people but could not communicate withthem…Simon Young writes on folklore and historyand runs www.fairyist.com

,

Fairies, Folkloreand ForteanaSimon Young FiLES A nEW REPoRT FRom THE inTERFACE oF STRAngE PHEnomEnA AnD FoLK BELiEF

sHe KepT pROBiNGTHe BANK iNA CeAseless

eFFORT TO FiNdA WAy THROuGHTHe MAGiC WAll

WHiCH sHuTHeR iN

fun at the horror genre with suchfilms as Wes Craven’s New Nightmare(1995). Some critics denounced himas a purveyor of gore with a dazzlingtechnique and nothing to say; otherscompared him to Ingmar Bergman. Hecreated some of the most memorablebogeymen in film, most notably theblade-taloned Freddy Krueger, amurdered child-molester in a moth-eaten sweater and filthy fedora who isbrought back to life via the dreams ofthe teenage descendants of his killers(A Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984).Craven subverted the horror genreagain with Scream (1996), the tale ofa high-school student who becomesthe target of a mysterious killer knownas Ghostface. It is full of ironic self-reference: “This is like somethingout of a Wes Carpenter film,” onecharacter observes.

Craven earned a master’s inphilosophy and writing from JohnsHopkins University, and workedas a humanities professor atClarkson University in Potsdam,New York State. In 1971 he leftteaching to work as a film editorin Manhattan. After writing anddirecting pornographic films underpseudonyms, he made his debutunder his own name with the ultra-low-budget shocker The Last Houseon the Left (1972), about a gang ofpsychotic killers who rape, tortureand murder two teenage girls, onlyto meet a more horrific fate at thehands of the girls’ parents. Hisfollow-up, The Hills Have Eyes (1977),about cannibalistic mutants stalkinga suburban family who have becomestranded in the desert, establishedhis reputation as a cult director.

Craven was a prominent defenderof the horror genre, which, he argued,gives people the mental equipmentto deal with a frightening world.“You’re talking about the beasts inthe forest that come after you… butin a way that’s under control. So, ina sense, you can own the beast.”People were sometimes surprisedto learn that Craven was not (in hiswords) “a Mansonite crazoid”, buta charming, humorous man whosehobby was bird-watching. When askedto name the thing that most terrifiedhim, he replied “my ex-wife’s divorcelawyer”. He is survived by his thirdwife, Iya, and by a son and daughter.Wesley Earl Craven, film director, bornCleveland, Ohio 2 Aug 1939; diedfrom brain cancer in Los Angeles 30Aug 2015, aged 76.

The Lizard Man ofScape ore SwaMp

26 fT333


among the mysteriouscreatures said to lurk inthe remote regions of North

America, the Lizard Man issurely among the strangest.The monster goes by several

names, including the SouthCarolina Lizard Man, the Lizard Manof Scape Ore Swamp, and the LizardMan of Lee County. Whatever you callthe beast, it’s something no one wouldwant to encounter: Seven feet (2m) tall,powerful, aggressive, incredibly fast, and– according to some – with a penchantfor chewing on automobiles. It was firstsighted near a butterbean field in aspooky area called Scape Ore Swamp(originally named EscapedWhore Swamp).

Most monsters have one signatureworld-class sighting to their credit. ForBigfoot, the gold standard is RogerPatterson and Bob Gimlin’s 1967 sightingand film; for the chupacabras, thebest evidence is eyewitness MadelyneTolentino’s seminal 1995 account; forChamp – the Lake Champlain monster– it’s Sandra Mansi’s 1977 sighting;and so on. In the small South Carolinatown of Bishopville, a teenager namedChristopher Davis is considered thegodfather of Lizard Man lore; hisdramatic sighting in the early hours ofa summer morning in 1988 remains thedefinitive account of the creature (afull report appeared in FT51:34-36) andappeared in the Sumter (SC) Item of 20 July1988, pictured at right).

Though a handful of others have reportedthe beast, most of these cases were not first-hand eyewitness sightings but reports ofdamaged, mangled metal attributed afterthe fact to the Lizard Man. Davis is creditedwith spawning the legend and indeed“became somewhat of a celebrity over thissighting... [he] was taken under the wingof a local talent agent who had him doing

tours, selling autographs, and makingmedia appearances”. 1

What began as a local curiosity blewup as national and international newsmedia got wind of the story. Televisionshows from Good Morning America to theOprah Winfrey Show called; newspapersand magazines, including Time, People,The Los Angeles Times, and CharlotteObserver, all clamoured for a story. Byone estimate, 50,000 people visitedBishopville in the weeks and monthsfollowing Davis’s sighting, creating abooming crypto-tourism business thatsurvives to this day, trading in T-shirts,hats, mugs, figurines, and LizardMan hamburgers. Several reports ofthe Lizard Man were proven hoaxes– including faked footprints createdbecause a local man wanted to keep thestory alive.

Despite, or perhaps because of, allthe publicity surrounding the LizardMan, relatively little critical scrutiny hasbeen brought to bear on Chris Davis’soriginal sighting over the years, and hisremarkable story merits a closer look.

CHRIS MEETS THE LIZARD MANHere is the story Chris Davis told:“Driving home from his job, he hadrun over something sharp near theswamp, which caused a flat tire. Justas he finished changing the wheel, hesuddenly heard a noise and looked

across a moonlit butterbean field and sawsomething that stood more than seven feettall. According to Davis’s report on theAssociated Press wire service, the creature‘was about 25 yards away and I saw red eyesglowing. I ran to the car and as I locked it,the thing grabbed the door handle. I couldsee him from the neck down – the three bigfingers, long black nails and green roughskin. It was strong and angry. I looked in mymirror and saw a blur of green running. Icould see his eyes and then he jumped on

In the spooky swamps of South Carolina lurks one of America’s most mysterious and menacingmonsters: a seven-foot-tall reptilian terror with a taste for trashing motor vehicles.BENJAMIN RADFORD sets out in search of the elusive Lee County Lizard Man…

“HE LOOKED ACROSSA MOONLIT FIELD ANDSAW SOMETHINGMORE THAN SEVENFEET TALL...”

ILLU

STR

ATION:eTIeNNegILfILLAN

/ALeX

TOmLINSON/geTTy

ImAg

eS

the roof of my car. I thought I heard a gruntand then I could see his fingers through therear windshield, where they curled around onthe roof. I sped up and swerved to shake thecreature off.”

Dolores Riccio and Joan Bingham pickup the account in their book More HauntedHouses: “A shaken Davis reached home, ranin, and told his father.Together they went toinspect the car for damage.The first thingthey found was that the side mirror had beenterribly twisted. When Chris Davis’s fatherlooked at the roof of the car, he found deepscratches penetrating the paint and evendenting the metal.” 2

Davis’s story was endorsedby local sheriff ListonTruesdale. Part of the reasonthat Sheriff Truesdale foundDavis credible is that his storynever wavered or varied:“What impressed me was thathe told the same story everytime. And he had to tell thestory over and over againto the media and others. Ifyou’re lying, you can’t tellthe same story twice,” saidTruesdale of Davis. 3

Not only that, but somesources claim that Davis wasadministered a polygraph (liedetector) test by police in aneffort to get to the bottom ofthe mystery: “ChristopherDavis drew an image of thebeing that attacked his carand got wired up for the test.A series of questions aboutthe event were put to himand Christopher answeredthem without hesitation.Although believing thatthey were victims of animagination gone wild, theofficers administrating thelie detector test and Listonsoon realised otherwise.Christopher had passed thetest with flying colours”. 4

A CLOSER LOOKIt all makes for a vivid and compelling story,but several important aspects wither undersceptical scrutiny. For example – contraryto Sheriff Truesdale’s statement – Davis’sstory had in fact changed several times inthe months and years following the sighting:“As he told and retold the story some ofthe details changed. For instance, while hefirst said the creature had scales, he latersaid the creature was caked with mud...” 5

As Lyle Blackburn notes in his book LizardMan: The True Story of the Bishopville Monster,Davis “didn’t discount the possibility that it

could have been a bear with wet, green mudcovering its fur.” 6 Davis also gave differentaccounts of how far away the creature waswhen he first saw it, and other details.

Another account from the local newspaper,The (Sumter) Item of 20 July 1988, offered asomewhat different version in an interviewwith Davis conducted at the site of hissighting: “‘I had just put the tyre in the trunkwhen I see this thing coming from those trees(about 50 yards away), kicking up dust as itran.’ He said the creature grabbed the cardoor just as Davis sped off. When he reached40mph (64/kmh), he said he noticed it had

caught up with him. ‘I lookedin the rear-view mirror and Isaw something, and heard acrash on the roof’”. 7

This version is puzzlingnot only for the details itincludes but for those itleaves out. Davis states thathe sees the Lizard Manunder some trees runningtoward him and “kickingup dust”. This is a curiousdetail, partly becauseswamps are not known forbeing particularly dusty,and partly because Davis isclaiming to have seen dustbeing kicked up in near-darkness from 50 yards away– half the length of a footballfield, and twice as far awayas he claimed in otheraccounts. There’s no mentionof the three green fingershe later saw clinging to thecar as he drove, terrified, at40mph trying to shake offthe creature.

Furthermore Davis’s claimthat he saw “a blur of green”coming at him as he droveaway cannot be true. Cartaillights are red, not white,and thus everything justbehind Davis’s car would bebathed in a red hue giving

28 fT333


ABOVE LEFT: The road to Scape Ore Swamp. ABOVE RIGHT: The spot by the swamp where Christopher Davis stopped to change a flat tyre.BELOW: early press coverage of the story made a link between the Lee County Lizard man and the ‘gill man’ from the Creature from the Black Lagoon film.

JImmySem

eRSON,DVm

a false colour. Davis could not have seen agreen blur behind him as he claimed becauseboth red and green are primary colours,and nothing looks green under a red light;a light green object in red light appearsyellow, and a dark green object in red lightappears black. Though many writers havetaken Davis’s description at face value, a bitof logic and research reveals that whateverhe did or did not see that night, several of hisimportant details cannot be accurate. If heimagined or assumed the creature’s colour,what other details might he have imaginedor assumed?

• How did the creature go from running ina forward direction to chase Davis’s car tohaving its fingers (not its toes) being seenthrough the rear-view mirror? Any bipedalcreature running and jumping on the roof ofa car would land with its head, hands, andfingers toward the front of the car and itswindscreen.Yet if Davis’s account is correctsomehow this acrobatic Lizard Man ended upwith its fingers on the rear windshield.

If the Lizard Man was bipedal, as Davisclaimed (and as represented in the sketch hedrew), then his description of the creature

running toward him on its “hind legs” makeslittle sense; lizards are tailed quadrupeds(with the notable exception of the JesusChrist Lizard or common basilisk, whichcan run for short distances on water) andcannot run bipedally. What Davis drew (anddescribed) is simply not very lizard-like– especially since it lacked a tail. Lizardsalso do not have eyes that emit light; in factno animals do, though the pupils of manyanimals can reflect light if it shines on them.The red eye-shine has been claimed for many

supernatural and cryptozoological creaturesincluding chupacabras, the Mothman, andeven Satan (one source notes that Davis atfirst thought he was seeing the Devil himselfbecause of the red eyes).

• How, exactly, did Davis even see theLizard Man creature at 2am? The area isa swamp, and therefore there was littleor no ambient, available light from anynearby houses, businesses or buildings (LyleBlackburn states that “there were no housesfor at least a half mile”). This was and is avery rural area, and photographs of the scenetaken at the time show no streetlights. Mostwriters and researchers have ignored thisissue, though a few note that perhaps Davissaw the creature by moonlight. This seemsplausible until you consider that the area isovergrown with trees, as swamps tend to be;if the creature emerged from the swamp andunder trees (as he claimed in one interview),it would have been hidden in shadows castby the trees above. I consulted an almanacto determine what phase the Moon was inthat night. It was not full, but nearly so. Evenunder the best of circumstances the Moonis not very bright; an ordinary person mightbe able to see some details at close rangeunder a full Moon, assuming the moonlightwas not blocked from above, but Chris Davis’sdetailed description beggars belief. EitherDavis’s eyesight was nearly superhuman orhis imagination filled in many of the detailshe saw – or claimed to see. Try it yourself:try to describe details of an unknown objectfrom 25 (or 50) yards away in near-darkness.Psychological studies have shown that undersuch conditions, the human mind is verypoor at accurately perceiving, remembering,and reporting even basic elements of theexperience. Our brains often “fill in” detailswith what we expect to see – not necessarilywhat we actually see – and we bias ourreports accordingly.

• How did Davis escape from the creature?The logistics of Davis’s account don’t add up;he claimed to have spotted the Lizard Manfrom about 25 (or 30, or 50, depending on thesource) yards (at least 23 metres) away (innear-darkness), and that it caught up withhis car even as it raced at a speed of up to40mph (65km/h). A creature that could movethat fast would take less than five seconds toreach Davis’s car from where it was seen. Itshould have been able to grab Davis in thetime it took for him to notice the Lizard Man,see the details he described, realise it wasrunning toward him, close the trunk of hiscar, go around to the driver’s side, open thedoor, get the keys out and start the ignition,close and lock the door, get the car in gearand speed off. Time it yourself in a vacantparking lot to judge its plausibility.

• Why would the Lizard Man chase ChrisDavis in the first place? He was no threatto the beast. If the behaviour that Davisdescribed was accurate and typical of the

fT333 29www.forteantimes.com

LEFT: Christopher Davis’s sketch of the creature heclaimed pursued him as he drove away.

“I LOOKED INTHE REAR-VIEWMIRROR AND I SAWSOMETHING, ANDHEARD A CRASH ONTHE ROOF”

30 fT333


creature, why is he the only person to claimbeing chased? While there are other reportsof something odd in the area, Davis is theonly person in the world to ever describesuch an encounter. Real, known animalshave typical temperaments and repeatedbehaviours: even the few land animals thatare known to be aggressive against humansat times (such as bears protecting theircubs or apes defending their territory)exhibit the same behaviour under the samecircumstances. If the Lizard Man had existedfor years or decades in the swamp, surely thiswas not the first time it had seen humans, andlogically there should be dozens of reportssimilar to Davis’s. Instead, his is unique.

• According to one account written theyear after the Lizard Man encounter, Davis“waited three weeks before he reported [theincident] to authorities”, 8 though he mayor may not have reported it to his fatherimmediately. Lyle Blackburn states thatDavis reported it to police on 16 July, justover two weeks later. There seems to be norecord of Davis mentioning his dramatic,life-changing encounter with an unknownmonster to any friends, co-workers, or anyoneelse until weeks after his experience. Evengranting that eyewitnesses to strange eventsmay sometimes be reluctant to come forward,this is curious behaviour.

Unfortunately, we may never know theanswers to these questions: Davis died in2009, killed in what police described as adrug-related incident, sticking by his storyto the end. There are, however, several issuesthat bear on the credibility of his sighting.

THE LIE DETECTORThe fact that Davis passed a lie detector testhas become an important element of thestory, giving it the implicit endorsement ofthe police. After all, police (even in smallSouthern towns) are typically assumed to be

sceptical, hard-nosed types who would seethrough any deception. If both the police anda lie detector believe Chris Davis’s story, thenwho is anyone else to doubt it?

Many reports state that Sheriff ListonTruesdale administered the lie detectortest in the course of investigating theincident, but this is not true. No crime wasreported or committed, and therefore itwas not a criminal matter; why would apolice department spend valuable time andresources giving someone a lie detectorjust because they said they saw somethingstrange near a swamp? A little diggingreveals the truth: according to news reportson 18 August 1988, Davis was given aprivate polygraph test “paid for by SouthernMarketing Inc., a company formed by twoSumter men to arrange personal appearancesfor Davis”. 9 (Tuten 1988).

In other words, the polygraph was notgiven as part of any police investigation orprocedure (though an officer administeredthe test), but was instead a publicity stunt.Because the test was informal, unofficial,and private, the results could only be givento, and released by, Davis’s promoters, whocould choose what information, if any, tomake public. Because there was no criminalor civil legal matter being investigated,there were no consequences to the outcome.Polygraphs work (to the degree to which theydo “work,” the machines being inadmissiblein court because of concerns about theirvalidity and reliability) only when thereis some penalty for knowingly and falselylying to an authority such as the police.Being interviewed by police who can chargeyou with a crime for lying to them is a verydifferent situation than being interviewed byyour publicity team, who can simply pretendthe polygraph test didn’t happen if they don’tlike the results. In any event, at best thepolygraph only detects signs of nervousnessor physiological reactions to intentional

deception, not mistakes or false information.If Davis sincerely (but mistakenly) believedhe saw something unknown he would likelypass.

A CAR-CHEWING LIZARD MAN?Regardless of any questions about thevalidity of his polygraph test, ChrisDavis had one piece of evidence thatwas unimpeachable: the damage done tohis vehicle. There were (apparently) noeyewitnesses to Davis’s sighting, and littleor no evidence to show that his encounterwas real – except for the damage done tohis car, the “deep scratches penetratingthe paint and even denting the metal”.Another account 10 states that “the driverside mirror was bent and twisted” and therewere scratches on the car’s roof. In fact,“mysterious” car damage would later becomeintegral to Lizard Man lore, as later “chewedup” auto fenders would be seen as evidenceof its presence. If a seven-foot tall animal aslarge and powerful as that described by Davisleapt onto a car from a 40mph run, surelyit would have cracked a window, or at leastbadly dented the roof of the car.

In his book on the monster, Lyle Blackburnasks: “How do we explain the damage tothe side mirror and roof of the car? Sure,Davis could have damaged the car himselfto back up his monster story, but woulda kid who worked for minimum wage atMcDonald’s want to bust up his own car?”This scenario is indeed far-fetched; however,there are two other, far simpler plausibleexplanations. The first is not that Davisintentionally damaged his own car as proofof his Lizard Man encounter, but exactly theopposite: Davis accidentally damaged the car(perhaps through speeding or typical teenrecklessness) and later made up the LizardMan encounter to explain it. Alternatively,assuming Davis did in fact see somethingstrange and scary as he claimed, he could

ABOVE: Since Davis’s 1988 encounter, many local instances of damage to vehicles have been attributed to the Lizard man of Scape Ore Swamp.


Bishopville’s infamous Lizard manmade a surprise appearance on aSunday summer afternoon about amile from his old Scape Ore Swampstomping grounds. The sighting was

reported via email to the local news stationin Lee County, South Carolina, on 2 August2015, accompanied by a photograph ofthe monster strutting along a tree line. Thewitness, “Sarah”, said she saw the creatureafter leaving church and swore: “I am notmaking this up”. The photograph, takenwith a mobile phone, is low-resolution, butthe distinctive, pointed, lizard-like face, redeyes, three-fingered hand, and buff physiqueare clearly discernible, just as described inprevious accounts.

The news report was updated the next dayto include a video from an unidentified manwho said he had captured what he thoughtwas the Lizard man in a short clip taken inmay 2015 in Bishopville’s Scape Ore Swamp.The video shows a dark, human-like figuredarting among trees in the distance. Thephoto can best be described as a person in acreative Hallowe’en costume, while the videois no better than the average “blobsquatch”clip – shot from too far away and too indistinctto be of any real value. Both pieces of“evidence”, though, were prime fodder for

social media sharing and take their placeas the latest bits of poor-quality evidencesupporting the claim of a bipedal reptilianhumanoid living in Lee County.

The Lizard man (or Bishopville monster)story began in 1988 when Sheriff ListonTruesdale responded to a call regardingdamage to a car parked in a rural area ofBrowntown, South Carolina. The car wasdescribed as “chewed on”. Witnesses cameforward with reports of seeing a seven-foottall, green or brown, bipedal creature with redeyes roaming the area. One witness, Chris

Davis, gained notoriety for his frightening backroad encounter with a monster he claimedattacked him and his car. The creature wassaid to run upright and to have three fingersand three toes. Crude, three-toed prints Lizardman prints duly appeared. Sheriff Truesdaletook all this mighty seriously, and the legendof an aggressive, possibly dangerous,definitely freaky creature lurking in the darkwas born. The town embraced its nativemonster.

Later reports of damaged cars, completewith teeth marks, continued to be attributedto the Lizard man. Documented cases of dogscausing remarkable amounts of damage tocars in attempts to get to a cat hiding in awheel well were glossed over if a Lizard manattack could be invoked.

Lyle Blackburn wrote the firstcomprehensive book on the Lizard man in2013. Blackburn expressed serious doubtsabout the latest encounters saying: “Itappears to be some sort of costume orminiature model rather than a real creature.”Neither did he find the video clip credible.While the Lizard man reports gained webhits and popularity, no reporters bothered tocontact Blackburn. The Sunday-strolling Lizardman story (based on just one email) wasrepeated by a myriad of web sites, with littleresearch and no follow-up provided.

Lizard man’s popularity is greater than everthanks to his appearance on mystery-themedtelevision shows, Blackburn’s book, and nowthis latest flap. What the eyewitnesses saw, ifanything, is undetermined. Telling a good storyand getting attention for it is easy. Supportingthe idea of an actual (and biologicallyimplausible) bipedal man-like lizard is a bigstretch. Lizard man is a creature of legend,not zoology – but the Bishopville monster hasachieved the status of a pop culture icon, soyou can bet he’ll be around for a long while.

REFERENCESLyle Blackburn, Lizard man: The True Story of theBishopville monster, Anomalist Books, 2013;Personal communication, 3 Aug 2015.

“Pit bulls maul Calif. minivan chasing kitten”, CBSNews, 22 Aug 2012. www.cbsnews.com/news/pit-bulls-maul-calif-minivan-chasing-kitten/.

“Something gnawed on this BmW, but it’s not somysterious”, Doubtful News, 29 mar 2013. http://doubtfulnews.com/2013/03/something-gnawed-on-this-bmw-but-its-not-so-mysterious/

“Has Bishopville’s ‘lizard man’ returned? Newvideo surfaces in case”, WCIV ABC News, 3 Aug2015. www.abcnews4.com/story/29690324/has-bishopvilles-lizard-man-returned-photo-apparently-shows-fabled-sc-creature.

Sharon Hill is an advocate for science andscepticism but loves monsters. She is the owner ofDoubtfulnews.com. Contact her at sharonahill.com.

RETURN OF THE LIZARD MAN

SHARON HILL reports on arecent rash of reptoid sightingsin South Carolina’s swamps...

LEFT: The mobile phone photo taken by ‘Sarah’.BELOW: A frame and enlargement taken from thevideo supposedly shot in may 2015

32 fT333


easily have damaged and scratched thevehicle as he drove away in a panic, swervingthrough trees and shrubbery.

Yet there may be no need to speculate onwhat damaged Davis’s car, because thoughthe mangled metal certainly makes for adramatic story, there is little evidence thatit is a true one. Several versions of Davis’sstory state that his car sustained significantdamage, alyhtough one early local newsreport offers the following: “When hereached 40mph, he noticed it had caught upwith the car, but he escaped with no morethan a scratch on his fender, Davis said”. 11

Not only do newspaper reports quote Davishimself as saying that the encounter leftlittle more than a scratch, but there seem tobe no extant photographs of any damage tothe car. A handful of photographs related toDavis’s encounter can be found – in books,magazines, and on the Internet – of vehicledamage attributed to the Lizard Man in other,later cases, but I have been unable to finda single image of damage to Davis’s car asa result of his encounter with the powerful,aggressive, car-mangling monster.

The absence of any photos of the onlyhard evidence of Chris Davis’s Lizard Manencounter is very curious. Surely, if thecar’s mirror was indeed nearly torn off and“deep scratches penetrating the paint andeven denting the metal” of the car werefound, Davis and his publicity team wouldhave eagerly circulated photos of them tobolster the credibility of his story; instead,they inexplicably neglected to photographthe damage. On the other hand, if the teen’sterrifying encounter resulted in “no morethan a scratch on his fender” – as the originalreports said – then there would be no reasonto highlight an ambiguous, unimpressivescratch that could have been caused byanything.

The inconsistencies and contradictionsin Davis’s story, plus the matter of thepolygraph test and the lack of evidence of cardamage, should give even the least scepticalinvestigator pause. Still, this brings us nocloser to knowing what, if anything, Davis saw

in the Scape Ore swamp early one summermorning. The obvious explanations include ahoax, a misidentification, or a genuine LizardMan monster.

THE HOAX THEORYCould Chris Davis have simply made thewhole thing up? Davis’s account is gripping,scary – and suspiciously cinematic. It hasmany of the standard hallmarks of a scenefrom a monster or horror film, startingwith a car breaking down late at night on adark and lonely section of road. When thevictim/eyewitness is almost through fixingthe problem, he sees something terrifyingin the distance: a monster that nobody hasever seen before! He rushes into the car,starts the engine, and the creature runs afterhim; he guns the engine and speeds away.Thinking he’s managed to escape, he startsto relax – but, to his horror, he realises hisnightmare isn’t over as he sees a monstroushand through the windshield and hearsa horrifying thump on the top of the car.Panicked, he drives like a madman, tryingto shake loose the monster clinging to theroof, and finally he does so. He rushes home,wondering if it was all some horrible dreamor nightmare – until the classic and terrifyingreveal: monstrous claw marks on the carprove his story.

From a folkloric point of view, this storyhas several recognisable motifs that are usedin the traditional plot narrative structuresof legends and tales. Of course, just becausesomething sounds like it came from a moviedoesn’t mean it didn’t really happen. But itdoes counsel caution before accepting suchextraordinary claims.

There’s another curious element to Davis’sstory; in a big city on a weekend night, onemight expect a fast food restaurant to be openuntil midnight or later. But Bishopville was asmall town, and 29 June 1988 was a Tuesdaynight/early Wednesday morning. Though it’snot impossible that the teenager was workingat a national fast food franchise until nearlytwo o’clock in the morning, he seems morelikely to have gotten off at midnight at the

latest. Why was Davis still driving home twohours after his shift likely ended? Havingworked many years in food service myself,I know that workers do not leave when thedoors close. But a two-hour delay is unusual,and suggests that perhaps Davis had not leftwork and gone directly home, as he’d claimed.Perhaps he’d stopped off at a friend’s house,or was out having a drink or smoke, as manypeople do just after getting off work late atnight.

Even though there was apparently little orno damage to the car, perhaps Davis had beenin a minor accident. As a 17-year-old workingthe night shift at a fast food joint, it’s unlikelythat Davis owned the car outright, and hehad only recently gotten his licence to drive.Any damage to the vehicle would be noticedby his father and might jeopardise not onlyhis continued use of the car but perhaps hisemployment as well. The idea of a teenagerconcocting some outlandish story about minordamage to a car to cover up for carelessnessor illegal behaviour is hardly unknown.Perhaps he had been drinking, using drugsor speeding that night and had an accident– one that was not severe enough to seriouslydamage or disable the car, but enough tocause a noticeable scratch. Perhaps in thedarkness Davis couldn’t see the extent of thedamage, and he decided to come clean beforehis father saw it the next morning. Or perhapshis father was awake when he returned homeand wanted to know why he was so late.Though a hoax seems like a real possibility,there are more charitable explanations.

