FT325 MARCH 2015 £4.

25
 Fortean Times 325
strange days
New Norse temple, zombie cat, Groundhog Day man,

CONTENTS
world’s oldest art, ghost boy, vegetable lamb, girls trapped
in time, mummified monk still meditating, amnesia myths,
bringing up Bigfoot baby – plus much more.

05 THE CONSPIRASPHERE 18 GHOSTWATCH

14 SCIENCE 21 ALIEN ZOO
the world of strange phenomena 16
17
ARCHAEOLOGY
CLASSICAL CORNER
23
26
MYTHCONCEPTIONS
THE UFO FILES

features
COVER STORY

28 THE FAT BOY OF PECKHAM

As an epidemic of childhood obesity sweeps the developed
world, JAN BONDESON explores a vanished age in which
corpulent youngsters were treated neither as villains nor
victims but celebrated as prodigies in the music halls and
sideshows. Meet Johnny Trunley and his rotund rivals...
GETTY IMAGES

36 DALI AND THE OVERWEIGHT GHOSTS

SD TUCKER explores an alarming outbreak of morbid
obesity amongst 1930s ghosts, and finds Salvador Dalí’s
6 WINTER WEIRDNESS
Seeing in the New Year, Ukrainian style bizarre explanations involving Adolf Hitler’s fat back and
Napoleon’s edible trousers rather hard to stomach.

40 THE BLACK BALL

In 1975 an enigmatic object was found in Ukraine – the
so-called Black Ball. The late VLADIMIR RUBTSOV wondered
whether this enigma wrapped in a mystery might be the
long-hoped for “indubitable extraterrestrial artefact”.

44 THE GHOST HUNTER’S DAUGHTER

As an all-female remake of Ghostbusters is announced, TEA
KRULOS catches up with Alexandra Holzer, daughter of the
man who helped inspire the original movie, to talk about
discovering that your father was the most famous ghost
hunter in America and honouring his legacy today.

reports
WENDY SCHREIER
GETTY IMAGES

48 FIRST FORTEANS
No 12. Strange bedfellows
14 BAFFLING BLAZES 44 THE GHOST HUNTER’S DAUGHTER 74 FORTEAN TRAVELLER
Cases of spontaneous combustion Who you gonna call? Alexandra Holzer!
No 98. Knossos, Crete

forum
53 The Curse of Aaron Ramsey by Rob Gandy
TAMPA HUMANE SOCIETY
MARIA J PÉREZ CUERVO

regulars
02 EDITORIAL 73 IT HAPPENED TO ME
74 GODDESSES AND MONSTERS 12 MIRACLE MOGGY 57 REVIEWS 79 PHENOMENOMIX
Looking for the Cretan labyrinth The cat who came back from the grave
69 LETTERS 80 STRANGE DEATHS

COVER: ETIENNE GILFILLAN. THANKS TO ALEXANDER TOMLINSON.

IMAGES COURTESY JAN BONDESON FT325 1
www.forteantimes.com
 Fortean Times

editorial
EDITOR
DAVID SUTTON
(drsutton@forteantimes.com)
FOUNDING EDITORS
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ART DIRECTOR
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(etienne@forteantimes.com)
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VAL STEVENSON
(val@forteantimes.com)
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2 FT325
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 A DIGEST OF THE WORLDWIDE WEIRD

strangedays
New Norse temple for Iceland
Growth in Paganism leads to plans for first new temple to Thor and Odin in over a millennium
A modern version of Norse
paganism has been gaining
popularity in recent years as
followers regard the stories as
metaphors for life rather than
worship of the gods. By the time
the Icelandic Eddas were written
down in the 13th century, an
active belief in the pantheon of
historic gods they describe was
already archaic. For centuries,
however, the Viking world from
Iceland to the Black Sea had
been shaped by the belief in the
central world tree of Yggdrasil,
the hammer-wielding god Thor,
the one-eyed, raven-attended

LEFT: LENKA KOVAROVA RIGHT: HAUKURTH

Odin, the fertility goddess Freyja,
and a host of elves, trolls and
nature spirits. “I don’t believe
anyone believes in a one-eyed
man who is riding about on
a horse with eight feet,” said
Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, a noted
film composer and high priest of
the Icelandic Ásatrú Association
(or Esetroth Fellowship), which ABOVE LEFT: The Icelandic Ásatrú Association at a blót in 2009. ABOVE RIGHT: Composer and high priest Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson.
promotes the pagan faith.
“We see the stories as poetic
metaphors and a manifestation of
the forces of nature and human Belief in elves on top to let in the sunlight. It
should accommodate 250 people
feast on sacred horsemeat. Unlike
some pagan groups, they do not
psychology.” However, belief in at a time. Architect Magnus practise animal sacrifice, and
elves and trolls is still widespread and trolls is Jensson has incorporated the have severed all ties with groups
in the country (see FT201:42-47; ‘golden ratio’ in his design, as espousing far-right ideology.
311:14-15). Rose Thorsteinsdóttir,
a folklorist at the University of
widespread in well as the numbers nine and
432,000 – which are sacred to
“Some of them are really pissed
off that a stupid hippy nation
Iceland, said: “People tell fairy
stories of the hidden people;
the country the Ásatrú rite and other pagan
religions. “The Sun changes with
should have the sources in their
own language,” says Hilmarsson.
there are nature spirits that walk the seasons so we are in a way Reykjavik City Council has
over the country and you should share of the church tax. It is about having the Sun paint the space donated the site for the new
not disturb them. These stories to build its first temple or hof, for us,” Hilmarsson said. The temple, but the Ásatrú Association
are alive.” Roadworks are still where celebrants can worship temple will host ceremonies such will raise the £645,000 building
occasionally diverted to avoid Thor, Odin and Freyja (aka as weddings and funerals. The costs itself. Membership of
annoying these denizens of the Frigg). It will be the first pagan group will also conduct naming the Association has tripled in
faery world. temple to be built in the country ceremonies and coming of age Iceland in the last decade to 2,382
The Ásatrú Association was since the Viking age, 1,000 years rituals. The faithful will gather members out of a total population
founded in 1972 and officially ago. Starting this March, the for weekly study and for the five of 326,000 – that’s 0.73 per cent
recognised as a religion the 3,800ft2 (350m2) circular temple main feasts of the year, when of Icelanders. About a third of
following year, allowing it will be dug 4m (13ft) down into they will recite poems round Ásatrú members are women. BBC
to conduct legally binding a hill overlooking the Icelandic a central fire, make sacrificial News, 30 Jan; [R] Guardian, 2 + 7
ceremonies (blót) and collect a capital, Reykjavik, with a dome drink offerings to the gods and Feb 2015.

4 FT325
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 TRAPPED IN A NOT QUITE ASK A
CHILD’S BODY NIRVANA POLICEMAN
The girls who Mummified New witness
stopped ageing monk said to comes foward
when they were be alive and in a classic
toddlers meditating British UFO case
PAGE 10 PAGE 22 PAGE 27

The Conspirasphere EXTRA! EXTRA!

Are the mainstream media and conspiracy theorists feeding off one another? FT’S FAVOURITE HEADLINES
NOEL ROONEY looks at a surprising confluence of official and alternative news FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Two stories currently galvanising both the investigating the failure to indict anyone for
mainstream media and the conspiracy the bomb attack on a Jewish community
tubes tell us something about the centre in 1994, which resulted in the
surprisingly – perhaps disturbingly – close deaths of 85 people, and hundreds of
relationship between the orthodox and injuries. Strong rumours in the intelligence
alternative news systems. community suggested at the time that Iran
The terrible death of Alexander was behind the attack, and that Hezbollah
Litvinenko in London in 2006 (see – a Lebanese organisation that has been in
FT218:4-5; 324:36-39) made the front conflict with Israel for more than 25 years
pages all over the world. Litvinenko, an – carried it out.
Irish Times, 24 June 2014.
ex-FSB operative who had made his own Nisman’s death from a single gunshot
contribution to conspiracy literature, was to the temple was at first called a
poisoned with the deadly Polonium 210, suicide by official sources, but they have
apparently delivered via that most genteel since retracted that view and claimed
of English institutions, a cup of tea. His he was murdered in a bid to smear the
death followed a series of meetings with government. The circumstances of his
two other shady Russian characters, death are markedly suspicious, and fertile Toronto Star, 30 April 2014.
Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun, also ground for the conspiratorial imagination.
ex-members of the FSB/KGB; Lugovoi Did his bodyguards abandon him? Was he
and Kovtun are considered about to spill the beans on
the prime suspects a government cover-up? Why
in Litvinenko’s alleged did he borrow a gun from a
assassination. friend (the weapon that killed
Litvinenko’s longstanding him) only days before his
link to the exiled Russian death?
oligarch Boris Berezovsky Both these cases have ABC News, 20 June 2014.
(pictured at right), and to be seen against a
his stream of allegations background of renewed
AFP / GETTY IMAGES

about false flag operations conflict. The long-running feud

perpetrated in and by Russia, between the Israel Defense
made him a hated figure Force and Hezbollah has (London) Eve. Standard, 8 May 2014.
in security circles; rumour recently broken out into open
has it that FSB agents used warfare again; and Western
a blow-up photograph of him for firearms governments are eager to throw mud at
target practice. Berezovsky also died in Putin to keep the proxy war in the Ukraine
questionable circumstances, adding to the from fading into a vestigial European
murky miasma surrounding the life and tragedy. In both cases, the mainstream
death of his erstwhile bodyguard. press and conspiracy theorists are equally
An official enquiry into the death of busy, and equally pruriently fascinated;
Litvinenko has recently opened in London, they are feeding off each other as they
and already a stream of lurid allegations feed off the tragedies. It’s arguable that,
is gracing the pages of the UK and in both cases, they are equally guilty of
international press. Behind Lugovoi and helping vested interests to foment further
Kovtun, according to this rendition, stands conflict – a lesson for the wise? Toronto Star, 19 June 2014.
the figure of Vladimir Putin, the strongman
of modern Russian politics. www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/
The death of federal prosecutor Alberto http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/1/28/
Nisman in Buenos Aries in late January has whats-behind-the-buenos-aires-cover-up.html
opened a can of conspiratorial worms for www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/19/
the Argentinian government. Nisman was did-iran-murder-argentina-s-crusading-prosecutor-
Tivy-Side Advertiser, 3 June 2014.

FT325 5
www.forteantimes.com
Winter weirdness
Villagers in Krasnoilsk, Ukraine, dress up as bears
and hay bales as they celebrate the winter festival
of Malanka on 14 January 2015. The holiday, which
involves dressing in elaborate costumes and going
from house to house singing traditional songs,
is celebrated on New Year’s Day of the Orthodox
calendar, a week after Orthodox Christmas. The
festivities appear to have been too much for one
exhausted participant.
PHOTOS: BRENDAN HOFFMAN/GETTY IMAGES
 strangedays

SIDELINES...
FATWA ON SNOWMEN
In January, for the third con-
BIGFOOT NEWS MANIMAL SIGHTINGS FROM LINCOLNSHIRE TO
LOUISIANA, PLUS HOW TO RAISE A BABY BIGFOOT

secutive year, snow covered

upland areas in Saudi Arabia’s
Tabuk province near the
border with Jordan. Asked on
a religious website if fathers
could build snowmen for their
children, Sheikh Mohammed
Saleh al-Munajjid, a prominent
cleric, replied: “It is not permit-
ted to make a statue out of
snow, even by way of play and
fun.” Snowmen are haram (for-
bidden by Allah). irishexaminer.
com, 13 Jan 2015.
HYPNO DOG
German Spitz Princess is said
to be the only dog in the UK
that can put people into trance

CATERS NEWS AGENCY

with hypnosis. The four-year-old
has been thrilling audiences
nationwide with her owner,
Krystyna Lennon. She has
been signed up to perform in
Dubai and Australia. Princess ABOVE: Bigfoot researcher Adam Bird’s photograph. Is something lurking in the woods in a Lincolnshire nature reserve?
is a descendent of the first hyp-
no-dog, Oscar, whose owner • L Melacetti, 70, a retired “Bigfoots are alleged events, but insisted that
Hugh Lennon is Ms Lennon’s farmer living in Avondale, “Bigfoots are real and happen
uncle. Metro, 11 Nov 2014.
FROG JUICE
Louisiana, has come forward to
claim that she raised a Bigfoot docile and to be excellent creatures, docile
and better than most people.
Some Andean cultures believe
frog juice can cure asthma,
between 1964 and 1972. She
found the animal when he better than And by the way, they don’t smell
bad like some idiots say.” When
was a baby, abandoned in the asked about evidence such as
anæmia, bronchitis, slug-
gishness, tuberculosis, and
swamps of Louisiana. “He was most people” photographs she replied that she
a low sex drive. Telmatobius so little, so cute,” she said. “I has some she keeps in a secret
coleus, a critically endangered had to do something about it. He spot. She plans to publish her
water frog from Lake Titicaca, was so defenceless, lying next friend. Even though he couldn’t secret journal someday, she said.
is killed, peeled, and put in a to the mud and water, curled, speak well, sometimes he’d say Cryptozoology News, 12 Jan 2014.
blender with carrots, Peruvian crying like a baby. His parents words I taught him”; words like
maca root and honey. There is were either dead or they had “tomato”, “food”, “love” and • Adam Bird, 31, co-founder
no scientific evidence confirm- abandoned him.” The little “hungry”. of the British Bigfoot Research
ing any medicinal benefits. [AP] hominid weighed about 20lb Eventually, she says, the beast organisation, might have
18 Nov 2014. (9kg) and had a hairless face grew up, and one night she had captured a Bigfoot on film last
that “didn’t look like a human’s a pleasant surprise. “He brought year. Hearing that there had
nor a monkey’s. He accepted a friend with him! At first the been a possible sighting in a
me as a friend right away. I took other guy was shy, hiding behind small wooded nature reserve
him home only for three nights the bushes, but little by little, he in Friskney, Lincolnshire, he
MARTIN ROSS

to nurse him back to health.” In began to trust me too. So there and some colleagues went to
the course of those three days, we were, sitting on my porch, two investigate. They heard some
she fed the Bigfoot anything she Bigfoots and I, having dinner strange noises and photographed
had at hand, including lettuce, under the moon. When people suspiciously large footprints. “I
tomatoes, eggs and goat milk. in town began using them CB took various photographs and
He particularly liked tomatoes. radios, the Bigfoots didn’t visit when I checked back through
After releasing him back into as much. Then I had to move out them I spotted the creepy picture
the wilderness, he kept coming because of my age, but I know [abbove],” said Mr Bird. “It looks
back to her small house. “So, they are still there, a big group like a shadowy figure standing
every time he came back, usually of Bigfoots. I taught them about within the trees staring at us
during the evening, when hunters and other people that from afar. It shows something
most people weren’t around, might hurt them and not to trust dark, a different colour against
I’d give him more food.” She any humans.” all that greenery.”
lived alone, which made it easy Melacetti didn’t want to Mr Bird, who lives in
to keep a secret. “He was my give away the location of the Nottingham, has been

8 FT325
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 strangedays

investigating UK Bigfoot reports or two before screaming and “I could hear crunching as
SIDELINES...
for more than two years. His turning to run back to the house. something was clearly moving TOO BENT TO DRIVE
group have allegedly collected As I screamed, it slowly started through the forest, but I had no The Russian government has
200 reports of the creatures to turn round, but I didn’t hang torch with me to shine towards decreed that the following will
across Britain, including 50 about to see its face. Needless the sounds. There was an no longer qualify for driving
in Scotland. His interest was to say, my reports of seeing a unpleasant odour in the air and licences: transsexuals, trans-
piqued while on holiday in monster were not taken seriously suddenly I got a feeling I was vestites, fetishists, exhibition-
Florida at the age of 15 when he and dismissed as probably being being watched as everything ists, voyeurs, “pathological”
spotted a large orangutan-like a neighbour.” went very quiet. I then continued gamblers, kleptomaniacs,
creature with reddish-brown Charmaine said she saw a home. Thinking back, this amputees, those with heredi-
hair crouching in bushes. In figure in the same area shortly individual was well over seven tary eye diseases and people
one of his videos, taken in afterwards with a “humanoid feet [2m] tall and a dark brown shorter than 1.5m (4ft 11in).
June 2014 at Yellowham Hill, shape” and eyes that shone colour. Its hair was of reasonable “Promoting non-traditional life-
styles” was outlawed back in
in Puddletown Forest, Dorset, orange when picked out by length. I have never seen this
2013, leading to harassment
he recorded a clamour of eerie headlights in the darkness. She again anywhere in Scotland and
of gay activists. BBC News, 8
howls. One of his pictures, also also heard a “long, deep wail” in only confided in my partner. I
Jan 2015.
taken at Yellowham Hill, shows the same area. “My sister found know unequivocally what I saw
what appears to be the ungainly a den made of branches in the and it is still clear in my mind as STOP, OR I’LL FRUIT
footprint of a large human- woods, with five or six animal if it had happened yesterday.” Nat Channing, 28, faces jail for
like creature. Debbie Crossley skulls arranged in a semicircle,” Daniel Perez, founder of the threatening police officers with
Hatswell, one of British Bigfoot she said. “That was several years Center for Bigfoot Studies in the a banana that they feared was
Research’s team members, also after my sighting. The strange US and long-time friend of FT, a gun – in Fruitvale, Colorado.
claims she saw a manimal at stories I’ve heard make me think said he was open to reviewing Sunday People, 30 Nov 2014.
close range when she was 15. She something could still be there.” apparent Bigfoot sightings,
MAGICAL REALIST
described it as having an ape- The area round the quarry at but thought it was unlikely the
A professional ghost buster
like physique, a mouth the same Carmyllie used to be pinewoods, beast exists in Scotland. Dundee
has been elected president of
as ours, a huge jaw and dark, but almost all has since been Courier and Advertiser, 30 Jan;
the Green Party in the Mexican
tanned, weathered skin covered cleared for housing. Charmaine, Shropshire Star, 4 Feb 2015.
city of León. Carlos Calderon,
in dark brown hair. mirror.co.uk, a mother of one, has recently 54, insists the film Ghost-
2 Dec 2014. found out about other possible • In the US, Bigfoot Project busters was “a lot of fun” but
Bigfoot sightings north-east of Investments, a small start-up “based in good solid paranor-
• Meanwhile in Scotland, Carmyllie. She has joined the company, is offering $3 million mal research”. Metro, 15 Jan
Charmaine Fraser, 41, has come British Bigfoot Research team (£2 million) of shares. Its future 2015.
forward to claim that she saw as they look to gather evidence. profitability depends, to some
a Bigfoot in remote woodland Sunday Post (Dundee), 18+22 Jan extent, on the discovery of an RAINING HAMSTERS
near Arbroath, Angus, during 2015. actual manimal, dead or alive. In Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, the
a morning walk with her Veteran Bigfoot hunter Carmine Parade-Allee circus attached
grandmother’s dog when she was • Following the news coverage ‘Tom’ Biscardi said the venture hamsters to balloons and
a child. Charmaine, originally of Ms Fraser’s alleged encounter, could be a path for those seeking dropped them on children in
from Monikie but now living a former civil servant from Fife to establish the existence of the audience as gifts – but
in Edinburgh, has a degree in said he had seen a similar beast other fabled cryptids such by the time they reached the
psychology from St Andrews just off the Tay Road Bridge. The as Nessie. His company has crowd they were dead. Children
were left in tears and “acutely
University. She said she saw the man, who asked not to be named, budgeted $113,805 (£74,000) a
distressed” and animal
7ft (2m) black creature – which said the encounter happened year for expeditions although,
rights groups were outraged.
was “like a gorilla standing in August 2005 around 3.40am until the manimal is discovered,
(Queensland) Courier-Mail, 29
upright” – near a disused near the Five Roads Roundabout most anticipated revenues will
Nov 2014.
sandstone quarry in Carmyllie in when he was driving home from come from the production of
the early 1980s. “I was with the work. He said: “I was proceeding documentaries and films about
dog and we were coming down home on the A92 when my the search. Biscardi claims to
the path that leads to the track headlights picked out what I have encountered manimals
running past the bottom of the thought was a man standing by seven times, but in 2008 two
property and out to the farm the left-hand side of the road. men in Georgia sold him a
road. Just before I got onto the As I approached, the figure furry carcase, 7ft 7in (2.3m)
track, the dog stopped suddenly stepped out in front of my car tall, encase in ice (shades of
and started to growl, whine and and I naturally brought it to a the Minnesota Iceman!), which
bare her teeth. I looked up to halt. This ‘person’ was a large they claimed to have found in
see a large black figure further hairy ape-like creature, which the woods. It turned out to be a
along the track standing with turned to look at the car as I rubber gorilla costume stuffed
its back to me. It was reaching approached. Its eyes gave out a with animal parts and outfitted
up to a branch on a tree at the shine which was very noticeable with a set of teeth that might
side of the track and was tall, and it crossed the road in about have been bovine. “They took my
of thick build with no neck and three large strides.” money,” said a duped Biscardi.
wide shoulders. I remember The man said he felt uneasy, Oh well, better luck next time!
standing in shock for a second but wound down the window. Times, 24 Jan 2015.

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strangedays

SIDELINES...
HUNGRY FOR POWER
MEDICAL BAG GIRLS TRAPPED IN TIME, MAN LOCKED IN HIS BODY AND
A MYSTERIOUS SUDDEN PARALYSIS ACROSS THE USA

The Asian super ant (or fire

ant), which forms colonies of s Ajifa Khatun was healthy
thousands and causes fires when she was born in May 1994,
because of its fatal attraction to but stopped growing before her
electricity, is spreading across second birthday and now, at
the UK. First identified in Britain the age of 20, weighs just 17lb
in 2009 in Gloucestershire, (7.7kg). Her only words are ‘maa’
a colony invaded a house in (mother), ‘baba’ (father) and ‘didi’
Hendon, north-west London, (sister), and she spends her days
last year and more have been playing with the local children in
found in Buckinghamshire. They Mirapara, West Bengal. She has
occupy plug sockets and power witnessed her three siblings grow
sources, creating a fire hazard.
up around her but still has to be
D.Telegraph, 24 July 2014.
spoon-fed by her mother Apila, 42,
PINT OF PALE WHALE who said: “She’s like a two-year-
For Iceland’s midwinter festival, old, she can only take a few baby
microbrewery Stedji produces steps. I carry her everywhere.”
Hvalur 2, a beer made with Ajifa is probably suffering
the testicles of endangered fin from a rare autosomal recessive
whales, smoked in a “tradi- disorder called Laron syndrome,
tional way” using dried sheep or Laron-type dwarfism. This was
dung. The news has angered first described in 1966 and only
conservationists. Sun, <i> 13 300 cases have been recorded,
Jan 2015. often affecting people of Semitic
SEALS BEHAVING BADLY ethnicity, although a third of the
victims live in Ecuador’s southern
Fur seals have been caught
Loja province. Those with the
repeatedly screwing king
penguins on a remote Antarctic
condition lack a hormone called
island. This was captured on Insulin-like Growth Factor 1
camera and published in the (IGF-1). They are insensitive to
journal Polar Biology. A similar growth hormone but also immune
incident was reported in 2006. to diabetes and cancer. Some
Scientists are nonplussed. physical anthropologists have
Meanwhile, grey seals off the proposed that Homo floresiensis
UK are mutilating and slaugh- (discovered in Indonesia in 2003
tering porpoises. Over the ABOVE: 20-year-old Zeng Yushan (left) stopped growing at the age of seven. and nicknamed ‘hobbit’ – FT191:4-
past decade, 1,081 severely 5) represented a population with
scarred dead porpoises have
washed up on North Sea
LOCKED IN TIME
s Zeng Yushan is 20, but has the A couple widespread Laron syndrome. Sun,
28 Jan; D.Mail, 29 Jan 2014.
coastlines, mainly in Holland,
and at least 17 per cent are
appearance and mental capacity
of a small child. She was born in spotted Zeng PARALYSIS PUZZLE
estimated to have been killed
by seals. Adelaide Adver-
tiser, Canberra Times, 20 Nov;
June 1994 in Huzhu township,
Fushun County, in the Chinese begging and Since August, more than 100
children across in 34 US states
province of Sichuan. At seven have developed a mysterious,
D.Telegraph, 26 Nov 2014. years old, she stopped growing took her in sudden paralysis. There is
and was diagnosed with a tumour currently no cure, but their
on her pituitary gland, which syndrome at least has a name:
caused a deficiency in growth Zeng’s father died from gastric Acute Flaccid Myelitis. Victims
hormones. Pituitary tumours cancer, leaving her alone. A warm- have unexplained lesions in the
in childhood are very rare; hearted couple then spotted her spinal column. The kids have a
less than one in 1,000. begging and agreed to take her median age of eight, and three-
Zeng’s parents couldn’t in. Guo Liu, 50, said that when quarters of them were previously
afford to pay for treatment they first saw her, he and his wife perfectly healthy. For most, the
and argued bitterly about the were unsure if she was a boy or loss of feeling occurred only on
disease before divorcing, leaving girl because she had no hair, and one side of the body and coincided
Zeng with her father Yul Wei, 43, had suffered horrific physical with a nasty cold, which made
who subsequently fell seriously problems because of her medical health workers initially think
ill. Unable to pay their bills, the condition. Mr Guo said that after that the paralysis was caused by a
pair ended up on the streets the Spring Festival they planned rare virus called enterovirus D68.
begging, travelling from their to take Zeng to a specialist in EV-D68 is a severe respiratory
home to the cities of Zigong, Beijing for hormone treatment. virus that was going around at
Chengdu and Guiyang. In 2013, D.Mail, 9 Feb 2015. the start of school last year, and