LUCIOUS THE LIZARD MAN?If it wasn’t a hoax, what, if anything, didDavis see? There’s little real evidence fromwhich to draw a solid conclusion, but one partof his report that stands out is the red eyes,and locals have a few theories that mightexplain that. A longtime resident who livesnear Scape Ore Swamp, Joe E Moore Jr, toldone researcher: “I doubt very seriously ifanything ‘chased’ Davis’s car down that night.I think he saw a bear’s eyes reflecting hisbrake lights as he was closing his trunk, and

ABOVE LEFT: Lucious ‘Brother’ elmore’s butterbean shed on Browntown Road. ABOVE RIGHT: Visitors to Bishopsville can even buy a sample of ‘Lizard man Butter Beans’.

JImmySem

eRSON,DVm

BeNJAmIN

RAD

fORD


by the time he had gotten into the car andgotten it started, the bear had climbed on topof it, which park bears are notorious for doing.Everything I observed led me to believe itwas probably a black bear in that particularinstance”. 12

One intrepid Lizard Man investigator fromthe College of Charleston, Alicia Lutz, visitedBishopville recently and was told by severallocals that they had a pretty good idea whatDavis saw that night – and it wasn’t a LizardMan. It was instead a local named LuciousElmore, a butterbean farmer who had a shednot far from where Davis had his flat tyre.

“Lucious ‘Brother’ Elmore was a lucrativebutterbean farmer, with 40-something acresof butterbeans... In order to keep his harvestmoving quickly, he dumped the beans ontodrying tables in his shed on Browntown Road,which he equipped with air-conditioningwindow units to further speed up the dryingprocess. ‘In those days, not everybody hadair conditioning, and I guess it got so hotsometimes that it went to people’s heads,because people kept stealing the units rightout of Brother Elmore’s shed,’ Al Holland,owner of the local feed and seed, had told usthat morning. ‘Well, he’d just picked up threenew units from the store, and people knewthis. But he was determined to make sure noone stole them.’” 13

Annoyed by the nighttime thefts, Elmorestayed up overnight at his shed guarding hisnew air conditioning units, sitting quietlyalone in the dark to catch a thief. He was“on a stakeout the night that ChristopherDavis’s tyre blew, and – when he heard thecar stop just 100 yards down the road fromthe butterbean shed, he thought he’d foundhis culprit. ‘He walks out to the road, whichis lower than the yard, so he’s up high, hidingin the dog fennel,’ Holland told us. ‘So he’sstanding there, he’s looking down, when thekid turned around and screamed and tookoff.... Davis’ taillights reflected in Elmore’sglasses, causing an illusion of red glowingeyes’.”

Though not definitive proof, this accountseems plausible, and there would seem little

incentive for Elmore to make up a storyabout encountering Chris Davis near hisbutterbean shed that night; as Blackburnnotes, “It would certainly be coincidentalthat Davis reported having a flat near theButterbean Shed on the very night Elmorechased away a thief.” 14 Though Davis wouldhave been aware of any passing cars fromtheir headlights as he changed his tyre onthe dark, lonely stretch of road, it’s unlikelythat he (or anyone else) would expect to seesomeone walking toward him in the moonlitdarkness from the nearby swamp. Any one ofus could have been startled and spooked bysuch a sudden appearance, and in his panicDavis’s imagination may have filled in theother details. This explanation also jibes withthe fact that there was little or no damageto Davis’s vehicle. We need not assume thatElmore actually jumped on Davis’s vehicle,and in fact in some statements Davis suggeststhat he was not sure that the Lizard Manactually did jump on his roof: “I looked in therear-view mirror and saw something. And Iheard a crash on the roof”; “He never saw itfall but eventually the swerving must haveworked because the creature was no longerclawing and banging on the roof”. 15

As Davis only mentioned seeing“something” behind him and was swervingback and forth through a swampy, woodedarea, it’s possible that he scraped low-hangingtree branches that in his panic he mistookthem for something in his roof. If there wasindeed a scratch on the car’s roof, that mightaccount for it.

THE HOLLYWOOD CONNECTIONPerhaps Davis saw Elmore, or somethingelse he didn’t recognise, and his mind racedto make sense of it, perhaps drawing froma movie monster he’d seen. It may seemoutlandish, but there are precedents for justsuch an event (this is part of the explanationfor the very first chupacabras report in 1995;see FT271:30-35 and my book Tracking theChupacabra).

Karl Shuker has noted that the Davisreport is just one of several encounters withreptilian man-monsters astonishingly similarin appearance to the amphibious ‘gill-man’from the Hollywood film Creature from theBlack Lagoon movie. 16 It’s also interesting tonote that a popular comedy/horror film, TheMonster Squad, was released a year before,and featured a Lizard Man-like creature.

In 2009, Canadian researcher and Skepticmagazine editor Daniel Loxton investigatedreports of a monster in British Columbia’sThetis Lake. It was 1972, and according toseveral books, the monster was described byeyewitnesses as a fish-like humanoid “withsilvery scaled skin, sharp claws and spikeson its head.” Two teenagers saw the creatureemerge from the lake and look around;a newspaper headline the next day read:“Thetis Monster Seen by Boys”. According toone eyewitness, Mike Gold, the creature “wasshaped like an ordinary body, like a humanbeing body but it had a monster face and itwas all scaly”. Furthermore, the scary beasthad “a point sticking out of its head” and“great big ears”. Several authors of monster-themed tomes cite the case in their books asa genuine mystery, possibly representing anew type of creature.

Other than the pair of seemingly sincereeyewitnesses, there was no other evidenceof the creature. Nothing of that size or shapehad ever been seen in the man-made lakebefore or since, and the incident was verybizarre. Loxton noted that the Thetis Lakemonster seemed outlandish and suspiciouslycinematic (almost like The Creature from theBlack Lagoon), and wondered if somehow theboys’ description of the monster had been

ABOVE: movie monsters may have influenced Davis’s interpretation of what he saw that night, as appears to have been the case with the Thetis Lake monster of 1972.

IT WAS A SCALYBEAST WITH A “POINTSTICKING OUT OF ITSHEAD” AND “GREATBIG EARS”

34 fT333


FT

influenced by something they had seen orheard.

After careful research, Loxton discoveredthat though The Creature from the BlackLagoon had not been shown recently inVictoria, British Columbia, a very similarlow-budget knockoff, Monster from the Surf,(1965, aka The Beach Girls and the Monster)had. In fact, as Loxton discovered: “Monsterfrom the Surf played twice one weekend– and the first Thetis Lake monster sightingwas reported within a week! That’s right:local TV showed a monster movie abouta scaled, humanoid gill-man attackingteenagers at the beach after dark. Fourdays later, local teenagers reported beingattacked at the Thetis beach after dark by ascaled monster!”

Furthermore, the boys’description of the monsterthey saw exactly matchedthe creature in Monsterfrom the Surf, down to thepoint and the large, ear-like gills on the creature’shead. This is an open-and-shut case of peopletaking their detailedeyewitness description ofa supposedly real, mysterious monster theyhad seen directly from a movie. When Loxtoncontacted one of the now-grown men abouttheir sighting decades later—somethingno other researcher had done before – theman admitted it was all a hoax. They haddescribed the monster they had seen in thefilm, and pretended they saw it in real life.

A REAL MONSTER?A quarter-century after the events of thatnight in Scape Ore Swamp it’s impossible toknow what, if anything, Chris Davis saw, buta seven-foot tall Lizard Man is among theleast likely explanations. There have beenfew if any credible reports in over 20 years,and most of those were not actual sightingsbut cars that sustained some ambiguousdamage blamed on the Lizard Man. Thisphenomenon of assuming an unknowncreature’s presence from ambiguousindirect evidence is not uncommon incryptozoology. For example it occurred inmany chupacabras ‘reports’ in which theanimal was never actually seen but inferredfrom the presence of dead livestock (in factkilled by ordinary predation). Unremarkabledamage to cars in the Bishopville area thatotherwise would have been attributed tominor vandalism or careless driving was seenas mysterious and alarming in the context ofthe Lizard Man publicity.

Why would a fully-grown, man-sizedcreature only be seen once or twice and thendisappear? This fact can be interpreted inseveral ways. The first is that the Lizard Manwas real, and was actually sighted by one ormore of the witnesses but is no longer seen,perhaps because it has radically changedits behaviour (from openly attacking andchasing humans and cars) and has beenremarkably adept at hiding. Alternatively,it may have been killed or died of natural

causes without ever beingfound, and this explains its disappearance.However this presumes the beast wasunique. As with other cryptids, if it’s a realflesh-and-blood animal then of course itcannot be a single solitary creature – uniqueanimals do not simply pop into existence,and certainly not for brief periods of time.Like all other animals it would need tohave parents, and in order for there to be asurviving population there would need to beenough of them to ensure genetic variation.For example it has been estimated that therewould need to be between 6,000 and 10,000Bigfoot in North America alone to sustaina breeding population. Bigfoot reports arefar more common than Lizard Man reports,and simply from a biological perspectivethe Lizard Man’s singular existence isimplausible in the extreme.

An alternative explanation is that theLizard Man never existed in the first place,and that its mythology was created by one ormore misidentifications, misunderstandings,hoaxes, or some combination of those. Ifthat’s true, then the fact it is no longer seen

needs no explanation other than thatmany monster sightings, like manyUFO sightings, occur in flaps thatgradually fade away. Chris Davis’s report– the most celebrated and detailed

encounter on record of the Lizard Man – isquite literally incredible, riddled with bothimplausibilities and impossibilities. It maybe sincere or it may be a hoax, but in eitherevent no hard evidence of the creature hasbeen found. Davis is gone, and it seems thatthe monster he made famous is gone aswell. Still, if you ever visit the small town ofBishopville, South Carolina, you can find theLizard Man – on shirts, caps, bumper stickersand mugs.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

BENJAMIN RADFORD is alongtime researcher and writer.He has degrees in psychologyand education, and is author ofeight books including Trackingthe Chupacabra, ScientificParanormal Investigation: How to

Solve Unexplained Mysteries, and most recentlyMysterious New Mexico: Miracles, Magic, andMonsters in the Land of Enchantment. His Website is www.BenjaminRadford.com.

NOTES

1 Dolorea Riccio andJoan Bingham, MoreHaunted Houses,Pocket Books, 1991.

2 Ibid.

3 Randy Burns,“Police: murder victimLizard man witness”,The Item, 20 June2009. Available atwww.missfidget.com/?p=3362

4 www.cockytalk.com/archive/index.

php/t-121492.html.

5 Riccio and Bingham,op cit.

6 yle Blackburn, LizardMan: The True Story ofthe Bishopville Monster,Anomalist Books, 2013.

7 george georgas,“Bumps in the night?”,Sumter Item, 20 July1988.

8 Ron Schafner, “SouthCarolina’s SwampSlob?”, CreatureChronicles newsletter,

1 January 1989.

9 Jan Tuten, “firstLizard man SpotterPasses Polygraph”,Columbia Slate, 3 Sept1988.

10 Blackburn, op cit.

11 www.missfidget.com/?p=3403

12 Terrance Zepke,Best Ghost Talesof South Carolina,Pineapple Press, 2004.

13 Alicia Lutz, “Off toSee the Lizard”, College

of Charleston magazine,7 Sept 2011. Availableat http://magazine.cofc.edu/2011/09/07/lizard-man/.

14 Blackburn, op cit.

15 Ibid.

16 http://karlshuker.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/coming-to-swamp-near-you-lizard-men.html.

RIGHT: Lizard man T-Shirts and bumperstickers are available in a variety of designs.

BeNJAmIN

RAD

fORD

Daily Mail

HHHHHThe Daily Telegraph

HHHHHThe Times

HHHHH

the strangestfamily

in england

36 FT333


Nobody writing a book abouteccentricity can avoid puttingpen to paper in the shadow ofDame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964).Not only was she the author ofperhaps the most celebrated

of all books on the subject – 1933’s TheEnglish Eccentrics – she was also a memberof arguably the strangest family ever tohave lived. The exploits of the three Sitwellsiblings, Dame Edith and her youngerbrothers Sir Osbert (1892-1969) and SirSacheverell (1897-1988) were legendary,so much so that tales of their eccentricitieshave often overshadowed recognition oftheir very real achievements in the fields ofliterature, music and the arts.

Seemingly, the Sitwells were attractedto other unusual people like moths to aflame. After achieving fame, for instance,Edith and Osbert composed a questionnaireto send out to any correspondents whosefan mail seemed weird enough to markthem out as being potential loons. As wellas asking for deliberately nonsensicalinformation like the “Age, sex and weightof your wife”, and demanding they providepassport photos signed by clergymen, thesiblings also made several personal queriesrelating to the mental health of the letter-writers’ families. “Has any relative of yoursever been confined in a mental home?” wasone such question; “If not, why not?” wasthe next.

Given this taste for the agreeablygrotesque, it is perhaps no surprise thatEdith Sitwell chose to write a book abouteccentrics, generously using the royalty-payments to help support a cancer-strickenfriend of hers named Helen Rootham(1875-1938). Rootham herself, though, was

a striking example of the kind of curiousacquaintance the Sitwells liked to cultivate.Coming from a difficult background – herinsane sister occasionally tried to murderpeople – Helen first became known toEdith after being appointed her governess

in 1903. A talented musician, as wellas a translator of French poets such asRimbaud, Rootham became an importantinfluence upon the young Edith; it has beensuggested that without her governess’sartistic example Sitwell would neverhave become the famous poet she didas an adult. Another influence that mayhave rubbed off on Edith, though, wasHelen’s undoubted eccentricity. As well astranslating Rimbaud, Rootham had tried tointroduce the 19th-century Russian mysticVladimir Solovyov to the English-speakingworld. An inspiration for both Tolstoy andDostoyevsky, Solovyov had argued for asynthesis of Christianity with Buddhismand the teachings of Plato, and claimed tohave had mystical encounters with a beingnamed ‘Sophia’, the very personification ofDivine Wisdom.

Rootham had a weakness for this kindof thing, being drawn to arcane movementslike Theosophy and its offshoots, engagingin bare-footed ‘nature-dances’, andbecoming convinced that she was thereincarnation of a mediæval Yugoslavianprincess named Yelena. At one point, Helenbecame abnormally obsessed with a dreamin which a giant leaf had emerged from thebody of what she rather vaguely termed “aBeing”; she asked everyone she met if theyknew what it meant. Many said they did,but, being English, were much too polite toadd out loud: “It means you’re mental”.

MARCHING TO HER OWN DRUMThe weirdest incident involving Roothamand the Sitwells occurred in 1915, however,when the governess took it upon herself toexpel a demon – or ‘elemental’, as she hadit – from the family home of Renishaw Hall

In an extract from his new book, Great British Eccentrics, SD TUCKER tells the story of the real-lifeAddams Family who wrote poems, hunted ghosts and tried to paint cows to fit in with the crockery.

tales of theireccentricities haveovershadowedtheir very realachievements

HULTONAR

CHIVE/GETTY

IMAG

ES

in Derbyshire. Built in 1625 and occupied bysuccessive generations of the Sitwell familyever since, the Hall certainly had plentyof time to acquire some ghosts to haunt itslonelier corners, but the one that Roothamclaimed to have expelled was particularlyhorrible in nature. Edith apparently met itherself as a child; she heard lame-soundingfootsteps dragging their way across emptyrooms, and on one occasion saw a door-handle repeatedly turning around by itselfbefore the door burst open, revealing...nothing, other than the melancholy soundof the invisible spook, limping away into thedistance.

Clearly this was a poltergeist infestation,and on a trip back to Renishaw duringWWI, Rootham decided to play ghost-buster, wandering around the place withEdith and Osbert saying prayers for thedead. Suddenly, standing at the bottomof a staircase, Rootham announced: “Itis coming!”; whereupon the sound of thehalting footsteps began once more. Overcomeby a sense of evil, Helen retreated to joinEdith and Osbert, the latter gulping: “It iscoming for us.” Seemingly, it was; a soundlike whispering waves filled the trio’s heads,and a shapeless black mist appeared, floatingdown the steps and interfering with theirbrains in a strange, trance-inducing fashion.Perhaps disturbed by all the praying, theghost then veered off at the last moment

and passed through a doorway. Roothamlater swore blind that the elemental hadvisited her again in bed that night, where sheengaged in a “battle” with it whose precisedetails have sadly never been revealed.

Osbert wrote a poem about this uncannyevent called Night, and Edith herself was alsoinspired to versify by poltergeist phenomena,her poem The Drum being based uponone of the most celebrated of all Englishhauntings, the famous ‘Demon Drummer ofTedworth’ (see FT48:54-56, 202:38-44). Thepoem presents an interesting demonstrationof Sitwell’s own peculiar poetic craft; often,she was concerned above all with the soundher lines made when read aloud, and therhythm of The Drum is an extreme exampleof this, for it is surely the only poem in theEnglish language to take its tempo directfrom the noises allegedly made by a real-

life ghost. Edith had discovered the storyof the Drummer in a 1682 edition of JosephGlanvill’s tract Saducismus Triumphatus, abook of witchcraft-tales that provided thefirst comprehensive account of the haunting.The story, which has a fairy-tale air to it,begins with a Wiltshire magistrate namedJohn Mompesson confiscating the drum of alocal beggar named William Drury. Robbedof his livelihood, Drury is then supposed tohave cursed the official, leading to his homebeing plagued by poltergeist phenomena,including loud raps and knocks. Seeing asthese knocks seemed to play distinct tunesfrom thin air, they were interpreted bycontemporary observers as being drumbeatscaused by the supernatural agency ofDrury in revenge for his instrument beingimpounded. Sitwell’s poem was supposed toimitate the sound of this unearthly tattoo –and lines like “Dust doth clack/Clatter andquack/To a shadow black” do indeed soundlike the regular beatings of an invisible drumif you read them correctly.

CURIOUS GEORGERenishaw Hall was apparently so full ofspooks that it sometimes seemed the placehad more dead occupants than living ones –not that Edith’s father, Sir George ReresbySitwell (1860-1943), would have agreed. SirGeorge was a truly odd man, as we shallsoon see, but when it came to ghosts he was

38 FT333


ABOVE: Osbert Sitwell at work in the gardens of Renishaw Hall, Derbyshire. The family home’s numerous ghosts inspired some of the Sitwell’s literary endeavours.

HAYWOODMAG

EE/PICTU

REPO

ST/GETTY

IMAG

ES

a black mistappeared, floatingdown the steps andinterfering withtheir brains

utterly orthodox in his opinions; he didn’tbelieve in them one bit. He accepted thatpeople saw ghosts, but considered themhallucinations or “reverse impressionsof something seen in the past, and nowprojected from an overtired and excitedbrain”, as he put it. Sir George simply sawspooks as silly ‘women’s matters’, causedby the supposed inferiority of the femalenervous system. “Ghosts are sometimes metwith, but they are not ghosts,” he said. Whenit came to his own wife’s nervous system, SirGeorge may have had a point: an unstablealcoholic and occasional ghost-seer with ataste for self-dramatisation, Lady Ida Sitwell(1869-1937) was given to explaining away anysleepless nights by reference to Renishaw’sspirits being noisy, kept an expensively-acquired hangman’s noose on display at thetop of her bed for luck, and squandered afortune of her husband’s money on a pet pigshe was convinced was psychic.

Perhaps Sir George’s cynicism stemmednot only from his wife’s foolishness but alsofrom a youthful experience whilst studyingat Oxford. Attending a séance arrangedby the British National Association ofSpiritualists on 9 January 1880, George hadwitnessed a notorious 24-year-old mediumnamed Florence Cook (see FT179:30-37) walkbehind a curtain only to re-emerge momentslater having apparently transformed intoa dead 12-year-old girl called Marie. On aprevious visit to the séance-room, however,George had noticed something suspiciousabout Marie – beneath her white shroud-like robes, the dead child was sporting acorset. Pondering this fact later, Georgehad concluded that ghosts were unlikely

to require any underwear and that, even ifthey did need to purchase fresh knickersin case of ectoplasmic accidents, there wasno reason for a 12-year-old spectre to wearsuch an adult undergarment. This time,however, Sitwell had come prepared. When‘Marie’ emerged from behind the curtain,he jumped up and grabbed her, establishingthat, beneath her shroud, the ‘little girl’was indeed wearing only her undies, thusno doubt allowing him to observe that shewas unusually well developed for a girl ofsuch alleged tender years. Tearing down

the curtain between two worlds, Sitwellwas unsurprised to find Florence Cook’sdiscarded clothing scattered all over the floorbehind it. The séance then broke up amidstshouting and abuse, but Sir George laterappeared in the pages of the Times and theTelegraph, where he was praised for havingexposed a fraud.

THEY’RE CREEPY AND THEY’REKOOKYWhilst most of the Sitwells were morethan a bit abnormal on their own, it wason a collective basis that the family’s trueeccentric strength rested. Edith’s paternalgrandmother, for example, Lady LouisaSitwell (1827-1911) was an excessivelyreligious woman whose favourite pastime wasdriving through the streets of Scarborough inher coach together with a suffragan bishop,kidnapping prostitutes (or, more accurately,women she thought resembled prostitutes)and carting them off to a home for ‘fallenwomen’ she funded. Here, the whores werestripped naked, forcibly bathed by a burlymatron to wash away their sins and thendressed up like policemen, before being putto work as laundresses behind closed doors.Cousins and second-cousins provided furtherweird delights, most notably one ReginaldFarrer (1880-1920), a Yorkshireman with acleft palate who turned both vegetarian andBuddhist after accidentally eating his pet catwhilst visiting Japan; he became the world’sleading authority on oriental rock-gardens,


ABOVE LEFT: Reginald Farrer, way out East. ABOVERIGHT: The Sitwell Family by John Singer Sargent.LEFT: Edith and Osbert in 1956.

BARON/GETTY

IMAG

ES

40 FT333


adopting the bizarre alpine-planting methodof filling his shotgun up with rare Himalayanseeds and then firing them into cliffs inorder to lend an element of chance to hishorticultural compositions. In 1913, Farrerstood for Parliament, but lost after blowinghis entire campaign-budget on flower-bulbs.

As a family, then, the Sitwells could takeon the entire world in the ever-popular sportof competitive nuttiness, but their only realhope of a solo world-champion lay with SirGeorge. George, like Reginald Farrer, was afan of gardening, devoting much of his time(and his fortune) to planning alterations tohis estate, constructing numerous tall woodenpillars upon which he would sit perched withan umbrella for hours on end, surveying hislands through a telescope, fantasising aboutadding lakes and statues and bulldozing awayannoying hills which interfered with his lineof sight. Today, visitors to Renishaw Hall’sbeautiful formal gardens may well be pleasedthat Sir George took such troubles over hishobby; but most people will no doubt berather more pleased that his son Osbert tookequal pains over the careful presentation ofhis father’s life-story in his five-volume 1945-50 autobiography Left Hand, Right Hand!

DADDY QUEERESTOsbert’s very funny book is a treasure-trove of mad anecdotes about his parent.Eager to present his father as crazy frombirth, Osbert related how, after inheritinghis title as a toddler in 1862, the young SirGeorge immediately began to feel a senseof superiority and entitlement. There wasthe time, for instance, when travelling on atrain with his nurse, that an avuncular oldman sitting opposite had asked him “Andwho are you, young fellow?” The enquiry wasto elicit an alarmingly precocious response:“I am Sir George Sitwell, Baronet,” the tinytot answered. “I am four years old and theyoungest Baronet in England.”

Sir George’s odd ways continued whilstboarding at Eton between 1873 and 1878,where he is alleged to have devised twoamazing inventions; a musical toothbrushthat played as you scrubbed your teeth,

and a tiny revolver for firing miniatureprojectiles at wasps – devices that are stillbeing searched for by his descendants.As an adult, his unsuccessful marriage tothe alcoholic Lady Ida sent him retreatingfurther and further inside himself. Convincedhe was always right about everything, ever,Sir George once published a pamphletpointing out to Einstein where he was goingwrong, and deliberately tried to alienateany visitors to Renishaw by having a noticemade, reading: “I must ask anyone enteringthe house never to contradict me or differfrom me in any way, as it interferes with thefunctioning of the gastric juices and preventsmy sleeping at night”.

Appalled by modernity, Sir Georgebecame an expert on the Middle Ages, aperiod he thought better than his own day inevery respect, banning electricity from hispresence until the 1940s, rationing visitorsto two candles apiece during their stays,and calculating Osbert’s allowance uponthe basis of the amount one of his ancestorshad given his own son during the years ofthe Black Death. Appropriately enough, hebegan devoting much of his time to highlyspecialist historical research, writing a

series of quite unpublishable books whosetitles ranged from the wilfully obscure – TheHistory of the Fork, The Use of the Bed, Leper’sSquints, The Introduction of the Peacock intoWestern Gardens – to the absurdly specific– Domestic Manners in Sheffield in the Year1250, Rotherham Under Cromwell, Acorns asan Article of Medieval Diet and his analysis forcuring insomnia, The Twenty-Seven Posturesof Sir George R Sitwell. A weird mixtureof miser and spendthrift, Sir George wasperfectly happy to buy a mediæval Italiancastle on pure whim, but once attempted topersuade Eton to accept Osbert’s school-feesin the form of potatoes. Frequently, he wouldquestion trivial household expenses, buyinghis children utilitarian ‘presents’ like barsof soap at Christmas, and yet when it cameto his own interests of landscape-gardeningand antiquities, money was no object. Eventhe cows that wandered through the fieldsof Renishaw were not safe from Sir George’sæsthetic attentions; he seriously conceivedthe idea of paint-stencilling their hides withblue and white willow patterns to match histasteful Chinese crockery. Sir George died inSwitzerland in 1942, though for him, in manyrespects, it might as well have been 1342.

JEEVES AND BLUSTERSo eager was Osbert to portray his fatheras a modern-day Don Quixote that he evengave him his own Sancho Panza figure,Sir George’s faithful butler Henry Moat(1871-1940). Moat may have described hismaster as “the strangest old bugger youever met”, but he was a little odd himself.Described as resembling a “benevolentpurple hippopotamus”, the burly Moat wasforever having bust-ups with Sir George andwalking out on him before returning to patchthings up again. Moat’s chief role was to tryand curb Sir George’s madder schemes astactfully as possible. There was the time, forinstance, that Sir George called Moat into hispresence and informed him excitedly of hisnew idea that, from now on, all knife-handles“should always be made from condensedmilk”. Taking his time to ponder this bizarresuggestion, Moat eventually formulated thefollowing droll response: “Yes, Sir George...but what if the cat gets at them?” WhenLady Ida died and was buried in 1937,Moat consoled the household thus: “Well atleast now Sir George will know where HerLadyship spends her afternoons.” WhenMoat finally died in 1940, 43 years after firstentering the Sitwells’ service, Sacheverell,typically, thought he heard his ghost bangingabout in the pantry at Renishaw. When sheheard this claim, Edith fondly imagined thatMoat was returning home to check up on thepoor neglected children whom he had triedhis best to protect from their parents’ harshinadequacies during their earliest and mosttender years.