10 FT325
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 strangedays

because it’s a relative of polio, down, while eight-year-old Bailey D68, however, and none of the SIDELINES...
it was thought to be causing the Sheehan, discharged from hospital hospital’s 300 patients who had
polio-like loss of muscle function. in December, is hobbling around confirmed enterovirus D68 later SMALL FRY TARGETED
Now, however, researchers aren’t with a brace. Researchers in became paralysed. “Right now In a bid to disrupt international
sure. Of the 71 paralysed children Colorado are currently attempting we have two scenarios and we travel across the Western world,
whose cerebrospinal fluid was to determine whether the children have no idea how they’re related,” hackers claiming to be based
tested, none came back positive suffering from paralysis have said Jackson. Nationally, only in Tunisia and the Ivory coast
for enterovirus. The virus has been elevated levels of enterovirus 68 one of the paralysed children has replaced TravelWest’s website
found in nasal swabs taken from antibodies. fully recovered, while about two- with a sinister black page in the
some of the paralysed children, Mary Anne Jackson, chief of thirds have got slightly better. style of Da’ish (ISIL), Arabic mu-
sic, and the message: “Hacked
but that doesn’t indicate as strong infectious diseases at Children’s Treatment is supportive, just like
By darkshadow / Arab Security
a link as spinal fluid would have. Mercy Hospital and one of the first polio, which was eradicated in
Team / Muslum [sic] Hackers”.
In Oregon, two girls have fallen doctors to recognise enterovirus the United States in 1979 thanks
The Western world withstood
victim: seven-year-old McKenzie D68, said her hospital has had to a nationwide vaccination
the onslaught as the website
Andersen is in hospital in three cases of paralysis. None of programme. The Oregonian, 23 Jan; was merely a journey-planner
Portland, paralysed from the neck the paralysed kids had enterovirus theatlantic.com, 10 Feb 2015. for people in the Bristol area.
D.Telegraph, D.Mirror, 3 Jan
2015.
LOCKED-IN SYNDROME
A South African man locked inside his YULETIDE LUNATIC
body for over eight years unable to show On 17 December, a man ap-
he was conscious heard his despairing proached a woman outside
mother tell him: “I hope you die”. Martin her house in Street, Somerset,
Pistorius was just an ordinary boy with an waving what appeared to be a
interest in playing with gadgets when, at long-barrelled weapon and a
the age of 12, he suddenly started to shut rubber chicken. He pointed the
down. Defying doctors and any attempt at weapon at her and said he was
diagnosis, he was sent home from school going to eat her alive. She ran
inside and he started banging
with flu symptoms and never returned. He
on the front door and broke a
stopped eating, his muscles weakened
window. He failed to get in and
and eventually he stopped moving, and
fled before police arrived. Sun,
even thinking, altogether. In his book Ghost 19 Dec 2014.
Boy, he relates how his parents were told
he was “a vegetable”, that he had lost all DIVINE IGNORANCE
intelligence, and that they should simply Fewer than half of 3,412 adults
wait for him to die. Yet when he was 16, he surveyed in the US by the Pew
awoke – and spent the next eight years as a Forum on Religion and Public
conscious brain trapped inside a paralysed Life could identify Buddhism
body. as the Dalai Lama’s religion.
He was inspired by a bizarre motive to Astonishingly, almost half of
fight and get himself understood: being Catholics didn’t know that their
made to watch repeat episodes of children’s own church taught that the
TV programme Barney. “I cannot even bread and wine in Communion
express to you how much I hated Barney,” actually became the body and
he said. He was so fed up with being made blood of Christ; while a majority
of Protestants could not name
to watch the singing dinosaur that he made
Luther as the main driving
himself learn to tell the time – without the
force of the Reformation.
use of a clock – to count down until it was
D.Telegraph, 28 Sept 2010.
over. “I would watch how the sun moved
across the room or how a shadow moved MELODY MALADY
throughout the day,” he said. “Simply to For years, Susan Root, 65,
make it to when I was taken out of my from Coggeshall, Essex,
wheelchair and that for a brief moment, the was plagued by hearing
aches and pains in my body could subside.” “How Much Is That Doggie
Though doctors eventually diagnosed In The Window?” in her head
Pistorius with cryptococcal meningitis, it [FT300:24]; she has finally
remains unclear what made him emerge shaken off that earworm – but
from his vegetative state when he was 25. now has “Somewhere Over The
GHOSTBOYBOOK.COM

He then taught himself to read and write and Rainbow” jammed on repeat in
trained as a web designer. Now speaking her internal hi-fi instead. “I also
through a voice synthesiser and moving hear ‘Happy Birthday’ now and
with a wheelchair, he lives in Harlow, Essex, again, and ‘Auld Lang Syne’,”
with his wife Joanna. Independent, 14 Jan; said Ms Root, who suffers
TOP: Martin Pistorius in 1994. ABOVE: Martin and his wife Joanna. from a severe form of tinnitus.
D.Mirror, 17 Jan 2015.
Metro, 8 Oct 2014.

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 strangedays

SIDELINES...
CONEHEAD BEAR
BOOKWORM LAG One-year-old polar bear Nobby
An inmate at Garth prison plays with a traffic cone – a
near Preston dug a giant hole birthday gift – during his birthday
in his cell, not in an escape party at the polar bears’ outdoor
attempt, but to make a study enclosure at the Hellabrunn zoo in
where he could read in peace. Munich, Germany, on 9 December
Alerted by “noisy hammering” 2014. Polar bear twins Nobby and
at night, staff found a tunnel
Nela were born at the zoo on 9
behind his bed stashed with
December 2013.
books. Sunday Mirror, 21 Dec
PHOTO: CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP/
2014.
Getty Images
REPEAT SNAP
Claire Ottaway and Michelle
Noble became friends when
they were in adjacent hospital
beds after giving birth to boys
Ben and Henry on 8 March
2012. They were back along-
side each other in Scarbor-
ough Hospital after giving birth
to girls Evie and Isabel on 30
July 2014. The odds of giving
birth on the same day twice
were said to be 270,000 to
one. Metro, 8 Aug 2014.
DIDACTIC AFTERLIFE
A head teacher in Romania
has been allowed to stay in
the class where he taught
for 50 years – as a skeleton.
Alexandru Popescu donated
his bones in the 1960s, but
they were confiscated over
hygiene worries. After a clean,
he has been given back to
“help pupils with biology” in
Prahova. Metro, 23 Oct 2014.
AVICIDE
For the last five years, a vi-
cious gull has been dragging
pigeons by the neck to the
Serpentine in London’s Hyde
Park, before drowning and
feasting on their innards with
its mate. The behaviour is
extremely unusual for lesser
black-backed gulls, which usu-
ally eat small fish and insects.
Times, Metro, 14 Oct 2014.
TORTOISE EATS TURTLE
Lola, a 15lb (6.8kg) African
spurred tortoise, hadn’t
passed stool for a month
and was evidently unwell. An
X-ray revealed a metal turtle
pendant in its digestive tract.
Vet Don Harris was keeping
Lola at his Miami clinic, hop-
ing to get the pendant to pass
with laxatives; if that failed,
surgery would follow. [AP] 29
Oct 2014.

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 SCIENCE
MATT PATTINSON

of wool was a Victorian mystery.

BEWILDERING BLAZES The problem was particularly

acute with cargoes of wool, and
occurred where oily or greasy
Is nature a secret pyromaniac? DAVID HAMBLING investigates the numerous forms of bales were stored. The problem
spontaneous combustion, from fiery haystacks and blazing laundry to red-hot cannonballs was more or less solved by
excluding greasy ‘pie wool’ from

W
hile spontaneous bales. As Carol Noble pointed out
human combustion [FT321:74], there were numerous
remains controversial, cases where oily rags caught
other forms of fire spontaneously. The same
spontaneous combustion are combination of circumstances
well known to science, if not it at work as with chipboard and
to the wider public [FT318:72, coal.
321:74]. Sometimes things just Some reactive materials
burst into flames, and such fires now come with safety warnings
destroy haystacks, cargo ships, about spontaneous combustion.
trucks and timber yards. The term Linseed oil, often used for treating
spontaneous combustion applies wood, is especially hazardous
to any fire that starts without an and there are many accounts of
external heat source. bins or buckets of oil-soaked rags
Pliny the Elder described the bursting into flames. However,
effect in his compendious Natural the suggested scenario of baby
History 2,000 years ago: “When oil igniting cotton clothing seems
the grass is cut it should be unlikely, unless the parents
turned towards the sun and must accidentally used linseed oil or
never be stacked until it is quite another of the highly reactive

AFP / GETTY IMAGES

dry. If this last precaution is not drying oils that reacts with air.
carefully taken a kind of vapour David Lee notes the
will be seen arising from the rick spontaneous combustion of dry-
in the morning, and as soon as cleaned towels on a cruise ship
the sun is up it will ignite to a in 1996-7 on the same Letters
certainty, and so be consumed.” page. This effect was investigated
This description is surprisingly when the harvesting season is fires on ships in 1896 alone. by the University of Strathclyde
accurate given the unreliability damp. When there is known to Fortunately, we now have a better in 1999, following a series of
of Pliny’s work. When hay is be a risk, farmers leave a metal understanding of the effect and fires at laundries. The problem
dry, bacteria cannot thrive; if it crowbar or pipe sticking in the the types of coal and storage was traced to concentrations of
is damp, they multiply and the stack. If the crowbar gets too hot methods that cause it. Modern fatty acids from human sweat,
hay decays, generating heat. to touch, they pull the haystack ships have thermometers to which remained in cloth even
The inside of a haystack is well apart to cool it down. warn of any heating in the cargo after washing. Again, these acids
insulated, so the heat continues Garden compost heaps also and fire-extinguishing systems. cause heat-generating oxidation. A
to build up, which accelerates the get warm, but because they are Where crews lack adequate large enough stack of laundry in a
rate of decay. Anyone who has left smaller than haystacks and offer training it can still be a problem; warm store cupboard can produce
milk out of the fridge on a warm less insulation, there usually is in 2005 the bulk coal-carrier Belo the right conditions for thermal
day will be aware how rapidly not a fire hazard. However, police Horizonte docked in Britain with runaway.
bacteria work at 30 degrees helicopters with thermal cameras several fires still burning in her Perhaps the most exotic form of
compared to four degrees. More still sometimes direct officers on cargo hold. spontaneous combustion occurs
decay means more heat, and the ground to what appears to be Spontaneous combustion may in old cannonballs recovered from
the upward spiral continues until an intruder in a back garden, only also strike in unexpected places. wrecks. Long years underwater
the temperature reaches about to find a warm compost heap. Like coal, freshly cut wood also corrode them until they become
75˚C (167˚F). This is so hot it Oxidation also causes produces heat, and chipboard or metal sponges with a large surface
kills off the bacteria, but it is also spontaneous combustion in other fibreboard made from sawdust area; when they are taken out,
hot enough to start chemical materials. Break off a piece of may be a hazard. A series of the exposed surface oxidises and
oxidation. coal, and the freshly exposed fires on trucks carrying insulating may produce a significant amount
Oxidation or smouldering surface oxidises slowly, releasing fibreboard panels across Canada of heat. In 2002, Robert Child
combustion is a form of low- a tiny amount of heat. If you have in the 1990s initially baffled broke some cannonballs free from
temperature burning without enough broken coal, and it is scientists. They later discovered the solidified sand in which they
flame. Again, because heat piled deep enough so that the that the factory was in the dry were embedded at the National
cannot escape, the temperature heat cannot escape, you have the prairies, and the boards were Museum of Wales in Cardiff. They
continues to rise, and this speeds conditions for thermal runaway. being transported to Ontario, started to warm up; after a few
up the oxidation in a process The coal-mining Ruhr area of which it hotter and more humid. minutes, one cannonball was
known as thermal runaway. The Germany suffers about 10 major As the fibreboard absorbed water glowing red-hot and burned a hole
hay turns yellow, then brown, fires a year from spontaneous from the atmosphere, it started through the tabletop.
then black, and gives off white combustion. to heat up. This would not be a Most recently, rust in oil tanks
vapour just as Pliny described. This risk is greater for ships problem except that the boards has been shown to catch fire,
This vapour, with a rich mixture of carrying coal, and many were were stacked together in two- and no doubt there are many
flammable hydrocarbons, bursts lost in the 19th century before metre (6.5ft) cubes and were other forms of spontaneous
into flames as soon as it reaches the cause was fully understood. very well insulated, so thermal combustion still to be discovered.
the oxygen of the outside air. The port of Newcastle in New runaway kicked in. Nature, it seems, has pyromaniac
The problem is especially acute South Wales reported nine coal The spontaneous combustion tendencies.

14 FT325
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 ARCHÆOLOGY
MATT PATTINSON

Our archæological round-up is brought to you by Paul Devereux, Managing Editor of Time & Mind – The Journal
of Archæology, Consciousness and Culture (www.tandfonline.com/rtam)
VU UNIVERSITY AMSTERDAM

ABOVE LEFT: The incised zigzag markings on this shell could be up to 540,000 years old. ABOVE RIGHT: Does this Egyptian rock art show 7,000-year-old swimmers?

ART BEFORE ART the incised markings fully four times AN IRON AGE FROM SPACE
Art is said to be a key defining feature older than the previously oldest known In previous columns we have reported
of the human species – so when did engravings, found in Africa. “At the on the veneration of meteorites in the
it begin? The usual assumption has moment we have no clue about the Americas, and the use of meteoric
been that it bloomed with the advent meaning or purpose of this engraving,” material in ancient Egypt. Now, the
of modern humans, Homo sapiens commented Wil Roebroeks, Professor story moves towards the Arctic. In
– we think of the fabulous painted of Palæolithic Archæology at Leiden August 2014, a team of Scandinavian
Palæolithic caves of France, Spain University. Because this finding currently geologists and archæologists visited
and elsewhere. There have also been challenges accepted scholarship, it is, of northern Greenland to examine the
(controversial) indications that the course, controversial. Nature, Dec 2014; remains of a meteorite that impacted
earlier Neanderthals knew something BBC News, 4 Dec 2014. the area 5,000-10,000 years ago. It
of symbolic representation, but nothing was a huge object that broke up in the
earlier. Until now: a hint has emerged of ANCIENT SAHARAN SWIMMERS atmosphere, the fragments being hurled
the intentional making of marks, showing The Sahara Desert is just that, a across the Greenland ice sheet and the
some kind of symbolic behaviour, that vast, arid waste, right? So that is why sea around the Cape York Peninsula
goes way back – half a million years the 7,000-year-old cave paintings of (near present-day Thule). These gifts
back. apparent swimmers, in the appropriately from space allowed the Iron Age to
The hint comes from an archæological named Cave of Swimmers in a begin in Greenland centuries
site called Trinil on the Indonesian very dry region of southwestern before knowledge concerning
island of Java, where a distant human Egypt, have always seemed the mining and smelting of
ancestor, Homo erectus, was already incongruous. (The cave iron was brought by farmers
using shells of freshwater mussels as featured in the movie The to that land. Virtually nothing
tools. After sifting through a museum English Patient, incidentally.) was known about the cultural
collection of many of these mussel The Sahara did once have effect of the meteor until the
shells collected from the site many rivers and fertile areas, but that arrival of the research team.
decades ago, an international research was long before the date of the “The story of the meteorites as
team has discovered one engraved rock paintings. However, researchers the whole area’s source of iron have
with a zigzag pattern older than the from the NASA Ames Research Center sunk into oblivion,” explained team
weathering on the shell. Using two have now found carbonate deposits member Martin Appelt, an archæologist
different dating methods, scientists lining the walls of two neighbouring from the National Museum of Denmark.
at the VU University Amsterdam and valleys in the Gebel Uweinat region, The team found that the meteoric
Wageningen University have determined about 125 miles (200km) south of the iron was traded over huge distances
that the shell is between 430,000 cave. This indicates the former presence in the eastern Arctic, even well across
and 540,000 years old. This makes of lakes in the valleys. “The deposits Canada. The initial reason the meteoric
look like a ‘bathtub ring’ around the source location was discovered was
canyon walls,” as team member, Chris because of investigation of mysterious
McKay, vividly states. Carbon-dating of piles of basalt rocks at Cape York.
samples of the deposits indicate that (The first person to draw European
the two lakes existed about 8,000 attention to these strange stones was
and 9,500 years ago, respectively, so an Inuit stowaway aboard a British ship
spanning the dates of the rock art. anchored in the Disko Bay in the early
Did the rock painters belong to a tribe 19th century.) It transpired that these
who in their nomadic circuit visited the had been used as hammerstones
lakes, and left, as it were, a pictogram to knock off pieces of the meteoric
postcard of their watery frolics? Phys.org fragments and batter them into shape
news, 8 Jan 2015. for harpoons, etc.

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 CORNER
It seems that the meteoric iron was FORTEANA FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD COMPILED BY BARRY BALDWIN
used from the mid-eighth century by
the Palæo-Eskimo Dorset culture, but
in the 12th century the Inuit arrived 185: TÊTE OFFENSIVE
and took over the trade in meteoric
iron. ScienceNordic, 13 Jan 2015, A non-Nabokovian Invitation to a Beheading, room table. Thirty-seven years later, he was
translated form Polarfronten, a Danish offset by direction to Mike Dash’s ‘Dry as prosecuted for complicity in murder by Julius
magazine (Videnskab.dk). Dust’ FT blog of 25 January 2011, plus Frances Cæsar, defended by Cicero.
Larson’s Severed: A History of Heads Lost and The great orator’s own truncated head and
AMBER EVIDENCE Heads Found (Granta Books, 2014). hands were displayed on the Roman Rostra
Researchers from Oregon State Nothing funny about ISIS decapitations by Mark Antony in revenge for his Second
University, the US Agricultural and paradings of severed heads (though Philippic’s fiery denunciation (albeit never
Research Service, and Germany shades of Irish Murdoch here). Nothing new, actually delivered). Spectators felt they were
inform us that a wonderfully preserved either. There’s (alas) a rich ancient litany of really gazing at Antony’s ‘black soul’.
grass specimen (below) has been precedents. Literary as well as historical. And Earlier, Marcus Gratidianus’s head, after his
found in an amber fossil about 100 not just classical. We all know the Queen of torture and ritualistic dismemberment, was
million years old in Burma (Myanmar). Hearts’ mantra: Off With His Head! Clearly paraded through Rome; in the same year (82
It was infected by a parasitic an unusually well-read playing card, since she BC) fellow-officer Censorinus’s was sent to rival
fungus similar to ergot, which is is borrowing from a favourite Shakespearean general Marius to lower his soldiers’ morale.
psychoactive: it contains the alkaloids ejaculation, e.g. Queen Margaret’s (Henry VI Punic spirits were similarly shattered (207
from which LSD was synthesised by Part III), “Off with his head, and set it on York BC) when, to signal a key Roman victory, the
Albert Hofmann in 1938. It has also Gates; / So York may overlook the town of York.” head of Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal was
been responsible at various times No shortage of head-lopping in the OT, along (Livy, bk27 ch51) “ tossed between the forward
in European (and possibly North with other savageries, though for sheer horror posts of the enemy,” thus prefiguring Rugby,
American) history for mass outbreaks ISIS and all other sadists must give way to the American, Australian, and Canadian football.
of hallucinatory chaos in populations Assyrians, justly described by Byron as coming Credit a canny Septimuleius for morbid
that had consumed ergot-infected down like a wolf upon the fold. Takes a strong ingenuity. Enemies of radical tribune Gaius
rye bread. There is also a good case stomach to get through the Ancient Biblical Gracchus had promised bounty-hunters gold
to be made that an ergotised beer Beheadings website. equal to his head’s weight on its production –
was used as a sacramental drink (the “He slashed off his head and sent it rolling shades of Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia.
kykeon) in the Eleusian Mysteries like a rounded boulder through the crowd” Septimuleius dug out the brain, poured in
(see this columnist’s The Long Trip). – Homer, Iliad, bk. v165. That’s poetry on the molten lead, thus boosting its avoirdupois to
This amber fossil provides evidence battlefield, based in reality, surpassed by this seventeen-and-two-thirds pounds.
that the availability of a particularly piece of Roman grand guignol (Appian, Civil In those pre-Instagram days, severed heads
powerful chemical means of inducing Wars, bk. ch26: “Trebonius, who was in bed, told were the most reliable proof of an enemy’s
altered states of consciousness has his captors to lead him to Dolabella. One of the death. Pompey’s Egyptian assassins embalmed
been with humanity from the start. centurions replied facetiously, ‘Go where you his head to send to Cæsar, stomach-turningly
Nature’s wisdom? Phys.org news, 9 like, but leave your head behind, because we described by Lucan (Civil War, bk. vv663-91).
Feb 2015. are ordered to bring your head, not yourself.’ Roman poets had a suggestive taste for such
Dolabella displayed it on Trebonius’s official lucidities; cf. Andrew McClellan, ‘Headless but
chair, then the soldiers rolled it from one to not Harmless’ (on-line).
another in sport along the city streets like a That of Crassus, killed (53 BC) by the
ball until it was completely crushed” – and so Parthians (who blamed poor Roman
Serie A was born. Just possibly, this scene was performance on the Greek porno found in their
in Queen Elizabeth I’s mind when she remarked knapsacks) arrived just in time to be used as
to a defender of Mary, Queen of Scots, “I will a stage prop finale to Euripides’s Bacchæ, in
make you shorter by the head.” which Agave enters carrying the head of her
En passant, although both ancient and royal son whom she and fellow-Bacchantes
modern Greeks have a word for it, Greece had torn to pieces. This outdoes even John the
is strikingly omitted from the extensive Baptist’s served up on a platter for Salome.
Wikipedia list of country-by-country Had Christ, as Paul, been a Roman citizen, he’d
kephalotomies – no Chop-Chop Square in have been beheaded, not crucified. That would
Athens – in which England features among the have made a difference: no symbolic cross, and
most prominent. would the Resurrection have been a headless
Cue here for mention of Oliver Cromwell’s ghost buster?
posthumous severed bonce, a popular 18th- Bald heads were a nuisance. A Galba lyncher
century curiosity (‘Oliver’s Scull’ was slang had to carry that emperor’s by sticking his
for ‘chamber-pot’), dismissed by Carlyle thumb up a nostril (Suetonius, ch20 para2).
as “fraudulent moonshine”, authenticity Gloating over heads is a regular event in
defended by Pearson & Morant (Biometrika 29, Tacitus’ Annals, for notable instance Poppæa’s
1934, p109), finally re-interred (1960) at Sidney glee on seeing that of her murdered rival
Sussex, Cambridge [FT115:40-42]. Octavia. Given the dark nature of this column, a
Gaius Rabirius pickled the head of populist bit of Nero’s black humour makes fitting finale:
agitator Saturninus (stoned to death, 100 “Why was I ever afraid of a man with such a big
BC) and kept it for mockery on his dining- nose?”

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 GHOSTWATCH
MATT PATTINSON

ALAN MURDIE explores the ghosts and folklore of a mysterious prehistoric complex

I
n 21st century Britain, it might be thought
the day of the M R James-style ghost
story, where a scholar or antiquary heads
off to some unexcavated archæological
site steeped in local legend and digs up
more than he bargained for in the form of nasty
supernatural shocks, is well and truly over.
However, just over the last year a locality
not far from the village of Great Livermere in
Suffolk, where James himself grew up as a
child and treated as his college vacation home
for many years, is rapidly becoming recognised
as the site of a mysterious prehistoric
complex with intriguing legends attached.
Previously mentioned in FT last year by Paul
Devereux [FT312:17], this cursus monument
(also classed as a ‘causewayed enclosure’
by some prehistoric specialists) consists of
straight lines and ditches on so large a scale
that it can only be fully comprehended from
the air (key traces are apparent by way of
crop marks visible on Google Earth). A section
of this colossal monument runs along the
River Lark, stretching between the villages of
Hengrave and Fornham All Saints, and has ABOVE: Fornham Hall, Suffolk, now demolished but once haunted by a White Lady. OPPOSITE: M R James, who
been awarded Schedule Ancient Monument grew up in nearby Great Livermere. BELOW: The TV adaptation of James’s ghost story ‘A Warning to the Curious’,
which drew on the local folklore of the ‘Three Crowns of East Anglia’.
status, with portions dating back to the
Neolithic and Bronze Age. It qualifies as the
oldest surviving man-made structure in East burials and ghosts. John Gage in The History of
Anglia and is almost wholly unexcavated. Hengrave (1810) mentions a local hill known as
Situated at its heart is the church of Fornham Kingsbury Hill in Fornham Park and a tradition
All Saints, indicating a past Christianisation of that three ancient British kings are buried
the old pagan site and a continuing tradition of nearby. Today, the village pub at Fornham All
sanctity. Saints commemorates the tradition, being
The full extent of this ritual landscape is not named The Three Kings.
yet known, but it could stretch north into the This has a resonance and indeed pre-dates
Brecklands of Norfolk, out west to a Bronze Age one of M R James’s most famous stories, ‘A
barrow cemetery on Risby Heath and east to Warning to the Curious’ (1925). Written some
the village of Rougham and a prominent burial 15 years before the Sutton Hoo discoveries,
mound called Eastlow Hill. The orientation of James used the conceit of the ‘Three Crowns
the earthworks points south, direct towards of East Anglia’ buried in antiquity to protect
St Edmund’s Abbey, at Bury St Edmunds. The composite derived from words from two the land from invasion. One crown was lost to
presence of the monument perhaps explains different languages – the ‘grave’ portion coastal erosion that consumed the ancient
why Bury was chosen for the shrine and tomb coming from the old German for grave or city of Dunwich, where Siegbert, son of King
of St Edmund, an East Anglian King martyred earthwork, dating from Anglo-Saxon period Rædwald, established a palace in AD 630. The
by the Danes in AD 869, as the district had and the old British or Welsh language second crown was dug up at Rendlesham in
already been established as the traditional providing ‘Hen’ which means ‘old’ – hence 1687 by workmen, who melted it down, whilst
burial place of kings and chieftains. Traces ‘Old Earthwork’. The Anglo-Saxons called the third remains undiscovered. Folklorist
of a Bronze Age burial ground lie close to Suffolk, ‘Selig Suffolk’ which is thought to Jacqueline Simpson maintains that it is an
the monument, together with a significant have been corrupted into “silly Suffolk” but inspired fiction by James (See ‘The Rules of
concentration of folklore and ghost stories the original meaning of ‘selig’ is holy, the place Folklore in the Ghost Stories of MR James’ in
in the wider area, perhaps hinting at earlier of the blessed dead. (Sources: East Anglian Folklore vol 108, 1997, pp9-18); whereas Enid
religious practices on the site. In short, it is Daily Times, 1 Feb + 31 May 2014; Revd J Porter in The Folklore of East Anglia (1974)
nothing less than part of an enormous spiritual Towyn Jones and Dr Duncan McAndrew pers. tended to treat it as a local genuine tradition
landscape used in one form or another comms.) that may have been utilised by him. In James’s
for some 6,000 years and awaiting proper The location of an ancient ceremonial and story the third crown has a ghostly guardian
investigation and study. burial site above a river valley is reminiscent of who wreaks a terrible vengeance upon a
According to some archæological theories, the positioning of Sutton Hoo in East Suffolk, reckless excavator and treasure seeker. Was
causwayed enclosures occur at focal points itself linked with ghostly sightings of warriors the Fornham complex folklore an inspiration
where different cultures met, and this by Mrs E Pretty on whose land the famous for him?
aspect is currently attracting attention from ship burial was found in 1939. (See ‘My Buried However, at the Fornham site there are not
as far away as Wales. The President of the History’ by John Preston Daily Telegraph, 29 stories of guardian spectres or soldiers, but a
Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society and April 2007; ‘Sutton Hoo – Finding the Hoard’ marked and exclusive concentration of female
veteran folklorist and ghost writer the Revd by Rodney Castledean in The Unknown, Dec phantoms variously dressed in white, grey, pink
J Towyn Jones has expressed support for 1986). and red.
the suggestion of archæologist Dr Duncan Folklore around the Fornham complex John Gage’s History and Antiquities of
McAndrew that the name ‘Hengrave’ is a similarly includes a tradition of ancient royal Hengrave (1810 and 1822) states that female

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 water spirits haunted the River Lark through occurred with the park being developed as However, given that the last Briton with an
the village. Gage seems to have been a training ground. Following this, troops at 18th century parentage died only in 1970
captivated by the idea of female water sprites the Hall were frightened by appearances of (admittedly with a father born in 1799) many
troubling the builders of a mill around which the White Lady apparition which continued exceptions doubtless exist (‘Last link with
they were supposed to frolic, writing in the until the soldiers left, whereupon the hall the 18th century’ a former category in The
style of Chaucer: was completely demolished in 1951, save Guinness Book of Records). Indeed, at the
Now there spreaden rumour that everish for a stable block. Pits and craters created other extreme there have been suggestions
night by the army were later used for a while for that some oral cultures may preserve history
The (pitts) ihaunted by many a sprite gravel extraction and in the mid-1970s were as myths for thousands of years, with up
The miller avoucheth and all thereabout earmarked as a toxic waste dump; fortunately to 10,000 years even being proposed (See
That they full oft hearen the hellish rout the alternative that was developed was a When They Severed Earth from Sky: How
Further along the River Lark one finds water treatment plant and sewage works. The the Human Mind Shapes Myth, 1994, by
further traces of these beliefs with pools stable block was turned into private dwellings Elizabeth Wayland Barber and Paul T Barber).
called the Mermaid or Merrymaid Pits; in in 2009. In Britain, an oral tradition spanning the
East Anglia mermaids were not cute fairytale Another White Lady is said to wander centuries between the Bronze Age and the
creatures, but often malevolent sirens Barton Hill, the nearest prominent high mediæval writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth
dragging victims to watery deaths. point lying due east of the Monument, in the in The History of The Kings of Britain (1136)
At nearby Hengrave Hall a ‘Pink lady’ neighbouring parish of Fornham St Martin. has been proposed concerning the legendary
is supposed to haunt the Tudor manor Back in 1978 I heard from a local lady, a origins of Stonehenge (cited in Quest for
house, which between 1895 and 2005 Miss Smith who lived in the village all her Merlin, 1986, by Nicolai Tolstoy), whilst the
was run by the Roman Catholic Sisters of life, of her childhood encounter with this prehistorian Leslie Grinsell considered that
the Assumption. The Pink Lady was said to figure along with her father, who was deeply popular folklore might carry clues about
have disturbed guests in their bedrooms as troubled by the experience. Completing this changes to the coastline which occurred
recently as the 1990s since the building has collection of female spectres to the south is in prehistoric times (see The Folklore of
been converted for secular purposes, being the Grey Lady of Babwell Priory, further linked Prehistoric Sites of Britain, 1976).
seen to glide out through an upstairs window. with the notorious and dangerous Grey Lady Currently, only parts of the ritual complex
At the former gates of the ill-fated Fornham apparition of Bury St Edmunds. (Sources: are protected under the Scheduled Ancient
Park, which lies adjacent to the Monument West Suffolk Illustrated, 1903, by Horace Monument Act 1979, despite in 2007 the
across the river, a dangerous female Barker; Haunted Bury St Edmunds, 2007, by then regional director of English Heritage
apparition known as Red Hannah was said Alan Murdie; Fornham File, Bury St Edmunds visiting the area and telling locals it was the
to appear at dusk, serving as a bugbear Record Office). 48th most important historic site in their
for threatening wayward children. The Park Such a concentration of female phantoms records for England. In particular, a large
itself was prowled by a sinister White Lady, in around an ancient site is remarkable. section of land containing much archæology
walking from the lake to Fornham Hall and Could these be folkloric clues that the site within 50 metres of the Monument is being
the ruined church tower. The square tower was once a focus of female-centred worship threatened by a major road development
is all that remains of St Genevieve’s church, and veneration of goddesses? scheme proposed by Suffolk County Council
which burned down soon after building and How long do oral traditions last? Leaving in a deal with Countryside Properties of
landscaping for the Hall commenced in the aside claims of extraordinary human longevity Brentwood to put 900 houses on the site.
18th century. According to local tradition the so beloved in fortean circles, an influential Trial digging in this field by the Suffolk
fire started in a freak accident on 24 June academic view of Lord Raglan in 1936 was Archæology Service has already found
1782, caused by a man shooting at rooks that no oral tradition endures reliably for hundreds of flint tools, a palisaded enclosure,
or jackdaws, with the shot setting the roof more than five generations, or approximately a Bronze Age cremation urn and human
alight. June 24th or Old Midsummer’s Day or 150 years (The Hero, 1936, by Lord Raglan). remains, with only five per cent of the field
Night was considered a particularly numinous excavated. Nonetheless both the County
date for ghosts and the supernatural, though Council and Countryside Properties are
other historical evidence places the fire shutting their eyes to the situation and trying
occurring seven years earlier on 17 May to force their scheme through, the latter
1775. even claiming that there are no areas on the
Despite having at one time being owned by site “that can be classified as a cemetery’.
a wealthy Norfolk family, the once beautiful (Source: ‘Archæologist’s woes for oldest
Hall suffered a long decline. Numerous cemetery’ Bury Free Press, 13 Feb 2015) But
skeletons, laid out in strange positions, were then putting 900 houses on the oldest burial
found in the park beneath an ancient pollard ground in East Anglia is hardly likely to be a
ash felled in 1827. Opinion has been divided selling point for marketing luxury properties,
as to whether the 30 skeletons were dead certainly if prospective purchasers know their
from the Battle of Fornham in 1173 or from M R James.
an earlier, perhaps prehistoric burial. Sympathetic readers are encouraged to
From the late 1890s Fornham Hall was send polite protests to the Development
shut up and abandoned by the owners, Control Committee, St Edmundsbury Council,
being requisitioned by the army in both Cllr Graham Newman Suffolk County Council
World Wars and later used as a POW camp. and Countryside Properties of Brentwood.
After 1945 the Army remained in occupation As locals told Peter Vaughn in the 1972 BBC
and inflicted a great deal of damage on the television adaptation of A Warning to the
HULTON ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES

building. One soldier recalled, “It was a weird Curious: “No digging!”
place if you can imagine something like Miss
Haversham’s place in Great Expectations. You can see traces of the monument in
Four poster beds, sheets still on the beds the fields between Hengrave and Fornham
and when you tried to pick them up they fell All Saints using Google Earth maps. The
to pieces in your hands.” Scheduled Ancient Monument Map can be
Further major disturbance of the soil seen on the English Heritage website.

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strangedays

THE GROUNDHOG DAY MAN A man with a chronic version of

déjà vu is “trapped in a time loop”

A British man has been forced has encountered cases before –

to drop out of university after with some patients even insisting
chronic déjà vu left him unable they had already met him because
to lead a normal life. In one of of their déjà vu. “People greet you
the strangest cases of déjà vu like an old friend, even though
ever recorded, the 23-year-old they’ve never seen you before.
even stopped watching television, Some of them were on Skype on
listening to the radio, or reading the other side of the world, but
newspapers or magazines because they still had that sense,” he said.
he believed he had seen it all The term déjà vu (French for
before. He doesn’t suffer from “already seen”) was coined in
any of the neurological conditions 1876 by the French philosopher
usually seen in people who suffer Emile Boirac. Research indicates
frequently from déjà vu, such that about two thirds of us
as temporal lobe epilepsy; in experience at least one episode of
his case, the phenomenon may déjà vu during our lives. Unlike
have been triggered by panic many other memory problems,
attacks, perhaps exacerbated by it seems to occur more in young
LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) people, often starting at the age
– although he only took one ‘trip’. of six or seven and reaching a
In every other respect, he is in peak between the ages of 15 and
perfect health; his brain scan 25 before tailing off, according to
appeared normal. The unnamed research by Professor Alan Brown
student had a history of feeling at South Methodist University in
anxious, particularly a fear of Dallas.
germs, which led him to wash Other lesser-known neural
his hands very frequently and phenomena are thought to be
to shower two to three times a related. Jamais vu (“never seen”)
day, but his anxiety worsened is the sense that something which
when he began university in should be familiar is alien, for
early 2007. Feeling depressed, example a common word which
he took a break from his studies, suddenly seems strange. Presque

GETTY IMAGES
which is when he first began vu (“almost seen”) is the sense of
experiencing déjà vu. The early being on the edge of an epiphany
episodes sometimes lasted only or realisation, for example
a few minutes, but other attacks
could be extremely prolonged.
There was one condition such as dementia or
epilepsy. In relation to our case,
recalling a memory. Déjà entendu
(“already heard”) is the sense
For example, while on holiday in a
destination that he had previously instance when distress caused by the déjà vu
experience may itself lead to
of feeling sure you have heard
something before, like a snippet
visited, he reported feeling as increased levels of déjà vu: of conversation or a musical
though he had become “trapped he had déjà vu similar feedback loops in positive phrase.
in a time loop” – a sort of endless symptoms are reported in other “I’ve had people say to me
Groundhog Day.
On returning to university, the
of the déjà vu anxiety states e.g. panic attacks.
It is plausible on neurobiological
‘You don’t really believe in déjà
vu, do you?’ as if it’s something
déjà vu episodes became more grounds that anxiety might lead paranormal,” said Dr Akira
intense. In 2008, he was referred appeared in the Journal of Medical to the generation of déjà vu.” O’Connor, a psychologist from
to specialists for neurological Case Reports (8 Dec 2014). “Most The man likened the the University of St Andrews.
examination and was treated cases like this occur as a side “frightening” episodes to being “I’ve had letters from some
with a range of medications, but effect associated with epileptic in the psychological thriller film people who believe strongly that
these failed to help. “Rather seizures or dementia. However, Donnie Darko. “There was one it is something spiritual, quoting
than simply the unsettling in this instance it appears as instance where he went to get a the Bible and the Qur’an. Some
feelings of familiarity which though the episodes of déjà vu haircut,” said Dr Chris Moulin, people say I shouldn’t investigate
are normally associated with could be linked to anxiety causing a cognitive neuropsychologist at it; that ‘explaining rainbows
déjà vu, our subject complained mistimed neuronal firing in the the University of Bourgogne who ruins their beauty’. Personally
that it felt like he was actually brain, which causes more déjà worked on the case. “As he walked I’ve always loved getting déjà vu
retrieving previous experiences vu and in turn brings about more in, he got a feeling of déjà vu. – and finding out what causes it
from memory, not just finding anxiety. If proved, this could be Then he had déjà vu of the déjà just makes the experience more
them familiar,” said Dr Christine the first-ever recorded instance vu. He couldn’t think of anything beautiful.” livescience.com 23
Wells, a psychology expert from of psychogenic déjà vu, which else.” It is not known how many Dec 2014; telegraph.co.uk, 20 Jan;
Sheffield Hallam University, is déjà vu triggered by anxiety people suffer from this “chronic” D.Mail, 21 Jan; BBC News, 24 Jan
whose report on the case rather than a neurological version of déjà vu, but Dr Moulin 2015.

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 ALIEN ZOO
KARL SHUKER presents his regular round-up from the
cryptozoological garden – including a possible new species
of monkey in the rainforest, an intriguing encounter with a
giant eel and news of the vegetable lamb of Tartary’s return.
UNIVERSITY OF MATO GROSSO

MYSTERY MONKEY IN BRAZIL was a tree with algæ in water, then saw the firmly believed that China and elsewhere in
A large monkey unlike any currently known to head and realized the ‘algae’ was actually what was once known as Tartary (a vast area
science has been sighted on three separate a frill. The animal was thicker than my arm. encompassing much of northern and central
occasions, and now photographed (above), The head was at the front of the 15ft [4.6m] Asia) harboured an extraordinary bush whose
in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, according to Coleman canoe and the tail end trailed behind gourd-like fruit opened to reveal small woolly
a recent report released by the country’s my back seat. At the time this was amazing to lambs inside. Each lamb remained attached
University of Mato Grosso. It appears to be both my father and I. Only later did I come to to its umbilical cord-like stem throughout its
a form of saki monkey (genus Pithecia), but fully appreciate how amazing this sighting was. life, which was usually quite short as its flesh
unlike all known sakis the mystery monkey I got to see it the longest as we slowly passed reputedly tasted like crabmeat and its blood
is calico in colour. Consequently, it may be it and I was in the back of the boat. [The eel like honey, so it was readily eaten by humans
either a previously unrecorded colour variant was] 12 to 15 ft [3.7–4.6m].” and also by wolves, its anchoring stem
of a known species of saki or – as suggested The ‘frill’ was presumably the eel’s long, low preventing the helpless animal from fleeing.
in the report – a completely new, currently dorsal fin, which runs along almost the entire Some collectors even proudly possessed what
undescribed saki species in its own right. length of the body in freshwater anguillid (true) were alleged to be preserved specimens of
Sakis can grow up to almost 2ft (60cm) in eels. What makes this report so exciting is these exotic zoo-botanical lambs. During the
length, and are therefore quite conspicuous, that there is an unambiguous scale present in late 1600s, however, Sir Hans Sloane and
but the belated discovery of this novel example it – the length of the canoe, alongside which others revealed that these strange artefacts
is due to the fact that the region of rainforest the eel was aligned, thereby making its total were actually the hairy rhizomes of a large
where it occurs has not previously been length very easy to ascertain. The only such arborescent oriental fern, whose roots and
studied. Sadly, however, this same region is species recorded from Ohio is the common most of its frond stems had been removed,
threatened by deforestation, so even before its American eel Anguilla rostrata (above right), leaving just four stems remaining that had
zoological identity has been determined, the which officially grows up to 4ft (1.2m) long. been carefully shaped to resemble legs.
calico saki is already in danger of extinction. Consequently, judging from the scale provided Two such specimens, both well over two
www.natureworldnews.com/articles/11483/ by the canoe, the eel seen by Chris and his centuries old, still exist in British collections.
20141229/ new-monkey-species-already- father was three to four times longer than this One of these, only very rarely displayed publicly,
believed-to-be-endangered.htm 29 Dec 2014. species’ official maximum size. Assuming their is held by London’s Natural History Museum.
report to be genuine (and I have no reason The other, displayed more often, is at the
GIANT EEL MEASURES UP to doubt it), there seems little option but to Garden Museum, donated many years ago by
Giant eels are a popular identity for water assume that giant freshwater eels do indeed a Cambridgeshire physician, after being in his
monsters, of both the marine and freshwater exist, at least in the Ohio waterways. Chris R. family for over 150 years, encased throughout
variety. However, because the size of eels Richards, Cryptozoology group, 3 Feb 2015. that time in its original glass dome. Arriving at
is notoriously difficult to gauge accurately the Garden Museum, I found that it was not
in the wild due to their sinuous movements AND THE LAMB SHALL RETURN presently on display, but after the museum’s
and lack of background scale, reports of On 6 February 2015 I visited the Garden exhibitions curator, Emily Fuggle, learnt of
giant specimens are normally difficult to Museum in Lambeth, London, to view their my interest she very kindly treated me to a
take seriously – which is why the following most celebrated exhibit – a preserved private viewing of their vegetable lamb in the
account is so significant. On 3 February specimen of the legendary vegetable lamb museum’s store. It is a most remarkable-
2015, Facebook friend Chris R Richards from or barometz. For centuries, many naturalists looking specimen, but Emily informed me
Covington, Washington State, that it is now too fragile and
posted on the page of the vulnerable to the effects of light
Facebook group Cryptozoology and photography from which its
the following hitherto- antiquarian glass cupola can no
COURTESY OF THE GARDEN MUSEUM AND MALCOLM RUSSELL.

unpublished report of a huge longer shield it adequately for it to

freshwater eel that he and his be placed on display at present.
father had personally witnessed However, I am happy to reveal
during the 1990s: exclusively here in FT that there
“I believe wholeheartedly in are plans for this unique wonder
giant eels. I saw one as long to return on show as a permanent
as my canoe back in the later exhibit in 2016, housed inside a
Nineties. They could result in sea special new case affording it full
monster claims. Hocking River protection, so I am already greatly
Ohio. Directly off the side of the looking forward to a return visit to
canoe in clear water near upper see it again. Emily Fuggle, pers.
part of river. At first thought it comm., 6 Feb 2015.

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strangedays

MEMENTO MORI A 200-YEAR-OLD MUMMIFIED, MEDITATING MONK, MANSON’S INTENDED HAS

BIG PLANS FOR HIS CORPSE, AND THE CAT WHO CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD

DEAD – OR MEDITATING? fresh and without rigor mortis.

A mummified monk found in When the tukdam ends, the body
the lotus position in Mongolia is collapses, and is just like any
believed to be around 200 years other dead body. The rainbow
old. Dr Barry Kerzin, a famous body, however, is a product of
Buddhist monk and a physician to a very specific line of practice,
the Dalai Lama, allegedly claims a small and particular part of
that the monk is actually in “very dzogchen. The process starts
deep meditation” and in a rare immediately after death, but
and very special spiritual state the shrinking stops if the body
known as tukdam. Over the last 50 is disturbed. It takes a few days,
years there are said to have been even a week or two, to happen.
40 such cases in India involving So these are two different ideas,
meditating Tibetan monks. and this body fits neither case.
“I had the privilege to take care It looks much more like what
of some meditators who were in a happens after a long, slow
tukdam state,” said Dr Kerzin. “If reduction in food intake. The
the person is able to remain in this digestive system then effectively
state for more than three weeks shuts down – no juice, no bugs,
– which rarely happens – his body nothing to attack the body when
gradually shrinks, and in the end it dies.”
all that remains from the person is Michael Smith in New Orleans
his hair, nails, and clothes. Usually writes: “Tukdam (meditative
in this case, people who live next stability on the clear light nature
to the monk see a rainbow that of the mind at the death point)
glows in the sky for several days. is a very real phenomenon, but
This means that he has found a doesn’t usually last more than
‘rainbow body’. This is the highest a few hours or days, and up to
state close to the state of Buddha. a few weeks in rarer instances.
If the meditator can continue to Not over centuries as this report
stay in this meditative state, he suggests… Dr Kerzin doesn’t
can become a Buddha. Reaching actually say that the monk is still
such a high spiritual level, the in tukdam.”
meditator will also help others, Siberian Times, 2 Feb; BBC
and all the people around will feel ABOVE: The mummified Mongolian monk; not dead, just meditating very hard. News, 4 Feb 2015. For more
a deep sense of joy”. about self-mummification,
Initial speculation is that the and professor of the Mongolian in his own home in Ulaanbaatar, see http://www.soulask.com/
mummy could be a teacher of Institute of Buddhist Art at planning to sell it on the black sokushinbutsu-bizarre-practice-
Lama Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov. Born Ulaanbaatar Buddhist University, market at a “very high price”. self-mummification/
in 1852, Itigilov was a Buryat said, in reference to the body of Police uncovered the plot and
Buddhist Lama of the Tibetan Itigilov’s alleged teacher: “The quickly arrested a 45-year-old, LOVED TO DEATH
Buddhist tradition, best known lama is sitting in the lotus position named only as Enhtor. According Charlie Manson’s supposed
for the lifelike state of his body. vajra, the left hand is opened, and to Article 18 of the Criminal Code budding romance with a woman
In 1927, Itigilov supposedly told the right hand symbolises the of Mongolia, smuggling items of 53 years his junior has been
his students he was going to die preaching Sutra. This is a sign that cultural heritage is punishable allegedly exposed as a money-
and that they should exhume the lama is not dead, but is in a with either a fine of up to three making scheme, according
his body in 30 years. The lama very deep meditation according to million roubles (£28,000) or to journalist Daniel Simone,
sat in the lotus position, began the ancient tradition of Buddhist between five and 12 years in who has spoken extensively
meditating and died. When he lamas”. prison. The mummy is now to Manson in Corcoran jail,
was dug up, his body was found The body, wrapped in being examined at the National California, and is planning
to be well preserved. Fearing cattle skins, was found on 27 Centre of Forensic Expertise at a book on him. Afton Elaine
interference by the Soviet January 2015 in the north- Ulaanbaatar. Burton, 27, now known as Star,
authorities, his followers reburied central Mongolian province There are some intriguing was hoping to gain possession
him and he remained at rest until of Songinokhairkhan. It now comments on the Siberian Times of Manson’s corpse through
2002 when he was again dug up transpires that it had been stolen website. Alex Wilding in Italy marriage so she and her friend
to great fanfare and found still from another part of the country writes: “Normally tukdam is Craig Hammond could put it
well preserved. The lama was then and was about to be sold. An said to follow death. It lasts for on display in a glass case in
placed in a Buddhist temple to be unnamed official said that it was hours, sometimes a few days or Los Angeles, just like Lenin in
worshipped for eternity. taken from a cave in the Kobdsk even longer. The body, though Moscow or Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi.
Gankhüügiin Pürevbat, founder region by a man who then hid it without breath or heartbeat, stays They apparently thought that

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 Mythconceptions by Mat Coward

186: WHO AM I?
POLARIS / EYEVINE

HUNT EMERSON
ABOVE: Manson’s would-be widow thinks he’d look nice in a glass display case.

the notorious Sixties hippie anti- MIRACLE ZOMBIE CAT

hero (whose ‘Family’ murdered Bart, a tomcat belonging to
The myth
When people have lost their memory, they don’t know who they are.
Sharon Tate and others) would the girlfriend of Ellis Hutson
draw a huge number of visitors in Tampa, Florida, was found
and make them a pile of money. lying in the road, stiff in a pool The “truth”
But Manson, 80, got wind of the of blood after being hit by a In fiction, amnesiacs, upon regaining consciousness, generally begin
plan and now no longer wants car, and was presumed dead. by asking two questions: “Where am I? – and then, a second later, as
to marry Burton. Anyway, he Hutson said he “couldn’t stand” the full horror of their situation strikes them “Who am I?” But according
to the experts in the field, “Amnesiacs never forget who they are”. Most
believes he is immortal, so he to bury the animal and asked his
amnesiacs suffer anterograde amnesia (difficulty with remembering new
thought the idea of displaying his neighbour David Liss to dig him
information), not retrograde amnesia (which concerns memories of the
corpse was stupid to begin with. a shallow grave. Five days later,
past). What we see in films isn’t amnesia as such, but the extremely
The marriage license expired a bedraggled Bart, weak and
rare “fugue state”, in which the patient loses all past memories
on 5 February, though Burton dehydrated, was found meowing and knowledge of his identity. If this truly exists it’s thought to have
apparently remains hopeful that for food by neighbour Dusty psychological, not neurological, causes – stress, for instance, rather
it will be renewed. Albritton. Hutson, 52, took Bart to than a head injury. But psychologists are divided over whether such
As Manson once said in an Tampa’s Humane Society, where cases are ever genuine. Memories concerning our identity are amongst
interview published in Rolling on 27 January the 23-month-old our oldest and most-often recalled. As such, they are “overwritten”
Stone in 1970: “Do you feel cat had surgery to remove his or hard-wired. It’s hard to imagine medical circumstances in which a
blame? Are you mad? Uh, do ruined eye and treat his broken person might become so damaged as to lose those memories, and
you feel like wolf kabob Roth jaw. He was reported to be resting yet still be able to function normally. Even someone stricken with a
vantage? Gefrannis booj pooch comfortably the next day. The dementia like Alzheimer’s is likely to lose their name only after they’ve
boo jujube; bear-ramage. Jigiji Humane Society called Bart a already lost everything else. Amnesia, specialists stress, is to do with
geeji geeja geeble Google. Begep “miracle cat”, while the ordeal memory, not identity. Interestingly, when people fake amnesia they tend
flagaggle vaggle veditch-waggle has earned him the nickname to overdo the symptoms, so asking “Do you know your name?” is one
bagga?” Curiously prescient, “zombie cat” on social media. way psychiatrists use to diagnose malingering.
that reference to Google, 28 Full recovery was expected to
years before the company was take about six weeks. BBC News, Sources
incorporated... Independent, 9 Feb 28 Jan; Sun, 29 Jan; Irish Examiner, www.psychologicalscience.org/media/myths/myth_14.cfm;
2015. 30 Jan 2015. www.memorylossonline.com/spring2002/memlossatmovies.htm;
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2009/05/27/does-faking-
amnesia-permanentl/