These are marvellous stories. The onlyquestion is – how accurate are they? Osbertdid not like his father, for a variety of reasons,and what must be remembered with thepaternal portrait painted in Left Hand, RightHand! is that it is extremely partial. Nothingin it is untrue, as such, but Sir George’s

HULTONARCHIVE/GET

TYIM

AGES

TOP: Sir George Sitwell. ABOVE: Osbert’s autobiography portrayed his father as an eccentric on a grand scale.


numerous episodes of weirdness werestitched together by his unfaithful son in sucha way as to obscure the general day-to-daypattern of his life. While he was undoubtedlyvery strange, for most of the time Sir Georgeacted in a reasonably rational manner, and nodoubt whole months would sometimes passwithout him appearing to need a straitjacket.He was, for example, a well respected ToryMP, sitting for five years in the Commons. Ilooked up the contributions he made there– there aren’t many – hoping they would befilled with insane ramblings, but they werenot. In some ways, this is all most unfair;and yet, at the same time, Osbert’s skewedversion of Sir George is undeniably a greatliterary creation. Exaggeration and selectivequotation is, essentially, the method of alleccentric biography; a presentation of anunusual life with all the dull bits taken out inorder to leave us with a heightened, slightlyinaccurate, yet not untrue, portrait of thesubject.You can make more-or-less anyoneresemble a fruitcake using such a method,I would suggest – including Dame Edithherself.

QUEEN OF THE GOTHSOne of Sir George’s many unpublishedmasterworks was called The Errors of ModernParents – a subject upon which he really wasqualified to write, particularly in relationto Edith’s childhood. Sir George was notdeliberately vindictive towards his daughter,but many of his kindnesses seemed to hervery much like cruelties. For example,genuinely concerned about her wellbeing,Sir George allowed himself to be convincedby misguided doctors that the 11-year-oldEdith was in danger of growing up with botha crooked spine and a severely misshapennose, thus condemning her to spend yearslocked up within a kind of artificial bodilyprison. Specially-made iron-lined boots anda weighty metallic corset restricted Edith’smovements during the day, while at night herlegs were sealed within a locked cage thatrendered it impossible for her to leave herbed – even, as she complained, if there wereto be a fire. She was also made to wear a nose-truss, with two steel prongs constantly lockedinto place against either side of her proboscis,forcing it to grow straight. So hideous didthis apparatus look that, callously, her hatedmother used to encourage friends to visitEdith during her home-schooling lessons inorder to peer at the infant freak-show.

With a childhood this gothic, no wonderEdith grew up to be somewhat unusual. Thevery word ‘gothic’, for example, is surely thebest way to describe the manner of dress sheadopted in adulthood; long flowing velvetdresses, fingers covered with antique rings,and strange, mediæval-style head-wearand golden turbans were far indeed fromthe usual fashions of the day. With her tall,thin frame, elongated fingers, unusual nose(in spite of the childhood truss) and evenmore unusual outfits, Edith certainly madea striking figure, and, to many, a strikinglyridiculous one. Ever the self-dramatist, sheeventually began claiming to have modelledher appearance on that of Queen Elizabeth

I, about whom she wrote two bestsellingbooks. So strongly did she begin to identifywith the Virgin Queen that Sitwell, findingthey shared a birthday, hired a professionalastrologer to cast their charts for comparison.According to Sitwell, the astrologertentatively concluded his client might wellhave been the reincarnation of Good QueenBess, an idea she found pleasing.

As all this suggests, Edith Sitwell felta very real need to engage in acts of self-reinvention, perhaps in an attempt to escapefrom the miseries of her childhood. Decidingupon life as a poet, she started to view herselfas different from other people and more‘sensitive’. She believed, for instance, that sheand her brothers were slightly psychic, havingaccess to what she called “a leakage intime” that facilitated prophetic dreams. Sheclaimed that, when asked as a toddler whatshe would be when grown, had answered “Agenius!” a prediction that, it was implied,had since come true. Determined to embarkupon the literary life, as a young womanEdith began performing acts of faintlyembarrassing poetic pilgrimage, travellingto Algernon Swinburne’s grave on the Isle ofWight and pouring libations of milk over it asan offering to his soul, or leaving red roses onthe doorstep of WB Yeats and then runningaway.

Because of such eccentricities, it remainsan inescapable fact that the Sitwells aretoday more celebrated for their bizarrelifestyle and humorous escapades than theyare for their art. But is it really such a terriblefate to be remembered by the multitude as

being slightly mad? Not necessarily. Thelast word, as ever, must go to the formidableDame Edith, who in a 1923 lecture assessedher family’s reputation for insanity andweirdness thus: “Let us speak of our madness.We are always being called mad. If we aremad... at least we are mad in company withmost of our great predecessors... Beethoven,Schuman and Wagner, Shelley, Blake, Keats,Coleridge, Wordsworth, were all mad in turn.We shall be proud to join them in the Asylumto which they are now consigned.”

So, surely, would anybody remotely sane.

This is an edited andcondensed extract takenfrom SD Tucker’s new bookGreat British Eccentrics,released in September2015 by AmberleyPublishing (ISBN:978-1-4456-4770-8). Allreferences can be found

listed within. (For a discussion of SacheverellSitwell’s theory that Adolf Hitler was apoltergeist-medium, see FT293:46-49)

AUTHOR BIORAPHY

SD TUCKER is an FT regularwhose most recent booksare Great British Eccentricsand (forthcoming) The HiddenFolk. Currently at work on abook about forgotten science,

he loves strange people, but only from adistance.

HAROLD

CLEMEN

TS/EX

PRES

S/GET

TYIM

AGES

FT

TOP: Dame Edith photographed in 1953 sporting typically mediæval-style garb and one of her antique rings.

Tragic Songs fromthe Grassy KnollA MUSICAL HISTORY OF THE JFK ASSASSINATION

42 FT333


Awatershed politicaland historicalmoment, the 22November 1963

assassination of John FKennedy approaches its 52ndanniversary and still stirspassions and debate.

Visitors to Dealey Plaza,in Dallas, Texas, consistentlyremark how time appears‘frozen’ at the the scene ofthe crime: little has changedsince that infamous date anda haunting stillness hangsover the fateful intersection.Likewise, the momentous eventis captured in a mountainousrange of forgotten, discardedand ghostly vinyl artefacts.

No one can deny the seismicimpact on culture, politicsand the popular consciousness of theassassination of the 35th US President.Some sources assert that over 40,000books (is that possible?) have been writtenthat relate in some way to JFK’s demise,scores of major and minor films havereflected upon the murder, and hundredsof documentaries have presented variousconflicting theories and versions of events.Even select names or phrases (‘GrassyKnoll’) have seen their usage or culturalresonance forever altered, and Kennedy’sslaying regularly appears (in some form oranother) in such pop-culture touchstones asThe Simpsons or South Park.

While the public appears to bedivided between those who adhere tothe establishment Warren Commissionconclusions (or those of the House SelectCommittee on Assassinations) and a widelandscape of competing alternate theories(FT72:30-33, 176:32-36, 292:25, 307:30-36),it’s worth reiterating that there was never atrial and no one has ever been found guiltyof the crime (mainstream assumptionsabout Lee Oswald’s guilt notwithstanding).

ON THE MARGINSOne aspect seldom consideredis the assassination’s impacton music and the field ofrecorded sound. A sincere andglobal tide of grief greetedthe young President’s death(frankly unimaginable forincumbents of recent memory)and a legion of scribes andwordsmiths hastily took uppen, microphone, guitar orbaton.

Perhaps fortuitously, late1963 also lay at the apex ofan era when recording andrecord (LP and 45) pressingtechnology (while nevercheap) were accessibleand many, especially in thegenetically entrepreneurialUSA, expressed themselves

musically or in spoken-word form insmall editions or regional releases andprivate pressings. Pop music, with itscommodified corporate parameters,national or international marketplaceand rigid schedules barely registered theassassination (with notable exceptions fromThe Byrds, Phil Ochs and a few others) butout on the margins, with less commercialimperatives but considerable popularsentiment, hundreds of artists committedodes or laments to the fallen Presidentto wax, sometimes within weeks or evendays. Where today a blog,YouTube postor Facebook thread might register socialdisquiet or topicality, in 1963 a troubadour,singing group or organisation could tap intothe popular ferment in recorded song orspoken tract. Media outlets were relativelyfew and generally inaccessible, but modestrecording studios were plentiful, anddo-it-yourself or independent releases aroughhewn, entry-level democracy.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Country music,with its southern lineage, preternaturalsentimentality and historical claims to

The assassination of President John F Kennedy in November 1963 sent shockwaves around theworld, but its impact on popular music and recorded sound remains largely neglected.

DAVID THRUSSELL assesses a forgotten legacy of discarded vinyl artefacts.

A sincere andglobal tide ofgrief greeted thepresident’s death

THREE

LIONS/HULTONAR

CHIVE/GETTY

IMAG

ES

authenticity and sincerity,spawned a veritable cottageindustry of JFK threnodies.

The exception that provesthe rule is the notably bizarre1966 hit 45 ‘History RepeatsItself’ penned, recited andrecorded by journeyman WestVirginia Country singer, radiopersonality and renowned‘pitchman’ Buddy Starcher(1906–2001). Over a stirringrendition of ‘The Battle HymnOf The Republic’ Starcherrecites a litany of eeriecoincidences and connectionsbetween the assassinations of Kennedy andAbraham Lincoln. Like a tuneful JamesShelby Downard (of ‘King-Kill/33°’ infamy),Buddy intones his striking (and disarminglyfortean) list with stentorian, authoritativeaplomb. Originally released in 1965 onhis own microscopic BES (Buddy EdgarStarcher) label, regional interest motivatedthe independent Boone label to reissue the45 (complete with transparent orange vinylpromo edition) in 1966, landing this surrealslice of pseudo-historical/political patter allthe way at #2 in the national Country charts

and #39 in the Pop charts, thusevidently persuading DeccaRecords to license the masterand rush-release an LP ofsibling recitations, includingtoe-tappers like ‘The Fall Of ANation’ [a comparison of thencontemporary America and thefall of the Roman Empire] and‘A Tax-Payer’s Letter’.

Starcher’s song createdenough traction to result ina charting cover version cutby bluesman Cab Calloway, aDutch version (‘De GeschiedenisHerhaalt Zich’ naturally), a

parody by irreverent duo Homer & Jethrothat chronicled further eerie coincidencesbetween Lyndon Johnson and Batman, anda sequel, Buddy’s own and somewhat tired‘History Repeats Itself Part II’.

RED RIVER DAVE AND OTHERSRed River Dave is the kind of storieditinerant troubadour who deserves a book.Raised as a cowboy “within a rifle shot ofthe Alamo” in San Antonio, David LargusMcEnery (1914–2002) soon took up the guitarand became a successful radio entertainer

and apparently the first ever singing cowboyto appear live on television, at the 1939New York World’s Fair. McEnery turned histalents to topical songwriting and becamea prodigious chronicler of current events insong. His 1937 ode ‘Amelia Earhart’s LastFlight’ reputedly sold in the millions andhas become a standard, performed by KinkyFriedman, Joan Baez and countless others.For a time, Red River Dave was a genuinecowboy singing star.

Once in 1946, at a San Antonio radiostation, McEnery sat handcuffed to a pianofor 12 hours (“not goin’ to the bathroom ornothin”) and composed 52 songs. Movingto Hollywood, Dave spent time in ‘talkies’before roaming and selling topical 45sfrom his car boot. Tall, with a white flowing‘Buffalo Bill’ beard, gold-sprayed cowboyboots and a steer-horned Cadillac, duringthe late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s McEnerywaxed and yodelled about Lee HarveyOswald, the Bay Of Pigs incident, the deathsof Marilyn Monroe, JFK and James Dean,Korean War brainwashing, Elvis’s mother,the Jonestown massacre and Patty Hearstamong a multitude of other, essentially lost,recordings. ‘California Hippie Murders!’ is alyrically harrowing, journalistically accurate


ABOVE: Country singer Buddy Starcher (below) had a regional hit with his JFK tribute; it was picked up by bigger labels and spawned cover versions, including one in Dutch.

ABOVE: Red River Dave was a singing cowboy and topical songwriter who tackled topics from the JFK assassination to the Manson murders and the Jonestown Massacre.

retelling of the infamous Manson-masterminded Tate-LaBiancaslayings. Released while thetrial was still ongoing inSeptember 1970 on thehomespun ‘Reveal’ label,original 45 copies are sadlyso rare as to be almostmythical.

McEnery’s homilyto JFK, ‘God’s Game OfCheckers’ (available for $1postpaid at the time), madeit to market just weeks after thetragedy; it’s copyrighted 1963, withhis then home address in San Antoniolisted as the label headquarters. It takesthe appropriate form of a letter, deliveredas recitation, from a gnarled, silver-hairedcowboy to the son he never had (JFK Jr.– who ‘celebrated’ his third birthday theday his father was buried). Red River Davespeaks eloquently about checkers as agladiatorial metaphor for the “great game oflife” and reassures John John that his fatherwas sacrificed so that others might live andprosper. The song ends as the weary oldcowboy mounts his steed to deliver the letterto a far-off post office where ‘Old Glory’ “stillhangs” at half-mast.

Another talented but largelyunappreciated Country and Rockabillysinger, Autry Inman (1929–1988), pluggedaway at the Bullet, Decca and RCA labelsduring the 1950s with little commercialsuccess. He also rushed his catchy and reallyrather fine ‘The Ballad Of John F Kennedy’onto the market via the independent Simslabel within weeks of the assassination.The cut was earwormish enough to receivesporadic radio play and decent distributionon 45, and later turned up as an album cuton an Alshire budget label LP.

By the mid-1960s Inman had tradedcareers to become an ‘adult comedian’and cut spicy releases like ‘Riscotheque/

Saturday Night: Volume One’ and‘Nudist Marriage’ (which veered

towards the Neil Hamburger‘so unfunny, it’s kind offunny’ style comedy).1968 saw Autry return toCountry and record (withBob Luman) his greatestcommercial success, ‘TheBallad Of Two Brothers’

(nope, not the Kennedys),a delirious cowpoke

juggernaut of hyper-patrioticagitprop that vividly portrays two

brothers (one fighting/burning babiesin Vietnam, the other a loafing campushippie) on either side of the Vietnam Warsocial divide. As entertaining a late 1960stime capsule as one could possibly hopeto find, ‘The Ballad Of Two Brothers’ was asizeable hit, #14 on the Country chart and#48 on Billboard.

Nevertheless, by the early1970s, Inman had been nabbedheading a massive operationallegedly pirating LPsonto 8-track tapes inNashville and Memphis.At trial, Autry (ratherconvincingly) arguedthat despite decades ofhard slog, he’d never beenpaid a cent in the musicbusiness previously and wasdetermined to make a go of it,one way or another. Unfortunately,he eventually did jail time and driftedinto other pursuits.

BALLADS AND BLUESInnumerable other privately pressed orregionally released JFK homages exist.Some, like Leamon Allen Jr’s fine, folksy,rustically engaging ‘The Ballad of John FKennedy’ were completed so quickly thatthere is no flipside to the 45, just blank

vinyl. Allen was a musically inclined NorthCarolina Korean War veteran so movedby Kennedy’s death that he made his onlyextant recording soon after.

Similarly, southern Colorado constructionworker and weekend musician Phil Albowas so shaken by the assassination that heimmediately wrote and recorded (at the localGordon’s Music Store) his heartfelt ode ‘TheBallad of John F Kennedy’. His wife Mariareports that Phil sent copies of the resultantprivately pressed 45 to Bobby, Jackie andTed, receiving in return “the nicest letterfrom them, thanking him for the record.”Sadly, just a few years later Phil passed awayfrom leukemia.

Though contested, it is most likely that‘Johnny Rebel’ is the pseudonym of CliffordJoseph Trahan, a Louisiana, Cajun Countrymusician. Trahan is infamous for composingand recording a number of overtly racist

45s for notable producer JD Miller’s‘Reb Rebel’ label in the mid-1960s.

Spawned at the height of theCivil Rights era, these cuts

received no radio playbut were apparently soldunder the counter atjuke-box joints and otherestablishments. Recordedat Miller’s Crowley,Louisiana, studio, some

of the ‘Reb Rebel’ releasesreportedly sold over 200,000

units in underground trade.When cornered about his deep

stable of sometimes dubious recordings,Miller would protest that they were onlywaxed as a “joke,” and the fact that Milleroften recorded interracial bands and also(over decades) a notable cast of localbluesmen only serves to muddy the waters.Bootlegged and banned, with their ownershipoften in dispute, these incendiary records aretoday available only via ominous soundingwhite-supremacist groups like the “Condor

44 FT333


ABOVE: Many Country artists recorded homages to the fallen JFK, including Autry Inman (‘The Ballad of John F Kennedy’) and Doc Williams (“Oh Why Do the Good Die Young?)

Legion Ordnance”.For his troubles, ‘Johnny Rebel’ was

reportedly offered an honorary membershipin the Klu Klux Klan. On the rare occasionthat Trahan (by day, a driving school owner)wasn’t recording racist tracts, however, heshowed himself to be a fine Country singer.His 1967 45 ‘Keep A Workin’ Big Jim’(flipside: ‘(Federal Aid Hell!) The MoneyBelongs to Us’) commends and encouragesNew Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison(“Keep a workin’ Big Jim, we want toknow the truth!”) and his controversialinvestigation into the Kennedy assassination.A spirited, swinging (and rare) musicalrebuke to the Warren Commission, Trahan’srecord nevertheless receives no mentionin Garrison’s iconic book (the inspirationbehind Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK), On TheTrail Of The Assassins.

From Doc Williams to The CountryGentlemen, Jimmy Newman to David Price,legions of Country artists – big and small,known and unknown – mourned Kennedy’sviolent, shocking death.

Dispelling the illusion that perhapsonly white southerners grieved enough toput needle to wax, the 1964 LP Can’t KeepFrom Crying: Topical Blues On The Death OfPresident Kennedy proved that blues artistsalso penned tributes to the fallen president.Largely recorded around the Chicago areain the weeks following the assassination,the album is composed entirely of emotiveAfrican-American blues laments to JFK, andfeatures well known singers Big Joe Williamsand Otis Spann (whose ‘Sad Day In Texas’is a particular highlight) amongst a cast ofrelatively lesser known artists.

Fast forward a few decades, and justin time for the 50th anniversary of theassassination (22 November 2013), theexcellent NYC-based Norton Records(co-founded by former Cramps drummerMiriam Linna) issued Tragic Songs From TheGrassy Knoll, a compelling compilation LPof obscure period Country songs mourningJFK’s murder (the set doesn’t contain anycuts mentioned here, such is the wealth ofrelevant and forgotten material).

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSESThough undoubtedly the bulk of Kennedy

tributes came from the USA, internationallythe tragedy also left ripples etched deep inwax. Maverick British producer Joe Meekand his orchestra dedicated their spritelyyet haunting ‘The Kennedy March’ to theslain president, and Scottish blues-rockerAlex Harvey wrote (according to the lyrics)‘The Ballad Of JFK’ a week after the event.Harvey’s song was unreleased at the time andonly exists today because of an acetate/demorecording recovered through the deceasedestate of his manager. It paints a remarkablysympathetic portrait of alleged assassin LeeHarvey Oswald, comparing him favourably torenowned and railroaded Italian anarchistsSacco and Vanzetti, as well as murderedunionist Joe Hill, while hinting at darkerforces behind the scenes.

Rarely seen outside of Italy, the fascinating1969 documentary film I Due Kennedy (‘TheTwo Kennedys’) presents the assassination asa domestic political intrigue at the nexus of‘Big Oil’, CIA malfeasance and mob muscle.

According to some researchers, fleeting anddistant footage (seemingly only availablein this particular film) depicts Oswald,notorious assassination figure David Ferrieand future Watergate burglar and CIAoperative Frank Sturgis, together training foran anti-Castro operation. If that is the case,the theory of Lee Oswald as lone assassinbecomes essentially untenable.

Lauded Italian musician Carlo Savina(music director on The Godfather andcomposer on more marginal titles like FeastOf Satan and School Of Erotic Enjoyment)wrote the film’s suitably funereal score,which was issued in extremely limitednumbers on a Cinevox label LP.

SELF-PORTRAIT IN REDParallel to all this musical activity, another,even more subterranean industry thrived.Though largely forgotten now, record albumswere once seen as a suitable vehicle tocapture and distribute audio documentaries,solemn lectures and apocalyptic tirades.Especially amongst those denied accessto the mainstream media, LPs were usedto propagate often unconventional ormarginalised views. Running the gamut fromRussian/American Objectivist Ayn Randreading her short stories and deliveringphilosophical treatises (she released atleast half a dozen LPs during the 1960s) toreligious tracts denouncing hallucinogenicdrugs (1966’s LSD: Battle For The Mind and1968’s Instant Insanity Drugs among others)the battlefield of ideas played out on vinyl asit did in print and on the airwaves.

Oswald: Self-Portrait In Red is a 1964 LPpressed and distributed by INCA (‘TheInformation Council Of The Americas’),a group linked by some to the CIA. Itpresents a 21 August 1963 radio appearanceby Oswald on New Orleans’s WDSU withinserted commentary by Dr Alton Ochsner,Congressman Hale Boggs and Ed Butler.Ochsner was President of both INCA and theAlton Ochsner Medical Foundation (he alsoreleased an LP The Death Of A Smoker on theWaco, Texas, ‘Word’ label) and, accordingto Judyth Vary Baker, he hired her, her‘boyfriend’ Lee Oswald and David Ferrieto work in a clandestine cancer laboratoryto develop a carcinogenic bio-weapon to be


The 45 commendsJim Garrison andhis controversialinvestigationinto theassassination

ABOVE: Other vinyl responses to JFK’s killing included an album of Chicago blues, an Italian film score and an instrumental tribute from eccentric British producer Joe Meek.

46 FT333


deployed against Fidel Castro.Numerous other LPs of the period

feature that same Lee Oswaldradio interview (or another, lessfamiliar one from a week earlier)with additional commentary.The privately distributed Hear!Kennedy’s Killer: An Interview – LeeHarvey Oswald, The President’sAssassin Speaks (on the Los Angelesbased Key Records, founded andrun by Frank Sinatra songwriterand John Birch Society associateVic Knight) and Lee Harvey OswaldSpeaks (among others) allegedOswald’s guilt.

On the other side of the debateare at least three LPs that featurenotable Warren Commission criticMark Lane: The Oswald Case: MarkLane’s Testimony to The WarrenCommission (a 1964 double-LP boxset on Folkways) and two differentaudio LPs documenting the (thenpopular on campuses) film version of Lane’sbest-selling book Rush To Judgement, oneon the well-regarded left-of-centre folkieVanguard label (home to Buffy Sainte-Marie,Tom Paxton and others) and another onHappening Records Inc.

Folkways also issued in 1964 The OswaldCase: Mrs Marguerite Oswald Reads Lee HarveyOswald’s Letters from Russia, wherein Lee’smother plainly states her opinion that herson was an intelligence “agent of the UnitedStates government”.

Auschwitz survivor and left-leaningwriter/publisher MS Arnoni wrotepresciently in an early 1964 edition ofhis fascinating journal The Minority OfOne about the assassination as a possible‘deep state’-inspired regime change orsubterranean military coup action. His clearand provocative reasoning showed no signof the Establishment Left’s later allergy to

‘conspiracy’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’ and isworth perusing even today. Arnoni releasedhis impassioned 15 October 1965 speechat a Berkeley ‘teach-in’ (delivered while hewas wearing a concentration camp uniform)on the privately pressed LP A Manifesto OfBelief In Man.

Uncountable other elegiac JFKaudio artefacts also exist, fromalbums of poetry like JFK: 30 PoemsOn The Death Of A President (onFolkways again) to The Controversy(on Probe/Capitol), a wide-ranginganalysis of heatedly divergentopinions.

We’re left with a vast andunremembered archive, largelyconsigned to oblivion, thatsonically captures events, emotions,recollections, grief, pain, anger,pleadings, protestations, exhortations,misinformation, disinformation,propaganda and a desperate yearningsearch for the truth; a plasticised‘Stone Tape’ formed in culturaldetritus and reverberant rubble; acatalogue of innocence and optimismlost.

As the controversy around John FKennedy’s death refuses to subside, sothese vinyl relics continue to whisper

from the shadows.

All records, covers and images are from thecollection of the author. Much information isgleaned directly from the actual records/coversthemselves. Some of the records described canbe heard on YouTube and other corners of theInternet. Some can’t. Good luck. This article isfar from exhaustive; no complete discographyof Kennedy assassination-related recordingsexists and the above largely reflects theauthor’s own tastes and interests.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

DAVID THRUSSELL is amusician/composer/writer/record label mogul/filmmaker/closet-hillbilly wholives deep in the Australianoutback and is best avoided.

ABOVE: Vinyl as a battlefield of ideas: the Kennedy assassination wasn’t the only topic addressed by spoken-word recordings. BELOW: The debate about the assassination,and the guilt, or not, of Lee Harvey Oswald raged across a slew of releases at the time.

FT

EXECUTIVE MScIN THE POLITICALECONOMY OF EUROPE

European Institute The London School of Economicsand Political Science, [email protected]

A part-time degree aimed at working professionals

Visit our website to find out more: lse.ac.uk/ei/execmsc

48 FT333


forteanlibrarybUilDinG a

the first ‘must read’ volume hereis Adamski’s first book, FlyingSaucers Have Landed. Somebackground is worth reviewing

before looking at the book itself. It wasfirst published in the UK by T WernerLaurie. Their newly arrived editor-in-chief, Ian Waveney Girvan, as a directorat Carroll & Nicholson and WestawayBooks, had not long before commissionedand published Gerald Heard’s The Riddleof the Flying Saucers. Girvan was, if notobsessed, certainly deeply fascinated byflying saucers: he had begun subscribingto a clippings agency for UFO-relatednewspaper reports in 1949, and in 1954,along with others such as Brinsley lePoer Trench, became one of the foundersof Flying Saucer Review (later FSR). AsSteve Holland tells it (http://bearalley.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/waveney-girvan.html), “Girvan’s arrival at T WernerLaurie coincided with the arrival ofa manuscript from a member of theAnglo-Irish aristocracy, Desmond Leslie(1921-2001). While he was touting hisbook around various publishers, Leslieheard of a Polish-born American, GeorgeAdamski (1891-1965), who claimed tohave photographed alien spaceshipsin the Californian skies and who later,in 1952, said he was taken on a trip toVenus by an alien visitor to Earth. Lesliecontacted Adamski who sent him copiesof his photographs and then sent hima manuscript detailing his adventures.Leslie submitted both his and Adamski’smanuscripts to Werner Laurie...” WaveneyGirvan thought the two manuscripts weretoo slim to publish individually, so hecombined them into a single book. Flying

Saucers Have Landed was published in 1953to a chorus of derision from reviewers,soon followed by massive sales on bothsides of the Atlantic.