Disclaimer
Please don’t forget – this column reports, it doesn’t profess. It holds
no view on whether “Who am I?” amnesia is “extremely rare” or
“non-existent”. But if you do, the letters column is at your
disposal.
TAMPA HUMANE SOCIETY

Mythchaser
Cats and dogs eat grass when they want to
vomit. Or possibly to obtain a nutrient which is
missing from their pet food. We all know that –

OOK
ABOVE: Bart is making a good recovery after his ‘death’ and subsequent burial.
ISS MY THCONCEPTIONS THE B
DON’T M GOOD BOOKSHO
PS
E AND IN ALL
OUT NOW ONLIN
FT325 23
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 strangedays

This month, we mark the passing of a concert pianist turned much-loved bag lady, an
astrologer with a nose for disaster and a Nobel physicist who embraced life’s mysteries.

open fire, giving her homemade of Free Enterprise and the King’s
tomato chutney to regular passers- Cross fire. By his own account,
by. From time to time there were his premonitions began when
attempts to help her off the he looked at the astral charts
streets, by both official agencies at the beginning of the year and
and well-meaning music-lovers. noticed that Jupiter and Neptune
Most were politely declined: if (associated with shipping) were
she could not return to Prebend heading into a 90-degree angle,
Gardens she would remain in her coinciding with a solar eclipse in
car. She also turned down a free Pisces in March. The picture was
bus pass and other benefits. reminiscent of the astrological
Anne Naysmith, who died after chart for April 1912, the month
being hit by a lorry in Chiswick that saw the sinking of Titanic.
High Road, never married. On the Elwell then claimed to have
community website ChiswickW4. written to both P&O and Cunard in
com, Robert Fish wrote: February warning them they were
THE GUADIAN

“Sometimes I felt sorry for her, entering a prolonged period of

but often I reflected that, with that danger and offering to give them
ANNE NAYSMITH prommers outside the Albert Hall. fierce pride of hers, she probably more specific information if they
The daughter of a wayward Army In 2002 her beloved car was never felt sorry for herself.” would provide him with sailing
officer and a Russian mother, Anne towed away after a new local Some commentators drew schedules of their ships. Cunard
Smith (who later changed her resident complained it was parallels with Miss Shepherd, the wrote back on 20 February, saying
name to Naysmith) won a place at blighting the area. She declined musician who lived for 15 years the letter had been passed to
the Royal Academy of Music at the the offer of social housing, in a van on the driveway of Alan their fleet commodore, who was
age of 18, and by the early 1960s preferring a makeshift shelter Bennett’s home in Camden and on board the QE2. The liner was
was making a career as a concert in bushes at the foot of an was immortalised in his play The about to leave on a much-hyped
pianist, sometimes performing embankment by Stamford Brook Lady in the Van (1999). Others saw voyage to New York following a refit.
under the conductor Sir Adrian Underground station, where she a link to Diogenes the Cynic, the Elwell’s predictions proved spookily
Boult. In 1967 she took top billing cooked and tended her little Greek philosopher who showed his prescient when, in mid-Atlantic,
at the Wigmore Hall. She played garden. In 2012 her hideaway contempt for the material world cabins flooded, the air-conditioning
at Leighton House in Holland was left in tatters when workers by sleeping in a large ceramic jar failed and the captain had to make
Park, St Martin-in-the-Fields, St hacked back the vegetation and or barrel. a 250-mile (400km) detour in fog
James’s Piccadilly, and venues in cut down the cherry and plum Anne Smith, afterwards Naysmith, to avoid icebergs – a precaution
the Home Counties. She taught trees she had planted. Transport pianist and rough sleeper, born which, the company claimed,
piano at the Marist convent school for London said the workers had Southend on Sea 1937; died had nothing to do with Elwell’s
in Sunninghill, Berkshire, and later not realised the plot was special. Chiswick 10 Feb 2015, aged warnings.
worked at Trinity College of Music She was devastated but set about 77. P&O, meanwhile, fobbed Elwell
in London. about replanting and restoring the off with a letter assuring him that
By the early 1970s she had garden. DENNIS ELWELL they were well prepared for any
given up teaching and run into She slept elsewhere. Dennis Elwell was born in Aquarius emergencies. But two weeks later,
money problems. At about the Neighbours would never say with Scorpio ascendant. As he on 6 March, the P&O ferry Herald
same time a romance with a choral where, in order to protect her, but came into the world, the clock of Free Enterprise pulled out of
singer failed. In 1977, aged 39, it is thought that for more than downstairs kept striking until the Zeebrugge harbour with her bow
she was evicted from her flat in 10 years she bedded down in a doctor attending had to ask for it to doors open. She capsized and
22 Prebend Gardens, Chiswick. school doorway most nights. She be stopped. He developed a keen sank, taking the lives of some 200
Believing she had been wronged, would arrive after night classes interest in astrology as a teenager passengers. Elwell’s claims that
she took to sleeping in her car finished and would be gone before after reading Secret Service of he had warned the company of
nearby and agitated to get her school began the next morning. the Sky by Louis de Wohl, and impending doom brought much
rooms back. She never did. She Until recently she attended A Beginner’s Guide to Practical publicity. Subsequently a journalist
spent the next 26 years sleeping evensong at St Nicholas Church, Astrology by Vivian Robson. While asked him to explain how the
in her dilapidated old blue Ford Chiswick, her singing notable for working as a reporter on a local planets could signal disasters.
Consul. She achieved notoriety its clarity and beauty. Her ablutions newspaper, he began writing In response he referred her to
as “the car lady of Chiswick”, were done in public lavatories or regularly for American Astrology another forthcoming eclipse,
a dishevelled and familiar sight at a doctor’s surgery, and she and other magazines. He also on 7 October, when “Mercury
to commuters in west London. washed her tattered clothes at became a popular lecturer at and Pluto would be conjoined
Sometimes she would sit in on a petrol station with a hosepipe, international astrological symposia in Scorpio in semi-square to
local court cases; once a week wrapping them in old newspapers and established an astrological Uranus”. Mercury, he explained,
she could be found in the Barbican to dry. As her clothes fell apart she consultancy. was about “communication”, and
music library, examining scores or stitched new ones with rags. Elwell made the news in Pluto about the subterranean.
engaging in spirited and intelligent She used pigeon feathers to 1987 when he claimed to have “How about underground trains?”
conversation about music and insulate the plastic bags she wore predicted two major disasters that was her reply, he claimed. On 18
musicians; or she would chat with on her feet, and cooked on an year – the sinking of the Herald November a fire broke out beneath

24 FT325
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 strangedays

the escalators at King’s Cross

underground station and quickly
spread, causing 31 deaths and 20
serious injuries.
In 2007 Elwell was awarded
the Charles Harvey Award for
Exceptional Service to Astrology by
the Astrological Association of Great
Britain. He was twice married and had
four children.
Dennis Elwell, astrologer, born
Stourbridge, West Midlands 16 Feb
1930; died 13 Nov 2014, aged 84.

CHARLES TOWNES
Townes earned the unusual
distinction of winning both the
Nobel Prize for Physics, for his work
on the theory and application of
the maser (the forerunner of the
laser), and the Templeton Prize for
Progress in Religion. Townes often
cited his discovery of the maser
– an insight that had occurred to
Fairies, Folkloreand Forteana
him as he sat on a park bench in SIMON YOUNG FILES A NEW REPORT FROM THE INTERFACE OF STRANGE PHENOMENA AND FOLK BELIEF
Washington DC – as a “revelation”
akin to a religious experience, and
he was often teased by his scientific fact that doesn’t fit. Selby’s description fails
colleagues for his religious beliefs.
In 1961 he was appointed Provost
FAIRYCIRCLES to match the ‘sour ring’, where grass has
failed to grow, nor is there any reference to
and Professor of Physics at MIT, and In 1841, a humorous book was written, mushrooms or different colours. The circles
became a champion of the search for partially in the dialect of Devon, by one are, instead, “beaten”. This may just be a slip
extraterrestrial intelligence. He was Charles Selby: Maximums and Speciments of the author’s pen, but combined with “high
chairman of the advisory committee of William Muggins, Natural grass fields” it recalls modern
for the first human landing on the Philosopher and Citizen of crop circles. I am ignorant of
Moon. the World. Humour does the history of crop circles and
In 1966 he published a seminal not transfer very well from “they is pixy rings,” have always presumed them all
article, “The Convergence of Science generation to generation and it will be the sure (though without any effort at
and Religion”, which established him would be possible to read tens research) to be fakes. However,
as a unique voice in seeking common of pages of Maximums without reply, “made by the this short sentence made me
ground between the two disciplines.
“My own view is that, while science
the barest lifting of the corners
of the mouth. However, there is
little people when wonder whether we don’t have
something with its roots in
and religion may seem different, they one interesting paragraph on they dances in the folklore…
have many similarities, and should
interact and enlighten each other,”
p283: “Ask any country lad or
lass the meaning of the beaten
moonlight” The earliest thing that
could be construed as a
he wrote. After learning that he had circles as is sometimes seed in description of crop circles
won the Templeton Prize in 2005, high grass fields. ‘They is pixy was a picture (though not
he explained that his views arose rings,’ will be the sure reply, the text), of a pamphlet from
out of his perception that science, ‘made by the “little people” 1678 entitled “The Mowing-
like religion, embodies paradoxes when they dances in the Devil: Or, Strange News out of
that can only be resolved by acts moonlight’’. Hartford-shire”, showing the
of faith. “There are many mysteries At first glance, this is Devil cutting a field of oats in
still in science, many mysteries nothing special. It is a mid- a strange formation [FT53:38-
and inconsistencies. Quantum 19th-century reference to fairy circles: and 39]. The next work discussed by crop-circle
mechanics is inconsistent with there are scores, perhaps even hundreds of enthusiasts appears in Nature in 1880: “a few
general relativity… So what do we such sentences between Victorian covers. standing stalks as a centre, some prostrate
do? Physicists just accept it. They And fairy circles? They are, of course, rings stalks… forming a circle… and… a circular
believe in both. I think that’s what that appear in the grass. Sometimes they wall of stalks.” I’d certainly prefer Selby to
we have to do in life, recognise there are circles of dead grass, sometimes rings of the Mowing Devil, which requires special
are inconsistencies, places we don’t different coloured grass and sometimes rings pleading, and would rank it behind the
understand. We have to accept the of toadstools. Explanations for these rings Nature letter. It would be too much to call any
mysteries and proceed.” varied from fungus, to lightning, to ‘airflows’, of the three proof: but the two 19th-century
Charles Hard Townes, physicist, born to, a personal favourite, moles. Nothing to see, references are, let’s say, suggestive.
Greenville, South Carolina 28 July move along? Simon Young writes on folklore and history
1915; died 27 Jan 2015, aged 99. Well, possibly; but there is one peculiar and runs www.fairyist.com

FT325 25
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 the UFO files
FORTEAN TIMES presents our monthly section featuring regular sighting
reports, reviews of classic cases, entries on major ufological topics and
hands-on advice for UFO investigators. The UFO Files will benefit from your
input, so don’t hesitate to submit your suggestions and questions.
To contact The UFO Files, email: nufon@btinternet.com

ANDY ROBERTS & DR DAVID CLARKE PRESENT

FLYINGSAUCERY THEIR REGULAR SURVEY OF THE LATEST FADS AND

FLAPS FROM THE WORLD OF UFOLOGY

THE RISE AND FALL OF BLUE

BOOK
In January, many mainstream news
organisations got excited about the online
disclosure of 130,000 pages of ‘declassified’
UFO documents from the Project Blue Book
archives. But seasoned researchers refused to
get too excited, as anyone with even a basic
knowledge of UFO history knows the Blue Book
files have been in the public domain since
1970. Case files generated by the project,
that ran for 22 years until its closure in 1969,
were deposited at the US National Archives
after the United States Air Force decided it
wanted to “make UFOs history”. Unfortunately,
anyone who wanted to consult this archive had
to travel to Washington, DC, and spend hours this as either a speck of dust or a lens flare the everyday story of three metal detecting
cranking through obsolete rolls of microfilm from the Sun. UFO watcher Toby Lundh is chums who go down to the woods hoping to
to access the 12,618 case files. But thanks unconvinced. Toby describes himself as “a unearth buried treasure. What could possibly
to the efforts of an industrious ufologist with persistent viewer” who spends four to six go wrong? In typical film fashion, their mobile
the nickname ‘Xtraeme’, John Greenewald hours every day peering at the live footage phones malfunction, tensions rise and the
was able to convert images from the files into from space and, perhaps unsurprisingly, often inevitable high strangeness ensues. In a nod
10,000 searchable PDF documents. These sees what he believes are UFOs in orbit. He to the cattle mutilation myth, dead horses
were uploaded to Greenewald’s Black Vault has accused NASA of deliberately cutting the are seen and ignored and it’s funny (both
Internet archive in January, and, for a few live feed whenever a UFO gets close to the peculiar and hilarious) how even though the
days, this handy resource was available to ISS and says footage is removed from its protagonists lose phone communication,
anyone with a web browser – leading to the archives “to conceal alleged communication their camera soldiers on to record their trials
media hype and a huge spike in the number between astronauts and UFOs”. Lundh points for posterity! The true star of the real-life
of online searches for Blue Book files. But on to two separate incidents in January when he Rendlesham UFO mystery, the Orford Ness
29 January, Greenewald reluctantly took down spotted mysterious objects hovering outside Lighthouse, doesn’t even get a mention in
his database following a wrangle over the legal the space station. One “looked remarkably the credits, never mind its own personal
ownership of the images. Until the dispute like the Starfleet insignia in Star Trek”, but assistant. Film makers trying to grasp the
is resolved the Blue Book files will remain in moments after cameras panned onto the nettle of successful UFO films really need
limbo, unlike the British MoD files, many of UFO the stream was interrupted for 10-15 more imagination than this and flying saucery
which can be downloaded for a small charge seconds. On another occasion he spotted a suggests they refer to Close Encounters of
online. But, as Greenewald says, although the grey object coming up over the horizon and the Third Kind and Communion as exemplars
USAF material doesn’t contain anything new, then disappearing, moments before NASA of the real weirdness and obsessions people
his laudable efforts to establish a searchable switched to a different camera. NASA have not experience when meeting ‘them’ from ‘there’.
database that allows visitors to do research commented on the still images captured by In a timely, ahem, ‘coincidence’, a UFO was
“without going to any hassle of registering, or Lundh. But UFO pundit Nigel Watson pointed caught on film over Rendlesham Forest on
even paying for access” should be applauded out the majority are “as vague and elusive 26 January, just weeks away from the film’s
by all forteans. as those posted by UFO witnesses on Earth” opening. A military helicopter ‘seemingly’
Huffington Post Weird News, 26 Jan: tinyurl. and have similar mundane explanations. But, inspects the UFOs which flash and flicker
com/qeh5cko; BBC News Magazine, 26 as Nigel says, “the more NASA denies such above it. Is this the truth come to set us free?
Jan; Black Vault: http://projectbluebook. things or explains them the more people think FT contributor Nigel Watson, author of The UFO
theblackvault.com/ there is a conspiracy to hide the truth.” Investigations Manual, thinks otherwise: “If I
Daily Mail Online 26 Jan: tinyurl.com/o2nve53 was being cynical I’d say this is a stunt to give
THE NASA CONSPIRACIES publicity for The Rendlesham UFO Incident.
Ever since NASA set up a live feed from the THREE GO MAD IN SUFFOLK Like this video, it features helicopters and
International Space Station, UFO hunters It was bound to happen. Take a generation anomalous lights in the sky.” We couldn’t
have been trying to use it as a source of steeped in The X-Files and UFO conspiracies possibly comment. (See FT324:66-67 for
‘evidence’ for a conspiracy by the agency to and mix it up nicely with the enduring myth an interview with the film’s director, Daniel
hide the truth that aliens are visiting the Earth. of alien visitation in Rendlesham Forest. Stir Simpson).
Last October, some claimed that a ‘strange lightly with some Blair Witch Project found www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_
object’ was visible near the ISS during a footage and lo, you have this year’s celluloid detailpage&v=qfYOlwBftRY;www.openminds.
space walk by astronauts Reid Wiseman and saucer smash sensation: The Rendlesham tv/video-shows-flashing-ufos-rendlesham-
Alexander Gerst. But sceptics later identified UFO Incident. This film genre mash-up tells forest/31872

26 FT325
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 UFO CASEBOOK BRITISH JENNY RANDLES RE-OPENS THE CASE FILES
ON BRITAIN’S BEST-KNOWN UFO ABDUCTION

FLAPPY VALLEY:
LEFT: In 1981, PC Alan Godfrey stands on the
edge of Burnley Road at the spot where he
PART ONE encountered the UFO. The Ukrainian Club
is in the background.
Back in 2011, my fellow FT
contributors Peter Brookesmith, bus and had to get the driver back to
Dave Clarke and Andy Roberts the depot for 5.10am, so was pressed
wrote an article debating Britain’s for time. He has always regretted that
best-known UFO abduction this prevented him getting out of the
(FT269:44-47; 270:46-49). This bus after stopping on the road to look
celebrated case involves police and see what was happening.
JENNY RANDLES

officer Alan Godfrey, who in the It was clearly not the passage of his
early hours of 29 November 1980 bus that created these strange forces,
was, he claimed, abducted from his as he saw them ahead on the roadside
patrol car after seeing a spinning, as he approached, and then halted to
domed UFO at close quarters. He on Alan reliving the incident under hypnosis investigate. It was about 4.55am, he
had been driving on duty down Burnley Road in during the investigation. He had said on first believes, and he was on Burnley Road with the
the Yorkshire mill town of Todmorden (the area spotting the UFO: “It’s a bus” – before adding park to his left and the distinctive Ukrainian
where the award-winning BBC police drama quickly, when its nature revealed itself to him Club building to his right.
Happy Valley is set and filmed). These rugged on closer proximity: “It’s not a bus”. So what did he see? Here is what he told
surroundings have long been associated with In late 2014, Alan broke a few years of me: “All the litter and twigs on the road ahead
UFO activity. Indeed, Godfrey’s case came in silence to aid a local charity fundraiser. As of me were blowing like a whirlwind. The
the middle of an ongoing flap. a result, one man revealed his intention to swirling was very unusual. Higher up the trees
I became involved in this investigation soon talk to the now retired policeman of what he nothing was moving. But lower down on the
after the events happened, as my family come knew. He said to me: “Hi, Jenny. I was on that trees and bushes and the road all this stuff
from the adjacent mill town of Bacup and road at 5am… at the same time as this was was moving.”
my cousin married Alan’s sergeant. With PC happening to Alan Godfrey.” As he drove towards this strange
Godfrey’s cooperation I devoted my book The This witness, called Bob, was driving on phenomenon and stopped right next to it, he
Pennine UFO Mystery to his case and others Burnley Road that night in 1980 and, more could see in the light from streetlamps that
from the surrounding valleys. importantly, had directly observed part of there was a circle on the roadway.
One point raised by the authors in their what had taken place. Though he did not see “It was not the fact that the surface was a
2011 article was the lack of other witnesses Alan Godfrey or the UFO he did encounter the big dry patch that first alerted me. Instead, it
to any part of the patrolman’s experience. They physical effects that Godfrey described. was all the twigs in a strange pattern that drew
felt that if something unusual had occurred on Like the authors of that earlier article, I me to look there. But closer up I saw the road
that highway, even at 5am, someone should am unconvinced of the reality of hypnosis was swirled dry. I stopped the bus right in the
have supported PC Godfrey’s story. claims regarding aliens. Andy Roberts further middle of it.”
This lack of corroboration was never total, suggests that some of the details Alan It had rained through the night, but this had
as a report was made to Todmorden police perceived could have been influenced by stopped shortly before. The road was still quite
that Saturday from a man describing a light in subconscious recall of a futuristic modular wet, but not in this region where the strange
the early hours moving over the valley between house design that had been on display in winds were creating mayhem.
Cliviger and Todmorden. Sadly, he never came Todmorden. It turns out, coincidentally, that “The dry patch went from one side of the
forward again. Another witness in the town Bob made some panels for that very Futuro road to the other… possibly over the river,
on the Saturday evening witnessed a light house. However, I am utterly convinced that but I could not see that far” (NB: This river –
crossing the road close to the spot where PC Godfrey is sincere and saw something the Calder – is immediately left of the road
Godfrey’s police car stopped. And at a farm he considered strange. Indeed, the physical between here and the park, but behind a low
near Walsden, on the moors above the valley, effects he reported were for me a key reason stone wall).
an even more intriguing sighting had occurred why I am sure it was something real, not Bob stopped his bus, watching in
37 hours after the Godfrey encounter. Walsden hallucinatory. astonishment. He did not get out, as noted,
was the village where Alan was local bobby. Bob – it transpires – was the driver of the but was sufficiently intrigued to wind down his
On that Sunday, a family witnessed a works bus that Alan initially thought he might cab window and stick a hand out.
domed object bobbing up and down, in and be seeing that night and that Roberts et al “The updraft was amazing. It was not a wind
out of the valley near electricity pylons. Initially, think he might have mistook for a UFO. Bob blowing at me, like a stormy day. The draft was
they thought it could be a power company worked for the West Yorkshire passenger going upwards from off the road into the sky.
helicopter, but after rushing outside for a good transport company (now First Bus) driving a But it only went up to about four feet. I moved
view they realised that it was impossibly silent. double decker Fleetline to pick up other local my arm above shoulder height and there was
Moreover, they saw it again a few months drivers booked on the first morning services. nothing at all. The trees here were very still.
later, right on top of their farmhouse, which He insisted there were no other buses on So I moved my arm back down and the strong
confirmed that fact. that road until he delivered these drivers to updraft was still there hitting me.”
The farmer told me how then he and his the depot at Millwood, on the road out toward He left the area, with the effects continuing,
wife were watching the TV news when the Hebden Bridge. A couple were in Rochdale and picked up the driver, turned around and
newscaster’s face suddenly blurred. “It was Bacup, but none near Todmorden. In other passed the spot again about 10 minutes later
just like on Star Trek when they say ‘beam words, if PC Godfrey did misinterpret a bus on his way back to the depot. There was no
me up,’’ he told me with a puzzled look – that night then Bob had to be driving it. sign of anything unusual and he did not see
concluding that “It was something I can’t Around 4.50am Bob drove his Fleetline away the swirl.
explain”. from Millwood, heading west into the town Bob told me of this still vivid memory:
However, none of these sightings were centre, then north west onto Burnley Road “I want this to go public. Something bloody
directly corroborative of PC Godfrey’s to pick up the driver of the first bus heading strange went on.”
encounter, allowing for much speculation for Halifax. This driver lived in Portsmouth, a In the second part of this report I assess
by those sceptical writers about visionary village on the Lancashire border a couple of what this evidence means and whether it adds
experiences or misperception of an early bus miles north west of where Alan Godfrey had a new dimension to our understanding of this
traversing the highway. That theory was based his encounter that night. Bob was alone in his major case.

F T325 27
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 THE FAT BOY
OF PECKHAM
As an epidemic of childhood obesity sweeps the developed world, JAN BONDESON explores a
vanished age in which corpulent youngsters were treated neither as villains nor victims
but celebrated as prodigies in the music halls and sideshows of Britain and the United States.
Meet Johnny Trunley, the Fat Boy of Peckham… and his rotund rivals.
Pictures from the author’s collection, unless otherwise noted

ohn Thomas Trunley Jr was born

on 14 October 1898, the son of
a poor Camberwell scavenger
JOHNNY SOON the schoolmistress, so a school inspector
recommended that he should be exempt
from attending school.
with the same name and his wife
Rosetta. John Thomas Trunley ATTRACTED But a vocal faction of the London
School Board refused to accept this

NOTICE DUE TO
Sr was a short, thin man, and his recommendation, believing that, in the
wife of ordinary stature; yet their son was modern world, every child should go to
an extraordinary large, sturdy infant. The school. They had access to a force of School
1901 Census has the three of them living
at 1 Herring Street, Camberwell, but they HIS EXTREME Board officers, whose tasks included
fetching truant children and forcing them

CORPULENCE
soon moved into a small terraced house at 12 to go to school. A carpenter was instructed
Colegrove Street, Peckham. Young Johnny to build Johnny a king-size chair and desk,
Trunley, as the hero of this strange tale was and a stern schoolmistress was recruited
always called, soon attracted notice to discipline him. When interviewed
due to his extreme size and corpulence. in the Daily Mail, a newspaper that
In late 1903, he was four feet tall, with took a vigorous interest in Johnny’s
a chest measurement of 44in (1.1m) educational tribulations, she assured
and a weight of 10 stone (64kg). He the journalist that she knew of a way to
OPPOSITE PAGE: ETIENNE GILFILLAN. THANKS TO ALEXANDER TOMLINSON. IMAGES COURTESY JAN BONDESON

was enormously strong for his age, and manage her 10-stone pupil. “Persuasion
could lift his father from the ground. goes a long way,” she said, hinting that
Johnny soon became a local celebrity. she had something in her cupboard that
He spent most of his time in or near a she would make good use of if he proved
beer-house in Willowbrook Road, where obstinate. Not unnaturally, Johnny did
he earned various treats by acting as not like this sinister schoolmarm one
an advertisement and entertaining little bit. When she annoyed him, he
the customers. When a Daily Mail used to lie down on the floor and refuse
reporter went to see Johnny, it turned to get up, and no one at Reddin Street
out that the Peckham dustmen, police Board School was strong enough to
constables and omnibus drivers knew lift the Peckham prodigy. Even when
all about his exploits. The unwholesome Johnny was sitting quietly at his desk,
food he was served at the beer-house the other pupils stared at him, to the
meant that he was rapidly increasing detriment of school discipline. Johnny
in girth. was fond of sleeping in the morning,
In November 1903, when Johnny and his parents found it difficult to
was five years old, the London School rouse and dress him. Whenever the Fat
Board began to consider how this Boy played truant, the assiduous School
monstrous child would be supplied Board officers made themselves known
with an education. He was not mentally in Colegrove Road.
defective, and quite educable, although Once there were deplorable scenes
it would take quite a gargantuan chair when two sturdy school policemen
and desk to fit him. Although it might dragged the howling Johnny out of the
be possible to take him to school for house and put him in a cart, only partly
physically defective children, if he dressed, to transport the Peckham
could be roused and dressed in time, prodigy to school. For obvious reasons,
the hulking Johnny might injure the School Board officers were not
the other children or topple over particularly popular among working-

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class people, and there was considerable meals. On 29 December, Johnny appeared New York Times, which found it strange that a
newspaper interest in the attempts to force in a pantomime at Chatsworth, the seat of boy who in America would at most have been
Johnny to go to school. Many ordinary people the Duke of Devonshire, before the King an attraction in a dime museum had attained
viewed him as a hero: a sturdy, stubborn John and Queen. This singular meeting between national celebrity.
Bull who refused to take orders from the Royalty and the Fat Boy of Peckham was much Throughout 1904, the triumphal tour of the
creatures of the detested School Board. commented on in the newspapers – even the Fat Boy continued. The school policemen were
still after Johnny, but Mr Trunley said
THE PECKHAM PRODIGY that he was giving his son regular lessons.
John Thomas Trunley Sr was not the When it was objected that the scavenger
brightest of men, but he could not fail turned showman entirely lacked teaching
to be impressed with the great interest qualifications, a governess was recruited
in his son from the media and the to accompany the Peckham phenomenon
general public. Soon, a Great Yarmouth on his tour. As the tour went on, it was
showman approached him with an offer considered very droll to have some
he could not refuse. On 14 December provincial tailor measure the Fat Boy for
1903, the Fat Boy of Peckham made his a suit of clothes, as funny the 20th time
debut at the Yarmouth Hippodrome, to as it was the first. At a music hall sports
great acclaim, before travelling to the event at Herne Hill in July 1904, Johnny
Waverly Market Carnival in Edinburgh. competed in a race against the diminutive
On 23 December, when Johnny was comedian ‘Little Dando’. As the Fat Boy
exhibited at the Camberwell Palace of gathered speed, and then seemed to
Varieties, the place was thronged with stumble, a local humourist exclaimed
locals keen to see the Peckham prodigy. “Catch him! He’ll make a hole in the
The School Board officers, who had track!” But Johnny recovered his balance,
already been exposed to a good deal won the race, and was led away, quite
of newspaper ridicule for their failure breathless, by his proud father.
to bring Johnny to school, were up to Picture postcards were very fashionable
their mean-spirited tricks once more: in Edwardian times, and Mr Trunley made
they went to the SPCC, objecting that sure that his son, the family breadwinner,
a child under 11 was performing in was depicted on a number of them, which
a local amusement parlour. The case all enjoyed healthy sales. One of the
went to the Lambeth Magistrates, earliest of these cards depicted the Fat
where the exhibition was declared to Boy at the age of six, when he weighed
be fully legal. As a result of Johnny’s 14 stone. Johnny’s success was such that
lucrative exploits on the stage, the a ‘funny’ Daily Mirror journalist wrote
Trunley family did not have to face that Peckham must be a nursery for Fat
Christmas Day in the Workhouse, and Boys; the mothers purchased quantities of
instead enjoyed some hearty Christmas milk and treacle to produce an even more

TOP: Johnny Trunley and his father in 1909. ABOVE: Peckham High Street in 1906; the large building to the left is the Peckham Hippodrome, where the Fat Boy was exhibited.

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ABOVE LEFT: A portrait of Johnny Trunley, aged 11. ABOVE RIGHT: A poster for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. BELOW: The “World-famed Peckham Fat Boy” on tour in 1910.

monstrous specimen of boyhood. ENTER BUFFALO BILL

The school policemen still tried their And indeed it was the celebrated showman
best to make themselves obnoxious, but William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody who had
the incessant travelling of the Trunleys descended, like a Deus ex Machina, from
hampered their activities. Later in his great Wild West Show upon the sleepy
1904, the old London School Board Peckham terrace. After inspecting Johnny
was reorganised into a more modern and finding him fully satisfactory, Buffalo Bill
establishment, run by the London County offered him a contract with his show, which
Council, and this meant a temporary was currently touring Britain, before going
hiatus for the school police. But the abroad. Overjoyed that his son was to become
London educationalists still considered an international megastar of corpulence,
the schooling of the Fat Boy of Peckham Mr Trunley accepted this offer with alacrity,
a top priority, and the school policemen on the conditions that he himself was to
issued the Trunley family with a summons accompany the Fat Boy, to provide him with
that Johnny was to start school on 9 some elemental tuition, and to protect him
January. According to a Daily Mirror against the school police.
journalist, the Fat Boy was in despair Johnny appeared along with Little Anita,
at the thought of being forced to go to the Smallest Lady on Earth, and the Human
school, but still he devoured two plates Skeleton. As the Wild West Show tour went
of winkles, 17 slices of thick bread and on, the Fat Boy of Peckham was as popular
butter, and two pieces of cake for Sunday as ever. The newspaper writings about his
tea, as the astonished newspaperman educational difficulties had been reported in
looked on. But a just few days later, there the provincial papers as well, and Johnny was
was a knock at the door. Mr Trunley sometimes greeted like a conquering hero:
answered it with some degree of caution, suits of clothes were measured, postcards
fearful that the school policemen were sold, and country journalists treated to
up to mischief again. But outside the interviews with the Peckham superstar.
door stood a dapper, grey-bearded Johnny had a certain native wit, and if a
gentleman wearing a large Stetson crowd of country bumpkins was making
hat. As the flabbergasted Mr Trunley fun of him, he asked them how much they
stood gaping, recognising his visitor but earned each week. On 1 April 1905, the Daily
being quite unable to utter a word, a Mail could announce that the Fat Boy of
street guttersnipe passing by yelled out Peckham was to join the Wild West Show on
“Gorblimey, Guv’nor! It’s Buffalo Bill!” an extended tour to Paris, Venice, Rome, and
perhaps to the United States.

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 Buffalo Bill had been very pleased with touring the country. He was a particular wastrels of the London County Council ought
Johnny during the tour of Britain, but the favourite at the Peckham Hippodrome, not far to have constructed a special tramline to
French and Italian reaction to the Peckham from his home, and at Great Yarmouth, where carry the Fat Boy to school, since no motor
prodigy left much to be desired. With he had many admirers. In November 1906, the omnibus would hold him. Another joker,
their usual disdain for British fads, the Evening Telegraph announced that Johnny was in the Buckinghamshire Herald, suggested
French declared themselves to be entirely to attend a school for the mentally deficient in that the Fat Boy ought to be housed, at
unimpressed with the Fat Boy. Linguistic Gloucester Road, nearly a mile from his home government expense, near the opening of
difficulties meant that Johnny was unable to in Peckham. There were problems, though: the proposed Channel Tunnel, and used for
interact with the audience. A picture postcard he could not walk 200 feet without pain, blocking it in case of hostilities.
in French was published to advertise ‘Le his boots cost 22 shillings a pair, and he ate
Garçon Gras de Peckham, Londres, Buffalo twice as much as an ordinary man. Nothing AN ORDINARY MAN
Bill’s Wild West’, but to no avail. Buffalo Bill much seems to have become of this schooling Johnny continued touring for quite a few
realised that the usefulness of the Fat Boy as project, and the Daily Mail wrote that the years. In February 1907, he was barred from
an object of exhibition was geographically appearing at the Winter Halls in Leamington
limited, and in September 1905, Johnny was Spa, where the local magistrates found

JOHNNY WAS
back in London, where he was immediately the exhibition to be in bad taste, but the
‘nabbed’ by the school police and taken to majority of towns and cities accepted him
school. But although the snub from Buffalo without demur. In Edinburgh, where he
Bill was a hard blow for Mr Trunley, his
son was still famous, and there were other PROCLAIMED was particularly popular, a waxwork effigy
of him was unveiled in 1908. In a postcard

THE HEAVIEST
showmen interested in taking over his from early 1908, the hulking Johnny is
management. Trunley soon signed a contract portrayed together with his father and
with the celebrated music hall impresario manager. In another card from late 1909, he

PERSON IN
Fred Karno, and Johnny performed in various is advertised to be over 25 stone (159kg) in
sketch comedies, meeting Charlie Chaplin weight and touring under the management
and Stan Laurel, among other celebrities. of Barron Bros., Amusement Caterers, of
When there was a lack of music hall
engagements, Mr Trunley took Johnny GREAT BRITAIN Great Yarmouth. In April 1910, he was at the
Novelty Bazaar, 27 Biggin Street, Dover. The

ABOVE: Two photographic portraits of the Peckham Fat Boy at the ages of around 10 and – late in his career – 18 years old.

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BELOW: The Peckham Prodigy as an ordinary man: Johnny and Florence Trunley, with stepson Reg riding pillion. ABOVE LEFT: The Hungarian Fat Boy, who was active in
showbusiness from 1904 until 1907. ABOVE RIGHT: Wilfred Westwood, the New Zealand Fat Boy, riding a tricycle. He used to perform with an equally fat elder sister
named Ruby, but she died of blood-poisoning after pricking her finger on a rose-thorn, and he carried on a solo career.

1911 Census lists both John Thomas boxing and club-throwing. The
Trunleys, the elder of whom gives Second World War, with its terrible
his employment as a Travelling air raids, again affected him very
Showman. But the following year, badly. He caught pneumonia from
Mr Trunley died unexpectedly, spending the nights in damp air
and Johnny was without his father raid shelters, and went into hospital
and manager. Although he kept where the doctors diagnosed

PHOTO COURTESY SHEILA WHITTLE BRUCE

increasing in weight, turning the tuberculosis. In September 1944,
scales at 33 stone (210kg) by 1915 poor Johnny passed away.
and being proclaimed the heaviest His Times obituary pointed
person in Britain, his career never him out as one of the many cases
recovered from this blow. The Great in which extensive publicity is
War affected him badly, and he was followed by the most profound
very much afraid of the air raids oblivion. Over the years, many a
and the sinister ‘Zeps’. Due to his plump schoolboy must have been
nervous disposition and to wartime called ‘The Fat Boy of Peckham’
shortages, his weight plummeted without having a clue as to the
dramatically. Peckham, had become an Ordinary Man. origin of this cheerful insult.
As hostilities ended, the fortunes of the He got a job as an apprentice clockmaker,
Fat Boy continued to dwindle. Although he and later opened his own clock repair shop THE FAT BOY’S RIVALS
soon increased in weight to 21 stone (133kg), in Gordon Road, Peckham. He once tried One’s immediate reaction, after considering
he was incapable of regaining his pre-war to return to the limelight by challenging the life and career of the Fat Boy of Peckham,
fame. In a brief acting career, he took part Gene Tunney, the world heavyweight boxing must be that it is quite distasteful, even
in a play called ‘Kill or Kure’ at the Stratford champion who had twice defeated Jack barbaric, to exhibit a morbidly obese child
Empire, and played the part of a bookmaker Dempsey, but Gene snubbed him. In 1927, in such a manner. Today, such a degrading
in an early silent film. His self-confidence Johnny married Mrs Florence Petty, a widow exhibition would of course be speedily
was as high as ever, and he told his friend with an adolescent son. A photograph shows prohibited, and one would have thought it
Charlie Chaplin about his ambition to go the hulking paterfamilias sitting astride a would have been considered tasteless and
to America and challenge ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle motorcycle, with his short, slim wife in the unedifying back in 1903. Three independent
and other overweight Hollywood celebrities. sidecar and the stepson ‘Reg’ riding pillion. factors conspired to allow Johnny Trunley
But Charlie warned him that since America Johnny and Florence got on well, and had at to make his fortune on stage, however.
already had a great many fat comedians, least one child, John, who later had offspring Firstly, the traditional freak show was still
actors and performers of every description, himself. There is evidence that although alive and flourishing, as evidenced by the
it would be very difficult for a foreigner to still eating heartily, Johnny became rather exploitation of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant
break into the industry. more health-conscious after getting married, Man, in the 1880s, and Krao, the Human
Johnny Trunley, once the Fat Boy of taking regular exercise through swimming, Monkey (FT317:76-77) in the 1890s. Although

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ABOVE LEFT: Willie Filtz, the rotund American Fat Boy, who was active in showbusiness until his premature demise in 1911. ABOVE RIGHT: A cabinet card showing Amelia
Hill, the American Fat Girl, a celebrated predecessor of the Fat Boy of Peckham. BELOW: Lennie Mason, the Leicester Fat Boy.

the tide was slowly turning, with The next question must of course be:
many ‘educated’ people finding the What was wrong with the Fat Boy?
exhibition of freaks morally repugnant, Some Internet commentators have
support for freak shows from the suggested that there must have been
lower classes remained strong, as did something seriously amiss with his
the infrastructure for the travelling ‘glands’, although not providing any
exhibition of freaks. Secondly, the details exactly what this might have
considerable newspaper publicity been. A newspaper account mentions
around the Fat Boy’s educational that, when he was four years old,
mishaps made him a national Johnny was brought to some kind of
celebrity, and thus set the stage for his medical convention, where he was
exploitation in the sideshow. Thirdly, shown to 700 doctors, one of whom was
the popular ‘fat baby’ competitions the celebrated Sir Frederick Treves;
arranged by PT Barnum and others they had no clue what ailed him.
had engendered an unwholesome In modern medicine, obesity
fascination with obese children, both in can be separated into a (common)
the United States and in Britain. In the primary form, which occurs without
1880s and 1890s, various grossly obese other disease being present, and
children were exhibited in the American an (uncommon) secondary form,
sideshows, and one or two of them even where the corpulence has some
visited Britain. They were considered external endocrine or genetic cause.
as ‘phenomena’ or ‘wonders of nature’ For example, myxoedema (severe
rather than unwholesome or unwell. lack of thyroid hormone) may cause
Johnny Trunley eclipsed all his obesity, as may Cushing’s syndrome
predecessors, however, and his meteoric of hyperproduction of corticothropic
success even spawned a few ‘Fat Boy hormone. Less common causes include
wannabes’ eager to go on show. The Froelich’s syndrome of hypothalamic
Hungarian Fat Boy was at large from insufficiency and certain rare genetic
1904 until 1907, with modest success. In syndromes like the Laurence-Moon-
the 1910s, Lenny Mason, the Leicester Biedl syndrome and the Prader-Willi
Fat Boy, managed to usurp some of the syndrome.
fame of the Peckham prodigy following But Johnny Trunley had no
his semi-retirement in 1912, until Lenny symptoms of either hypothyroidism or
himself died prematurely in 1920. hypothalamic insufficiency, nor had

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ABOVE LEFT AND CENTRE: A portrait of the celebrated Daniel Lambert, and his gravestone, from an old postcard. ABOVE RIGHT: A Staffordshire pottery figure of Lambert.

he the typical moon-face of the patient with publican William Campbell (see FT298:76- the audience, but sources agree that in later
Cushing’s syndrome. Patients with the Prader- 77). Whereas Lambert was said not to have life Johnny Trunley was an affable, popular
Willi or Laurence-Moon-Biedl syndromes may been grossly overweight as a child, Campbell man. He did not appear to feel sorry for
become extremely corpulent, but are often turned the scales at 18 stone (114kg) at the himself or embarrassed by his size. He was a
quite feeble both bodily and mentally, with age of 10, roughly the same as Johnny Trunley. good watchmaker, and a kind husband and
a tendency towards diabetes and severe eye Lambert died at the age of 39, and Campbell, father. His local popularity was such that
disease that may lead to blindness. Johnny whose habits were not conducive to a long and hundreds of people attended his funeral in
Trunley was strong and vigorous as a child, healthy life, at just 22. the Camberwell New Cemetery. For many
and lived to be 46 years old. There is no Two showbusiness contemporaries of years, the Bun House at 96 Peckham High
doubt that he suffered from primary obesity, Johnny’s, namely Willie Filtz, the American Street exhibited an old colour banner of
which does not appear to have been genetic Fat Boy (1892-1911) and Lenny Mason (1903- Johnny in his prime, but this pub was closed
in origin, due to the lack of any overweight 1920) also died prematurely. It is today down in 2002 and is today a branch of Betfred.
relations; his father was in fact a short, appreciated that adipose tissue produces In addition, both the Trunley family home in
thin man. It is notable that not less than six adipokines, noxious signalling proteins that Colegrove Street, and the watchmaker’s shop
Trunley children were born in the Camberwell mediate early-onset diabetes, atherosclerosis in nearby Gordon Road, have fallen victim to
district from 1900 until 1909, so Johnny may and cardiovascular disease. Thus, being London’s developers.
well have had several siblings. In late 1904, grossly overweight does not just increase But although the humble Peckham terraces
there was a newspaper story that Mrs Trunley the strain on the locomotory and circulatory are gone, and the ordinary people who
had just given birth to another very large, systems, it literally poisons the body from inhabited them forgotten, the memory of
heavy son; this may well have been the Albert within. Johnny Trunley’s life may well have Johnny Trunley, once the celebrated Fat Boy
Edward Trunley whose birth was registered in been saved by his rapid weight loss during the of Peckham, remains to this day. FT
early 1905, but nothing more is known about Great War.
him than that he expired in 1962. Indeed, the As is well known, the globe is today swept SOURCES
popular belief that very obese individuals by an epidemic of obesity: both adults and SL Gilman, Fat Boys (Lincoln, NE 2004) and Obesity:
have something wrong with their ‘glands’ is ill- children are increasing in weight in an A Biography (Oxford 2010).
founded; in fact, only a small minority of them alarming manner. The world’s heaviest person, D & F Haslam, Fat, Gluttony and Sloth (Liverpool,
have an endocrine cause for their obesity. the American John Brower Minnoch (1941- 2009), particularly pp 42-59.
The 76-stone (483kg) Robert Hughes used to 1983) weighed in at 100 stone (635kg), far J Bondeson, The Two-Headed Boy (Ithaca, NY, 2004),
blame his corpulence on a singular accident: outclassing Daniel Lambert and the other pp237-60.
when three years old, he suffered from obese celebrities of yesteryear. Although Picture Postcard Monthly, 350 [2008], pp38-9.
whooping-cough and ‘ruptured his thyroid extremes like Johnny Trunley and Willie Filtz Times, 23 Dec 1903, 4+7 Oct 1944; D. Mirror, 23 Dec
gland’. This explanation, eagerly swallowed would still attract notice today, some of the 1903, 4 Feb, 6 July, 20 Dec 1904; D. Express, 10 +14
by the journalists, deserves a place among Dec 1903; D. Mail, 10+11+20+23 Dec 1903; 6 July,
other ‘fat children’ exhibited in Edwardian
21 Dec 1904; 1 Apr 1905; 24 Nov 1906.
the ‘greats’ of medical cock-and-bull stories, times would fit in perfectly well waddling
There are also various garbled Internet accounts of the
along with the tale of the Irishman who tried around a contemporary schoolyard.
Peckham prodigy, many of which call him Trundley, as
to convince the doctor that he had caught Childhood obesity is a serious health does the aforementioned Professor Gilman.
venereal disease from borrowing another problem, as the aforementioned adipokines
man’s trousers. are given extra time to undermine health. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
In my book The Two-Headed Boy, and other Moreover, being an overweight child
Medical Marvels, I described the life and times engenders psychological problems as well, JAN BONDESON is a senior
of Daniel Lambert, a native of Leicester who from the incessant playground teasing and lecturer at Cardiff University,
weighed not less than 52 stone (330kg). When bullying. One might find it unlikely that a boy a regular contributor to
he exhibited himself for money in London in who was exhibited in the Edwardian freak- Fortean Times and the
1806, he was acknowledged as the heaviest shows as ‘The Fat Boy of Peckham’ from 1903 author of numerous books,
man ever seen in Britain. There is no doubt (aged five) until 1912 (aged 14) would grow including Queen Victoria’s
that like Johnny Trunley, Lambert suffered up to become a psychologically well-adjusted Stalker (2010), Amazing
from primary obesity, as did the first man in person, after suffering a decade of heartless Dogs (2011) and Murder
Britain to challenge his weight record, the comments and impertinent questions from Houses of London (2014).

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PHANTOM-MASS OR DALI AND THE overweight GHOSTS
SD TUCKER explores an alarming outbreak of morbid obesity amongst 1930s ghosts,
and finds Salvador Dalí’s bizarre explanations involving Adolf Hitler’s fat back, Mae West’s
detachable breasts and Napoleon’s surprisingly edible trousers rather hard to stomach.
Illustrations by YOHAN SACRÉ.