Leslie’s contribution amounted to aboutthree quarters of the book, and one cansee why, in the innocence of those earlysaucer days, Girvan would have beenintrigued. As his Daily Telegraph obituaryput it: “To Leslie, ancient monuments andartefacts were proof of a sophisticationof culture and technology that could notbe attributed to the people of their times.The makers, he concluded, were evidentlysuper-human – or came from elsewhere”– that is, from Mars or Venus. Lesliebelieved these visitors were “of a higher

plane”, both literally and figuratively,did not have wars, and were “kindlypeople who come to us more often intime of stress and trouble.” Leslie openlylooted, and treated as fact, large chunksof his ‘history’ from early Theosophists,forerunners in their own special wayof ‘ancient astronaut’ theory. What wasmost startling, and undoubtedly new tothe Anglophone world, was his lengthytreatment of vimanas, the sky-chariotsof the Hindu gods, later treated at greatlength by Richard L Thompson in AlienIdentities (1993). But that was as nothingbeside Adamski’s claim to have met theoccupant of a flying saucer in Californiaon 20 November 1952.

Adamski said he had no more than ahunch that a spot about 11 miles down thehighway from Desert Center was the placehe and his invited companions shouldstart their vigil. But there they went and,after a light lunch, sat scanning the sky.Then: “Riding high, and without sound,there was a gigantic cigar-shaped silveryship, without wings or appendages of anykind.” The craft moved as if drifting inthe direction of the group, then stopped,hovering. Adamski felt that the ship hadcome specifically for him, and on anotherhunch demanded to be taken down theroad. Adamski was duly driven onto a dirtroad. After half a mile or so, fearing thepresence of his companions would deterthe aliens, he sent them back to theirparking spot, to watch from there.

Within five minutes, he saw a flash inthe sky and “almost instantly a beautifulcraft appeared” and settled on a ridge,and Adamski took photographs. Then itlifted and flew out of sight. After someminutes Adamski realised that a manwas beckoning him from the opening ofa ravine about 450 yards (411m) away.Adamski made his way toward the figure.Only when he was within arm’s length ofthe man did Adamski realise that he waslooking at a visitor from another world.

“The beauty of his form surpassedanything I had ever seen,” he wrote. Ifthat raises an eyebrow and a quick flick ofthe eye at the closet, we should rememberthat only two years previously Al Jolson(generally conceded to have been a bloke)had had a hit with the song ‘I’m Just Wild

4. A MOUND OF VENUS

cTHE H IEROPHANT ’ S APPRENT I CE PRESENTS cThere was no one quite like the contactee George Adamski, and half acentury after his death he remains as potent an invitation to spill ink aswhen living. It is strange to us that anyone, even in the early 1950s when hefirst burst upon an astonished world, took him at all seriously – that’s to say,literally. But as a supernova of the ufological firmament, he should be takenseriously, although in another sense. His story, the tales he spun, the importof the messages he brought from ‘outer space’, and his sheer brilliance atself-promotion, all illuminate his own times and the wider context of thehistory of ufology. And he casts an interesting light on ufologists, too.


About Harry’, which goes in part: “Theheavenly blisses/ Of his kisses/ Fill me withecstasy.” No identity politics in those days.The man was about 5ft 6in (1.7m) tall,weighed about 135lb (60kg), and seemedto be about 28 years old. He had shoulder-length, sandy, wavy hair “glistening morebeautifully than any woman’s I haveever seen”. He appeared to be beardless.Adamski’s attempts to speak to the alienfailed, but he succeeded in communicatingwith a mixture of hand signals andtelepathy. The first thing he told Adamskiwas that he was from the planet Venus.The Venusians were there, he said, becausethey were concerned about radiationfrom atomic explosions: too many of theseexplosions would destroy all of Earth.

The saucer had not brought theVenusian – who on this occasion did notdivulge his name – directly to Earth,but had been launched from within theatmosphere by the giant mother shipthat Adamski had seen earlier. The craftwas powered by ‘magnetism’. Asked if hebelieved in God, the spaceman repliedyes, but observed that Venusians livedaccording to the laws of the Creator andnot the laws of materialism as Earthmendid. People from the other planets in theSolar System – all of which were inhabited– and from other systems too were visitingEarth. All aliens were essentially humanin form. Some of their craft had been shotat and crashed on Earth. Saucers landedonly in remote places to avoid panickingpeople, but the time would eventuallycome when they would land openly nearcentres of population. There were numbersof aliens living in our midst already, andfor this reason the Venusian refused to bephotographed, lest his features becomerecognisable. Adamski was then allowedto approach the saucer hovering nearby,but was not allowed inside it. After this,the Venusian climbed aboard his craft,and it glided silently away. Adamskiprints affidavits from his companions – hissecretary Mrs Lucy McKinnis, Mrs AliceK Wells, Mrs and Mrs Al C Bailey, and Drand Mrs George Hunt Williamson – thatconfirm they were witnesses to all this.

We would not be the first to noticethat the lovely Venusian (whose name,Adamski later revealed, was Orthon)bears a distinct resemblance to an angelas depicted in Western iconography.Magic technology replaces the impossiblecelestial wings, but the androgynousOrthon flies down from Heaven (the planetof Love) bearing a message of peace – ofpacificism, even. One can wax sociologicalabout this: the Soviets had had nuclearweapons since 1949 and, three days beforeAdamski’s alleged encounter, the NewYork Times announced somewhat obliquelythat the US had detonated a prototypenuclear fusion (‘hydrogen’) bomb on 1November; it was more than 20 timesmore powerful than the fission (‘atom’)bomb that wiped out Hiroshima. ‘Cold Warparanoia’ is misnamed: the possibility of

mutual annihilation was real. But we alsorecall that tall blond humanoid alienssoon became known as ‘Aryan’ or (lessprovocatively) ‘Nordic’ types. Which bringsus back to Ian Waveney Girvan.

It’s not entirely unreasonable to wonderquite what, besides a simple fascinationwith UFOs and perhaps a good nose forthe market, decided Girvan to publishsuch a patently dodgy work. The Aryanangel may have had something to do withit, along with Desmond Leslie’s patronisingnotion that a great, spacefaring, peace-loving race had built the world’s moreenigmatic ancient monuments. Thekey term is probably race, which leadsto politics. Girvan’s own politics wereso questionable that from 1941 theBritish security services kept a file onhim (http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11135023). One memotherein, stamped SECRET, notes: “He is aright-wing extremist; is anti-Jewish; anti-Socialist; anti-Communist and anti-war.He specialises in spreading doubt of thewisdom of the Government policy andour war aims.” Steve Holland (loc. cit.)tells us that at Westaway Books, Girvan’sco-director was John Warburton Beckett,one-time director of publications of theBritish Union of Fascists, and that Girvanknew Beckett “through his involvementwith the British People’s Party (BPP), ananti-war party founded by Beckett andLord Tavistock after Beckett split withthe National Socialist League in 1939.”Girvan was involved with other extremeright-wing organisations, among themthe National Front After Victory, whichwas “briefly allied with the BPP, whichdrew the interest of people as diverseas philanthropist Viscount Nuffield,fascist Jeffrey Hamm, and author HenryWilliamson (also a former member ofMoseley’s British Union of Fascists).”

In that context, Girvan’s pacifism waspossibly a trifle selective – maybe hewould have felt a little more belligerenthad the enemy been the Red Army, not hisrevered Nazis. Nonetheless one can see theappeal to him of Leslie’s and Adamski’svisitors’ anti-war sentiments, and theimplication that the aliens belonged to aninterplanetary ‘master race’. It may be nomore than coincidence that George HuntWilliamson was an associate of WilliamDudley Pelley, founder of the antisemitic,Nazi-aping Silver Legion (‘Silver Shirts’)

in the US, and there seems to be no directevidence that Adamski himself had Nazi,Fascist or antisemitic leanings. But theseconnexions are provocative. And it’s ironicto say the least that Girvan introducedthe world to what’s been called one ofthe founding documents of the (love-and-peace-touting) New Age.

Flying Saucers Have Landed wascertainly a seminal book. It spawneda host of Adamski imitators, and stillgenerates ructions among ufologistsabout the nature and causes of close-encounter claims. It is reviled by ‘seriousresearchers’ as a hoax and distraction. But,as we pointed out in the Dictionary of theDamned (FT269:50–52), Adamski and hiscohorts set in train many of the themes oflater abduction lore. This book is pivotal inufological history.

Having read it, you should promptlydownload your free copy of Belgianufologist Marc Hallet’s A Critical Appraisalof George Adamski: the man who spoke tothe space brothers, written with RichardHeiden.

Hallet has spent decades picking thebones out of Adamski’s claims, havingtravelled that well-trodden path frombeliever to sceptic. Not much work isneeded to dismantle his former hero’smost outrageous tales, such as seeing lushvegetation on the far side of the Moon, buthe is exceptionally good in analysing theway Adamski set up his first meeting withOrthon and how (for whatever motive) hiscompanions signed false affidavits – theysimply could not have seen what theysaid they did. The notorious photos arethoroughly debunked, as are Adamski’sstories of meeting John F Kennedy andhalf the crowned heads of Europe plus thePope. Even Adamski’s ‘confession’ thathe got into “all this flying saucer crap”solely because the end of Prohibitionkyboshed his bootlegging business getshammered on the head. All this is backedby interviews, documentation, and steelylogic.

Hallet also puts the late Colin Bennettin his place in a short appendix, describinghim as “not a serious critical historian”and his Looking for Orthon as “not worthquoting.” Readers may recall an hilariousstand-off between Supreme CommanderJames Moseley and Bennett over thematter of Orthon at an FT UnConventionsome years ago. Adamski is dead: long liveAdamski!

Flying Saucers Have LandedGeorge Adamski & Desmond LeslieT Werner Laurie, 1953.

A Critical Appraisal of George Adamski: theman who spoke to the space brothersMarc Hallet with Richard W Heiden,2015 (various formats; free todownload from archive.org/details/ACriticalAppraisalOfGeorgeAdamskiTheManWhoSpokeToTheSpaceBrothers).

in booKS i HaVetraVelleD notonlytootHerWorlDS, bUtintoMyoWnAnnaQuindlen

FT

sdsdsvdsvs

SEND FORUM SUBMISSIONS TO: THE EDITOR,FORTEAN TIMES, PO BOX 71602, LONDON E17 0QD, UK,OR TO [email protected]

miser. He and Charlotte, that horriblevampire girl. They had so manyservants, yet they would never offerme a cup of tea or a sandwich. Whichis such a mistake on their part becauseI put the curse of King Midas on them.If you’re greedy and just amass goldyou’ll get an illness. So I did turn herand Jimmy Page into statues of goldbecause they’ve both lost their minds.He can’t write songs anymore”. 3

Noted rock journalist Mick Wall, 4

who researched the episode in depthfor his A Biography of Led Zeppelin:When Giants Walked the Earth (2009)says: “I interviewed Anger, and hetalked about the big falling out in ’76when he put the Curse of King Midason Jimmy. What that does is turnsomeone into a ‘golden statue,’ so allthat see you admire you from afar, andcan’t comprehend your beauty. But thefact is that you are a statue, and you’ll

Rock music has always hadits links with the dark side,whether real or imagined.One of the great proponents

is Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page,his love of the arcane being welldocumented. He even ended up livingin Boleskine House, Aleister Crowley’sonetime residence on the shores ofLoch Ness, which Page insisted washaunted by a spectral severed head.1

Page’s fixation with the Great Beastwas at least part of the reason thecover of Led Zeppelin’s fourth albumwas adorned with occult imagery andsymbolism. Released in 1971, therecord went on to sell 37 million copiesand is widely regarded as one of thebest albums ever made. It was reissuedlast year.

Just prior to the album’s release,Page struck up an unlikely friendshipwith the filmmaker Kenneth Anger.The two bonded over a mutualfascination with Crowley, the storygoing that they met at Sotheby’s whilstbidding on pieces of memorabilia,and for a time became good friends.In 1973, Anger commissioned Page towrite and record the soundtrack to hisfilm Lucifer Rising,2 and later movedinto the basement of Page’s TowerHouse mansion in London. Everythingseemed hunky dory, but trouble wasbrewing.

In October 1976, while Page was ontour in America, Anger had a blazingrow with the musician’s partnerCharlotte, who kicked him out on thestreet. A few days later, the filmmakercalled a mystified Page and fired himfrom the Lucifer Rising project. Butthat wasn’t all. He went on to vilifyPage and suggested that the rockeronly ‘dabbled’ in the occult – theimplication being that Anger didmore than dabble. Speaking publicly,Anger said: “He’s a multi-millionaire

never move again. Nothing will change.I often wonder whether that curseactually worked, because Jimmy hasn’tproduced fuck all of note since Zepfinished. Outrider, his one and only soloalbum, is truly average. I would love tohear Jimmy invoke his influences andjust make some beautiful music. Butthe truth is, he can’t do it. It’s not thathe won’t, but he can’t.”

The notoriously difficult Anger hada history of cursing people; this time,it seems to have worked. Every projectPage has been involved in since thatera has indeed been a critical andcommercial failure. What’s more, theperceived curse seemed to have hadwider repercussions, as a successionof tragic events befell what was thenthe biggest rock band in the world.Singer Robert Plant’s five-year-oldson Karac died suddenly in 1977, thenon-appearance of several band matesat the funeral prompting him to quitthe band. The following year, SandyDenny, who had sung with Plant on thetrack ‘The Battle of Evermore’ on theaforementioned fourth album, diedafter falling down a flight of stairs, andthen came the tragic death of drummerJohn Bonham three years later thatended Led Zeppelin’s reign once andfor all.

Yes, this could be nothing but atragic string of coincidences. Buttwo things make this chain of eventsparticularly interesting; Anger’s verypublic curse, and the fact that it wascommon knowledge that certainmembers of Led Zeppelin were heavilyinvolved in occultism.

“To people who practise the occult,it’s not like Spinal Tap with a Ouijaboard,” says Mick Wall in summary.“To those who are into it, it’s seriousas Judaism or Catholicism. The wholebasis of occultism is to invoke often,or practice often. It’s not a once a yearmeeting in a forest. It’s all the fuckingtime. Anger was always at it, and so wasJimmy. He’s still sitting in the sameroom he was sitting in when Bonhamdied. The clock stopped for Page rightthen, and he’s still there waiting for itto start again.”

Dancingwith theDevilChRis saundeRs wonders whether filmmaker Kenneth Anger really cursed one of rock’s guitar greats


chris saunDers has writtenfor FT on Welsh portents, the 27Club, the Boston bombing andChinese UFOs. He writes fictionunder the name of CM Saunders.

forumhaVe YOuR saY

FT

nOTes1 http://beforeitsnews.com/paranormal/2015/04/updated-article-hess-crowley-and-the-loch-ness-monster-2487718.html

2 The music Pagerecorded for the filmwas later scrapped,and remained(officially) unreleaseduntil 2012.

3 http://dangerousminds.net/comments/lucifer_rising_jimmy_pages_insane_amazing_unused_soundtrack_to_the_kenneth

4 Mick Wall’s latestbook, Foo Fighters:Learning to Fly, ispublished on 27October by Orion.

Michael

PuTland/GeT

TyiM

aGes

forumcryptoculture

Iwas browsing the programme forLightNight 1 in Liverpool whenmy eyes settled upon The CryptidPetting Zoo in the wonderfulPicton Reading Room of Liverpool

Central Library. It stated that you could“see undiscovered animal oddities fromaround the world! Often thought to becreatures of myth and legend, this is achance to meet some truly remarkableanimals, with presentations fromtrained handlers”. Naturally, I put thisat the top of my list.

In the event, the room was packed,with parents seating dozens of youngchildren at the front only inches fromcages and boxes with labels suggestingthat the Jersey Devil and a Sasquatchwere inside – surely a tad dangerous ifany of these cryptids fancied a snack?

On the balcony, I spied compereBeatrice Balfour III, dressed intraditional explorer attire andreading the current issue of ForteanTimes. Obviously, a lady of taste! Shedescended the steps accompanied byHarry the Hybrid Hound, a chimera– with the head of a boar, the body ofa lion and the tail of a fish – who likedhaving his tummy tickled. He bouncedaround the floor escaping the attentionsof small, clutching hands.

Beatrice explained thatcryptozoology was the study of hiddenanimals and highlighted that this wasa rare opportunity for people to see somany of them at first hand and in a safeenvironment.Then, she introduced fivemore fortean fantastics:

The Awful: There was nearcatastrophe when the handlers almostdropped its cage. Fortunately the barswere strong and it was only able togrowl and flash its red Mothman-likeeyes from the darkness for the rest ofthe show.

The Wetlands Indigenous Mer-Pixie,or WIMP: This shy, nervous creatureanswered to the name of Trixie and hadto be coaxed out from behind the coversto her cage. Her timid disposition, bigeyes and blue colouring meant she

was greeted with a loud “Aaah!” fromthe audience, and was popular at thesubsequent petting session.

The Mongolian Death Worm: Smallerthan I had anticipated, Bertie theMongolian Death Worm lives in hishandler’s airing cupboard. Apparentlythis is the nearest thing in Liverpoolto the climate of the Gobi Desert.Bertie has something of a vicioustemperament, and when he stuck hishead out from inside his bucket, hebit one of the handlers with his strongbeak, releasing his electric venom.Thiscaused the light bulb she was holdingin her other hand to flash on and off.Happily she recovered.

Baby Dragon(s): Tyson the babydragon was roused from his slumberin his incubator, unfurling his wings.All of the children knew that dragonslove gold and the handler wanted todemonstrate this to them. It wasn’t herday, as Tyson greedily swallowed hergold ring and nearly took her fingerswith it. Attention then switched tothe large egg at the other end of theincubator which started to shake and

ABOVE: Beatrice Balfour III in the PictonReading Room of Liverpool Central Library;the Beast of Borneo is visible at right. LEFT:Beatrice introduces Harry the Hybrid Hound.BOTTOM: The Awful – caged, thankfully.

52 FT333


The Cryptid Petting ZooroB GANDy attends an unsual event in Liverpool, and gets up close and personal with some monsters...

ROB GANDY is a visiting professorat the Liverpool Business School,John Moores University. He haswritten for FT on Merseyside dop-pelgängers, ghostlore, footballcurses and phantom hitchhikers.

PHoTo

s:Jo

HnPA

uLMAnLey

forum

Beast was quickly placated with itsfavourite sugar lumps, although thisrequired Beatrice, in the interestsof dental hygiene, to clean its ratherlarge teeth with what looked like abath brush.The Beast performed someof its party tricks to the delight of thechildren, before Beatrice thankedeveryone and said that there was timefor petting the cryptids before theyreturned to their cages.

And so finished a show full of visualfun, tricks and humour.

I suppose I should add that thecryptids weren’t actually real, andwere puppets designed, built andperformed by the Headstrung PuppetCompany (HPC), which consists ofthree puppeteers: Katy-Anne Bellis,Eilidh Bryan and Beccy Hillam,augmented for shows by trustedassociates Aisling Leyne, AliceRowbottom and Jan Rule.Theirinterests and skills complementone another: Katy-Anne focuses onchoreography and costume; Eilidh isa designer and puppet-maker; andBeccy is the Techy. Puppetry attractedthem because of the creativity itinvolves: there are no rules and muchscope to experiment. HPC formed in2012 and developed within the late-night cabaret/clubland environmentof Liverpool, with acts includingknife throwing, fire breathing, circusand burlesque. However, reactions tothe (original) Beast of Borneo, whotap-dances to “Singing In The Rain”,encouraged HPC to broaden theirrepertoire by developing The CryptidPetting Zoo as an indoor and outdoorstreet show for families, with humourat multiple levels.

Eilidh says that she and herhusband are keen on cryptozoologyand regular readers of FT, whilecryptids offer innumerableopportunities for puppetry. She andher colleagues hope that The CryptidPetting Zoo will give children a sense ofwonder and inspire them to keep openminds about whether there might beunknown creatures out there.

If any cryptozoologists or forteanswant to add some cryptid puppetry funto their planned events, contact HPCat [email protected] or visit thewebsite: www.headstrung.org

1 Lightnight Liverpool, 15 May 2015:

www.lightnightliverpool.co.uk

crack. Finally another baby dragonpopped out, drawing another “Aaah!”from the audience and an interestinglook from Tyson.

The Beast of Borneo: Beatrice didthe big build-up for the final cryptid,the Beast of Borneo. She described itshabitat and how it was related to OrangPendek. Unfortunately, neither shenor the handlers had noticed that ithad already entered the room, and waslooming over them. Only pantomimecries of “It’s behind you!” made themaware of the creature’s presence.The

cryptoculture

LEFT: The Mongolian Death Worm (smallerthan expected) and handler. CENTRE: A pairof baby dragons. BOTTOM: The shy WetlandsIndigenous Mer-Pixie, or WIMP, needed to becoaxed from the corner of her cage.


PHoTo

s:Jo

HnPA

uLMAnLey

FT

The Divine SparkA Graham Hancock Reader:Psychedelics, Consciousness,and the Birth of Civilization

Ed: Graham Hancock

Hay House UK 2015

Pb, 288pp, £12.99, ISBN 9781781805626

Graham Hancock is no stranger tofortean topics. His examinationsof ancient cultures and theirmysteries in books such asFingerprints of the Gods openedavenues of interest for theontologically curious. Morerecently, in Supernatural, heopened up discussions aboutthe use of psychedelic drugsthroughout history. His interestin psychedelics was triggered,as it was for many forteans, byencounters with LSD in the 1960sand 1970s, in his case at the1974 Windsor Free Festival. Thatexperience left Hancock in aweof the potential of mind-alteringsubstances, but it was not untilhe was in his 50s that he chose toexplore them.

Not wishing to write aboutaltered states of consciousnesswithout first-hand knowledge,Hancock embarked on apsychedelic odyssey, takingDMT, psilocybin, ayahuasca,ibogaine and other drugs. Theseexperiences convinced him thatthe ‘spirit world’ of the shamansmay be more relevant to themodern world than previouslythought – and it may also be a

reviewsThis month’s books, films and games

SEND REVIEW COPIES OF BOOKS TO: BOOK REVIEWS,FORTEAN TIMES, PO BOX 71602, LONDON E17 0QD, UK.

Themodern shamanismMore cynical observers of the psychedelic scene can dismiss it as fun cloaked inspirituality; othersmay see clear links to shamanism’s spirit worlds

“Devereuxwritesabout psychedelicsbeing a tool tocontact plantintelligences”

FT33355www.forteantimes.com

consumerist culture encouragestools such as the telescope toexplore outer space and themicroscope to explore theminutiæ of reality, it does notlook kindly on those wishing toexplore inner space and alteredstates of consciousness via theagency of psychedelics.Yet asseveral essays here make clear,psychedelics can be used in somany useful ways. Artist AlexGrey, for instance, has used DMTto enhance the creative process,and there is now a worldwidecommunity of visual artists whosework draws on drug-inducedaltered states of consciousness.There are also explorations ofmore complex matters, such ashow psychedelics can inform howwe perceive and interact with thewider environment we live in, theGreat Mystery, and how we can,put simply, use psychedelics tohelp save the Earth. A naïve hope,perhaps, but many of the earlyenvironmentalists of Greenpeaceand other ecological organisationswere inspired by the psychedelicexperience.

Expanding on this idea, FT’sPaul Devereux writes aboutpsychedelics being a tool tocontact plant intelligences, suchexperiences being enshrinedin shamanic cultures across theglobe. If that’s too far out, thenDavid Jay Brown’s suggestion thatpsychedelics could be integrated

more valid view of humans’ placein the planetary environment.Hancock rails against ourtechnological society, framingit as ‘demonic’ because it treatshumans as production units tofurther the endless cycle of birth/school/work/death, a belief thatchimes with many Westernerswho take psychedelics. DivineSpark is, therefore, a timely andwelcome collection of essays,curated by and with contributionsfrom Hancock, examining howpsychedelics interact withconsciousness and where this canlead us as individuals, societiesand cultures – and what theymean for the future of the humanrace.

Surprises include RussellBrand, a high-profile supporterof the responsible use ofpsychedelics, though a debatableposter boy for the psychedelicRenaissance. Elsewhere, PaulDevereux, Rick Doblin, DavidJay Brown and several otherspsychedelic luminaries givetheir views and theories aboutthe purpose of psychedelicdrugs. For the general readerunfamiliar with psychedelicculture, Rick Strassman’s briefbut comprehensive essay abouthow the curious individual shouldprepare for the psychedelicjourney deserves close reading.The cynical observer of therapidly expanding psychedelicscene might easily dismiss theideas expressed here as justanother excuse for people tojustify taking mind-bendingdrugs for fun, cloaked in thedubious mantle of spirituality.And it may be. Psychedelicsare not for everyone, but if theyhave taught us anything, it’sthat what we call ‘reality’ is notwhat it seems. While Western

into general problem-solving(as the US military has done),or to probe the potential of ourconsciousness for telephony,remote viewing and so on, iseminently sensible.

Many of the contributors donot shy away from one of thefundamental truths of mostpsychedelics: that they arepleasurable beyond imagining,to the point of evoking statesof cosmic ecstasy – a statewhich itself is worth theprice of admission to thestrange invitation offered bypsychedelics.

Readers who see Hancock’shistorical revisionism as join-the-dots New Age nonsenseneed not worry. This is anintelligent collection of essays;unpretentious and sincere,written by people with aninsatiable curiosity to explorewho we are and what we mightbecome in the great mystery wedwell in. The unspoken sadnesshere, and a potential drawback tofurther exploration is that theseremarkable plants and chemicalsare, for the most part, forbiddenand controlled by legislationwith punitive sanctions appliedto those who would seek tomanufacture or use them.