B
DALI DEPLORED THE
y now, I suppose we’re far warning against an incredible epidemic of
enough into 2015 for most obesity that he saw as then being rife among
people’s New Year dietary a population of increasingly greedy and
resolutions to have ended
in little more than the “ALARMING INCREASE globulous ghosts. 2
Right from the first sentence, Dalí is

IN WEIGHT” HE NOTICED
usual miserable, yet wholly blunt in his views on the topic: “For some
predictable, round of cake- time now,” he writes, “and increasingly so
based failure – but wait! What with each passing year, the idea of ghosts
if this New Year should happen to be your
last? What will happen to all that unshed
blubber when you die? Will you continue to
IN TODAY’S GHOSTS has been turning suave, growing heavy and
rounded with its persuasive weight, with the
plump stereotype... that is characteristic of
carry it with you after death, in unsightly sacks of potatoes.” He goes on to deplore the
ectoplasmic form, bulging out from the seams and most fat ghosts seem to be equally “extra-soft sagging of today’s ghosts”, their
of your winding-sheet as your spirit wobbles fictional, fulfilling an essentially comic “compact heaviness”, and the “alarming
its way hungrily through the graveyard, function through their rotundity – the increase in weight” he was beginning to
looking for chips? Forget all those dusty old sausage-chomping green splodge Slimer in notice every time he saw one; all of which, he
saws about why ghosts wear clothes: with a Ghostbusters, for instance. For at least one said, left him feeling “horrified”. But why?
massive obesity epidemic currently sweeping person, however, the issue of fat phantoms
the Western world, the question of whether seems to have been a matter of genuine HUNGRY GHOSTS
or not spooks carry cellulite is clearly a far concern, at least ostensibly. That man was Included alongside Dalí’s article in
more pressing issue. none other than the prominent Surrealist Minotaure were reproductions of two of his
Probably the most imaginative attempted painter Salvador Dalí, who published a very paintings, namely The Spectre of Sex Appeal
answer to this unsettling bodily conundrum odd article in issue five of the avant-garde and The Enigma of William Tell. 3 The former
came from the pen of Will Self in his magazine Minotaure in 1934. Entitled ‘The is by far the most famous, and shows a tiny
2000 novel How the Dead Live, in which New Colours of Spectral Sex Appeal’, it Dalí dressed in the blue sailor-suit of his
the deceased yo-yo dieter Lily Bloom was nothing less than a early childhood, staring up at a bizarre and
encounters three fellow-spooks called gigantic figure representing a headless (or
‘the Fats’ – her own personal version is it?) naked female body, which appears to
of ‘the Fates’ a trio of blobby ghouls have been put together from various
made up from all of the weight rotting and deformed limbs, all
she had lost and then gained held together by big wooden
again ad infinitum throughout crutches and bits of old cloth.
her entire feast-and-famine The figure’s breasts consist
lifetime. Hideous creatures, of two lumpy sacks of grain,
“all wobble and jounce, another of which serves as
huge dewlaps of belly the figure’s abdomen. The
hanging to their knees”, general interpretation of the
these eyeless, hairless, painting is that it represents
nipple-shorn beings are Dalí’s complex feelings about
“the Pilsbury Dough female sexuality; he seems to
Girls of total dissolution”, desire the body which he also
and follow poor Lily around simultaneously finds disgusting, a
everywhere in imitation of possible legacy of his father’s misguided
the Chorus in an old Greek play, attempt to scare Dalí off from visiting
chanting the words “Fat and old, fat brothels by leaving a book filled with
and old, fat and old” at her endlessly, like pictures of rotting, syphilitic genitalia
tripartite manifestations of the manipulative around the family home during the
modern female beauty-industry. 1 artist’s adolescence. 4
Self, though, was writing satire, There is another thing worth noticing

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about this ‘spectral’ woman in the painting,
though – namely, the fact that she appears to be
surprisingly... well, edible. You could rip open
her sack-breasts and scoff the grain from them;
her left leg alone could feed a family of four for
a whole week. This is not just my own stomach
talking; in 1933, Dalí had published another
Minotaure essay, entitled ‘On the Terrifying and
Edible Beauty of Art Nouveau Architecture’,
in which he praised the swirls and curls, the
bobbles and bumps, which had been placed on
their buildings by architects who had worked in
this style, like the Frenchman Hector Guimard,
designer of the elaborate, organic-looking
entrances to the Paris Métro stations. Dalí was
annoyed by the way that some contemporary
critics had criticised such edifices by
comparing them to cakes with too much icing-
sugar squeezed on top as decoration. What was
wrong with buildings that resembled cakes,
Dalí wanted to know? Why shouldn’t a person
desire to eat his own house? Declaring grandly
that, in the future, “Beauty will be edible or
not at all!” Dalí then reproduced some photos
of Guimard’s Métro-entrances, with captions
saying things like “Eat me!” and “Eat me too!”
placed by them.
I don’t think that Dalí went so far as to
actually suck on any cornices himself, but
his theorising about the idea certainly left
plenty to digest. Obsessed with Freudian
notions about the so-called oral stage of
infant-development, wherein babies try to
stick anything they can get their hands on into
their mouths hoping thereby to recreate the
satisfaction given them by the maternal teat,
Dalí theorised that art nouveau architecture
was actually an occult emanation from the
hidden dream-lives of people like Guimard.
Secretly, the constructions of such architects
reflected their repressed quasi-sexual
childhood fantasies about eating not only
bricks and masonry but inappropriate matter
of any kind – indeed, he even went so far
as to call art nouveau architecture “glaring
ornamental coprophagia”, and implied that
you could psychoanalyse its creators through
their work. For instance, Dalí noticed that the
lamps at the Métro entrances looked a bit like
female praying mantises – which, of course,
devour their male lovers after sex in captivity
– meaning that Guimard should really go and
seek the couch of Dr Freud immediately. 5
To Dalí, then, art nouveau architecture was
profoundly haunted; cake-like buildings were
like visible concrete ghosts and spectres, solid
manifestations of their designers’ hidden
desires. Following this logic, if you looked
carefully at any city, then you would soon be
able to start spotting the ghosts of people’s
repressed sexuality everywhere within the
built environment. Sure, sometimes a cigar
really is just a cigar – but what about a large,
straight edifice like, say, the Luxor Obelisk
HULTON ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES

standing in the Place de la Concorde? That

couldn’t really have been meant to stand in
for something else, could it? Surprisingly, Dalí
was actually pre-empted in such speculations
by certain dirty-minded 19th-century artists
like Jules Breton, who suggested that a giant
gloved female hand be constructed from stone
and placed around the obelisk, in Germany, his views would actually
gripping it in a suggestive have landed him in a death camp.
fashion. A large stone ball The thing that Dalí liked most
representing the statesman about Hitler, he declared, was
Léon Gambetta’s fêted the plump edibility of his
hot-air balloon escape lovely fat back and the way
from Paris during the that this was emphasised by
Franco-Prussian War, his tight brown-shirt uniform,
meanwhile, was identified something that gave him “a
as being an unconscious delicious gustatory thrill”.
representation of a giant Like certain art nouveau
testicle by some French architecture, Dalí explained,
artists, and the idea floated of chubby Adolf looked good
completing the set by building enough to eat – or to have sex
the lonely gonad a twin brother with. “Whenever I started to paint
and then erecting a vertical pillar the leather strap that crossed from
of some kind between them as a giant his belt to his shoulder, the softness
‘up yours!’ to prevailing bourgeois of that Hitler flesh packed under his
sensibilities. 6 military tunic transported me into a
sustaining and Wagnerian ecstasy that set
THE FAT FÜHRER my heart pounding, an extremely rare state
If this all sounds rather mad to you, then of excitement that I did not even experience
there’s a reason for that: it is mad, and is so during the act of love,” he later wrote.
by specific design. Or, to be more precise, it is It turned out that Dalí had been having
not simply mad, but actively paranoid. Around repeated erotic and prophetic dreams about
1930-1932, Dalí – whose grandfather was a the Führer, in which it was mystically revealed
genuine paranoiac, whose delusions about to him that Hitler was in fact some kind of
being followed by imaginary thieves had reincarnation of his childhood nurse, gone
driven him to suicide in 1886 7 – developed horribly wrong. Rather than having only
his celebrated ‘paranoiac-critical method’ one ball, as the wartime song implied, Dalí’s
of generating ideas for paintings.This, ‘paranoiac-critical’ version of Hitler (the true
Dalí said, was a spontaneous version, to him) had instead been born with no
method of irrational knowledge fewer than four testicles and six foreskins, all
based on the interpretive and of which were “evil-smelling” and abnormally
critical association of delirious compressed – bad karma indeed. Dalí had even
phenomena. 8 Basically, it written a long manifesto, ‘proving’ that all
involved fusing Freudianism this was true. Breton asked Dalí if he couldn’t
with alchemy in order to erase simply refrain from painting his dreams. Dalí
the distance between your mind told Breton to be careful what he wished for,
and the physical world around it, threatening that he might well dream about
putting some aspect of your own madman] in having sex with him that night instead, and
psyche into inert matter, and then this only; that then paint an explicit picture of the event
reinterpreting this matter according his creations are for the world to see. “I wouldn’t advise it, my
to your own unconscious wishes, thus analogous to truth.” 10 friend,” Breton responded, coolly. 12
refashioning reality itself.This process has Dalí certainly thought that
aptly been described as “a form of divination he was a genius – so maybe his dreams were FIGHT THE PHANTOM FLAB
applied to art”, and as a systematised way indeed analogous to some kind of truth, no For Dalí, there was a distinct difference
of “seeing multiple images in one object or matter how weird they were. between ghosts and spectres, as he explained
scene”. 9 There are real affinities between Recently, Dalí had been having repeated in his Minotaure essay. The paranoiac Hitler
this process and the idea of simulacra – Dalí dreams about Adolf Hitler, Germany’s new was definitely a ghost; ghosts were fleshy
was obsessed with seeing figures and faces in leader. He makes reference to them in his and substantial in a horrible way, and stood
nature which were not really there, and was essay about obese ghosts, when, describing for his own fear of sexual desire – strip off
constantly painting optical illusions which an image of his childhood nurse taken from Hitler’s top and all “the terrifying fat of the
force the viewer to become a little paranoid The Enigma of William Tell, he speaks of her flesh” would come flopping out, as “the human
too, when they see them. For instance, the “Hitlerian” back being “soft and tender” libido makes distress anthropomorphic”
sack-breasted giantess in The Spectre of Sex – look closely, and you’ll see it actually has and “transforms metaphysical distress into
Appeal seems at first glance to have no head a bite-mark in it. The full truth about these concrete fat”, apparently. Fat Hitler, then,
– until you examine closely the seaside cliffs dreams involving Hitler and his nurse only symbolised Dalí’s fear of intercourse. In
behind her, when a hidden face suddenly came to light when André Breton, the so- contrast to this, however, were spectres, like
appears to emerge from amongst the rocks. Is called Pope of Surrealism , subjected Dalí the rotting woman on the beach in The Spectre
it really there, or are you just turning paranoid, to a kind of kangaroo-court trial in 1934, to of Sex Appeal. Rotting women, thought Dalí,
making connections between things that are determine whether he could remain a part were good – as their decomposition 13 meant
not really linked? of the movement. The problem was that that their bodies could be taken apart and
Famously, Dalí declared (repeatedly) Dalí, under the influence of his dreams, had then fitted back together again in new and
that: “The only difference between myself recently been glorifying Hitler and fascism surprising ways for one’s own imaginative
and a madman is that I am not mad!” In in public, seemingly trying to deliberately pleasure. He is quite clear about this – in
appropriating paranoid thinking in his art, offend the left-wing sensibilities of Breton and the future, he proclaims, “sex-appeal will be
perhaps he was hoping to ward off any of the his chums by making extremely reactionary spectral” and “the spectral woman will be
actual mental illness that ran in the family; or, statements, such as that his favourite train- the woman who can be dismantled.” Using
then again, perhaps he was merely imitating crashes were those in which the poor proles his paranoiac-critical faculties, Dalí claimed
the teachings of the 19th-century occultist in third-class suffered the worst injuries. 11 to have foreseen the coming of the first-ever
Eliphas Lévi, a real influence on Surrealism, Breton demanded to know – was Dalí a Nazi? spectral woman, the actress Mae West, back
who had written that: “The man of genius Not quite... in 1928, in particular her “round, salivary
differs from the dreamer and the fool [or As Dalí quite accurately said, had he lived muscles, terribly gluey with biological

38 FT325
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afterthoughts”, by which he meant her drool- frames, with “false-breasts, extremely soft swapping the former plague of hideously
inducing large breasts, upon which initially and well-moulded, though slightly drooping obese ghosts for a new wave of easily-
firm foundations he seems to imply she built and growing out of the [woman’s] back” dismantled edible spectres, though? Only
her entire career. becoming “indispensable city-wear”, whilst good could come of it, Dalí assured his readers.
A late starter in Hollywood terms, pushing special “vibratory metallic fibres on hats” will By causing fat people and their ghosts to be
40 by the time she got her first contract in somehow act to provoke spectral smiles in “flayed alive” into their component parts
1932, West was already starting to ‘rot’ a little their wearers. Even obese ghosts like Hitler’s and then reassembled, says Dalí, they will
when she landed her first film role, and as unacknowledged psychic twin Napoleon all instantly gain the “extra-rapid luminosity
such was one of Dalí’s ideal spectral women, Bonaparte, whose tight trousers keep in his of spectral sex-appeal” and the previously
as his 1934/5 collage Mae West’s Face Which fat legs much as Hitler’s shirt conceals his fat “monumental prosaicness” of the entire
May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment seemed back, will be redeemed; with his famous bi- world around us – including even such boring
to imply. Here, West is reduced down to the corn hat and podgy hips constituting distinct everyday objects as ironing-boards and large
individual components of her face – her and iconic individual components of his body, automobiles – will consequently become
lips are a couch, her hair curtains, her eyes exactly equivalent to Mae West’s breasts, says “ghostly [surely spectral?] and serene”.
paintings on the wall, etc – creating a giant Dalí, Napoleon’s ghost too will one day be able Someone should tell Rosemary Conley. FT
paranoid simulacrum for some fortunate to be dismantled and rearranged, which will
fan of hers to live inside forever. A literal finally allow the artist to eat the great man’s AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
‘objectifier of women’, Dalí would no doubt delicious-looking fat-restraining pants.
have loved the fact that, ultimately, ‘Mae Anyone wanting to see what such SD TUCKER is an FT regular,
Wests’ came to be a popular slang-term spectres would actually look like in real life, whose books are Paranormal
for ‘breasts’ and that, during WWII, Allied incidentally, are advised to look at some Merseyside, Terror of the
air-crews took to calling their inflatable disturbing artworks made by the German Tokoloshe and (forthcoming) The
life-saver jackets after her too, due to their Surrealist Hans Bellmer in 1936 under the Hidden-Folk. Currently working on
pneumatic nature. 14 Reducing a woman to collective title of The Dolls; Bellmer crafted a book about Britain’s maddest
her component assets like this was exactly some life-size ball-jointed female wooden eccentrics, he would doubtless make a very
the kind of thing the self-styled ‘Great mannequins and then joined them together substantial ghost himself.
Masturbator’ desired. in weird ways, so that they might have four
According to Dalí, who may not have been legs but no arms or head, for instance, and NOTES
a regular reader of Spare Rib magazine, “the then photographed himself perving at them 1 Will Self, How the Dead Live, 2000,
body that can be dismantled” was the natural sinisterly from behind trees in a forest. His Bloomsbury, p.179
“aspiration... of female exhibitionism,” as drawing Children, the Spring Games, from 2 The article in question is most easily
it would allow tomorrow’s rotting, edible, around that same time is just as odd – severed accessed in André Breton, Anthology of
spectral woman “to show each part [of her female breasts and bums are joined together Black Humour, 2009, Telegram, pp383-386
body] separately,” something that would with elaborate mechanical devices in order to (translated by Breton’s biographer, Mark
soon be made possible by the perverse create the kind of absurd contraptions Heath Polizzotti). All quotations from Dalí’s essay are
refinement of aerodynamic costumes and Robinson might have imagined, had he been taken from here.
corsets, as well as something Dalí called on the Sex-Offenders’ Register. 15 Surrealists 3 Not to be confused with a controversial 1933
“irrational gymnastics”. Even better, were now seeing dismembered Dalínian painting of that exact same name showing a
with the march of technology, “new and spectres everywhere, it seemed the Spaniard half-naked cannibalistic Lenin supporting his
uncomfortable [artificial] anatomical parts” had turned them all paranoid! giant elongated sausage-buttock in a handy
will be invented for women to attach to their What would be the ultimate effect of crutch. The Minotaure version of The Enigma is
now lost, but was part of a series of very similar
paintings by Dalí – The Spectre and the Ghost
being one particularly comparable example that
is easily available to view online.
4 Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador
Dalí, Faber & Faber, 1998, p74
5 Gibson, 1998, pp317-319; Katharine Conley,
Surrealist Ghostliness, 2013, University of
Nebraska Press, pp82-84
6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallic_
architecture (citing Thomas Mical,
Surrealism and Architecture, 2005, Taylor
& Francis, p.200)
7 Gibson, 1998, p.10
8 Dalí cited in Breton, 2009, p.380
9 Nadia Choucha, Surrealism and the
Occult, 2010, Mandrake of Oxford, p60
10 Lévi cited in Choucha, 2010, p.68
11 Gibson, 1998, p.320
12 All info/quotes re: Dalí, Hitler, edible
nurse-maids and Breton compiled from
Gibson, 1998, p322; Mark Polizzotti,
Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André
Breton, 2009, Black Widow Press, pp351-
355; Robert Descharnes & Gilles Néret,
Salvador Dalí, 1999, Taschen, p104
13 Think about that word in its literal
pictorial sense, too...
14 http://en.wikipdia/org/wiki/Mae_West
15 Michael Robinson, Surrealism, 2005,
Flame Tree Publishing, pp332-335.

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 THE
BLACK
BALL
In 1975 an enigmatic object was found in west Ukraine – the so-called Black Ball. Investigations
in Russian scientific institutions have revealed that the age of the Ball is estimated at a few
million years. At the core of this sphere is a substance that allegedly possesses the property
of antigravity. The late VLADIMIR RUBTSOV wondered whether this enigma wrapped in a
mystery might be the long-hoped for “indubitable extraterrestrial artefact”.

S THE BLACK BALL

cientists engaged in SETI (Search in terrestrial strata that defy current rational
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) explanations.
studies usually pay little attention
to claims about traces of ancient
extraterrestrial visitations – or
WAS FOUND IN NOT OF THIS EARTH
What is an ‘extraterrestrial artefact’?
palæovisits – to this planet. As a rule, they
are inclined to consider the palæovisit 1975 IN A QUARRY To put it simply, it is an object made by
extraterrestrials. Naturally, any search
problem as imaginary, a dubious field of requires some theoretical model of the
amateurish interest.
This rejection of the subject (or ‘damning’
IN WEST UKRAINE object to be found or to be searched for.
Ideally, a model of an ‘abstract ETA’ would
in Charles Fort’s sense) seems somewhat
strange since, at present, only a few scholars
doubt the idea of a multitude of inhabited
worlds and the possibility of interstellar
travel. Taking into consideration the
estimated age of our galaxy – somewhere
between 10 and 13 thousand millions years –
there is little room for a denial, on principle,
of the idea of palæovisitation. Still, the
subject remains damned.
When some of the most daring SETI
specialists – such as the late Carl Sagan and
the SETI pioneer Frank Drake – ventured
to discuss the question, they concluded that
the only acceptable evidence of a palæovisit
would be an “indubitable extraterrestrial
artefact” (ETA). Therefore it makes sense to
search for such artefacts – or at least to be
more attentive to the discovery of anomalies

40 F T325
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be useless for a real search; even a model LEFT: Valentin Fomenko, one of the earliest Russian
of a ‘specific artefact’ – an extraterrestrial scientists to examine the Black Ball.
computer, perhaps – would restrict the field of
our vision and probably cause us to overlook
other possible objects (say, extraterrestrial taken 500,000 years to form a layer this thick.
utensils). Similarly, our presumptions about However, the rate of leaching is not constant
what an ET computer, or ET cutlery, might because, as the thickness of the leached layer
look like may have little in common with any increases, the rate inevitably slows down. This
actuality. is caused when the leaching agents – water or
The first criterion of any likely ETA solutions of acids and alkalis – can no longer
worthy of further examination has to be easily reach the glass’s surface. Therefore,
its strangeness. The Black Ball that we 500,000 years are just a lower limit of the
will consider here certainly attracted the Ball’s real age: it could be much older.
attention of researchers because it was very
strange. For a start, its shape is too regular for A CORE WITH A NEGATIVE MASS?
a natural object, and its probable age is too An X-ray study of the Ball made by Dr
great for it to have been made by humans. Fomenko showed that there was was an inner
It was investigated on the initiative of core, shaped like a half an egg. The volume of
three scientists: Inna Petrovskaya (Institute this core was 80cm3, comprising 25 per cent of
for Space Studies of the Russian Academy the Ball in their hands. Dr Menkov borrowed the total volume of the Ball.
of Sciences), Dmitry Menkov (Moscow the Ball from Naumenko and passed it to Dr To determine densities of the Ball and core,
Physical Engineering Institute), and Valentin Fomenko, who formulated a very detailed Dr Fomenko used a method that was based on
Fomenko, a senior research fellow at the and sophisticated programme to study the information about the location of the Ball’s
Soyuz Scientific and Industrial Association. unusual object by scientific methods. centre of gravity and equations for weights
The Black Ball was found in 1975 in a clay and torques (or moments) of the Ball, shell
quarry in west Ukraine, at a depth of about THE FACE OF THE BALL (qs), and core (qc). From these he obtained
8m (26ft). This clay layer has been dated We can get an initial impression of the the results: qs = 4.1 g/cm3; qc = -4.6 g/cm3. This
geologically to be around 10 million years Ball from two early photographs. Its longer implied that the mass of the Ball’s shell was
old. It was discovered by an excavator, who axis measured 87.5mm and the midsection 980g, and that of the core was minus 363g.
noticed its unusually regular shape. When he diameter (the largest section perpendicular This result is very strange indeed. To improve
struck it against the edge of a bucket, the Ball to the axis) 84.7mm. The Ball weighed 617 accuracy of this measurement, it was repeated
did not split, but a piece broke away, exposing grams; its true volume (determined from three times, but it repeated the conclusion
a black glass-like surface. The worker took the the water displacement) was 320cc; and its that the density of the Ball’s core seems to be
thing home and gave it to his son, a schoolboy. average density 1.9g/cm3. This latter figure a substance with a negative mass. To check
Later a schoolteacher took it to the local is much less than the usual density of glass, this result and to determine an experimental
museum of regional studies. For some years it which ranges from 2.3g/cm3 for light crown error of the Ball’s centre of gravity location
was kept at the museum, but then it was taken glass to 6.6g/cm3 for super-dense flint glass. that could have eliminated this paradox, Dr
away by the teacher’s son, Boris Naumenko, It is also less than the density of quartz (2.3g/ Fomenko ran a computer simulation of the
who worked at the Earth Physics Institute of cm3) and obsidian (2.2-2.3g/cm3). situation. It was found, however, that the
the USSR Academy of Sciences. By the time of the investigation, two probability of such an error was negligible.
Subsequently, some Moscow thirds of the Ball’s surface were covered
parapsychologists laid hands on the Ball – with a relatively soft layer of a yellow-grey TRACES OF INTELLIGENCE?
literally. They claimed that it had what they substance, probably the product of leaching. Close inspection of the Ball’s contour,
called ‘bioenergy’ from a field generated by This layer was 1.5mm thick. It is known that approximated by arcs, showed that each of
highly advanced extraterrestrial civilisations window glass leaches at a rate of around these arcs was a multiple of 15º; i.e. equal
in outer space. The parapsychologists said 0.000003mm per year. If the Ball’s surface to the 24th part of a complete circle. It is
that they felt this ‘energy’ when they held was anything like window glass, it would have neither consistent with the common division

ABOVE: Two early photographs of the Black Ball.

FT325 41
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of the circle into 360º; nor to the division and the latter are surrounded by positron Naumenko at the latter’s urgent demand. But
of it into 32 points, accepted as standard in (‘anti-electron’) shells, a neutrid material the story does not end there.
navigation; nor to the 16 points, accepted in would effectively protect antimatter from Several years later, one of the largest
meteorology. This observation suggests that annihilation. Russian newspapers – Izvestiya – published
the Ball’s designer – if there was one – may Even if this protective neutrid shell were a long article, entitled ‘A Mysterious Ball
have used the number 24 as the base of his just one neutron thick, its weight would be in the Lubianka Cellars’, authored by Yury
system of numbers as well as of his system 4.2kg, which exceeds the whole weight of Kholodny, a Ph.D. in psychology. According to
of measurements. In the latter, the unit of the Ball. However, to be impenetrable by Dr Kholodny, in February 1981, two leading
angular measurement – one BAU = the Ball’s electrons and positrons, it is not necessary officials of the scientific and technical
Angular Unit – was equal to 15º, or the 24th for the neutrid shell to be solid. A ‘net’ with a department of the Committee for State
part of a complete circle. True, arcs that ‘mesh’ of the order of the positron diameter Security (the almighty KGB) were summoned
are multiples of some fractions of a circle would be enough. The weight of such a net to the Kremlin, to the no-less-almighty
occur both in animate nature (e.g. flowers, would not exceed 0.5kg. Military-Industrial Commission (MIC) of the
fruits, star-fish, etc.) and the inanimate (e.g. Thus, a number of the Ball’s features testify USSR Council of Ministers.
crystals). Therefore, this fact alone cannot be that its designers used engineering methods There, they were informed about the
considered as a proof of the Ball’s artificial that seem rational and understandable from results of the investigations of Dr Fomenko
origin. our present-day knowledge. If additional (whom Dr Kholodny designated just as ‘F’).
Consequently, Dr Fomenko decided to calculations confirm the ‘negative mass’ The Commission asked the KGB authorities
check whether the base-24 system of numbers result, we will probably be able to conclude to find out who was holding the Ball and
was also characteristic of the Ball’s linear that the Black Ball is the first extraterrestrial to withdraw it immediately. At that time,
dimensions. He took, as a unit of length artefact whose nature and origin may be the 26th Congress of the Communist Party
(BLU, the Ball’s Linear Unit), the 24th part considered as proven. It only remains to hope of the Soviet Union was approaching and,
of the Ball’s greater axis – i.e. 3.65mm. He that nobody will try to prove this by another therefore, the dangerous substance inside
discovered that all the radii of the arcs, the method: attempting to open the supposed the Ball had to be ‘neutralised’ as soon as
distances between their centres, as well as antimatter depository. possible. A few days later the MIC sent to the
the core’s dimensions, were all multiples of KGB Headquarters a copy of Dr Fomenko’s
one BLU (3.65mm). It is hardly probable that A STRANGE POSTSCRIPT research report.
all these figures were multiples of the same Unfortunately, Dr Fomenko could neither The KGB set up a special working group to
linear unit purely by chance. confirm the ‘negative mass’ result with solve this question. One of its participants was
Studying tables of the linear units used another method, nor complete his Dr Kholodny, the author of the newspaper
at different times by different investigators, investigation. A week after his investigation article. This team were soon on the trail of a
Dr Fomenko and his colleagues could not began he had to return the Ball to Boris Moscow parapsychologist – they called ‘D’ –
find units equal to 87.5mm or to 3.65mm. who had apparently obtained the Ball from its
Besides, their number systems were based on owner, Boris Naumenko. Mr D was using the
2, 5, 10, 12, 20, 40 and 60 – but not on 24. This
base-24 system may, in fact, be considered THE KGB SET Ball as the active element of a ‘biological field
generator’ that, he claimed, could influence

UP A SPECIAL
as more perfect that the one we commonly living beings with beneficial (or possibly not-
use, in which its base 10 is divisible only by so-beneficial) effect.
2 and 5. In contrast, base-24 has six divisors: The KGB group confiscated this ‘generator’
2, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 12, which are very useful for
calculations.
GROUP TO from Mr D and disassembled it, discovering
a brown sphere inside. Over two months
So, according to Dr Fomenko and his
colleagues, the Ball’s smooth surface, its STUDY THE BALL they investigated this object with great
thoroughness. Their main conclusions
regular form, as well as the fact that the
curvature radii, distances between the arcs’
centres, and the core’s dimensions are all
multiples of the same unit (3.65mm) – and
which suggests that the Ball was purposefully
designed. As this number system is foreign
to terrestrial cultures (that we know of), it
suggests – with some ambiguity – that the Ball
was made on another planet (or at least by
extraterrestrial beings).