That these substances arelargely harmless and have suchpotential for person and planetcan only make the curiousquestion why this state of affairsis so and what implications it hasfor our future as sovereign humanbeings wishing to explore ourconsciousness in accordance withour will.Andy Roberts

FORTEANTIMESBOOKSHOPPRICE£11.69

Fortean Times VerdictwHAT GOES AROuNDCOMESAROuND, uNNECESSARIlyMAyBE 8

reviewsBOOKS

GhostsA Haunted History

Lisa Morton

Reaktion Books 2015

Hb, 208pp, illus, £16.00, ISBN 9781780235172

Since beginning hercareer in 1988, LisaMorton has worked onfilm, television, shorthorror fiction andnovels. In recent years,

she has branched out into thefactual, Ghosts: A Haunted History,being her latest on paranormalhistory. Trick or Treat: A History ofHallowe’en (2012) won the BramStoker Award.

Morton manages to pack alot into a relatively short book,proving her mettle as a writerand her extensive knowledgeof the history of ghosts aroundthe world. That said, Ghostsisn’t exhaustive; details on eachfacet of ghostly history arequite brief. But given the largenumber of hefty tomes on thesocial history of the ghost, someof which go into excruciatinganalytical detail, and are equallyexcruciating to read, this is agood thing. What Lisa Morton hasto offer is something for thosewho may wish to delve a littlefurther into the subject and notrun the risk of being put off byhigh-falutin’ discourse.

Ghosts gives the reader a littletaste of everything, allowing themto find what may be of the mostinterest, which they then mightfollow up in reading the morecomplex histories and studies.

Ghosts starts off trying todefine just what a ghost is, adifficult task given the variousshapes and forms the entitytakes. It then harks back to theAncient World, where ghosts weremore deadly than they are now,recounting the famous legendsof the ghost met by Athendorusin Greece, the epic of Gilgameshand the Witch of Endor. TheAncients certainly could spin aghostly yarn.

The following significant partof the book is quite a refreshingtake on Spiritualism, whereMorton gives the impressionshe is somewhat sceptical ofthe movement. Instead of thewell-worn story of the Fox sistersbeing given the usual revered

305:56–57). Typically, Ouellet doesnot engage with the ETH, justdismisses it with waving hand, noreference to or awareness of theseminal writings on the subjectby the likes of environmentalscientist/ufologist Michael DSwords, space journalist/non-ufologist Edward Ashpole, andothers. Like you, I don’t know ifthe ETH is valid or false, but it isone reasonable working inference,awaiting decision for the daywhen all the facts are in, from thesmall subset of CE2s/radar-visualsthat hint at the presence of a not-earthly technology.

A more modest, intellectuallyagnostic approach – perhapsthe only one possible in our(ufology’s, culture’s, science’s)current ignorance – may alsobe a pluralistic one. What if thephenomenon of landing traces,radar/visuals, and multiple/independent witnesses isfundamentally unrelated to theextreme, high-strangeness casesso beloved of paranormalists andself-styled psychosociologists?The latter are the most thinlyevidential, the hardest from whichto glean information, beyondthe obvious one that it appearspossible to undergo really weirdexperiences which, unverifiablein any conventional sense, live ononly in memory and testimony,however vividly and confusingly.Well-researched CE2s givescientists something to workwith, on the other hand, and suchresearch should be encouraged,not ridiculed into extinction.

Meanwhile, the absence ofknowledge ought not to give usfree rein to insist upon certaintiesthat are nothing of the sort. Showme real evidence that macro-PK, working through selectivelydefined “social stresses,” createsUFO events, and we’ll talk.Jerome Clark

IlluminationsThe uFO Experience As aParapsychological Event

Eric Ouellet

Anomalist Books 2015

Pb, 223pp, bib, ind, $14.95, ISBN 9781938398537

Everything comes aroundeventually, and here we havethe revival of a largely forgottenobsession of 1970s ufology. In1975 Loren Coleman and I wroteThe Unidentified, which capturedthe spirit of the era: Jungiantheories and parapsychologicalUFOs. He and I soon moved on,relegating the book to youthfulexcess and embarrassed recall.It still has its defenders, amongthem the author of Illuminations,Eric Ouellet, a Canadian professorof defense studies and an activeparapsychologist.

In short, not much new here:macro-PK creates UFOs, andexperiences of them are symbolic,generated in response to “socialstresses”. This hypothesis, if that’sthe word for it, persuades no morenow than four decades ago, whenit passed out of fashion. Someof the original advocates wokeone morning with a terrifyingrealisation: their rejection ofextraterrestrial UFOs would notrender them socially respectableif at the same time they advocatedsomething just as heretical,namely psychic phenomena. In ablink or two they were promotingthe “psychosocial hypothesis,” ashiny, freshly minted moniker forrusty, old-fashioned debunkery.Some of us, on the other hand,turned to scepticism of sweepingexplanatory approaches, boththose that dismissed and those

that embraced.After all this time, I am

modestly confident that UFOs donot constitute a single anomaly.I wonder if we have gone to a lotof unnecessary trouble becausewe keep trying to cram them intoone box, as Dr Ouellet (hardlyalone) essentially does here. Itwould also help if we stoppeddragging in creaky concepts suchas macro-PK, on its best daysa hugely speculative notion, toexplain anything. And let’s keep“social stresses” out of it too.There are always social stresses,and there is no empiricallydemonstrated reason to link themto UFO sightings. If there weresuch a link, the Middle East wouldbe so thick with UFOs that allconcerned would be distractedfrom the pursuit of ceaseless,bloody conflict. One wishes.

Early in IlluminationsOuellet denies the existenceof physical evidence for UFOs,thus apparently eliminating awhole category of cases (closeencounters of the second kindand radar/visuals), though heeventually addresses them,if rather ambiguously. Herepresents CG Jung as endorsingparapsychological/psychosocialviews like his, while in factJung distinguished dreams andvisions from real-world UFOreports, which he suspected wereproduced by space visitors quietlygoing about their business. Ashe wrote in the last chapter toFlying Saucers: A Modern Myth(1959, p150), “By all humanstandards it hardly seems possibleto doubt [UFO reality] anylonger.” That Jung specificallyrejected parapsychological andpsychosocial theories about UFOshas not stopped either camp fromciting his authority.

Unfortunately, Ouellet is takenwith the late demonologist JohnKeel, whom many of us wouldnot have trusted with breakfast,as I’ve had occasion to documentin these pages (FT156:39–42;

Themagic roundabout


Ufology (like fashion) is having a 1970smoment, revisiting thetheory that UFOs are caused bymacro-psychokinesis…

56 FT333


Fortean Times VerdictwHAT GOES AROuNDCOMESAROuND, uNNECESSARIlyMAyBE 6


reviewsBOOKS

treatment, Morton choosesto touch briefly upon them,mentioning other founders of themovement, who don’t get muchattention in other books.

Perhaps the best part ofthe book is the space givento ghosts and spirit belief inother parts of the world, givinga good sense of the variationof ghosts in different cultures.Although the detail is brief,Morton reflects the richnessand quirks of cultural variationwell. She could very well haveended the book here, but addsan extra dimension by exploringscientific investigation ofghosts and their appearance inpopular culture via literature,film and TV. The chapter onghost research is particularlygood as it goes into great detailexplaining the science andfunction – and shortcomings – ofall the gadgetry such as the K IImeter and Ghost Box that appearon paranormal reality showslike Ghost Adventures. The finalchapter on the ghost in popularculture may lead to the readercompiling a list of books, moviesand TV shows with which toscare themselves silly.Mandy Collins

The Making ofStanley Kubrick’s2001: A SpaceOdysseyPiers Bizony

Taschen 2015

Hb, 562pp, illus, £49.99, ISBN 9783836559546

With StephenHawking andElon Muskwarning of the

potential dangers of artificialintelligence, 2001: A SpaceOdyssey seems more relevantas we inch closer to sentientcomputers like the film’s HAL-9000. Back in 1970, The Making ofKubrick’s 2001 by Jerome Angelprovided tantalising glimpsesbehind the scenes, but thisnew approach by Piers Bizonyconveys the gruelling effort andcreativity that went into history’smost creative effort of science-

Tunguska, or theEnd of NatureMichael Hampe, trans. Michael Winkler

Chicago UP - 221p

Pb, 240pp, $35.99, illus,ISBN 9780226123127

First off, if you are interested inthe Tunguska event, don’t buy thisbook. Despite the title, that is notwhat this book is about. Tunguskais used as a hook on which tohang a series of philosophicaldialogues between four fictionalcharacters based on real people (aphilosopher, a physicist, a biologistand a mathematician), broadlyon the subject of Man’s place inNature, how we can perceive it,and how we should rationalise ourperceptions.

The idea of using dialogues asa way of presenting arguments issomething that goes back a longway, most famously to Plato. It hassome advantages, in that one canuse one character to put up straw-man opinions that can then bereasoned away from, and Hampemakes the most of this, perhaps atthe expense of maintaining a clearthread of exposition through thebook. But matters are not helpedby the bizarre setting in whichall four appear as ghosts on a fog-bound cargo ship, three of themapparently having been killed in

why a duck?It’s not about Tunguska, the charactersare dead and the audience is uncertain

FT33357www.forteantimes.com

To order any of these titles – or any other book in print – contact the

Telephone: 08430600031 Fax: 01326 569555 Email: [email protected]: Fortean Times Bookshop, PO Box 60, Helston TR13 0TP.

weaccept all major credit and debit cards including Switch &Amex. Cheques or postalorders should bemade payable to the FT Bookshop. Delivery is 7–10 days, subject to

availability. Postage& packing is freewithin the uK.

FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP


Fortean Times VerdictSOMETHING FOR PHIlOSOPHERSTO CHEwON, PERHAPS 6

Fortean Times VerdictBlOwSOPEN THE POD DOORS ONA lANDMARK S.F. FIlM 9

the bombing of Nagasaki (cutelyrendered in anagram – why?).Having your characters deadgives them rather a privilegedperspective, which complicatestheir discussions needlessly. Itwould have been better (sincethe characters are presentedas fictional) to have them aliveand simply gather in the seniorcommon room over port.

Michael Hampe is aGerman philosopher, trainedat Heidelberg, and currentlyProfessor of Philosophy at ETHZurich (that’s AY-TAY-HAH toyou). And oh, this book is soGerman in style! The dense andflorid text leaps around fromidea to idea, packing in thoughtsand notions like fruit in a fruitcake. The translator has generallydone a good job, but in placesis reduced to citing the originalGerman in brackets.

This book is jam-packed withideas, and there is much food forthought. But… I am very unsurewho is the ideal audience for it.Anyone without a good groundingin basic philosophy already islikely to find it much too heavygoing, particularly given the densestyle. The author thinks nothingof firing off abrupt references toHeidegger, Kant, and so on. On theother hand, it isn’t an academicwork either. It seems to be a sortof very high-brow philosophicaljeu d’esprit. If that appeals, there isplenty here to set you thinking.Roger Musson

Fortean Times VerdictBRIEF, PuNCHy AND DOwN-TO-EARTH BOOK FOR GHOST NEwBIES 8


fiction filmmaking; a monolithictome on a feat that seemsalmost miraculous the more youdiscover about how it was done,the struggle towards somethingcinematically sublime.

Expressed through hundreds ofimages with dozens presented onfold-out pages, the world StanleyKubrick made at SheppertonStudios during the mid-1960scomes alive, with photographsand conceptual illustrations onthe film’s most groundbreakingtechnical stages.

The most obvious thing thatseemed missing was a ‘makingthe monolith’ shot, so the genesisof the OOPART that kickstartedhumanity will (rightfully) retainits mystery.

The accompanying text is thesubordinate component, butgives solid background to thelengths the crew went to giveform to the conceptual duellingbetween Kubrick and Arthur CClarke as they absorbed a welterof contemporary reports on spacetravel and the implications forhumanity of the existence anddiscovery of extraterrestrialcivilisations. As for unsung crewmembers, a standout contributioncomes from Dan Richter, whodirected the ape performances,and Joseph Gelmis, who got a rareenlightening interview with thedirector.

Given it was all half a centuryago, some of the historical andscientific research inevitablycovers old ground (e.g. theFermi Paradox), but the deepperspective on the film’sdevelopment compensates for this,with visual highlights includingthe conceptual artists’ attemptsto fulfill the director’s requestfor hardware, worlds and an aliendesign in “a shape that doesn’tremind you of anything in a colorthat doesn’t exist”. Kubrick’svision and idiosyncratic methodswere too much for some of hiscrew (and the critics) to bear, yetthe near-miraculous achievementhas never been surpassed inits genre, and this book is amonument, both physically and insubstance, to that end.Jerry Glover

reviewsBOOKS

Messages from theGodsA Guide to the useful Plants ofBelize

Michael J Balick & Rosita Arvigo

Oxford University Press 2015

Hb, 539pp, illus, ind, refs, £32.99, ISBN 9780199965762

It’s easy to forget how manydrugs have botanical roots.Metformin, a mainstay of type 2diabetes management, originallyderives from Goat’s Rue (Galegaofficinalis). For centuries,European herbalists used it totreat symptoms doctors nowascribe to type 2 diabetes. Aspirinis a modification of chemicals inwillow bark and meadowsweet(Filipendula ulmaria the herbpreviously known as Spiræaulmaria – hence aspirin’s name)traditionally used for headaches,pains, and fevers. Pacific yew(Taxus brevifolia) yieldedpaclitaxel, an important treatmentfor breast, lung and some othercancers. Indeed, according tothe Journal of Natural Products(2012;75:311–335) almost half ofcancer drugs introduced betweenthe 1940s and 2010 are naturalproducts or direct derivatives.

Not surprisingly, the rainforestis a rich source of new drugs – andmany pharmaceutical companies‘bioprospect’. According to theEden Centre, more than halfthe world’s terrestrial speciesof animals and plants call therainforest home.Yet 99 per cent ofthese species remain unstudied.So, Balick’s and Arvigo’s bookis an important contributionto the ethnobotanical, medicaland pharmacological literature– as well being fascinating

for forteans, neopagans andenvironmentalists.

Traditional Belizean medicinemixes ancient indigenous wisdomand Christian rituals. TheConquistadors didn’t fully controlthe Yucatan’s remote southernforests, including those in today’sBelize. This helped Mayanrefugees keep their traditionsalive alongside teachings imposedby the Conquistadors. Even today,many prayers and incantationsfor sick people refer to Mayangods as well as Jesus. A ceremonymarking the Day of the Holy Crosswas initially “sombre and sacred”with Catholic prayers, hymns andrituals. Around midnight, theceremony became a celebrationthat included loud music, wilddancing, drinking and passing afreshly severed, bloody pig’s headfrom guest to guest. Balick andArvigo suggest that this may be arecreation of a Mayan ritual.

The Belizean healing networkencompasses shaman-likepriests and priestesses (calledh’men – ‘one who knows’), villageand ‘granny’ healers, massagetherapists, midwives, bonesetters,snake doctors and specialists inusing prayers to heal. In additionto aches, pains, constipation andthe other diseases everyone’s fleshis heir to, healers manage several‘culturally bound syndromes’, suchas mal vientos – bad or evil winds,or malevolent spirits controlled byevil magic – maldad (a curse thatcan prove fatal if not treated) andmal de ojo, the evil eye.

Several traditional treatmentsseem empirically rational evento a sceptical, scientific, Westerneye, such as using the white,milky latex of the Dog Balls plant(Tabernaemontana alba) to extractparasites including beefwormand screwworm. Other plantshave ‘magical’ and ‘medical’ roles(although this is a scientific ratherthan indigenous distinction).Preparations of the Copal tree(Protium copal) treat headache,wounds and sores, colds, and

58 FT333


Traditional healingForteans, neopagans, environmentalists – and bioprospectors– share an interest in ancient indigenous plant wisdom


Fortean Times VerdictESSENTIAlMESSAGES FROM THEGODS – IF ONlywE’D lISTEN… 10

Fortean Times VerdictGOOD PARAPOlITICS PRIMER (ANDyES, THEy AREwATCHING yOu...) 9

intestinal worms. It’s easy tospeculate the plant might containchemicals responsible for theseactions. But the Copal tree is alsoused as an incense in rituals totackle, for example, mal de ojo,witchcraft and evil generally. Itsresin also makes a nail polish.

Messages from the Godshighlights how many medicinescould be awaiting discovery.For instance, the world’s herbalheritage might yield the longsought-after male contraceptive.Men in the Papua tribes ofIndonesia traditionally used aplant called Justicia gendarussato control family size. An extractfrom J. gendarussa reducedthe activity of hyaluronidase,an enzyme that helps spermpenetrate the egg. Early resultsfrom clinical studies seempromising (see my article athttp://bit.ly/1LVciRs). Similarly,people in Belize use a mix offour herbs – including Billy Webb(Acosmium panamense) and skunkroot (Chiococca alba) – and adrink made of the mashed leavesof Tococa guianensis as malecontraceptives.

Since 1987, Balick and Arvigointerviewed “dozens of traditionalhealers”, surveyed “hundredsof local people” about plantsand their uses, and collectedbotanical specimens from morethan 220 sites. The book drawson data collected during morethan 8,000 plant collections byvarious groups. Messages from theGods details some 900 plants.YetBalick and Arvigo suggest thatthe book may represent less thanfive per cent of the knowledgeabout plants in Belize. With thedestruction of the rainforestand other biodiverse habitatscontinuing, Messages from the Godsis a sobering reminder of what wemight be losing.Mark Greener

Mind warsA History of Mind Control, Surveil-lance, and Social Engineeringby the Government, Media, andSecret Societies

Marie D Jones & Larry Flaxman

New Page Books 2015

Pb, 240pp, £13.99, ISBN 9781601633583

Marie D Jones andLarry Flaxman, theteam who pennedThis Book Is From TheFuture, take a look athow since the dawn of

human history, from the AncientEgyptian Pharaohs to the CIAof today, the rich and powerfulhave used various techniquesto control the human mind fortheir own ends. Topics coveredinclude: Operation Paperclip,the Office of Strategic Services(OSS) programme which broughtNazi scientists, engineers, andtechnicians to the United Statesfor employment in the aftermathof WWII; as well as the CIA’sMK-Ultra programme to createa Manchurian Candidate styleassassin. Jones and Flaxmanare not simply just conspiracytheorists, however, as well asexploring the real life originsof terms like “brainwashing” inMao’s China, they also examinehow the concept of mind controlhas entered into popular culturevia films such as the ManchurianCandidate and TV series like TheX-Files.

The text also explores thecreeping Orwellian surveillancestate as well as some of thepositive impacts mind controltechniques can have, for instancebrainwashing yourself to be abetter athlete, or hypnotisingsomeone to quit smoking.

In Mind Wars, Jones andFlaxman don’t pretend to havewritten the definitive text onthe history of mind controland state surveillance; insteadthe 238 pages serve as a goodintroduction to the paranoidworld of parapolitics, wheresecret societies and socialengineers control the course ofhuman history.Richard Thomas


reviewsBookS

The Sasquatch Seeker’sField ManualUsing Citizen Science toUncover North America’s MostElusive Creature

David George Gordon

Mountaineers Books 2015

Pb, 172pp, resources, illus, ind, $14.95,ISBN 9781594859410

If we were in a quibbling mood,we’d wonder why this book hasto have a rhetorical question onthe cover: “Does the Sasquatchreally exist?” The book’s exist-ence answers for Gordon’s belief,laid out in a selection of sightingsfrom USA’s Northwest Territories.However, the main part of thebook forms a comprehensiveguide for any would-be Sasquatchhunter; covering the planning andmounting of search expeditions,equipment, the gathering of dif-ferent kinds of evidence and,probably critically important thesedays, how to disseminate anydiscoveries and evidence you maybe lucky to find. Throughout thereis a sensible emphasis on proto-cols and responsibility, on havinga sound scientific basis for yourexpectations and methods, andrespect for the wilderness.

Esoteric EgyptJS Gordon

Bear & Co. 2015

Pb, 408pp, illus, bib, index, $25.00,

ISBN 9781591431961

Lauded by his colleagues forhis “deep insight” into the eso-tericism of the ancient Egyptians,Gordon here embarks upon asurvey of the prehistoric origins ofthe magical and mystical beliefsthat underpinned its historicallyinfluential civilisation. Given thatGordon is a senior fellow of theTheosophical Society, it seemsinevitable that he focuses on theEgyptian interpretation of reincar-nation and ‘spiritual evolution’.Given, also, that he finds tracesof star and astronomical lore inthe other civilisations adjacentto Egypt and the Mediterranean,whose purest form was in Egypt,

and argues that they had acommon ancestor in the peoplethat colonised Egypt around100,000 years ago, it comes aslittle surprise that he claims theywere descended from “the 4thand 5th Root races of Atlantis”.Classic Theosophy, reinventedfor the New Age; that said, it iswell written and well argued, butprobably addressing only a sympa-thetic audience.

Journal of CryptozoologyVol 3, Dec 2014

Ed: Karl PN Shuker

CFZ Press 2014

Pb, 97pp, illus, refs, $6.99,ISBN 9781601633422

It is to Jon Downes’s credit thathe has kept going this journal,one of the last remaining outletsfor research into cryptozoology,now edited by FT’s old friend KarlShuker. Articles in this issue :‘The Thunderbirds of WesternPennsylvania: Mistaken Identity orMigratory Cryptids?’ by JonathanD Stiffy; ‘New Material on theMoha-Moha’ by Ulrich Magin;‘Target Practice: Evaluating Avail-able Fine-Resolution SatelliteImagery as a Potentially UsefulTool in Cryptozoology’ by EdmondW Holroyd III; ‘Searching For thePink-Headed Duck in Myanmar’ byRichard Thorns; and ‘Bessie, theLake Erie Monster: Assessed andAssembled’ by Scott E Strasser.Subscription details are on theCFZ website: www.journalofcrypto-zoology.com/

The Wars of AtlantisPhil Masters

Osprey Adventures 2015

Pb, 80pp, illus, colour plates, notes, bib, ind, $19.99, ISBN9781601632913

After a fairly sound summaryof the historical sources andtheories about the city-state andits eponymous island, Masterslaunches into an imaginativeevocation of its conflicts withpeoples on both sides of theAtlantic – including the Amazons,the proto-Athenians, the Gorgons,and the Egyptians – and the even-

tual destruction of its sea-goingempire in a mighty catastrophe.This slender book is made all themore exciting by dramatic full-col-our illustrations, and would makean inspiring gift to any youngsterinterested in the lore and legendsof lost worlds.

Nordic Goddess MagicAlice Karlsdóttir

Destiny Books 2015

Pb, 240pp, bib, ind, $19.95, ISBN 9781620054074

The revitalisation of the ancientAsatru (Northern Paganism) inthe modern era is arguably lesswell-known today than Klingon andrelatively sparely documented,so this ‘manual’ from one ofAmerica’s leading practitioners

seems all the more welcome.Alice Karlsdóttir has championedthe ‘Germanic Heathen’ revivalin the USA since 1974, and herepresents a primer on the AllmotherFrigg, wife of Odin, and the 12Asynjur goddesses associatedwith her; in fact, these 13 form amodel for constructing a coven.Against this background, Karlsdót-tir, also a Master in the Rune Gild,outlines a system of meditationexercises for each goddess. Theseare extended into shamanic-typeinvocations and ‘direct’ experi-ences of their different principlesor personality traits. For goodmeasure, accounts of Frau Holleand the Three Spinners are addedfrom the Brothers Grimm, and ofQueen Olga from a Russian source.

ALSo RECEIVED We leaf through a small selection of the dozens of books that

have arrived at Fortean Towers in recent months...


FoRTEAN FICTIoNThe Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol 1Ryan North, Erica Henserson

Marvel

Pb, 128pp, £11.99, ISBN 9780785197027

Batman, Spider-Man and even Ant-Man (at least since his big screendebut) are familiar names… but Squirrel Girl? You’ve got to be kidding,right?

Well, yes, a bit... sort of: this is a book that doesn’t take itself tooseriously and is intent on having – and providing – plenty of fun: TheDark Knight it ain’t, and fanboys of a grimdark persuasion should prob-ably give it a wide berth, as should Gamergaters and others upset bya noticeable trend toward inclusivity in geekdom. For those of us ofsunnier dispositions, this upbeat take on the superhero comic proveshard to resist: while it stops short of deconstructing the genre, it playsaffectionately with its tropes, sending them spinning off in unexpecteddirections and making the familiar Marvel universe dance to its tune.

Our unlikely superheroine is Doreen Green, a chubby-cheeked, buck-toothed, first year computer science student who tucks her prehensiletail into her trousers and has a female squirrel companion called Tippy-Toe. Doreen communicates with squirrels and “eats nuts, kicks butts”.

Her squirrel powers, and infectiously positive attitude, are tested bycollege freshers’ week, a random encounter with Kraven the Hunter, andan Earth-threatening visit from Galactus, Devourer of Worlds and wielderof the Power Cosmic. Doreen triumphs – I won’t say how – not so muchby having super powers as through confidence, quick thinking and anice line in diplomacy: the results are uplifting and hilarious.

This is a warm, witty and rather wonderful series suitable for all ages,and a playful riposte to the idea that comic books are filled with pneu-matic sex objects and violence. Included in the collection are issues1-5, plus SG’s one-shot 1992 debut, courtesy of a certain Steve Ditko.Highly recommended for lovers of comics, squirrels and life.

David Sutton

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

reviewsFILM & DVD

The NightmareDir Roddy Ascher, US 2015

On UK release from 9 October

Sleep paralysis sounds like a self-explanatory condition, and inpart it is; however, that paralysisis accompanied by nightmares ofa particularly vivid and frighten-ing nature.This documentary,from the director of Room 237, themind-bending documentary aboutStanley Kubrick’s The Shining,combines sufferers’ accounts withreconstructions of their individualterrors.

In fact, one element of the night-mares – the imagery – is common toa number of separate experiences.Multiple interviewees speak ofseeing three-dimensional shadowfigures, often accompanied bya hatted figure that seems to besuperior to, or in charge of, theothers.This imagery is similar toa number of characters from folk-lore and, more recently, cinema:specific films are cited as refer-ence points for these characters,for example A Nightmare on ElmStreet, Insidious and Communion.

Many of the interviewees com-plain about the short shrift they’vebeen given by health professionals,but some of them then go on todiscount the possibility that theirsleep paralysis is a physiologicalissue. One ascribes it to a spiritualconflict between good, represented

by Christianity, and evil; anothersuggests it is an alternate universeintruding into our own. One inter-viewee suggests that ‘alien abduct-ees’ are merely sleep paralysissufferers, while at the same timeresolutely maintaining that his ownencounters amount to a genuinesupernatural experience.

The condition seems to besetpeople regardless of gender, age,ethnicity or nationality, which sug-gests it is linked to human neurol-ogy or physiology, as opposed toanything supernatural, but directorRodney Ascher doesn’t provide ascientific benchmark against whichwe can judge the validity of theseother interpretations. It doesn’thelp the viewer to hear the physi-ological explanation being poo-pooed if we’ve not been told what itis, especially when the alternativetheories are somewhat outlandish.

A friend of mine used to saythat there is nothing more boringthan listening to accounts of otherpeople’s dreams; The Nightmarecontradicts that view, but only just,because after about half an hourone really has heard the full rangeof experiences. Beyond that point,there are really only slight varia-tions on the basic theme; as intrigu-ing as the condition is, personal rec-ollections of it are not quite enoughto sustain interest for 90 minutes.

The reconstructions are

designed to correct this imbalance,but are rather flatly staged, a bitlike those reconstructions in RayMears survival programmes wherewe see five men adrift on a lilo sur-viving on rainwater and albatrossmeat.The problem is that they tendto undercut the interviewees’ sto-ries of unbearable terror by failingto stir up any real fear. After all, ifyou don’t find the reconstructionsfrightening then the whole premiseof the film becomes redundant.

The familiarity of the images isanother problem. If you’ve seenany the films cited above, or scoresof similar ones, then the substanceof the nightmares is not going toappear particularly unusual. We’veall had bad dreams, and most ofus will have had nightmares inwhich we’ve tried to run away fromsomething horrible but have beenunable to. Surely this begs thequestion of whether sleep paralysisis merely a more powerful versionof this universal experience or aseparate and far more serious con-dition; the film provides no answer.

I completely understand theneed for ambiguity in certain kindsof documentary – the invitation toreach your own judgement or seekout further information – but TheNightmare doesn’t deal with anemotive or ethical subject as do,for example, the films of MichaelMoore. It is, in contrast, an appar-

ently neutral consideration of aphenomenon that is misunderstoodif it is acknowledged at all. Unfor-tunately, the lack of context and ofa basic structure to frame the testi-monies means that if one is to takeanything away from the film at allone is obliged to make a judgementbased solely on the interviewees’statements (or even their charac-ters), which is desperately unfair.As forteans, we are all too awarethat witness testimony is merelyone source of potential evidenceand often an unreliable one atthat. By offering us nothing more,Ascher has barely dipped a toe intothe deep and murky waters of thisphenomenon.Daniel King

The LobsterDir Yorgos Lanthimos, Greece/UK/Ireland/France 2015


David (Colin Farrell) is newlydivorced, but being single is simplynot permitted in the dystopian soci-ety in which Greek directorYorgosLanthimos has set his first English-language feature,The Lobster.Thegrey and misty land may resemblerural Ireland but the regime thatoversees it is closer to the one thatbred children for organ donationin Never Let Me Go or forced over-30s to their premature deaths inLogan’s Run.

The solution open to David – andevery other singleton – is to bechecked into a tawdry institutionrun by the evangelically marriedHotel Manager (Olivia Williams)as a nightmarish cross betweenPontins and Borstal. Here, Davidhas 45 days to fall authentically inlove; if he fails, he will be turnedinto an animal of his choosing andlet loose in the wild. While frater-nally close to his dog (it is afterall his own, once single brother),David has decided that he wantsto become a lobster, for reasons itwould be a spoiler to reveal. In fact,it is difficult to go into much detailabout the incidents of this weirdand, at times, hilarious film with-out spoiling the surprise of what onEarth – or wherever it might be – iscoming next.

Uncharismatic, heavily mous-tachioed and pot-bellied – butstrangely self-assured and accept-

60 FT333


a rather superFIcIaL Lookat a FascInatIng subject 6Fortean Times Verdict

reviewsFILM & DVD

The Reverend’s Review


MADMANDir Joe Giannone, US 1982

Arrow Video, £14.99 (Dual Format)

EATEN ALIVEDir Tobe Hooper, US 1976


NIGHTMArE CITYDir Umberto Lenzi, Italy/Mexico/Spain 1980


ZArDoZDir John Boorman, Ireland 1974

Arrow Video, £12.99 (Blu-ray)

It’s slashers, swamps and SeanConnery’s shielded scrotum thismonth, with a clutch of mad cultmovies hitting Blu-Ray. First up,an insane farmer hacks his fam-ily to bits then returns after hisown execution to behead anyonewho speaks his name above awhisper. Madman was overshad-owed by the higher profile slash-ers of the time (this was 1982,after all, a critical-mass year forthe genre), yet what looks like astraight rip-off of Friday the 13this a fun, likeable movie. Yes it’sa summer camp and yes there’splenty of head-chopping, but it’ssurprisingly eerie too. Shots ofMarz swinging his axe mid-strollor standing in a tree staring

down at his victims still manageto chill, and there’s a quirkinessto the characters and perfor-mances that makes the viewercare when they finally get sliced.Watch out for the funky closingsong, too.

There’s more blade wieldingmadness in Tobe Hooper’s EatenAlive. Known in the UK as DeathTrap, it’s an unsettling tale of acrazed hotel owner murderinghis guests and feeding them tohis prized crocodile. It lacks thegritty realism of Texas ChainsawMassacre but Hooper con-sciously replaces it with a sort oftheatrical, colourful and stageyhorror. The result feels surreal,dreamlike and as unsettling asChainsaw, but in a different way.It may well follow the themesand rhythms of Hitchcock’sPsycho, but Hooper’s thoughtfuldespair has a terror all of itsown.

The whole world turns mad,in Umberto Lenzi’s high-octanehorror romp, Nightmare City. Themonsters might technically bezombies, but they’re a frenetic,eager breed, sprinting acrossaircraft tarmac for victims, anddoing something not often seenin zombie cinema – using weap-ons! Exciting horror action like

this has ‘party movie’ written allover it. Be warned though, whileArrow Video present the verybest print they can, they’re openand apologetic about the some-times uneven picture quality. Tohelp, they provide two differentversions, so you can pick yourfavourite flavour.

Finally we get Zardoz, a filmso creative and out there, itsometimes feels as if you’rehaving a mini-stroke just watch-ing it. Sean Connery is Zed,a moustachioed ‘Brutal’ on apost-apocalyptic Earth. He killsanything that moves for hisstonehead God, Zardoz (thescene when Zardoz vomits riflesis as awesome it sounds). WhenZed stumbles into the Vortexand discovers a Shangri La landof chilled-out Eternals, he findshe can offer them things theymay desire. Like violence… andan erection. Throughout the filmConnery races around in a sortof Terry Towelling Mankini. Thefilm’s been lauded as one of thebest ‘bad’ movies ever made,but let step into its world on itsown terms and you’ll find a fas-cinating explosion of creativity.Catch all four of these mad andmarvellous movies from ArrowVideo.

ing of his situation – Colin Farrellas David is riveting to watch as heattempts to find a partner, rarelyexchanging his hangdog expres-sion for the mildest flirtation orsmile.There is much to squirmat in one potential relationshipwith Heartless Woman (AggelikiPapoulia), who is devoid of anyhuman feeling.The Limping Man(Ben Whishaw), skinny and nerv-ously stammering, succeeds alittle better in his quest for love,inducing his own nasal hæmor-rhages so that he has at leastsomething in common with Nose-bleed Woman, on whom he has sethis affections.

The whole story is narrated byShort Sighted Woman (RachelWeisz), a ‘single’ who has escapedthe hotel to live with others likeher in the woods, where theyare frequently shot at by hotelinmates, who gain an extra dayat the facility for every body theybring in. David and Short SightedWoman’s paths eventually crossand give to the film its momentsof poignancy.The film finishesabruptly, but not before Davidshows his willingness to make anextreme sacrifice in order to beable to empathise fully with her.

The suddenness of the endingleaves you wondering whatexactly it is you just witnessed –for days, if not weeks, afterwards.The Lobster does seem to have avery darkly humorous message– satirising the strong emphasissociety places on the pressuresto couple, the compromises thata person is willing to make, andthe lies he or she is willing to tell,in order to win the affections ofanother.

The filmmaker who comesmost frequently to mind duringThe Lobster’s many bizarre juxta-positions and situations is LuisBuñuel, whose brand of cinematicsurrealism similarly questionedaccepted social behaviours andturned them on their head. Fol-lowing in his footsteps, Lanthimosis a new European surrealistto watch. He has created a filmthat is funny, beautiful, strange,chilling, and fully deserving ofthe Jury Prize it won at the 2015Cannes Film Festival.Rob Weinberg

FT’s resident man of the cloth reVerenD peter Laws donshis dog collar and faces the flicks that Church forgot!(www.theflicksthatchurchforgot.com; @revpeterlaws)

a quartet oF the MaD anDthe MarVeLLous 8Fortean Times Verdict

rIch anD strange sLIce oFconteMporary surreaLIsM 8Fortean Times Verdict

reviews

63 FT333


HowlDir Paul Hyett, UK 2015


“British Rail would like to apologisefor the delay to your journey.This isdue to lycanthropes on the line.”

Reviewing smaller horror films,rather than blockbusters, can lead totrepidation; filmmakers tend to havebig ideas but small budgets, the casttries too hard and special effects arenot all that special. Paul Hyett’s newfilm may be a small one, but its con-cept and delivery are worthy of manya bigger release.

On a dark and stormy night, Joe(Ed Speelers), a London train guard,draws the unenviable late shifton the last train out of the capital,dealing with drunks, clubbers andexhausted office workers.The onlybright spot of the journey is that Joegets to work alongside Ellen (ShaunaMacDonald), the train’s trolley-push-ing hostess. Off they trundle into thenight, only to come to a screechinghalt somewhere down the line whenthe train hits something, forcing thedriver (Sean Pertwee providing thecameo) to check before the journeycan continue. But the driver neverreturns, and the train is stuck on alonely stretch of track, surrounded bydense forest, with something nastylurking in the woods…

So begins what is part claustropho-bic psychological horror, part gore-fest, with a fresh and truly beastlytake on the werewolf.The creaturestarts to pick off the passengers oneby one, until they decide to attemptthe walk to the next station; travel-ling through woods at night whilebeing stalked is not such a good idea,though, and results in a panickedsprint back to the safety of the railcarriage. Joe rallies the passengersto attack the creature with successfulresults… but, as we all know, wolveshunt in packs.

Hyett directs well, and charactersthat are essentially one-dimensionalare given enough telling dialoguethat their deaths register, althoughnot always in sympathetic terms;when the self-absorbed teenagergot it, I wondered whether she wastweeting: “Being eaten by were-wolf… lol”.The effects and monstersare very good and were created byHyett’s own company, which wasresponsible for the creatures inNeil Marshall’s The Descent and TheWoman In Black.The werewolvesare lean, supernatural and vicious,

purposely designed to capture themost horrific aspect of lycanthropy– not the fully transformed wolf, butthe transmogrification stage of parthuman, part animal; they’re just theright side of creepy when you firstencounter them.The cast performswell and portrays a nice cross sec-tion of the capital’s commuters, fromthe fat, guzzling football fan to thesmarmy investment banker whoinitially takes charge but dooms vari-ous passengers to death.The film’sclimax made me wonder if it wasn’tthe director’s exploration of interper-sonal relationships between men andwomen that made me want to watchit a second time. Hats off to Hyett,who has taken a mundane British railjourney and turned it into a feast ofbloody horror.Mark McConnell

Jurassic WorldDir Colin Trevorrow, US 2015

BFI, £9.99 DVD, £12.99 (Blu-ray)

I’m astonished that Jurassic Worldbeat all comers to take the boxoffice crown of 2015. It’s a painfullyunimaginative affair, moving withthe leaden plod of a constipateddiplodocus rather than the zippyattack of an angry velociraptor; itsimply tramples its open-mouthedaudience into submission over a verylong two hours in which the samething (dinos escape, chase people,get taken down) simply happensagain and again until – the end! Thefilm’s plot – corporate hubris anda jaded public lead to the creationof the world’s biggest and deadliestdinosaur ‘attraction’ – appears to beself-reflexive, meditating somewhatruefully on its own overinflated andempty nature; when our heroes dis-cover traces of the original JurassicPark, it serves as both Ozymandianwarning and aching nostalgia for alost world in which blockbuster filmswere actually fun. Chuck in irritatingkids in peril, everyday sexism, lash-ings of schmaltz and a criminal wasteof the cheeky talent Chris Prattdisplayed in Guardians of the Galaxy,and tedium ensues.David Sutton

DeMonIcIcon Entertainment, £7.99 (DVD)

What’s that…another attempt to re-invent thefound footage genre? This time around, policequestion the sole survivor in a house filled withcorpses, while officers watch the video shot by thenow dead people. It’s a reasonably effective back-and-forth between shaky-camand standardmovie

techniques. There are a few spookymoments and subtlety andplot twists are at least attempted, if not always achieved. Horrorhit-meister JamesWan produces, and you do get the sense of himhovering about on themargins, which is no bad thing. Just praisethe good Lord this wasn’t all shot shaky-style. It’s getting boring.rev pL 5/10

stungEntertainment One, £9.99 (DVD)

Two party planners have to deal with the commonannoyance of wasps screwing up an outdoorevent – only these critters are huge and homicidal.Plus, when they sting you, new giant wasps climbright out of your skin. This is an energetic fusion of1950s big-bugmovies and 1970s ‘nature attacks’

films, butStung is smart, funny and self-aware. It’s also gloopy andgory fun, with a refreshingly high quota of practical effects. PlusLance Henriksen shits himself: bonus! rev pL 7/10

the VoIcesArrow Films, £9.99 (DVD), £12.99 (Blu-ray)

This is certainly a left-field directorial choice fromMarjane Satrapi, the Iranian-born writer/directorwhose animated adaptation of her autobiographi-cal graphic novel Persepoliswon her admirersthe world over. The Voices is unlikely to repeatthat trick: it’s a ham-fisted retooling of Psycho

as a black comedy about a likeable factory worker/delusionalschizophrenic driven to kill by his talking cat. It fails to deliver eitherproper laughs or real unease, while its overbearing visual whimsyconsistentlymistakes itself for cinematic style. Ryan Reynoldsdeserves praise for his performance as the lonely nutcase Jerry,and extramarks for also voicing his talking pets (Roscoe the dogis an all-round good egg, unlike his scheming and psychopathicfeline housemate); butMrWhiskers has no business sounding likea super-sweary reject from aDanny Boyle film. I suspect that nineout of ten cats will be offended by this hopelessly crude portrayalthat captures none of the hauteur orMachiavallian cunning of theirtribe. Ds 5/10

InsIDIous 3Entertainment One, £12.99 (DVD), £14.99 (Blu-ray)

I liked the original Insidious, JamesWan’s horror-riffon astral projection. It had some nice Argento-inspired splashes of surrealism and colour. Thisprequel starts promisingly enough, with a youngwoman seeking out amedium to help her contacther deadmother. She soon learns, however, thatwhen you call out to one of the dead, all of them

can hear you. The film’s spooks at least look distinctive; yet thefinal result isn’t particularly scary and it’s all surprisingly schmaltzy.rev pL 5/10

sHorTs

FILM & DVD

gargantuan DIno-FestLacks requIreD bIte 5Fortean Times Verdict

werewoLVes on the LIne!a horrIFyIngLy Fun rIDe 8Fortean Times Verdict

#coacheffectfitter+healthier+happier

EFFECTTHE

The new health & fitness magazineFree every wednesday

Find out where at coachmag.co.uk

ONEBINDERSTORES UP TO

120DISCS

FREEPHONE 0800 027 0636 Order Online - WWW.ARROWFILE.COM/CDOFFER22MONEY BACK

G

UARANTEE

100%and ADD FTM0815 in the promotion code box in your basketFor Special Offer quote code: FTM0815

FlashFoto

LtdT/A

Arrowfile,147

ChurchillH

ouse,StirlingW

ay,WD

62H

PReg

No.1561035

A5DVDMER RDVD11 (Pk of 10)

A5 DVD Binder DVD & Booklet Sleeves Gold CD/DVD/Blu-Rays

CD/DVD Storage Boxes, Walletsand Zipper Portfolios

Film/Slide Scanner

78385Pack of 10s,25s or 100sF6437

FS1882 FS5302 FT140

Corazon Slip-in6x4.5”Albums

Blossom 6x4Slip-in Albums

Traditional & WeddingPhotoboard Albums

Visit our website for a FREE catalogue

84146

Over 350 Pocket Refill Sleeves to choose fromPortrait & Landscape Binder Albums

PF4985

Milano Photo Frame Wooden Deep Box Frames

Available in Black, White & Natural invariety of sizes from 3x3” to 16x16”

CPOP19

CPM881 CVPM09

CPOP24

Amazing 3D Pop & Laser Cut Cards Collectable Display CasesWIDE RANGE OF WALLGLASS ART & MIRRORS

Visit our website for a FREE catalogue

Visit Our Online shop and CLAIM 10% OFF any orders placed by 31 August 2015 - † Use Code: FTM1510

THE ULTIMATE LEATHER CD/DVD ORGANISER!

The Professionals ChoicePhotos, Memorabilia & Collectables

£22.95Normally £42.09

*

Stunning Limited Offer

Is Your Collection Getting Out of Hand?• Find your favourite group/artist or track in seconds• Protect your discs from dust, dirt, light and scratches• Match your CD/DVDs with their booklet covers• Prevent ‘CD-Rot’ and your music becoming corrupted.

Transform your Collection..

Maximize CDLife and keep 5times more in

the same space!

Extra refill sleeve pages RJ0CD44 (pk of 10) £9.95 | Additional Album PLUS FREE Slipcase K-472 £22.95 | Each album will hold up to 60 CDs with 60 covers or 120 CDs without covers | AlbumSize: 292mm x 337mm x 75mm. Total Album Capacity: 15 Sleeve Pages. | *Plus Standard UK delivery £5.95 | One album or double album set offer per household (see website for details)

Black Leather CD/DVD Organiser Ref: K-471

This Amazing Offer Includes:

Pack of CD Index Sheetsand Dividers £5.70

Page Numbers£0.50

10 Black RefillPages £9.95

Binder Album£22.95

Music Labels£2.99

Quote promotional code FTM0815 on your basket page

ÉFrom This

ÉTo This

Now in stock awide range of vinyl

record storage!

HighQualityBondedLeather

† Cannot be used with the above album offer

CONTACT US BY POST: BOX 2409 LONDON NW5 4NPOR E-MAIL [email protected] PROVIDE US WITH YOUR POSTAL ADDRESS

An Ice SurpriseI was very interested to readMalcolm Christophers’s letter[FT331:73] in which he reportedseeing “dozens of coots andmoorhens” entombed in a sheet ofice on a Cornish pond, these fowlapparently having been “instantlyfrozen in the postures they as-sumed going about their normalbusiness”. Sadly I can’t provide anexplanation for this, but I can pro-vide an (alleged) further instanceof the same type of phenomenonon an even grander scale, and in-volving a different type of frozenanimal – namely, horses!

It appears in a 1944 book calledKaputt by the Italian writer andadventurer Curzio Malaparte, anaccount of his escapades in Nazi-occupied Europe, and describesan event he says occurred in Fin-land in 1941, when he was a warcorrespondent embedded withGerman troops during the ‘War inthe East’ against Russia.Accord-ing to Malaparte, one day in theicy Finnish wastes he came acrossa frozen lake filled with hundredsof (bathing?) horses which hadbeen transformed to ice by aflash-freezing event so suddenthat it appeared to have beheadedthem. Malaparte (or his Englishtranslator, anyway) described thescene thus:

“The lake looked like a vastsheet of white marble on whichrested hundreds upon hundredsof horses’ heads.They appearedto have been chopped off cleanlywith an axe. Only the heads stuckout of the crust of ice.And theywere all facing the shore.Thewhite flame of terror still burntin their wide-open eyes. Close tothe shore a tangle of wildly rear-ing horses rose from the prisonof ice.” (Cited in John Gray, TheSilence of Animals,Allen Lane,2013, p.24)

As for whether this is actuallytrue or not, I have no idea – Naziwar correspondents were not, asa rule, the most honest of menI suppose, and Malaparte ap-pears to have been one of thoseadventurous piratical types whoidolise war and actively seek out

its arenas for æsthetic reasons,with his book apparently beinga curious mixture of accuratereal-life reportage and odd, sur-realist fantasy. Maybe Malapartemade it all up. Maybe he saw adead frozen horse or two in somewater and simply exaggeratedthe sight. Or, then again, maybehe really did see somethinggenuinely anomalous. My guesswould be the second option, butseeing as Malcolm Christophersapparently really did see somebirds which had been killed andinsta-frozen in this manner, whoknows? Maybe one day some madscientist could perform a deeplyunethical experiment upon somelivestock and find out for us. Itwas just a truly bizarre image andI thought I’d share it.SD TuckerWidnes, Cheshire

Thai GhostsI’ve been watchingThai ghostlakorn (soap operas) with my wife,followed by royal family news, allproper and prim, as well asThainews. I wish there were a primeronThai ghosts.There must be a

couple of dozen kinds. My favour-ite is the Pee-ka-sua, human duringthe day and a ghost after mid-night.This one’s head separatesfrom the body that is left behind.The head trails the spinal cord andorgans.This ghost has an appetitefor raw meat and afterbirth.Thereis also a folk hero, Su-tee-chai, whowas apparently an actual person.He took your words literally andthen did exactly as you said. Leav-ing the house, his mother said:“Clean the house inside and out

as well as your sister”. He cleanedhis sister on the outside and thenopened her torso and proceeded toclean.Another story is one abouta bird fight, normally roosters,and in this case between Burma(Myanmar) andThailand. He saidhe would bring his ‘bird’ to thefight and the Burmese acceptedhis generic word.You guessed it,he brought a hawk.The roosterlasted a few seconds.

On a totally different subject:when on a field trip collectingrocks in streambeds in southernIndiana, my old elementary schoolfriend, the late James Drew, cameacross a Mediæval coin, partlyembedded in a nodule of quartz.In later years James told mesomeone had stolen the coin.Terry W ColvinPrachuabkhirikhan, Thailand

Indian poltergeistFor the fortean database I submitthe following datum: “TheIndians [specifically the Shuswappeople] aver that unknown beingssometimes throw stones at them,particularly at night, when stonesmay be noticed occasionallyfalling into the fire.” (Recordedin 1877 or 1888-1890).This comesfrom GM Dawson, ‘Notes on theShuswap People of British Colum-bia’, (Proceedings and Transactionsof the Royal Society of Canada for1891, 9. 2 (1892), 3-44: 38)Marinus van der SluijsPhiladelphia

Dear FT…

letters


Dear FT…www.forteantim

es.com/forumFOR MORE DISCUSSION ON FORTEAN TOPICS GO TO...

This photo of a flint nodule resembling a human face apparently disfiguredby fire was sent in by someone called Christer Stone.We are always gladto receive pictures of spontaneous forms and figures, or any curious images.Send them to the PO box above (with a stamped addressed envelope or inter-national reply coupon) or to [email protected] – and please tell usyour postal address.

JORODO

“I LIKE WHATYOU’VE DONE WITH YOUR SHADOW.”

Simulacra corner

letters

68 FT333


The psychic toldAdamski thathe would beworld-famous

New light onAdamski

In November 1980, an elderlyMilwaukee psychic named Lillian(“Myrah”) Lawrance providedinformation to help fill in a previ-ously unknown period in the lifeof flying saucer contactee GeorgeAdamski. That month she ap-peared on a Milwaukee televisionprogramme, taking calls fromviewers about personal problems,and giving them her predictions.Near the end of that portion of theshow, the interviewer, Ms BJ Raab,asked her about UFOs. Myrah re-plied: “I’ve been acquainted withUFOs since 1926. When GeorgeAdamski first came out with histheory that there were UFOs, eve-rybody laughed, tried to laugh athim – [Raab, interrupting: Are theyfrom another planet?] Oh, yes!”

I had never seen the pro-gramme before, but JeromeClark and I happened to be inthe TV studio for the segmenton UFOs. When Myrah said thatabout Adamski, Jerry and I lookedat each other in astonishment.But apparently it didn’t make alasting impression on him, as inlater years he had forgotten allabout it – though Jerry is graciousenough to add that he takes myword for it.

During the commercial break,I got more details from Myrah.She had known Adamski in StPaul (Minnesota) in 1926, andalso knew his wife and sister-in-law there. “He was an ordinarymilkman then,” and was also intothe psychic. Myrah suggestedto Adamski that he get out of StPaul, telling him, “You’ll be world-famous.” He protested, “Whatam I going to do?” But later he didmove to California, where he wasset up by a very wealthy woman,to establish an observatory anda (UFO) landing area. (Naturally, Ipresumed that this woman wasAlice K Wells, but Myrah did notrecognise the name.)

In 1944, Myrah had predictedthat Liberace (the flamboyantpianist, a native of suburbanMilwaukee) would become world-famous. Of course, it is easyto talk about such predictionsselectively and in retrospect.

There was a presidential electionthe day after the TV programme,and Myrah said she did not seehow Jimmy Carter could lose. Ofcourse, Ronald Reagan was thewinner, and served as president1981-1989.

To people who know somethingabout Adamski (or even aboutUFOs in general), some of whatMyrah said does not ring true.Nevertheless, research doesconfirm her main point. This wasdone using the Library Editionof Ancestry.com, with access tocensus records, city directories,family trees, etc. In 2014 I startedusing it to research GeorgeAdamski and his family, for a bookabout him that I am collaboratingon with Marc Hallet of Belgium.

Mary Adamski (née Shimber-sky) was the fifth of 10 children.Her younger sister Ella Blanche(Mrs Elmer C Rasmussen) livedin St Paul, and during that periodshe often moved around – in the1925 city directory, she was at100 E 11th St; in the 1926 direc-tory at 666 Selby Ave; and in the1927 directory at 1591 Schwabe.Ella eventually died in 1976.

The St Paul city directoriesfor 1924, 1925, and 1927 gaveAdamski’s occupation as painter.He had also worked as a painterin Yellowstone National Park in1917 (an FBI office memorandum

dated 16 De-cember 1953gave the yearincorrectly as1916), and inPortland, Ore-gon, in 1918.AlthoughAdamski wasan accom-plished artist,that probablyisn’t the kindof paintingthat these

documents are talking about. Infact, his 1920 census record (inPortland, Oregon) specifically sayshouse painter.

But Adamski could also havebeen a milkman in St Paul (asMyrah said), either during a cer-tain part of that four-year period,or perhaps at a different time ofthe day – because delivering milkwould have only kept him busy inthe early morning hours.

Adamski was missing from the1926 directory, and in the 1927one he had a different address.(He had moved from 775 Ray-mond Ave to 374 Sturgis.) Thereare multiple possible explanationsfor this, including that in 1926 hemoved before the first block wascanvassed, but after the secondblock was canvassed. Manyentries in the city directoriesincluded the name of the wife,but Adamski was by himself. (Butthen, Myrah Lawrance wasn’t list-ed with her husband either.) MaryAdamski was as obscure thenas she was later, in the pages ofGeorge Adamski’s books.

Whether George Adamskidid it at Myrah’s suggestion ornot, within a couple of years hedid leave St Paul. By 1928, hewas back in Los Angeles, wherehe had lived previously – stillidentified as a painter. In 1930the census-taker there recordedGeorge’s occupation as lecturer,in the field of “gener. Religion.” Asthey say, the rest is history.