A DEPOSITORY OF ANTIMATTER?
Assuming that the ‘negative mass’ result is
trustworthy, we might speculate that the Ball
is a repository of antimatter, perhaps even
used to power extraterrestrial machinery. It
is still unknown whether antimatter has the
property of antigravity, but such a supposition
seems logical.
Given the disastrous prospect of the two
coming into direct contact, how was this
antimatter isolated from normal matter?
Dr Fomenko gave special attention to the
distinct dark outline at the core edges
(see photos on opposite page). Could this
boundary be a very thin layer of an isolating
material, such as a neutrid? This hypothetical
substance, composed of nothing but neutrons,
supposedly occurs in neutron stars (pulsars).
Since neutrons can annihilate only when ABOVE: Close inspection of the Ball’s contour, approximated by arcs, showed that each of these arcs was a multi-
colliding with antineutrons and antiprotons, ple of 15 degrees; i.e. equal to the 24th part of a complete circle.

42 F T325
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ABOVE: An X-ray study made by Dr Fomenko showed that within the Ball was an inner core, shaped like a half of an egg, with a dark outline at its edges.

were: the black (or rather brown) sphere is “The only possible conclusion is that the
composed of glass (but unusual glass, having “Dear Mr Mlechin, KGB specialists investigated a real gallo (with a
practically no sodium and a great deal of “In your newspaper of September 24, void inside it), but not the real Black Ball.
strontium in its composition); the outer this year, you published the article ‘A “There are, in the article, some strange
surface of the Ball had microscopic cracks, Mysterious Ball in the Lubianka Cellars’ by assertions as well. In particular, according to
through which water could percolate into it, so Yury Kholodny, a research worker of a KGB it, ‘by radiocarbon dating, specialists from the
it was not even waterproof, let alone airtight; Scientific-Research Institute, who had taken Geological Institute of the USSR Academy
for this reason it could not contain antimatter; part in an investigation of the so-called ‘Black of Sciences determined that, although the
and the ‘negative mass’ result was due to a 10 Ball’. He describes an attempt by the KGB to age of the Ball was not 10 million years, it was
per cent error in detecting coordinates of the verify the hypothesis that the Black Ball is a nonetheless a centuries-old antique’. This is
Ball’s centre of gravity. container of antimatter. absurd, since there cannot be any carbon at
As for the age of the Ball, Dr Kholodny was “I, Valentin Nikolayevich Fomenko, am all, let alone radiocarbon, in the ‘bottle’ glass
somewhat vague: “By radiocarbon dating, the author of the report on the results of of a gallo.
specialists from the Geological Institute of preliminary study of the Black Ball that is “In this connection, I would like to meet
the USSR Academy of Sciences determined referred to in that paper. That is why I would with the author of the paper to discuss the
that, although the age of the ‘Ball’ was not 10 like to meet Dr Kholodny to discuss with him matter in detail. If you cannot give me Dr
million years, it was nonetheless a centuries- some questions dealing with this matter. Kholodny’s telephone number, please let him
old antique, being, most likely, of artificial “As far back as 1981, I talked with a co- know my own number (attached). Please ask
origin.” worker of Mr Deev, who had encapsulated Dr Kholodny to call me at any time that suits
Judging from the information in the Izvestia the Black Ball into a block of epoxy resin. It him.
article, the Ball could have been broken would certainly be impossible to free the Ball “Sincerely yours, Valentin Fomenko, Ph.D.”
during the investigation. This is not directly from the resin. It seems, therefore, that not
stated, but the author mentions that fragments only had the KGB palmed off a forged “gallo” Since then there has been no reply.This is
were shown to Faina Petryakova, a prominent on Mr Deev [referred to in the article by one enigma that remains a mystery. FT
Ukrainian specialist in history of glass. Dr Yury Kholodny as ‘D’], but also Mr Deev had
Petryakova concluded that the Ball was a palmed off a copy of his generator to the KGB. NOTE
gallo, that is a primitive “device” for ironing The following points in Dr Kholodny’s article Further reading and much greater detail can be
the sleeves of shirts and blouses that had seem to confirm this assumption: found in Investigating the Anomalies: Mysteries
been in use in the Ukraine in 18th and 19th “[Kholodny] writes that the colour of the from Behind the Former Iron Curtain (RIAP,
centuries. Usually, gallos were manufactured ball, found in the ‘device’, was brown. But 2011); edited by Vladimir Rubtsov. Contributors
from waste glass that accumulated in the glass the real Black Ball consisted of a black glass- included Victor Zhuravlev, Yury Morozov, Matest
furnace after it had worked continuously for like substance, covered with a yellow-grey Agrest, Valentin Fomenko. Nikolay Vasilyev,
several days. leached layer. There were no brown spots on Vladimir Rubtsov, Mikhail Gershtein, Yuly Platov,
Since Mr D insisted that the Ball be it at all. Kholodny describes its fragments as and Lev Gindilis.
returned to him, the KGB specialists bottle-green in colour; but in fact, the colour of
made a copy of it and installed it into the the Ball’s shell also was deep black. The shell AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
‘biogenerator’. When returned to Mr D., the was opaque even to the light of a powerful
device did not arouse any suspicion on his halogen lamp. Besides, the Black Ball had VLADIMIR RUBTSOV
part. It continued working, still emitting the no microscopic cracks in its shell. Inside the was a physicist and
‘biological field’. Black Ball there was not a void, but a core, fortean. A member of
Such were the contents of Dr Kholodny’s whose density was four times less than that the Russian Academy
article. Although it looked as if everything of the Ball’s shell. This was established by of Cosmonautics, he
was said and done, some points remained an X-ray study of the Ball. By the way, in the was the author of The
unexplained compelling Dr Fomenko to write process of our investigation of the Black Tunguska Mystery
the following letter to Leonid Mlechin, the Ball, we also considered – and rejected – the (2009) and hundreds
editor of Izvestiya: hypothesis that it was a gallo. of papers on scientific

FT325 43
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The Ghost Hunt
As an all-female remake of Ghostbusters is announced, and I sank down really low in my chair like
I wanted to hide. I said ‘Oh my God, that’s
TEA KRULOS catches up with Alexandra Holzer, daughter of him? No!’”
the man who helped inspire the original movie, to talk about Rebel Without a Ghost
discovering that your father was the most famous ghost hunter As she grew into a young woman, Alexandra
went through a rebellious phase and tried to
in America and honouring his legacy today. escape her father’s eerie legacy.
“I ran off to art school to get away from
my father, because I thought he was weird. I
ow many of you know about wanted to get away from the paranormal and

H He wrote more
Hans Holzer?” Alexandra be with creative people. I really didn’t care. I
Holzer asks. She’s crowded was too young. When you’re at a certain age,
into an elevator with about 15
people at the Chicago Ghost than 120 books you don’t get what your parent does, even if
it’s as weird as that. He’d say ‘Oh look – I’m
Conference, being held at Carl on TV!’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s nice.’ I just
Schurz High School. The elevator is heading
up to the fifth floor for a short investigation
on ghosts, ESP, didn’t get it.”
Alexandra might not have been getting it,
of the school’s music room, where there are
claims of spirits lurking in the corner and
witchcraft and but others were. Holzer became renowned
as the foremost US authority on all things
tinkering around on the piano. related to ghosts. His expertise was used
Her question is greeted with an awkward the afterlife on shows like the classic In Search Of… and
silence. subsequent television programmes and
“Oh boy,” she says, disappointed, and Alexandra became aware that her father’s documentaries dedicated to the paranormal.
looks at the elevator wall. Later I ask her if interests might be termed “unusual” at a In another contribution to pop culture, Dr
she thinks this was just a shy silence. early age, and it was a while before she grew Holzer helped inspire the beloved horror-
“Maybe.” She answers. “His recognition is to appreciate them. comedy Ghostbusters. Dan Aykroyd, who
mixed and that’s not good enough for me. It’s “I was about eight years old when I figured wrote and starred in the movie, is on record
got to be higher.” out he wasn’t normal,” she smiles, “because as a Holzer fan. “I became obsessed with
This lack of familiarity is disheartening when I started going to school my mother Hans Holzer, the greatest ghost hunter ever,”
because if there were ever a Mount would wrap up my father’s books as gifts Aykroyd said. “That’s when the idea of my
Rushmore of “ghost hunters,” Alexandra’s – books on witches, warlocks, UFOs, the film Ghostbusters was born.”
father – Dr Hans Holzer – would definitely Amityville Horror. The teachers would open Holzer’s most famous case was the
have his hawk-like features chiselled there. up the gifts in the classroom and all the kids’ alleged haunting of the Lutz family on Long
Hans Holzer was born in 1920 in Vienna, eyes grew, the teachers’ mouths dropped, Island, New York, commonly known as the
Austria. He studied archæeology and history
at the University of Vienna, but, with World
War II on the horizon, his family determined
they would move to New York City in 1938.
He went on to study Japanese at Columbia
University, although his real interests lay
elsewhere. Thanks in part to an uncle who
told him ghost stories, Holzer had a passion
for the supernatural since he was a young
boy, and went on to devote his life to all
things ‘paranormal’. He wrote more than 120
books on ghosts, UFOs, the afterlife, ESP,
witchcraft, and related topics. He also taught
parapsychology at the New York Institute of
Technology.
“During the Seventies and Eighties, he
was the ‘ghost man’,” Alexandra explains.
She says her father’s collection of artefacts
related to his studies and circle of friends
involved in the parapsychological field made
living in the Holzer house “like growing up
in a living museum”. Her mother was also
out of the ordinary. An artist and descendent
of Catherine the Great, Countess Catherine
Buxhoeveden married Holzer shortly before
his first book, Ghost Hunter, was published
ALEXANDRA HOLZER

in 1964. The countess joined him in his

travels and employed her artistic talents
on illustrations for his early books. They
divorced when Alexandra was 13 years old.

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er’s Daughter

WENDY SCHREIER
FACING PAGE: Dr Hans Holzer and a young Alexandra photographed in 1975 . ABOVE: Alexandra Holzer today. BELOW: One of Holzer’s many bestselling books about ghosts.

Amityville Horror (see FT190:32-37). which helped Holzer put together a theory refuted claims that the house is built on any
The Lutz family moved into 112 Ocean that the house had been built on sacred Native such burial grounds, while other researchers
Avenue in Amityville 13 months after the American burial grounds, the cause of the who have investigated the case argue that it
home was the scene of a gruesome murder of malicious haunting. was an opportunistic hoax contrived by the
the former tenants, the DeFeo family. On 13 The Amityville Historical Society has Lutz family and their lawyer, embellished and
November 1974, 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo exaggerated to help make money from selling
Jr, the eldest child, systemically worked his a good ghost story.
way through the house in the middle of the Dr Holzer wrote both non-fiction (Murder in
night, shooting his mother and father and four Amityville, 1979) and fiction (The Amityville
siblings in their beds. After the Lutz family Curse, 1981, and The Secret of Amityville, 1985)
arrived, they claimed that between December about the case, as well as other popular non-
1975 and January 1976 they were terrorised fiction volumes on the topic of ghosts includes
by entities, and abandoned the house just 28 Ghosts I’ve Met (1965) Hans Holzer’s Haunted
days after moving in. The incident spawned Houses: A Pictorial Register of the World’s Most
a bestseller (The Amityville Horror: A True Interesting Ghost Houses (1971) and Great
Story by Jay Anson, 1977) followed by a string American Ghost Stories (1990).
of additional books on the case, Hollywood
movies (11 to date, with a 12th slated for 2015), Second Generation
and TV documentaries. “Probably by my late 20s I started to mature
Dr Holzer travelled to the house in January a bit and when I started to see the people
1977, and was joined in his investigation by he’d have over, I’d think, ‘these are really
medium Ethel Johnson Meyers. In addition to interesting people, they’re very spiritual, some
conducting interviews and research, Holzer are a bit wacky, but there’s something to what
often brought a medium with him on a case. he does.’ But I didn’t have a pinnacle moment
“A scientific investigation must have a well- of understanding who he was until my 30s,
trained transmedium for communication. It is where I was like ‘OK, I get it.’ Then I had my
the only way,” he once stated in an interview. own awakening and epiphany and it just kind
In the Amityville house, Meyers claimed of vibed at that point, so I’d say it took almost
that she had identified the house’s angry spirit: two decades to get to that point.”
Shinnecock Indian Chief Rolling Thunder, Alexandra says that epiphany came when

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her aunt passed on.
“At her service, I felt her come over and
hug me. My whole body went warm and I’m
sitting there crying hysterically because I
didn’t like it, I didn’t understand it. I felt she
was hugging me because she knew that out of
everybody except my mother I was destroyed
[by her death]. I knew it was her. I don’t know
how to explain it, I just knew. That flipped
me.”
Alexandra says the experience helped
inspire her to follow both investigating and
writing. She wrote a sci fi/fantasy novel, Lady
Ambrosia: Secret Past Revealed (2007), and a
memoir of her family, Growing Up Haunted: A
Ghostly Memoir (2008).
Hans Holzer died on 26 April 2009. After
his death, Alexandra stepped up her active
investigations, using the family formula for
ghost hunting, which she calls the “Holzer
Method.” Alexandra runs her group ‘Hunt
With Holzer’ with fellow investigator David
Lawson. “We create events with people and
give that personal contact and have groups
investigate using my father’s method. We
learn about other people’s methods and keep
it unified; help and learn and move on and

ALEXANDRA HOLZER
document.”
“It’s basically combining science
with metaphysics,” Alexandra explains,
describing the Holzer Method. “My father
had his predecessors and everybody was very ABOVE: The Holzer family on the tennis court during a holiday in Austria in the mid-1970s. Left-right: Hans,
scientific, and then he had the mediums and Alexandra’s older sister Nadine, Catherine, and Alexandra.
intuitiveness. Although he was a sceptic, he
believed if you combined the two, you’d have
better results, and that’s when the method
was born. It was his brainchild to say we’re Alexandra “Hans Holzer if you’re here, can you put
that green light on?” a participant asks from
going to do it this way and we’re going to do it the darkness.
that way and we’re going to get more data so
that we can understand what happens when
feels that Hans Silence. The REM-pod light does not turn
green.
we die. And not everything is science, and not
everything is spiritual – there’s a combination
Holzer’s place “You should ask him. He’ll listen to you,”
another participant suggests to Alexandra.
of the two.” “He didn’t listen to me in life!” She laughs.
In addition to Hunt with Holzer, Alexandra in history has “You think in the afterlife he’s going to
visualises a documentary or feature film listen to me? Really?” The group breaks into
based on her father’s life. She says it’s a
longtime goal of hers, one she spoke to her
been forgotten laughter in the dark.
“Daddy you want to play with some lights?”
father about. She feels Holzer’s place in Alexandra asks. The REM-pod remains idle.
history has been forgotten and overshadowed, “Do you feel he follows you around?”
and hopes such a project will help her father’s someone else asks her.
legacy live on. “He does. He’s a pain.” A second of silence.
Back at the Carl Schurz High School “Did someone just hum?”
investigation, her group has moved from the “I heard it!” a participant says. “I heard
fifth floor music room to a smaller music room hmmm from over here.”
filled with rows of keyboards on the fourth The group listens to an audio recorder
floor. An electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) and hears a ghostly sound they determine
session is taking place. Investigators are is an EVP they’ve captured of a girl saying
asking questions in the dark room, hoping to “daddy.” FT
illicit a response. After a minute of silence,
Alexandra addresses the group, telling them Alexandra Holzer’s website is alexandraholzer.com
that she is still in communication with her
father. Author Biography
“My father comes through when we’re
doing things,” she says. “So if anyone wants to TEA KRULOS is a journalist
ask if Hans Holzer is here, it’s actually pretty from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He
normal. I mean it’s a little paradoxical, but is author of Heroes in the Night
feel free to ask him a question.” and his new book Monster
Alexandra is seated near the teacher desk Hunters: On the Trail With
at the head of the classroom. On the desk in Ghost Hunters, Bigfooters,
front of her is the REM-pod, a device that Ufologists, and Other
measures fluctuations in electro-magnetic Paranormal Investigators is out June 2015
fields.Triggered lights and sounds on the from Chicago Review Press. He has written
device is said to be an indicator of a potential previously for FT on the real-life superhero
ghostly presence. movement and the Human Fly.

46 FT325
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THE FIRST FORTEANS
1 2 . S T R A N G E B E D F E L LOW S
Who were the First Forteans? British fortean lineage began in the early 1930s, when Charles Fort was still
alive and his books quite rare in these isles. BOB RICKARD concludes his rummage for our fortean roots.

What follows are various spent the rest of his life in the
brief notes which I could not USA – like Ivan Sanderson, so I
incorporate into previous regard both as honorary American
instalments of this series, some forteans.
of which were too short for their On the other hand, Fodor –
own entries or were about people author of the 1934 Encyclopaedia
whom I felt knew of Charles Fort of Psychic Science – was born
but on whom I could find little in Hungary, though his most
worth citing. I’m sure there is productive years were in Britain
much more to discover about the and America. After meeting
first British Forteans; the fan Carrington, he gave up law and
archives are vast and I had no time journalism, becoming a disciple
to explore them fully. of Freud, and developing a
There was no useful list of Price and Raymond Cass among NANDOR FODOR (1895-1964) & psychoanalytical approach to
UK forteans in the early issues the members. Here too was HEREWARD CARRINGTON (1880-1958) mediumship and spiritualism.
of The Fortean Society Magazine Tomas Elsender (whom Thayer Psychical researcher Hereward He was a member of the FS – and
and Doubt and it was no fun ranked with Eric Frank Russell Carrington who co-wrote Haunted like Dingwall, had corresponded
trawling for scraps through in sending quantity and quality People: The Story of the Poltergeist with Thayer – and his books
Thayer’s eccentric and cramped of newsclippings) and Hastings down the Centuries (1951) with on poltergeists and psychical
layouts, extravagant prose and Russell (12th Duke of Bedford), Nandor Fodor, was an Honorary research – which cite cases from
odd opinions. Worse still was his made a Fellow of the FS in 1944. Founder of the FS. He moved Fort – were touted in Doubt.
headache-inducing system for Other ‘Named Fellows’ included to the US in 1900, joining the
dating issues, adding an extra Aldous Huxley, Eric Dingwall, American Society for Psychical HARRY PRICE (1881-1948) & ERIC
month to honour Fort. Still, there JBS Haldane and Eric Temple Research five years later and DINGWALL (1890–1986)
we see novelist John Cowper Bell (who wrote SF as John Taine), becoming one of their senior In 1934, the Council for Psychical
Powys among the founders of which means they were invited investigators and author of over Investigation was formed at the
the Fortean Society (FS), and but there is no mention of their 100 books in the genre. However, University of London to take over
psychical researchers Harry acceptance. Carrington, while born British, Harry Price’s National Laboratory
of Psychical Research. Established
by Price in 1925, the lab
pioneered a scientific approach
to investigating mediums, ghosts
and poltergeists. Fodor wrote
approvingly of Price’s methods
and cautious curiosity, arguing
that the field owed him “a greater
debt” for making psychical
research accessible to the public.
Eric Dingwall was an
anthropologist who became a
senior investigator for the Society
for Psychical Research and, from
1947, catalogued erotica in the
British Museum Library. His
ground-breaking four-volume
Abnormal Hypnotic Phenomena
(1967–68) is still a standard
reference. Mediums would
fear Dingwall’s unsympathetic
investigations and his scepticism
only increased with age.
Dingwall, for undiscovered
reasons, took exception to Price,
resulting in a hostile analysis of
Price’s investigation of Borley
Rectory, and worse, accusing
Price of fabricating key evidence.
Fodor sprang to Price’s defence
TOP LEFT: Hereward Carrington. TOP RIGHT: Eric Dingwall. ABOVE: Nandor Fodor was a disciple of Freud and pioneered a with a remarkably personal
psychoanalytic approach to psychical research, as illustrated in this article from a 1949 issue of Mechanix Illustrated. statement, confessing that the

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“ferocious intensity” of Price’s BOTTOM: Raymond Cass with a device
critics baffled him and was, itself for recording paranormal voices. TOP
“pathological and worthy of LEFT: A record of the first meeting of
investigation”. the first UK fan group, in Ilford on 27
It is one of fate’s ironies that Oct 1937, reported by Walter Gillings in
the libraries of both Dingwall the Ilford Recorder (31 Oct 1930). LEFT:
and Price now lie adjacent A copy of Raymond Cass’s Fortean
within the archives of University Society membership card, signed by
College. 1 For more on Price Tiffany Thayer, which Cass sent to FT.
see FT116:40-43; for Dingwall,
FT:299:44-49, FT300:50-54. believed that all psychical
phenomena had either an
RAYMOND CASS (1921-1977) electrical origin or – at least – an
Cass was one of the leading electrical component. An active
figures in British research member of the SPR for many
into the Electronic Voice years, Herbert had widened
Phenomenon (EVP). Born his investigations to include
in Hull, he was, apparently, UFOs, witches and mediumistic
interested in paranormal ‘physical phenomena’. He took
phenomena since, at the age of advantage of the schisms within
seven, he believed he heard a the SPR in the mid-1960s to form
male voice call his name from his own independent unit, the
an early radio that was switched Paraphysical Laboratory (the
off. Later, on joining a local ‘Paralab’) on Lord Longford’s
spiritualist group he discovered
that an ancestor, Robert Cass
CASS WAS TOLD BY MEDIUM HELEN DUNCAN – estate at Downton, Wiltshire,
where he researched into
(d.1898), “could levitate a
heavy table with three men
THE LAST PERSON TO BE IMPRISONED UNDER ‘psychokinesis’ (PK).
Although not well known in
on top to the ceiling”; and in
1773, another ancestor, Molly
THE 1735 BRITISH WITCHCRAFT ACT – THAT HE the West today, according to
one source Herbert is “much
Cass, was persecuted for her
mediumship. At the age of 17,
WOULD DEVELOP “VOICE MEDIUMSHIP”. valued and still studied in the
Soviet bloc”. In 1970, Herbert
Raymond was told by the famous was invited by Soviet scientists
medium Helen Duncan – the proclaiming his formation of the Gillings noticed a letter in the to be the British representative
last person to be imprisoned Institute of Scientific Research, April issue of Wonder Stories, at the Prague Symposium
under the British Witchcraft Act one of the first regional SF fan from another resident of Ilford, on Psychotronics (variously
of 1735 – that he would develop groups which he describes as “a Len Kippin, an amateur radio defined as the military use of
“voice mediumship”. He kept up small English science society” enthusiast. As a commercial psychical abilities or ‘applied
his interest in “psychic affairs” also interested in radio research. traveller in boroughs of east psychokinesis’). In 1972, he
until 1945, when his release In 1935, Mayer was rewarded by London, Kippin acquired SF went to Leningrad to study the
from a German POW camp the American Science Fiction magazines wherever he found famous Russian PK medium Nina
required him to find a profession. League with an affiliation. This them; at that time they were Kulagina; a heavy chair moved at
Interested in acoustics, he stimulated a flurry of proposals sporadically imported and her will and her touch left a burn
established a successful and to establish local SF groups randomly distributed. Kippin mark on his arm for a week. In
long-lived business developing across the UK, including Belfast, and Gillings met and formed the the Paralab, he studied Suzanne
hearing aids. It was not until Nuneaton, Glasgow, Manchester Ilford Science Literary Circle Padfield, whose apparent
1971 that Konstantin Raudive’s and Barnsley. Fan historian Rob (ISLC). Gillings concocted a abilities included bending beams
book Breakthrough re-kindled Hansen notes that one of these ‘Letter to the Editor’ and had of light.2
his interest in the electronic start-ups was by a “Raymond A it inserted into his own paper. Crucially for Western EVP
mediumship of tape-recorders Cass of Hull”. It is highly likely, Hansen calls it “the earliest enthusiasts, Herbert’s own
and radios. By the time he died in then, that Cass learned of Fort known written record of fan periodical, the Journal of
1977, at the young age of 56, his through the fan community and activity in this country”. Paraphysics – (I was a subscriber)
experimentation was studied in the proselytising of Eric Frank The inaugural meeting of – became a regular conduit for
Germany, Japan and the USA. Russell in the early 1940s. the ISLC was held in Ilford on news of continental research
Cass probably became a 27 October 1930. Afterwards, by Jung’s student Konstantin
member of Thayer’s Fortean WALTER GILLINGS (1912-1979) Gillings wrote to Wonder Raudive in Latvia, Hans Bender
Society through his interest in Walter was crucial in providing Stories describing their success in Germany, and others in Russia.
science fiction around 1930. the initial environment in which and other UK readers began Both the ‘Paralab’ – which
Douglas Mayer – then a young UK SF fandom took root, and contacting him directly. The was once raided by British
student in Leeds – had a letter within which the UK forteans Ilford gathering also inspired Intelligence agents – and the
published in Wonder Stories flourished. Gillings lived in Ilford, Colin Askham and Leslie Johnson Journal ceased when Herbert’s
on the eastern edge of London; in Liverpool to attempt a group. health failed in 1987.
he was 18 and training to be a Johnson later went on to co- Even less well known is that
reporter on The Ilford Recorder. In found the British Interplanetary between 1931 and 1943 Herbert
his school days, he had attempted Society. Many groups never got wrote several SF stories and,
his own SF magazine. It was hand- off the ground and, less than a in the mid-1940s, bankrolled
written, with ink illustrations to year after forming, the Ilford Utopian Publications, which
his own stories and “a circulation group too disbanded. published two SF anthology
of ten” but it instilled in him a magazines for the UK market –
flair for writing and editing. BENSON HERBERT (1912-1991) American Fiction and Strange Tales
As SF historian Rob Hansen Herbert, a qualified physicist – which he edited with Walter
notes, it was Wonder Stories that credited with coining the word Gillings. In 1947, Herbert pulled
set things in motion. In 1930, ‘paraphysics’ in the early 1960s, out of editing two issues of New