Adamski was the subject of theexposé issue of James Moseley’sSaucer News (October 1957). Inmy opinion, this was Jim’s majorcontribution to ufology. Later heturned to treating the subject ina less-than-serious manner, such

as when he conspired with GrayBarker to fake “official” supportfor contactee George Adamskiwith the “RE Straith” letters, writ-ten in December of 1957. Theircolleague who provided the of-ficial State Department stationerythey used was James D Villard.

Villard wrote an article aboutthe Straith letters for Max Miller’sSaucers 6:4, of winter 1958/59(pp. 2-6). The article includedthe type of paper used and thenon-existence of an RE Straith inthe State Department. He saidhis father was the US Ambas-sador to the United Nations inGeneva. Donald Keyhoe had senthim a letter about the rumour thatVillard was an accomplice in theStraith matter, as provider of thestationery, but Villard denied it. Ihave some issues of Villard’s ownnewsletter, The UFOloger. He sentit out from Switzerland for a whilewhen his father was stationedthere.

I had long suspected Villard ofproviding the stationery, and JimMoseley finally confirmed it, in aletter to me dated 2 August 2011:“Yes, it was James Villard (whomI met only once, much later). Yourinfo about him + his father iscorrect.”

See also the incriminatingcorrespondence between Barkerand Villard about the station-ery, written in November andDecember of 1957. Michael DSwords quoted from it in CUFOS’sInternational UFO Reporter 17:6,Nov./Dec. 1992, p. 10.

Jim Moseley wrote in SaucerSmear (10 Jan 1985, when heconfessed that he and Barker hadhoaxed the letters) that Straith’sinitials were “in deference to R.E.Palmer [sic].” Even though – asI reminded him – Ray Palmer’smiddle initial was A rather thanE. Oops.

The FBI has an extensive file ontheir investigation of the Straithletters. Gray Barker seemed tobe their prime suspect, thoughof course proper names likehis were deleted. This file wasseparate from the FBI’s other ma-terial on Adamski, and required aspecific FOIA request.Richard W HeidenMilwaukee, Wisconsin

letters


letters

Gloves advised

Regarding SteveYates’s ‘Posh Soot’[FT330:73] I can vouch that mostmechanics treat carbon black withrespect, but the best-known sub-stance to avoid isViton, a ‘fluoroe-lastomer’ produced by DuPont.It is used in many applicationsand provides proven resistance tochemicals and extreme tem-peratures. It is mainly used in fuelsystem seals and hoses, O-rings andsome rubber gaskets. Story has itthat although safe when cool, onceits been heated to its limitViton be-comes aggressive in the sense thatif it comes into contact with fleshit eats its way in and like a necroticbug doesn’t stop until there is noneleft to consume. How true this is Idon’t know but I always wore gloveswhen removing seals and ‘O’ rings.Most classic car fanatics will knowthe story of designer GiovanniMichelotti – author of numeroussuperb designs forTriumph (Stag,TR4, Herald), Jaguar, BMW, Lancia,Ferrari, Maserati Alfa etc. – whowas once presented with a blockof ‘blue-grey plaster of paris’ forsculpting models. It proved to be anexcellent medium, and Michelottiwith his typical sleeves-rolled-upapproach, couldn’t wait to use it; infact it quickly became his favouritematerial for fleshing out ideas. Itseems initially he wasn’t told thatprotective clothing was a must,but apparently even after beingwarned he still carried on.The dustis said to have been absorbed intohis system through his lungs andskin and he died of cancer inTurinin 1980.Jack RomanoWorksop, Nottinghamshire

RecallingWarminster

I read David Clarke’s faintlyamusing article on David Simpson,Warminster and tripods [‘Warmin-ster Syndrome’, FT331:40-47]with interest as I attended themeeting called by Elwyn Rees inWarminsterTown Hall in August1965. Clarke describes Simpson as“a reserved, quietly spoken man”.However, he had a reputation forbeing argumentative in an unpleas-ant manner.

When Council Chairman Rees

called the public meeting, some200 or more people crammedinto theTown Hall. My BUFORAcolleagues, Dr Geoffrey Doel,BUFORA Chairman, and ‘Dr’ JohnCleary-Baker, journal editor, wereon the platform with Rev Ing.(Cleary-Baker was never BUFORAChairman, as stated by Clarke.)Afterwards, Dr Doel told me thatthey had felt obliged to reassurethe public that they were not inany danger. I felt Cleary-Bakerlacked objectivity on occasion.

The late Arthur Shuttlewoodwas the mainstay of the Warmin-ster phenomena. I saw at first handhow he manipulated lights-in-the-sky and satellites into UFOs.Andyes, people went on skywatches“wanting to believe”. I was toldShuttlewood’s colleague BobStrong had threatened me (for myscepticism) and I later learnedthat he had been mauled by alion at the Longleat estate. Shut-tlewood wrote some seven booksas I recall, and More UFOs OverWarminster suggested he was run-ning out of titles.

Much is made of Flying SaucerReview and others falling for theSIUFOP hoax. I am pleased to saythat, as publisher of the inter-nationally circulating Spacelinkmagazine, I chose to ignore thisstory.While Simpson prides him-self for his elaborate hoaxes, someregard this activity with the sort ofcontempt reserved for graffiti tag-gers. Did they contribute towardsscientific data?

In my 1986 booklet, The MovingStatues of Ballinspittle, I explainedthe phenomena at this remotegrotto in County Cork, using theautokinesis theory. However, thisdid not account for the wave ofreligious phenomena reportedfrom over four dozen locations. Somay I point out that the mysteri-ous sounds that triggered the‘Warminster Syndrome’ have notbeen adequately explained?

Curiously, Clarke makes no men-tion of the Bedford UFO Society’scaravan that was located nearWarminster. It contained severalchart recorders for monitoringevents in the area.Although Simp-son worked for the National Physi-cal Laboratory, I am not awarethat this equipment contributedanything useful in studying thealleged local anomalies.

Clarke compulsively mentionsRendlesham.At the ‘briefing’ atWoodbridge Community Hallon 11 July 2015, Colonel CharlesHalt (former Base Commanderat RAF Woodbridge) told us thatthe event in 1980 interrupted thebase Christmas party and that heremained mystified.

Clarke pads the end of hislengthy feature by rubbishing thestudy of UFOs. Now, back in 1979(the year of the House of LordsUFO debate), I put some effort intorunning a well-attended UFO con-ference at Morley College, not farfrom Waterloo Station. (The coursemade BBC national news.) At theend of term I asked the Principalabout continuing. I fancy he hadhad a couple of drinks that even-ing, and his reply was roughly: “MrBeer, I have been told by CountyHall [just up the road] that if I letyour [UFO] course continue, my[college] funding will be cut.”Thatwas more than Clarkean ridicule –that was brusque censorship.Lionel BeerHampton, Middlesex

From the mid-1960s until well intothe 1970s, the Warminster area ofWiltshire generated many reportsof strange phenomena (unusualsounds, UFO sightings, apparitions,etc.). David Clarke cites incidentsin which people were duped byhoaxers, and implies that the wholecase can be satisfactorily explainedin terms of psychosocial factors,such as misinterpretation, credu-lity and a ‘will to believe’. But hishighly selective portrayal doesn’tdo justice to the complexity of thewide-ranging events.

Admittedly,Arthur Shuttlewood(1920-1996), the main conduitfor published reports about thephenomena, wasn’t the mostreliable of writers. He was a localjournalist, and wrote several booksbearing on the manifestations,starting with The WarminsterMystery, which was first published(by Neville Spearman, London) in1967 (not 1968, as Clarke asserts).Shuttlewood’s writings containdirect quotes from witnesses. Butjudging from the relative formalityof the wording, I suspect that heexercised some licence in formu-lating the quotations. Similarly,I suspect that he paraphrasedwritten testimony and passed it offas direct quotation. He was proneto exaggeration 1, but I don’t thinkthat entitles us to write off thetestimony of the many witnessesthat he cited. Indeed, a positiveaspect of his reporting was thathe often gave background detailsabout them (even their addresses,on occasion). Some of them wouldhave been well known in the localcommunity. Fabricating complete-ly bogus stories about them wouldhave exposed him to reputationaldamage and the risk of losing hisjob with the Warminster Journal.

Even if we disregard all of thewitness testimony cited by Shut-tlewood, there remain grounds forthinking that the area was the set-ting for paranormal phenomena.In his 2007 book UFO Warminster:Cradle of Contact 2, Kevin Goodmandescribes unusual manifestationsthat he and some friends experi-enced there in the 1970s. He men-tions, for instance, an unsuccessfulattempt to photograph a UFO in

letters

70 FT333


the summer of 1977 (pp. 113-115).At the time, he and his friendChris Butler were staying at aWarminster guesthouse. Butlerwas lying on his bed, gazing out ofa window. Goodman writes:

“I sat on my bed reading a book[…]. Suddenly, Chris […] ran tothe window, crying out, ‘What thefuck’s that?!’ I got off my bed […]and joined Chris at the window.Over Cop Heap, slowly traversingthe sky from right to left, was asilver, cigar-shaped object. Chrisfumbled for his binoculars, andthrough the lenses could see auniform elliptical object. Hepassed the binoculars to me andI confirmed what Chris had seen.I handed the binoculars backto Chris and began to rummagethrough my camera equipment.[…] As I started to screw on a400mm telephoto lens, I left theroom, running down the stairsinto the back garden […] As I was

using a long, heavy lens I neededto avoid camera shake. I hadn’tbrought a tripod to Warminsterwith me, but I knew I could usethe post in the garden to brace thecamera. […The film in the camera]had a rating of 400ASA – one ofthe fastest film speeds commer-cially available at that time – so Ifelt certain that I would be ableto catch the object in mid-flight,without any blurring. I reached thepost, lined up the camera and care-fully focused.The object was in theviewfinder, with blue sky and high,light grey cloud in the background.I carefully took three exposures,manually winding the film on, refo-cusing each time, before the UFOwent behind the trees on Elm Hilland out of my view.As I finished,Chris yelled from the bedroomwindow, binoculars still to his eyes,‘There are people on the hill, andthey’re pointing at it too… It’s gotto be a real object!’[…]

“My film was developed whenwe returned to Stourbridge.Whenthe prints came back, there wasblue sky, white clouds but no UFO!In the left bottom corner of thefinal print were the tips of thetrees on Elm hill. […] I assure you,I had the object dead centre in theviewfinder, and we could see fromthe print that the exposure hadobviously been correct. […] I had,at the time, my own enlarger andprinting equipment at home. BothChris and I spent a good few hourslooking at the negatives throughthe enlarger, at different settings.At no time did we ever see any signof that UFO.”

In an email to me in March 2010,Chris Butler stated that, at first,the UFO looked like the fuselageof a plane reflecting the sunlight,but no wings or tail were apparent.

Goodman may not have beenthe only person to experiencedifficulty in capturing images of

the local UFO phenomena. Forexample, according to Shuttle-wood’s second book 3, Bill Nixonof Pathé News had taken movieshots of UFOs from Cradle Hill(near Warminster), in both colourand black-and-white, but nothingappeared on his film (p. 41). In myview, this raises the possibility thatsome of the sightings were para-normal hallucinatory experiences,perhaps engendered by a trickster-ish higher intelligence.

1 See, for example: Steve Dewey &John Ries, In Alien Heat: The WarminsterMystery Revisited (Anomalist Books, SanAntonio, Texas, 2006); Peter A McCue,Zones of Strangeness: An Examination ofParanormal and UFO Hot Spots (Author-House, Bloomington, Indiana, 2012).

2 Southampton, Swallowtail Books.

3 Warnings from Flying Friends, Warmin-ster, Portway Press, 1968.

Peter A McCueBy email

Star Jelly?

On my morning dog walk in early July 2015,the white blob visible in the first picture [right]caught my eye at the side of the road – PotHouse Lane, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire. It hadthe initial appearance of frogspawn but not asingle black speck as you would expect, andwas of a brighter-white colour and much denser-looking than the amphibious spawn we get inour ponds. It was lying under some pretty densetrees and hedgerow and as you can see fromthe curbstone in the foreground, right next tothe road. Handily for scale, a standard size canlid was lying just within shot.

This would have been an odd talking pointhad it not been a fairly regular occurrence in thisneighbourhood. My father and I have walkeddogs over the west Pennine Moors every weekfor years, which means we have ‘got our eye-in’when it comes to spotting the out-of-place: andwe’ve spotted this stuff at least half a dozentimes in all seasons. For those who claim it’sa gift from the Gods, this would appear tovindicate the “non-terrestrial, anti-organism”rationale as frogs and the like certainly wouldn’tbe out on the top of the moors after heavysnows in November (I nearly put my hand in thestuff making snowballs), nor should the spawnstill be ongoing half-way through the year.

I’d like to add my own humble theory (pureconjecture, of course): I always assumed thatthis “Meteor Shit” (to quote Stephen King’scharacter in Creepshow) was the result of theinteraction between vermin and amphibians; i.e.that a fox or mink had guzzled some unfortunatecritter, and that due to some biological/digestive

incompatibility had returned the plasma up theway it had gone down, but in a new chemicalform. I’ve witnessed the canine precedent ofdogs chowing down on the discarded umbilici ofnew-born lambs, only to start the ‘bilge-pump’two days later and bring back an ungodly blackoil that no decent person should have to dealwith in the early hours.

The second photo was taken about 14 dayslater. The stuff has thickened up/evaporatedsomewhat, but not into thin air as the legendsays it should, (rain, thunder, humidity as fac-tors?), and by my observations it has held nonutritional value for any other scavengers.

The other anti-space factor is the dense over-growth: unless the goop de-con/re-congealed

as it passed through the trees it must havebeen laid (barfed) at ground level.

There is a specific spot on the moor wherewe have come across this more than twice: itis within a quarter of a mile of a sinkhole wherefrogs breed in profusion (and presumably hiber-nate), and is on a route where we have trackedfoxes and mink in winter as they make beelinesfor the bins at the back of a fairly remote pub.

If anyone has touched this slime and beentransformed I shall stand corrected, but I’lladmit I’m not man enough to go sticking mydigits in space-snot for the sake of fortean-furtherance.James CrossleyOswaldtwistle, Lancashire


Comforting presence

My wife Carol and I have had many oddexperiences over the years. As a teenagershe would wake on several occasions withthe feeling someone was either stroking ornuzzling her hair. This feeling would continueafter she woke and would continue untilshe fell asleep again. She never foundit unsettling or scary. She described thestroking as soothing, as if someone werecomforting her and reassuring her with theirpresence.

My wife’s brother moved into her roomwhen she moved out and one day hementioned in passing about being woken bythe feeling of having his hair stroked in thenight. One of my wife’s friends was sleepingover when they were kids; the girl woke upscreaming that someone was in the roomtouching her hair and refused to go back tosleep until my wife had opened the wardrobeand checked under the bed for an intruderand left the light on for the rest of night.Many years later, after we’d married and wereliving in our first home together, the comfortingpresence returned, visiting when I was away onbusiness, leaving my wife and children alone inthe house.

Some other odd phenomena happened inthat house. We had things appear and reappearin weird places, in cupboards and under thecovers at the foot of freshly made beds. Severaltimes my wife and children caught sight of asmall blond-haired girl in one of the rooms. Shewould appear for an instant, stand staring atthem, then vanish without a sound.

It seemed we also had a pet we weren’taware of. I’d been napping one afternoon whenI felt what I thought was our dog jump onto thebed and walk along beside me, finally stoppingto stand on the pillow right by my head. Idistinctly felt the small feet land on the bed,the feet walking on the bed and the pressureon the pillow beside me when it stopped. Iopened my eyes ready to tell what I thoughtwas the dog to get off the bed. Nothing.There were prints on the bed and pillow, butno dog. My wife told me later that she’d hadsimilar experiences in the house: the feelingof something small walking beside her on thebed and then standing beside her head onthe pillow. She’d open her eyes to find shewas alone. When talking about it later, we bothagreed that the feeling was actually more likea two-legged rather than four-legged creature. Atiny biped.

We only found out about these sharedexperiences years later when we talked aboutthe odd things that had happened in that oldhouse. We also agreed that the experiencesincreased when we were renovating the house.

I can recall my youngest son, when he wasabout four or five, asking me about the colouredballs of light that followed me around the house

all the time. When I told him I didn’t knowwhat he was talking about, he became upset,insisting that he could see the balls of light andthat they were there behind me as we spoke. Itfreaked me out at the time, but I wish now I’dasked him more about those lights. He nevermentioned them again.Gary SmithVictoria, Australia

A busy house

When my husband and I relocated toManchester 11 years ago, we had very littletime to find somewhere to live between gettingmarried and getting the go-ahead to move. Onvisiting letting agencies we found our choicein the location we wanted limited to a tiny flator a large, turn-of-the-century house. Naturallythere was no contest, and at that time thecheaper rent after living down south meant thatan Edwardian house in north Manchester wasaffordable.

I am usually a bit sensitive to what I term‘busy’ houses, but in the chaos and stressof moving in I was too preoccupied to noticeanything out of the ordinary. It wasn’t until weput our first picture up that I began to wonderif the house was as quiet as it first seemed.The picture was a glass-covered framelessprint of nudes dancing by Rodin. My husbandfirmly secured it (or so we thought) to the wallabove the large, marble fireplace, but about20 minutes later it fell, clearing the largemantelpiece by a good few inches and landingon the floor. The glass was smashed irreparablyand it frightened the life out of us. We couldn’twork out how the picture had managed to avoidthe wide mantelpiece below it, but we were toorelieved that no other damage had been doneto worry about it any further. And so it began.

The toilet would flush itself at nightso often that we began to ignore it; keyswould jangle in the back door lock, andon one occasion my husband watchedtransfixed from the toilet as the showercurtain ‘shook’ by itself and a shampoobottle jumped into the bath. Some ofthese incidents are perhaps easy todebunk, but others were not so easy toexplain away. One night I awoke to see ashape bending over my bed as if to lookmore closely at me. The only way I candescribe it is to say that it looked as if itwas made up of the ‘snowiness’ you wouldget on pre-digital television sets when thesignal was weak or receiving interference.

One weekend my parents visited andmy mother swore she saw a gold-framedmirror appear on the bathroom wall whenwe only had a frameless modern versionabove the sink. The next incident followedclosely after that. My mother had madesome slightly disparaging remarks aboutwho might have lived in the house and Icautioned her not to say such things in

a ‘busy’ house. Shortly after my parents hadleft to drive home, the biggest haunted housecliché of all took place: a small picture of myparents in a metal stand-up frame which hadbeen on the mantelpiece for months crashed tothe floor. It was unharmed and I replaced it andthen made a quick call to my parents’ mobileto check all was well. It never fell down again inthe remaining time we lived there, and neitherdid my mother ever mention the previousoccupants again.

The strangest thing of all is that I never feltscared in the house, even when alone at night;I was more annoyed than anything. I recallmisplacing my purse just before going out andI could have sworn I just had it in front of me.In exasperation I shouted to the house that Ihad enough of flying pictures, flushing loos andjangling keys and yes, you guessed it, suddenlythere it was, on the table right in front of me.

As I say, in general the house did not feeluncomfortable apart from one of the tworeception rooms that we used for storage.This particular room had a horrible blood-redcarpet and bizarrely an old sword propped upagainst one wall. Very off-putting. In time wefound a house we wished to buy and movedout. It wasn’t until a number of years later that Irealised that the only time the house was quietwas when I had been very ill and had requiredan emergency operation. Was the housesensitive enough to know I needed peace orwas I just too busy recovering to notice anythingat that time?

In March 2014 we noted that the housewas up for sale. Looking at the pictures on theestate agent website, the sword was gone butthe horrible red carpet remained… and whatelse?Vicky HoltManchester

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 4NPOR E-MAIL TO [email protected] post your message on the http://forum.forteantimes.com.

it happened to me…

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

InVictorian times, the ‘sport’ of rattingenjoyed considerable popularity. In thisunsavoury pastime, a number of rats wereput into a rat-pit, and then an angry terrierwas released. Bets were made how many ratsthe dog could kill within a certain amount oftime, or how long it would take for the animalto kill 20 or 100 rats.

It would appear that ratting originated asa form of 18th century dog trial, where thekilling instinct of young terriers was tested bygiving them a few rats to kill. With time, the

sport spread from rural areas to London andother cities. Instead of just being dog trials,the ratting matches became increasinglycompetitive, with a greater number of ratsput into the pit, and a good deal of betting

going on. A dog owner might announce in thenewspapers that his animal was capable ofkilling a certain number of rats in a certainamount of time – say 20 rats in five minutes– and bets were placed as to whether the dogwould be capable of this feat. After a sack oflive rats had been emptied into the pit, thedog was let loose on its path of destruction.The best dogs dispatched each rodent with aswift bite, without worrying at it or carryingit around, before attacking the next rat.Therats scurried around as best as they could,sometimes piling up in the corner of the rat-pit as if to seek protection, at other timesdesperately fighting for their lives.

Already in the early 1800s, there wereseveral rat-pits in London, the most famousof which was the Westminster Pit, located inDuck Lane, Orchard Street. In the 1820s, thissleazy establishment became the catalystof the growth of London ratting, thanks toBilly the Raticide, the most famous rattingdog ever. Billy was a muscular dog of 26lb(12kg), mostly white in colour, with strongjaws and a fierce glare in his eye. He had seta record already in 1820, by killing 20 rats in71 seconds, at the cost of being deprived ofone of his own eyes by one of the infuriatedrodents. In September 1822, Billy waswagered for 20 sovereigns to kill 100 rats inless than 12 minutes. Since ratting of thismagnitude had rarely been seen before, theWestminster Pit was completely full.Theaudience, nearly 2,000 strong, laid manyhundreds of pounds on the outcome of the

42. THE RAT-KILLINGMONKEY OFMANCHESTER

S T R A N G E A N D S E N S A T I O N A L S T O R I E S F R O M

JAN BONDESON presents moresensational stories and startlingVictorian images from the"worst newspaper in England"– the Illustrated Police News.

TOP: The Great 100 Rat Match. ABOVE An old colour print depicting the famous ratting dog Billy.

match.There was a huge cheer when MrDew brought the squirming, growling Billydown to the pit, and another when a hugesack of large sewer rats was carried into thearena.The gentlemen puffed hard at theircigars to escape the pungent smell of therodents, and tankards of beer were liberallyswigged.There was a roar as the umpire andtimekeeper checked their watches, and Billywas set free.To the delight of his supporters,the fierce little dog dispatched all 100 ratsin eight minutes, 45 seconds – a new worldrecord.

There could be serious grudge matcheswhen two ambitious dog fanciers or rat-pitproprietors matched their best dogs againsteach other. Syndicates were formed to backthe dogs, hundreds of pounds were bet, andcrowds gathered in their thousands to backtheir favourites.The beer and the excitementsometimes got the better of the audience,and serious fights could break out. When acelebrated provincial ratting dog challengedone of the London stars, the atmospheremight resemble that of a present-day footballgame between a London club and an out-of-town rival. In 1848, the London dog Jackwas carried round the streets in a drunkenprocession after beating the Southamptonbitch Beauty by 106 rats to 100 in a fiercelycontested encounter. In another epic rattingmatch, the Manchester bitch Miss Lily, undereight pounds in weight, was wagered to kill100 large barn rats. After a frenzied effort,she narrowly lost by one minute, 40 seconds;still, the London sportsmen gave her astanding ovation.

The Godfather of the London RattingFancy was Jemmy Shaw, a dog-fancier andpublican who kept his rat-pit at the BlueAnchor, Bunhill-row, St Luke’s. Jemmy wasproud of his little dog Tiny, only five anda half pounds (2.5kg) in weight, since thisfierce little terrier had once won him a largebet by killing 200 rats in less than an hour. Bythe 1840s, the ratting matches were governedby a strict system of rules, constructed toensure fairness for the dog-owners and fairplay for the betting fraternity.There wasalways a match umpire, and a time-keeper aswell.The dog’s second was strictly forbiddento interfere with the gory proceedings inthe pit, except to cheer the animal on withgestures and verbal commands. He was alsoallowed to take the dog out of the pit if hefelt it needed rest or refreshments, and toblow on the rats when they had piled up inthe pit corner, in order to disperse them.After some distressing incidents involving

frenzied sewer rats running up the handler’slegs and inflicting very painful bites, the doghandlers made it a habit of wearing theirtrousers tied to their boots.

A sample of the rats was closely examinedbefore the match, to rule out that they hadbeen drugged with laudanum beforehandto make the dog’s task easier. A dog couldbe disqualified for a false pick-up, or forjumping out of the pit. A badly trained dogworrying the rat after killing it or carryingit proudly around the pit brought a volley ofoaths from its backers.

A tricky question was what to do ifsome of the rats played dead. In a 50-ratmatch, three rats, and three rats only, wereallowed to ‘come to life’ after time hadbeen called and the dog lifted out of thepit.The opposite party was allowed to makean appeal by calling out That ‘un ‘baintdead, guv’nor!’ and pointing at the rodentin question.The umpire would then put therat within a chalked circle on his table, andstrike its tail three times with a metal rod; if

the rat managed to crawl out of the circle, itwas ‘alive’, otherwise it counted as ‘dead’.

Supplying rats for London’s 70 rat-pitswas an industry of its own. If we assume thatthese establishments were each open twicea week, and that 200 rats were destroyed ateach session, this would imply that the rat-pits of London alone would require 4,000rats each day.The rodents were supplied bya network of rat-catchers, who scavenged forlive rats in warehouses, hedges and ditches,and often in the sewers as well. Jemmy Shaw,who boasted that he never had less than2,000 rats on the premises, had a number ofrat-catcher families dependent on him. Hebought between 300 and 700 rats each week,paying two or three pence for large, well-fedspecimens. Jemmy kept his rats on a diet ofgood barley meal, not from kindness of heartbut to keep them from eating each other. Inspite of the relatively good financial rewards,rat-catching does not appear to have been avery amusing line of work. Henry Mayhewonce spoke to one of the rat-catchers, who

A N G E A N D S E N S A T I O N A L S T O R I E S F R O M

ABOVE: Ratting in the Haymarket, from the IPN, 24 Dec 1870.

gave a graphicdemonstration ofwhat it felt like tohave your fingerbitten to thebone by a largesewer rat, andshowed the besttechnique to pullout a rat’s teeththat had brokenoff inside a bitewound.

The long-timeaim for JemmyShaw and otherdog-fanciers wasof course to finda dog capableof matching theexploits of Billythe Raticide.During the 1840sand 1850s, therewere severalattempts atbeating Billy’s epic 100-rat record, but nonewas successful. Then in 1861, Jemmy Shaw’sblack-and-tan Bull Terrier Jacko was spokenof as a future star in the London rat-pits.Jacko destroyed 60 rats in two minutes,42 seconds, with a killing time of just 2.7seconds per rat. In 1862, Jacko beat Billy’srecord, killing 100 rats in just five minutes,28 seconds. There have been claims fromvarious ‘experts’ alleging that the exertionsof Billy, or Jacko, or both, had been aided bysome person drugging the rats beforehand.

But as we have seen, there were safeguardsagainst such skullduggery, and the matchestook place before numerous and criticalspectators; had the rats been drugged, theywould surely have detected it. The crowningmoment of Jacko’s career was the famous1,000-rat match of 1862, in which Jemmy’sfamous dog killed 100 rats once weekly for10 consecutive weeks, destroying all 1,000rodents in less than a 100 minutes. Jacko wasstill alive in 1866, when he and Jemmy wereguests of honour at the Crystal Palace dog

show; between 1861and 1866, Jacko hadwon 300 matches, anddestroyed 8,000 rats.Just like Billy, Jackowas stuffed afterdeath; his record stillstands today.

There wasturmoil among theManchester RattingFancy after anunprecedented matchin 1880. Mr Benson’sfox-terrier Turk wasmatched against MrLewis’s monkey, in a12-rat match. Sincethe monkey was an

unknown quantity, and the dog a formidableratter, Turk was the favourite. After the doghad killed the 12 rats in very good time,the monkey was put into the rat-pit. MrLewis handed it a hammer, which the cleverprimate made good use of, bashing therodents’ heads in with alacrity and winningthe match with time to spare.

Several months later, it was still debatedwhether the rules of ratting should beamended to exclude monkeys wielding bluntinstruments.

ABOVE: The amazing Rat-

ting Monkey, from the IPN,

4 Sept 4 1880. Note the

expression on the dog’s

face in the background.

LEFT: A ratting scene.

andrew

may

&pa

uljackson

The “Jurassic Coast” is thetourist-friendly name givento the 100-mile stretch ofcoastline between Swanage in

Dorset and Exmouth in East Devon. In2001, UNESCO added it to their list ofWorld Heritage Sites, in recognitionof “the area’s important fossil sitesand classic coastal geomorphologicfeatures”. Officially known simplyas “The Dorset and East DevonCoast”, the popular name comes fromthe fact that most of the exposedrocks date from the Jurassic period,approximately 200 to 145 million yearsago.

For many people, the word Jurassicis synonymous with dinosaurs, butmost of the fossils to be found onthe Jurassic Coast represent marineanimals – including ‘Loch Nessmonster’-style plesiosaurs – ratherthan true dinosaurs. There’s a goodreason for this: the whole area layunderwater during the Jurassicperiod. The only thing a land-dwellingdinosaur would have been likely to dothere was drown. Fortunately for fossil-hunters (but not for the dinosaurs), asmall group of them did just that.

Scelidosaurus – a large, armour-plated plant-eater similar inappearance to the better knownStegosaurus and Ankylosaurus – is theJurassic Coast’s very own dinosaur. Thestretch of coast between Charmouthand Lyme Regis is the only place inthe world where specimens of thegenus – about eight in all – have beenidentified with any certainty. It ispossible that the whole group of themwas swept into the sea in a singleflash flood. The most complete fossilof Scelidosaurus was discovered nearCharmouth, where a replica can beseen in the Heritage Coast Centre (theoriginal is now in Bristol Museum).

The Jurassic Coast was a populartourist destination long before itacquired its modern name. Lying

chalk of Osmington Hill.Britain has many “white

horses”, but the one atOsmington is unusual in

that the horse has a rider. Itis also one of the largest; at just

under a 100m (330ft) it is secondonly to the Uffington White Horse inOxfordshire, which dates from the lateBronze Age or Early Iron Age. Near-disaster struck the Osmington horsein 1989 when the TV show ChallengeAnneka covered the chalk figure with160 tonnes of limestone chippingsin a misguided “makeover” stunt.The immediate effect was indeedto enhance the figure’s appearance,but over time the chippings beganto slide down the hill, causing severedamage to the original outline. It wasnot until March 2012 – a few monthsbefore Weymouth was due to hostthe Olympic sailing events – thatall of the limestone chippings werefinally removed and the original chalkcarving was properly restored.

Weymouth has a long history.Among other things it’s said to be theplace where the Black Death cameashore from France in 1348, but thetown’s most intriguing historicaloddity dates from a few centuries afterthat. It can be seen in Maiden Street,on a building which today is a publicconvenience. Lodged high up in thewall, above the sign saying “Ladies”, isa 17th century cannonball.

The Crabchurch Conspiracy wasa Royalist plot during the EnglishCivil War, and Weymouth was rightat the centre of it. The aim was toseize back the port, which was underParliamentary control, so that a forceof French soldiers could land and addtheir weight to the Royalist side. Theattempt to take the port led to severalweeks of heavy fighting, and it wasduring this battle that the cannonballis said to have found its way into thewall of the ladies’ toilets.

The stretch of Jurassic Coast to thewest of Weymouth is dominated byChesil Beach: a long, straight barrierof shingle that was formed at the endof the last Ice Age, around 10,000years ago. Between the beach and themainland is a saltwater lagoon calledthe Fleet, which has become a havenfor wading birds and other wildlife. Atthe westernmost end of this lagoon,near the village of Abbotsbury,another spherical munition can beseen – in just as unlikely a setting asWeymouth’s cannonball.

Abbotsbury Swannery is a populardestination for tourists wishing to getaway from the hustle and bustle ofWeymouth. But its peace and quiet wasshattered during WWII when the RAFused the lagoon as an experimentalbombing range. The most famousweapon to be tested there was theBarnes Wallis “bouncing bomb”. Twocompeting designs were evaluated:a cylindrical design called Upkeep

roughly at its centre is the seaside townof Weymouth, which was attractingsummer visitors as long ago as the 18thcentury. One person who returned yearafter year was King George III, and itwas largely thanks to his patronagethat the town became one of the mostfashionable seaside resorts in England.In gratitude for this, a group of localsdecided to immortalise the King – andhis favourite horse, Adonis – in theform of a gigantic figure carved into the

76 FT333


PAUL JACKSON and ANDREW MAY seek out the stranger side of the unesco

world Heritage site – from dinosaurs and daleks to nodding donkeys.

103. Oddities of the Jurassic Coast

FORTEANTRAVELLER

There’s acannonball inthe wall of theladies’ toilet

ABOVE: Barneswallis’s Highballbouncing bombon display atabbotsburyswannery.

BELOW: a flyingsaucer moneybank, us1950s.

pHoTo

sBy

andrew

may

&pa

uljackson

and a dimpled sphere called Highball.The tests showed that Upkeep workedbest, and this was the bomb that wenton to be employed in the legendaryDambuster raids. However, it was abomb of the other type – the sphericalHighball – that was dredged up in 1992and put on public display at AbbotsburySwannery (this is an inert prototype,filled with concrete and cork).

On the other side of Weymouth,near East Lulworth, there’s anotherstrange reminder of WWII. In 1943,the entire village of Tyneham, togetherwith much of the surrounding area, wascommandeered by the Army for use asan artillery firing range. At the time,the residents were told this was justa temporary measure and they wouldbe able to return to their homes at theend of the war. That was not the casethough, and the site remains in Armyhands to this day. The Lulworth Ranges,as they’re known, are still used for livefiring exercises, although they’re opento the public most weekends, as wellas during the whole of August and overthe Christmas period. For the visitor,it’s like stepping into a timewarp. Thecottages, abandoned since the 1940s,have been left to fall into picturesquedecay, untouched by the second half

of the 20th century, or the 21st (seeFT216:40-43).

A few miles east of the ghost town ofTyneham, on the edge of KimmeridgeBay, there’s another sight morereminiscent of the western UnitedStates than the English countryside:a “nodding donkey” oil well. Oiloperations in the local area began in1935, when people began searchingfor the source of small oil seepagesobserved at various locations alongthe coast. Between 1958 and 1980 sixwells were drilled around KimmeridgeBay, but only one of these, the K1 well,found commercially useful reservesof oil and gas. The nodding donkeyat the Kimmeridge K1 site has beenpumping non-stop since 1961, makingit the oldest working oil well in theUK. Drawing oil from 350 metres(1,150ft) below sea level, the K1 pumpproduced 350 barrels a day at its peak,although this has now dropped to lessthan 100. The K1 well now forms partof the larger Wytch Farm complex,which ranks as the largest onshore oilfield in Western Europe – even thoughthe majority of Jurassic Coast touristsremain blissfully unaware that blackgold is being extracted beneath theirfeet.

Kimmeridge lies on the so-called“Isle of Purbeck”, which is not anisle at all but a peninsula. The areais particularly known for its highquality stone, which has been used forprestigious building projects in Londonand elsewhere. As a result, the Purbeckstretch of the Jurassic Coast – itseasternmost section – has seen its fairshare of quarries over the years. One ofthese, the now disused Winspit Quarry,is now a popular tourist destination foradventurous climbers... and for anorak-clad sci-fi geeks.

Winspit Quarry can only be reachedon foot, by walking along the coast pathfrom the village of Worth Matravers.The quarry was worked until around1940, when the site was taken overfor use as part of the south coast’snaval and air defences during the war.Now open to the public, the quarryand surrounding cliff are probablybest known for their use as a filminglocation on numerous low-budget TVshows.

For example, Winspit appearedin the Doctor Who adventure “TheUnderwater Menace” in 1967, whichsaw the second Doctor (PatrickTroughton) encounter a band ofsurvivors from Atlantis on a supposedlydeserted volcanic island. Morefamously, the fourth Doctor (TomBaker) also visited the quarry in 1979for “The Destiny of the Daleks”. In thisinstance, Winspit stood in for the planetD-5-Gamma-Z-Alpha – better known asSkaro, the homeworld of the Daleks.The quarry’s ruined buildings provideda suitably bleak representation of whatan abandoned Dalek city might looklike.

With a ghost town, an oil well anda stand-in for an alien planet – not tomention bouncing bombs, Civil Warcannonballs and giant chalk figures– the Jurassic Coast has no shortageof attractions for the fortean traveller(and did we mention the dinosaurs?).

This article is extractedand adapted from WeirdWessex: A Tourist Guide to100 Strange and UnusualSights by paul jackson andandrew may, publishedby cFZ publishing Group

(Fortean words imprint), 2015.


ANDREWMAY is a formerscientist and regular FTcontributor with a lifelonginterest in pulp fiction andweird stuff. He blogs at

forteana-blog.blogspot.co.uk/

PAuL JAcksON is afrequent contributor ofnews clippings to FT. Hehas a worryingly largecollection of lego anda blog called random

encounters with the unusual.

TOP: winspitQuarry,aka skaro,the dalekhomeworld

ABOVE LEFT:The 17thcenturycannonballlodged abovea ladies’ toiletin weymouth.

ABOVE RIGHT:The lost villageof Tyneham.

Fortean Times is a monthlymagazine of news, reviewsand research on strange

phenomena and experiences,curiosities, prodigies and portents.It was founded by Bob Rickardin 1973 to continue the work ofCharles Fort (1874–1932).

Born of Dutch stock in Albany,New York, Fort spent many yearsresearching scientific literature inthe New York Public Library andthe British Museum Library. Hemarshalled his evidence and setforth his philosophy in The Book ofthe Damned (1919), New Lands(1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents(1932).

He was sceptical of scientificexplanations, observing howscientists argued according to theirown beliefs rather than the rulesof evidence and that inconvenientdata were ignored, suppressed,discredited or explained away.He criticised modern science forits reductionism, its attempts todefine, divide and separate. Fort’sdictum “One measures a circlebeginning anywhere” expressesinstead his philosophy of Continuityin which everything is in anintermediate and transient statebetween extremes.

He had ideas of the Universe-as-organism and the transient nature

of all apparent phenomena, coinedthe term ‘teleportation’, and wasperhaps the first to speculate thatmysterious lights seen in the skymight be craft from outer space.However, he cut at the very roots ofcredulity: “I conceive of nothing, inreligion, science or philosophy, thatis more than the proper thing towear, for a while.”

Fort was by no means the firstperson to collect anomalies andoddities – such collections haveabounded from Greece to Chinasince ancient times. Fortean Timeskeeps alive this ancient task ofdispassionate weird-watching,exploring the wild frontiers betweenthe known and the unknown.

From the viewpoint ofmainstream science, its function iselegantly stated in a line from EnidWelsford’s book on the mediævalfool: “The Fool does not lead arevolt against the Law; he lures usinto a region of the spirit where...the writ does not run.”

Besides being a journal ofrecord, FT is also a forum forthe discussion of observationsand ideas, however absurd orunpopular, and maintains a positionof benevolent scepticism towardsboth the orthodox and unorthodox.

FT toes no party line.

78 FT333


Special CorrespondentsAUSTRALIA Graham Cordon (SA), Tony Healy (ACT), John Palazzi (NSW), Len Watson (Qld).

CANADA Brian Chapman (BC), Graham Conway (BC), CYBERSPACE Richard Alexander, John

F Callahan, Hugh Henry, Steve Scanlon, Janet Wilson. ENGLAND Gail-Nina Anderson, Louise

Bath, James Beckett, Claire Blamey, Peter Christie, Mat Coward, Kate Eccles, Paul Farthing,

George Featherston, Paul Gallagher, Alan Gardiner, Keith George, Anne Hardwick, Richard

Lowke, Alexis Lykiard, Diana Lyons, Dave Malin, Nick Maloret, Valerie Martin, Tom Ruffles,

Meryl Santis, Paul Screeton, Gary Stocker, Roman Suchyj, Frank Thomas, Paul Thomas, Nick

Warren, Owen Whiteoak, Bobby Zodiac. FRANCE Michel Meurger. GERMANY Ulrich Magin.

HOLLAND Robin Pascoe. IRELAND Andy Conlon, Pat Corcoran, Andrew Munro. ISRAEL

Zvi Ron. NEW ZEALAND Peter Hassall. ROMANIA Iosif Boczor. SCOTLAND Roger Musson.

SWEDEN Sven Rosén. THAILAND Chris Williams. USA Loren Coleman (ME), Jim Conlan

(CT), Myron Hoyt (ME), Greg May (FL), Dolores Phelps (TX), Jim Riecken (NY), Joseph Trainor

(MA), Jeffrey Vallance (CA), Gary Yates (UT). WALES Janet & Colin Bord.

Fort Sorters (who classify clippings placed in the Archives for Fortean Research)

Phil Baker, Rachel Carthy, Chris Josiffe, Mark Pilkington, Bob Rickard, Paul Sieveking, Ian

Simmons.

Clipping Credits for FT333Richard Alexander, Gerard Apps, Louise Bath, James Beckett, John F Callahan, Brian

Chapman, Andy Conlon, Pat Corcoran, Mat Coward, JD Evans, Paul Farthing, Alan Gardiner,

Keith George, Tony Healy, Hugh Henry, Nigel Herwin, Ernest Jackson, Tony James, Rosalind

Johnson, Diana Lyons, Dave Malin, Nick Maloret, Valerie Martin, Greg May, Andy Munro,

Alan Murdie, John Palazzi, Zvi Ron, Tom Ruffles, Steve Scanlon, Paul Screeton, Jonathan

Sibley, Frank Thomas, Carole Tyrrell, Nicholas Warren, Clive Watson, Len Watson, Owen

Whiteoak, Janet Wilson, Gary Yates, Bobby Zodiac.

how to subscribeANNUAL SUB of 12 issues (inc p&p) UK £39.98; EC £47.50; USA $89.99($161.98 for 24 issues); Rest of World £55.Please see house ads in the latest issue for details of special offers.

North America (US & Canada)Subscribers should contact: IMS. 3330 Pacific Avenue, Suite 404, VirginiaBeach, VA 23454, USA. Tel: 800-428 3003 (toll free); Fax: 757 428 6253;Or order online at www.imsnews.com.

UK, Europe & rest of worldMajor credit cards accepted. Cheques or money orders should be in sterling,preferably drawn on a London bank and made payable to Dennis Publishing.Mail to: Fortean Times Dovetail Services, 800 Guillat Avenue, Kent SciencePark, Sittingbourne, ME9 8GU, UK. NB: This address should be used fororders and subscriptions only.Telephone payments and queries: 0844 844 0049.Fax payments and queries: 0844 815 0866.E-mail payments and queries: [email protected]

how to submitDennis Publishing reserves all rights to reuse material submitted by FTreaders and contributors in any medium or format.

IllustrationsContact the art director by email ([email protected]) before sendingsamples of work. We cannot guarantee to respond to unsolicited work,though every effort will be made to do so.

Article submissionsPlease send all submissions to David Sutton, Editor, Fortean Times,PO BOX 71602, London E17 0QD, UK or email [email protected]. As we receive a large volume of submissions, a decision may not beimmediate.

LettersLetters of comment or about experiences are welcome. Send to PO Box2409, London NW5 4NP, UK or email [email protected]. Wereserve the right to edit submissions.

Books, periodicals, DVDs and other material for reviewSend to: Fortean Times, PO BOX 71602, London E17 0QD, UK.

CaveatFT aims to present the widest range of interpretations to stimulatediscussion and welcomes helpful criticism. The opinions of contributorsare not necessarily those of the editors. FT can take no responsibility forsubmissions, but will take all reasonable care of material in its possession.Requests for return of material should be accompanied by a stampedaddressed envelope or an International Reply Coupon.

We occasionally use material that has been placed in the public domain. It is not alwayspossible to identify the copyright holder. If you claim credit for something we’ve published,we’ll be pleased to make acknowledgement.

Regular clipsters have provided thelifeblood of Fortean Times since itbegan in 1973. One of the delightsfor the editors is receiving packets

of clips from Borneo or Brazil, Saudi Arabiaor Siberia. We invite you to join in the

fun and send in anything weird, from tradejournals, local newspapers, extracts from obscure tomes, orlibrary newspaper archives.

To minimise the time spent on preparing clippings for aFort Sort, we ask that you cut them out and not fold themtoo small. Mark each clip (on the front, where possible) withthe source, date and your name, so that we can credit youin the listing (right) when we use the material. For UK localand overseas clips, please give the town of publication. Forforeign language clips, we appreciate brief translations. Toavoid confusion over day and month, please write the datein this form: 1 NOV 2015. If you send photocopies, copy onone side of the paper only.

Mail to: Fortean Times, PO Box 2409, London NW5 4NP, UKE-mail: [email protected] post on the FT website at www.forteantimes.co.uk,where there is a contributor’s guide.

Clippers wanted!

Why Fortean?reader info

John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer, 64, wasshot dead at his home in SouthWeald, Essex, on 24 June, the latestunderworld figure to fall victim to the“curse of Brink’s-Mat”. Tried for meltingdown gold bars stolen in the £26million theft of bullion and jewellery froma warehouse at Heathrow Airport, Palmeris the eighth man with close links to the 1983robbery to be shot dead. The earlier victimswere Nick Whiting (1990), accused of being aninformant (1990); Great Train Robber CharlieWilson (1990) and Donald Urquhart (1995),hired to launder some of the proceeds; KeithHedley (1996), suspected money launderer;and Solly Nahome (1998), Brian Perry (2001)and George Francis (2001), who handled someof the gold. Kenneth Noye, the most notoriousmember of the gang, is currently serving a lifesentence for a 1996 ‘road rage’ murder. Aroundhalf the stolen gold remains unaccounted for.D.Telegraph, 2 July 2015.

Say Phalla, 25, climbed 10m (33ft) down awell in Cambodia after his dog fell in. A maleneighbour, followed by Phalla’s mother, 64, thenclimbed down in a bid to save him, but all threesuffocated because of a lack of oxygen. MXNews (Sydney), 7 July 2014.

In August a Utah man in his 70s died from theplague, probably contracted from a flea afterit had bitten an infected prairie dog. (In July,plague killed 60 to 80 prairie dogs in an easternUtah colony.) Squirrels, rabbits and ferrets arealso known to carry the plague bacterium,Yersinia pestis. The man was the fourth ‘BlackDeath’ fatality in the US in 2015, double the2014 toll, although the first case in Utah since2009. Plague occurs naturally in rural and semi-rural areas of the Western US, most commonlyin New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado. [CNN] 27Aug; Sun, 29 Aug 2015.

A couple from Normandy, both aged 31, fell40ft (12m) to their deaths while having sex ontop of an historic fort in the English Channel.Police found the man’s naked body in a dried-outsection of the moat of Fort Vauban on Grande-Île in the Chausey Archipelago, and that of hispartner in 5ft (1.5m) of water. Their belongingswere on top of the fort. Sunday Sun, 23 Aug2015.

David Shingler, 54, took a large bottle ofpotassium cyanide from the firm where heworked as a surface scientist and swallowed itwhile sitting in his car in Oulton, Staffordshire,on 26 May. The chemicals were so dangerousthat firefighters had to be called to the mortuaryto protect staff after they received his corpse.No post mortem exam was carried out, asdoctors said it would be too dangerous to theirown and the public’s health. D.Telegraph, 7 Aug2015.

Robin Meakings, 59, from Surrey, and JeremyPrescott, 51, from Telford, Shropshire, both diedon 5 July, hit by separate lighting strikes minutesapart while walking in the Brecon Beacons in

Powys. Meakings was on Cribyn Peak,near Pen y Fan, while Prescott was onCorn Du, 1.2 miles (2km) away. At theinquest, coroner Andrew Barkley saidsuch deaths were “very rare”, but twoso close together were “remarkable”.Two other climbers were also struck by

lightning on Cribyn Peak, but survived.Independent, D.Telegraph, 6 July; BBC News, 3

Sept 2015.

A groom was killed eight days after his weddingby a blood clot caused when he broke hisankle walking back from his stag night. BenAucott, 40, collapsed at his parents’ homeon 9 August. It seems the clot had movedup his leg and blocked his heart. The graphicdesigner had been on crutches when hemarried partner Sam. The couple, from EarlShilton, Leicestershire, had a young daughter.D.Telegraph, 15 Aug 2015.

An outdoor enthusiast who enjoyed bad weatherdrowned in a freak accident on 30 March aftera huge gust of wind puffed up her overcoat andcarried her into the swollen River Irwell. ValerieWeston, 58, a retired teacher, was tending toher pot plants in her garden and tying up hercanoe in a fierce Atlantic storm at 10.45pmwhen it is believed she was lifted off her feet bywinds of up to 70mph (113km/h). The gale blewher into the river at the bottom of her garden inthe Lancashire village of Irwell Vale. Her bodywas found 10 miles (16km) downstream 36hours later. She had suffered injuries consistentwith being dragged through a rocky, fast-flowing waterway. The coat was never found.D.Telegraph, 17 Sept 2015.

A London art dealer is in jail in Pozzuoli nearNaples, accused of killing her 93-year-oldmother by stuffing a rosary down her throatin an attempt to ‘cleanse’ her of evil spirits.Italian-born Francesca Martire, 61, who rana successful design, furniture and lightingdealership in Alfie’s Antique Market, St John’sWood, London, was undergoing psychiatricassessment following the alleged murder ofher mother, Maria Luigia Magazzile, in theirhome town of Taranto, southern Italy, on 27May. Mrs Martire, who had lived in Britain since1986, told the police that she believed hermother’s flat was infested with evil spirits andthat by shoving the rosary in her mouth shewas performing a sort of exorcism. A friend of30 years who saw her three days before theincident said she appeared to be “away withthe fairies”. He added: “She was not herself,she was miles away, it was very odd… Peoplesaid she had been acting strangely for years.”D.Telegraph, D.Mail, 14 Aug 2015.

Strange deathSUNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL

THE FORTEAN TIMESBOOK OF STRANGEDEATHS VOL 2ON SALE NOW FROMWH SMITH AND AMAZON.CO.UKTO ORDER DIRECT CALL 0844 844 0053

COMINGNEXTMONTH

murder most weirdTHE STRANGE CASE OF THEHEADLESS EVANGELIST

FORTEANTIMES334

a woolf in the foldTHE BLOOMSBURy SET ANDjACK THE RIppER

+occult black dahlia,france’s lost lake,blind artists,and Much More…

ON SALE 12 NOV 2015

Reasons To Enrol= Specialist course on proofreading and copy editing.

= Caring constructive help from expert tutors.

= Four tutor-marked assignments.

= Help and advice from our experienced Student AdvisoryTeam.

= Flexible study programme.

= Specialist advice on how to find work.

= Enrol when it suits you.

= Instant access to course material when you enrol online.

= 15 days trial.

= Online Student Community Area.

= Advice on how to set yourself up in business.

NAME .....................................................................................................................

ADDRESS ..............................................................................................................

..................................................................................................................................

.................................................................................................................................

.................................................................................................................................

EMAIL ....................................................................................................................

FREEPOST RSSK-JZAC-JCJG

The Writers BureauDEPT AT1510PMANCHESTERM3 1LEemail: [email protected] include your name and address

Why Not Be AProofreader?

As a freelance proofreader and copy editor you can earn agood income making sure that copy is professional and errorfree. Earning your share can be fun, varied and profitable.

Our Proofreading and Copy Editing Course will show you how toset yourself up as a freelancer – either full or part-time – puttingyou in control of your working life! You’ll receive:

• A first-class, home-study course created by professionals

• Expert, personal tuition from your tutor

• Advice on all types of proofreading and copy editing techniques

• Plus much more!

If you want to be a proofreader and copy editor, this is the wayto start! It’s ideal for beginners. No previous experience or specialeducation required. You can be earning in as little as 2-3 months.15 day trial. For free details visit our website or call us today!

Quote Ref:AT1510P

FREE CALL24 HRS 0800 856 2008www.wbproofreading.com

START YOUR COURSE TODAY by visiting our website. Yourcourse modules and the first assignment are available online so youcan start studying while you wait for your course books to arrive.

Start TODAY When You Enrol ONLINE!

POST CODE

“The material is very informativeand interesting as well as coveringpretty much everything you wouldneed to know when starting toproofread. There are a lot of tips andideas for freelancers in general thatyou can see have been tried andtested and are being passed on ingood faith.

“Overall, I found the information inthis course very useful. It covered allthe main areas that anyoneinterested in working as aproofreader/copy editor would needto know.”

Shazia Fardous,Freelance Proofreader and Copyeditor

“This is an extremelyhelpful course both forthose startingproofreading and forthose who, like me,need to be remindedof everything we haveforgotten. Above all, Ithoroughly enjoyedthe tone of voice ofthe author – he writeswith authority butmanages to keep alight touch.”

Dorothy Nicolle

Expert Opinions

www.facebook.com/writersbureauwww.twitter.com/writersbureau

Members of BILDand ABCC

YES! Please send me free details of how to become a successfulproofreader and copy editor.

#

WritersBureau

Years ofSuccess26

Documents

Fortean Times - November 2015