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 Worlds, which had to be finished and corresponding with every by arranging for one Egerton in fanzines, and the chain-
by Sam Youd (who wrote SF as authority on the subject Sykes, an individual whose sole letters that circulated in early
John Christopher) anonymously. between 1912 and 1950. Most qualification seemed to be that wartime years… He won me over
Harry Turner remembers the of his life was spent as a British he was perpetually on the verge wholeheartedly to Charles Fort…
issue as displaying a significant Intelligence Officer working in of setting off for Mt Ararat in bowled me over with Sinister
divergence from the fare that 28 countries – the perfect cover search of the Ark, to take over as Barrier in Unknown, and wrote
SF fans expected: “its coverage for his determination to locate secretary. However, the London some printable (and unprintable)
of psychical research, occultism, books in their native languages. Circle was as disinclined to be letters of comment when I started
Spiritism, and astrology got a His library – said to be the largest organised as ever and when Sykes pubbing a fanzine, Zenith, in
general raspberry from fans”. private collection on Atlantis in showed up at the White Horse 1941.” Turner adds that when,
Also, in his memorandum about the world – is now housed with he was told, apparently none too prior to his WWII overseas
the 1938 London SF convention, the Edgar Cayce Foundation’s diplomatically, that there was no posting, he was in Blackpool
GETTY IMAGES

Turner recalls “spending a lot Association for Research and money or publicity to be made searching secondhand book
of time arguing with Benson Enlightenment (ARE). out of organising fandom. He was stalls “for reading matter for that
Herbert about surrealism, then Like Rupert Gould, Sykes never heard from again.” 5 journey, I was lucky to pick up
currently attracting attention as was hospitalised with ‘shell the 1931 US edition of Fort’s Lo!,
a way-out and controversial art shock’. After WWII he retired HARRY TURNER (1920-2009) which accompanied me on the
form in the British press.” to Brighton, from where he A memoir of Eric Frank Russell’s voyage. It’s survived the years and
published journals – Atlantis interest in Fort is given by the still lurks on my library shelves
ERIC NEEDHAM (1921-1983) (1948-1976) and New World artist and fan historian Harry next to The Complete Books of
Needham, another of the Antiquity (1954-1979) – and Turner, one of the Manchester Charles Fort.” 6
Manchester ‘Rocket Boys’ and his own 1970 expansion of ‘Rocket Boys’. He writes that
a fan writer, said of Fort: “Plots Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis: The he first met EFR – “15 years my OTHER FORTEAN INFLUENCES
come ready made to me. It is Antediluvian World (1949). senior” – at a meeting of the BIS The period I’ve chronicled ends
a literal fact that after heavy Few know that Sykes appeared in July 1938 in Chingford. “Guest in the decade 1945-1955. This
showers of rain I’ve looked for among the London Circle, shortly of honour was Bob Truax of post-war period was an exciting
frogs on rooftops and fire-escapes. after it relocated to the famous the American Rocket Society, time for curious and inventive
No luck. Then I find reference White Horse pub in 1946. In then a midshipman working minds. Certainly something
to falls of frogs and all sorts 1948, Ken Slater was trying at the US Navy experimental wonderful was happening in
of Fortean phenomena in The to organise a fan-run Science station at Chesapeake Bay and the early 1950s and, in closing
Anatomy of Melancholy. And in Fantasy Society to buy and swap conveniently in the UK on a this series, I’d like to pay tribute
Titus Livius, plus Machiavelli, books and magazines. As Rob training cruise.” Arthur C Clarke to some of those writer-artists
too. They are there, if you look for Hansen records: “It was clear also attended. who inspired me: in particular
them. Biggest snag is persuading there was little real enthusiasm Turner described EFR as Sydney Jordan (b.1928) and his
fans that literature can be fun.” 3 for the organisation. Ken Slater “very much a kindred spirit” colleagues, whose long-running
made a final attempt to inject and the pair kept in touch strip ‘Jeff Hawke: Space Rider’
MP SHIEL (1865-1947) some life into it around this time “through letters and exchanges began in the Daily Express, in
Shiel was an acclaimed writer February 1954; and Nigel Kneale
of 27 novels and more short (1922-2006), whose ‘Quatermass
stories filled with discourses Experiment’, broadcast in mid-
on supernatural, philosophical 1953, was written while he was
and mythological mysteries. His a staff drama writer at the BBC.
masterpiece, The Purple Cloud This period began with Frank
(1901), was praised by both HG Hampson’s ‘Dan Dare: Pilot of
Wells and HP Lovecraft. the Future’, in the inaugural
In 1944, Malcolm Fergusson – publication, in April 1950, of
an American soldier stationed in the kids’ weekly, Eagle (which,
MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY

the UK – managed to track down somehow, my Dad got for me

and interview Shiel in Horsham, when we lived in the Far East).
Sussex. Fergusson describes a Looking back, it seems to me
letter he had from Shiel, with that the creators of these stories
this interesting passage: “He primed me to be receptive,
read slowly, he said. He did not later, to Charles Fort. They were
write of conventional ghosts or my first introduction to SF and
supernatural phenomena... He fortean tropes. Dan Dare, for
added that he enjoyed reading example, was chiefly written and
Charles Fort, the American writer drawn by Frank Hampson but,
who harangued at science for during its first three months,
its myopia and thrust forward Arthur C Clarke served as its
a bewildering array of data on ‘scientific advisor’.
the supernormal into its range As WWII ended, Sydney
of vision. Shiel spoke of the Jordan was training at a college
migration of lemmings and “for would-be aeroplane
suchlike matters as typical of this designers” near Reading. A
interest.” fellow student there was Willie
Patterson (d.1986), who would,
EGERTON SYKES (1894-1983) in 1956, join Jordan as co-writer
Sykes – a renowned mythologist of ‘Jeff Hawke’. Between 1956
and amateur archæologist – and 1969, Patterson became
was heavily influenced by the TOP: Benson Herbert with Nina Kulagina. ABOVE: BIS meeting in Chingford, the main writer, building up
novels of Jules Verne as a boy. July 1938: in honour of visiting US rocketeer Bob Truax (holding rocket part). In Hawke from a demobbed pilot
From the age of 18, he began attendance were Eric Burgess and Harry Turner (2nd and 3rd from left) and Arthur to the level of a space and time
collecting books on Atlantis C Clarke (on far right) with Maurice Hanson (to his right). travelling ambassador from

50 F T325
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Earth, frequently frustrating the god that seemed to be wearing a
plans of galactic ‘civil servants’ crash helmet… what EvD might
and villains, or correcting the have called a space helmet.
anomalies when those plans Jordan and Patterson also
went wrong. The stories of this seemed unexpectedly prescient
period have been described as in their Jeff Hawke strip,
the first British comic for adults; featuring Egyptian pyramids on
the quality of the writing was Mars long before von Däniken
good enough for me to insist my and the discovery of the infamous
parents get the Daily Express. Sphinx-like ‘Face’. And again,
Both Jordan and Patterson in their 1958 story ‘Out of
also did some work for Eagle, Touch’, in which a three-mile-
and later acknowledged that long spaceship enters our Solar
their characters, institutions System, inside which is a self-
and plots in ‘Jeff Hawke’ were contained world its inhabitants
largely modelled on what they call “Rhaam”. This was 15
had encountered in their training years before Arthur C Clarke’s
days. Although their college Rendezvous with Rama. However,
was not within the RAF, it was their most famous glimpse of
visited by flyers and officials, the future came in an innocent
and kept up with new wartime panel in their 1959 story set on
technologies. It is not unusual the Moon, which showed a pillar
to hear of other writers who of Moon-rock bearing a metal
lived through WWII using their plaque with the legend “On
experiences as inspiration for August 4th Earth year 1969 the
their characters and plots. first being set foot on the Moon
Further, on this topic of at this point. His name was Homo
transmission and influence, I’ve Sapiens.” Jordan shrugged off
always felt that the adventures of being only two weeks out for the
Professor Bernard Quatermass eventual landing (21 July 1969),
might well have been inspired saying he based his date “on my
by Sinister Barrier, considering knowledge of American/German
that some Quatermass plots also spaceflight engineering”.
involved possession or control by Nigel Kneale, though, is still
aliens or invading entities. my favourite with memorable
From the web I take this TV adaptations, including
description of Quatermass: TOP: A poster for Hammer’s The Abominable Snowman, written by Nigel Kneale. First Men in the Moon (1964),
“[He] is a pioneer of the British ABOVE: A typical panel from Sydney Jordan’s ‘Jeff Hawke’ newspaper strip. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954) and
space programme, heading up The Woman in Black (1989); and
the British Experimental Rocket with Wernher von Braun and the ingredients of Quatermass’s among his own productions are
Group. He continually finds German rocket programme.” 7 background. Beasts (1976, a six-part anthology
himself confronting sinister Doesn’t that put you in mind For example, in a rare article of horror shorts) The Stone Tape
alien forces that threaten to of those early boy rocketeers who on ‘The Flying Saucers’ for (1972, about EVP), The Year of the
destroy humanity… In Nigel formed the British Interplanetary Tomorrow magazine (March Sex Olympics (1968, predicting
Kneale’s 1996 radio serial Society and shared an interest in 1952), EFR claimed that ordinary ‘reality TV’), The Creature (1955,
‘The Quatermass Memoirs’, it SF? 8 BIS founder Philip Cleator people were being tricked by hunting the Yeti), Quatermass and
is revealed that the Professor even made a trip to Germany in authorities into believing the the Pit (1955 & 1967, witchcraft,
was first involved in rocketry 1934, visiting the pioneer rocket saucers were all illusions and ghosts and Martians) The Crunch
experiments in the 1930s, group that included Von Braun misperceptions. It is interesting (a nuke in London) and, top of
and that his wife died young. and Willy Ley. Could the young to note that in this article – some my list, The Road (1963, loosely
The unmade prequel serial Nigel Kneale (who would have 16 years before von Däniken based upon Glanvill’s story of
‘Quatermass in the Third Reich’, been 17 when Sinister Barrier was – EFR had suggested that the the Tedworth poltergeist of 1662,
an idea conceived by Kneale in published) have been a member Egyptian gods might have been but with a perfect final twist).
the late 1990s, would have shown of the BIS or overlapping SF visiting aliens. And in another, To close the circle, this was one
Quatermass travelling to Nazi groups in London? If he had earlier story – ‘Titans of the of Harry Price’s favourite cases,
Germany during the 1936 Berlin been, he would have had every Twilight’ (1941) – he mentions the starring in his Poltergeist over
Olympics and becoming involved opportunity to absorb all the discovery of a statue of an Inca England (1945). FT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS – For their com/Prolapse/; Philip Turner for PriceatBorley/fodor-hbr-review.htm (July/Aug 1999), pp22-25, 42-43
generous help, my thanks go to permission to use images from 2 At least one commentator noted at www.seachild.net/sykes/; See
the SF fan historians and archivists Harry Turner’s Footnotes to that Herbert “had one of those FF9, ‘The Pubs at the End of the
who went out of their way to Fandom archive: www.htspweb. names” that people muddle; to this Universe’, FT320:48-50.
preserve the correspondence, co.uk/fandf/romart/het/footnotes. day, he is often cited as ‘Herbert 6 Harry Turner, ‘Footnotes to
images, fanzines and reports htm; and Jill Godfrey for permission Benson’. Fandom: Remembering Eric Frank
of the day. Chief among those to use Harold Gottliffe’s photos from Russell’, at www.htspweb.co.uk/
are Rob Hansen’s FIAWOL archive: the above sites. 3 Written in 1954, first published
in Ethel Lindsay’s Bletherings #4, fandf/romart/het/footnotes/efr.htm;
www.fiawol.org.uk/ 1 E Dingwall, KM Goldney and Trevor also FF2 ‘Rocket Boys’, FT309:50-
FanStuff/; David Langford for 1972.
H Hall, The Haunting of Borley 51; Truax: www.htspweb.co.uk/
his Ansible archive: http://news. Rectory: A Critical Survey of the 4 Malcolm Fergusson, ‘The Lost fandf/romart/het/footnotes/1938.
ansible.co.uk/; Greg Pickersgill for Evidence (1956). Nandor Fodor, ‘Was Club Journal’, at http://homepages. htm#truax
his Gostak archive: www.gostak. Harry Price a Fraud?’, Tomorrow pavilion.co.uk/tartarus/shiel.html
demon.co.uk/; Peter Weston for 7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
vol 4, no 2 (1956); reproduced on 5 An excellent portrait of Sykes Bernard_Quatermass
permission to use images from Mike the Harry Price website at www. is Anne Ruby, ‘The Making of an
Rosenblum in his collection, and harrypricewebsite.co.uk/Borley/ Atlantean Scholar’, Venture Inward 8 See FT309:50-51.
for his Relapse: http://efanzines.

FT325 51
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FORTEAN TIMES, PO BOX 71602, LONDON E17 0QD, UK,
OR TO drsutton@forteantimes.com

HAVE YOUR SAY

forum whether some of the above should be

The curse of Aaron Ramsey described as ‘celebrities’, but there

is no doubt that they are all famous
people, even if infamous might be more
appropriate for Bin Laden and Gaddafi.
Was Robin Williams killed by a footballer’s ‘kick of death’? ROB GANDY asks So how on earth did this ‘curse’ come to
if Arsenal supporters will soon be singing ‘Another One Bites the Dust’. prominence?
Nick Enoch asked the question about
the alleged phenomenon in the Daily
Mail on 15 February 2012, 2 only four
ROB GANDY is a visiting professor
at the Liverpool Business School, days after Houston died on 11 February,
John Moores University. He has with the deaths of the other three

LINDSEY PARNABY / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

written for FT on Merseyside celebrities occurring over the previous
doppelgängers, ghostlore and the eight and a half months. As you need
mysterious Marsupilami.
a minimum of three events even to be
thinking about a pattern, it’s clear that

R
obin Williams, the great someone picked up on it at some time
American actor, comedian, film between Gaddafi’s and Houston’s deaths.
producer and screenwriter, At the time that reference was made
tragically committed suicide on to the ‘curse’, Ramsey had not been a
11 August 2014. The reasons put forward prolific goal scorer: his goal at the time
for this, discussed in various media, of Bin Laden’s death was only his sixth
have varied but appear to include for Arsenal in three seasons, which had
ABOVE: Ramsey
depression, the effects of the drugs disrespectful nature of the coincidence. admittedly been disrupted by a serious
scores! And Sir
he was taking for Parkinson’s Disease, There has not been a case of the curse Richard Attenborough leg break. His seventh goal for Arsenal
financial worries, and a downturn in since November 30, 2013, when Fast dies the following was when Jobs died; his eighth was when
his acting career. However, surely the and Furious actor Paul Walker died in a day... Gaddafi died; and his ninth was on the
strangest cause attributed to his death car accident. Ramsey scored two goals day of Houston’s death. Spooky! Added
is “the Curse of Aaron Ramsey”. against Cardiff that day. But after the momentum was given to the ‘curse’ when
“Who is Aaron Ramsey?” many will midfield dynamo scored 14 more goals Taiwanese animators NMA produced
ask – certainly outside of the United last season, the curse was forgotten. a humorous but controversial cartoon
Kingdom, and particularly in America. Previously, four celebrities passed away clip of Ramsey as the ‘celebrity slayer’
They will find that he is a Welsh as the Welshman scored four goals for – “Aaron Ramsey’s ‘Kick of Death’” –
footballer, born in 1990, who plays his club”. 1 which went viral on the Internet. 3
midfield for Arsenal in the English Four major celebrity deaths are then Fortunately, there is nothing in
Football Premier League and the Wales listed as being linked to Ramsey finding the ‘curse’, and there is a very simple
national football team. Arsenal signed the net: explanation. On average, the number
him for £5 million in 2008 from his Osama bin Laden was declared dead of deaths every day in the UK is just
hometown club, Cardiff City. They will on 2 May 2011, and Ramsey bagged a over 1,500 4 and in the USA it is over
then, inevitably and rightly, ask the goal against Manchester United the day 7,300, 5 so if you include the number of
follow-up question: “What has Aaron before. deaths on the day before and the day
Ramsey got to do with Robin Williams?” Apple guru Steve Jobs died at his after Ramsey scored a goal, then you
The answer is: “Nothing”. But in its 13 home in California on 5 October 2011, treble these numbers to 4,500 and 21,900
August 2014 issue, that esteemed British and Ramsey hit the headlines by scoring respectively. It is virtually certain that
newspaper the Daily Star headlined in a north London derby against Spurs there will be some celebrities included
with: Robin Williams dies, Aaron Ramsey the weekend before. in such numbers, however these might
scores – has the Arsenal star’s curse Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi was be defined. There are specialist websites
returned? captured and killed by rebels on 20 that list famous people that have died
The ‘curse’ is supposed to be that October that year, and Ramsey was each day: The Life In Legacy website 6
whenever Aaron Ramsey scores a there to bag an injury-time winner is primarily US-focused, but has lists of
goal, the death of a celebrity occurs. against Marseilles in the Champions deaths for each week going back as far as
The Star piece goes on to say: “The League. 2007, with around 30-40 people recorded
strange phenomenon became apparent Finally, Whitney Houston was found for each week; the IMDB website has
throughout 2011 and 2012 when a big- dead in her bathroom on 11 February pages for ‘Most Popular People With
name celebrity died within days of the 2012. Just hours before, the Gunner had Date of Death’ 7 in a given year; and
midfielder scoring a goal for Arsenal. struck against Sunderland. Wikipedia has ‘Lists of Deaths By Year’
And hours after the star scored in his Others believe he may have killed off going back to 1987, with generally more
club’s Community Shield victory on other celebs with his goals, including than 10 deaths recorded for each day.8
Sunday, the tragic death of comedy legendary basketball player Ray So, there are inevitably going to be
actor Robin Williams was announced. Williams and Russian billionaire Boris around a couple of dozen celebrities, or
Many on Twitter have talked of the curse Berezovsky. people famous for one thing or another,
returning, while others slammed the Now I know that it is questionable who die on the three days surrounding

FT325 53
www.forteantimes.com
forum SPORTING CURSES

an Aaron Ramsey goal. Just pick people that died on the day he Nelson Mandela! list, which shows that the ‘curse’ is
the one who is most famous and scored, or a day either side, given Interestingly, at the time of nonsense. With so many deaths of
add him or her to the ‘curse’! that deaths in North America could writing this article, Ramsey scored celebrities each day and football
As stated above, the ‘curse’ was be recorded as the day before in Arsenal’s 2-2 draw at Everton, matches now taking place every day
forgotten when Ramsey banged because of time zones. I have used and Sir Richard Attenborough, the of the week, it is possible to name
in 16 goals for Arsenal and two the above and similar Internet celebrated Oscar-winning actor any footballer and link a famous
for Wales in 2013/14. So, just sources, and then created my own and director died the following day death to every time they score. I
for fun – and definitely not to roll-call of Ramsey’s ‘victims’. The after a long illness. 10 Attenborough have every confidence that the story
provide evidence for the ‘curse’ – I result is the list provided. You will was Life President and a lifelong of the ‘curse’ started in a north
identified all the goals scored by see that Ramsey even brought the supporter of Chelsea FC, Arsenal’s London pub in a chat between some
Ramsey from when he first moved curtain down on George W Bush’s great north London rivals. 11 Arsenal supporters over a pint.
to Arsenal, 9 and selected famous favourite pooch, and nearly nailed Clearly, it was easy to create this Given Ramsey’s limited number

SEASON DATES AARON RAMSEY SCORED CELEBRITY VICTIM (DATE OF DEATH IN BRACKETS)
(Ramsey was playing for Arsenal
unless stated otherwise)

2008/09 21 Oct 2008 John Ringham: English actor known for V for Vendetta (2005), Woof! (1989) and The Secret of
Eel Island (2004). (20 Oct)
2009/10 22 Aug 2009 Elmer Kelton: Western novelist whose book The Good Old Boys was made into a 1995 TV
movie starring Tommy Lee Jones. (22 Aug)
2009/10 14 Oct 2009 Captain Lou Albano: professional wrestler in 1980s who appeared in Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just
Want to Have Fun” music video, and played Mario on The Super Mario Bros. (14 Oct) [Playing
for Wales]
2009/10 14 Nov 2009 Dennis Cole: American TV actor. (15 Nov) [Playing for Wales]
2009/10 5 Dec 2009 Jack Rose: guitarist whose improvisations on 6-string, 12-string, and lap steel guitar won him
a devoted cult following. (5 Dec)
2009/10 30 Dec 2009 Rowland Howard: Australian rock musician, guitarist and songwriter, best known for his work
with the post-punk group The Birthday Party and his subsequent solo career. (30 Dec)
2009/10 3 Jan 2010 Donal Donnelly: Anglo-Irish actor best known in the cinema for roles in The Knack... and How
to Get It (1965) and The Godfather: Part III (1990). (4 Jan)
2010/11 22 Feb 2011 Dwayne McDuffie: African-American comic book and animation writer best known as one of the
founders of Milestone Media, an imprint of DC Comics dedicated to promoting better stories
and characterisations for minorities. (21 Feb) [Playing for Cardiff City on loan]
2010/11 1 May 2011 Osama bin Laden: shot dead by US Navy Seals in his compound in Pakistan (2 May)
2010/11 27 May 2011 Jeff Conaway: American actor who starred in the TV sitcom Taxi (1978-81), and played Kenickie
in the movie musical Grease (1978). (27 May) [Playing for Wales]
2011/12 2 Sept 2011 John Hoover: Alaskan artist who used imagery and tales from Native traditions in contemporary
works. (3 Sept) [Playing for Wales]
2011/12 2 Oct 2011 Steve Jobs: Apple guru dies at his home in California after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. (5 Oct)
2011/12 7 Oct 2011 Julio Mario Santo Domingo: Colombian magnate whose $8.5 billion fortune made him one of
Latin America’s richest and most influential men. (7 Oct) [Playing for Wales]
2011/12 19 Oct 2011 Colonel Gaddafi: captured by rebels near his hometown of Sirte and dies from his injuries. (20 Oct)
2011/12 11 Feb 2011 Whitney Houston: found dead in a bathroom at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. (11 Feb)
2012/13 3 Oct 2012 Big Jim Sullivan: British guitarist, complications of heart disease and diabetes. (2 Oct)
2012/13 22 Mar 2013 Ray Williams: American professional basketball player, died after suffering from colon cancer. (22 Mar)
Boris Berezovsky: Russian business oligarch, government official and mathematician, found dead
at his home in England. (23 Mar) [Playing for Wales]
2012/13 14 May 2013 Billie Sol Estes: Texas king of con men who became notorious with the scandal that broke out
during JFK’s administration involving phony financial statements and nonexistent fertiliser tanks,
for which he served several years in prison. (14 May)
2013/14 21 Aug 2013 Elmore Leonard: American crime writer behind novels including Get Shorty, Out of Sight and Rum
Punch. (20 Aug)
2013/14 27 Aug 2013 Mike Winters: British comedian, who with his brother Bernie, pioneered television comedy. (26 Aug)
2013/14 6 Sept 2013 AC Crispin: SF author who wrote popular tie-in novels to Star Trek and Star Wars and helped to
run the online watchdog “Writer Beware”. (6 Sept) [Playing for Wales]
2013/14 14 Sept 2013 Salustiano Sanchez-Blazquez: world’s oldest man (112), a Spanish-born, self-taught musician,
coal miner, and gin rummy aficionado from western New York State. (13 Sept)

54 FT325
www.forteantimes.com
 SPORTING CURSES
forum
of goals at the time, his scoring a these celebrities and other famous NOTES 6 http://lifeinlegacy.com/
couple around the time of Jobs’s people was that their deaths 1 www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest- 7 www.imdb.com/
and Gaddafi’s deaths will have been dominated the media for some time, news/394206/Robin-Williams-dies-Aaron- 8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_
very notable and generated jokey just as Robin Williams’s did. Given Ramsey-scores-has-the-curse-returned deaths_by_year
comments; this might have been the media references to the ‘curse’, I 2 www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ 9 www.soccerbase.com/players/player.
reinforced by someone checking to have no doubt that Ramsey and the article-2101478/When-Arsenal-player- sd?player_id=46488&season_id=138
see if anyone had died the previous Aaron-Ramsey-scores-famous-dies.html
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger 10 www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-
time he scored and finding Osama will simply laugh it off; but I will be 3 www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeNXIVn1iz4 arts-11230065
bin Laden. And from there, it would watching to see if Arsenal fans start 4 http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node. 11 www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/
have grown, with Houston’s death to sing Queen’s “Another One Bites country.country-GBR?lang=en article-2733409/Chelsea-pay-tribute-
5 http://apps.who.int/gho/ club-s-Life-President-Lord-Richard-
and the NMA cartoon sending it The Dust” every time Ramsey scores
data/?theme=country&vid=20800 Attenborough-death.html
viral. The only difference between in the future. FT

SEASON DATES AARON RAMSEY SCORED CELEBRITY VICTIM (DATE OF DEATH IN BRACKETS)
(Ramsey was playing for Arsenal
unless stated otherwise)

2013/14 18 Sept 2013 Ken Norton: the world heavyweight boxing champion famously broke the jaw of Muhammed Ali in
the first of their three fights but lost the next two. (18 Sept)
2013/14 22 Sept 2013 Dr David Hubel: half of a scientific team that won a Nobel Prize for explaining how the brain
assembles information from the eye’s retina to produce detailed visual images. (22 Sept)
2013/14 28 Sept 2013 John Calvert: Hollywood illusionist whose magic tricks won him numerous fans and several film
roles, including three movies during the 1940s in which he played the detective known as the
Falcon. (27 Sept)
2013/14 15 Oct 2013 Sean Edwards: 26-year-old top British racing driver, who was leading the season’s Porsche Super
cup championship, was killed instantly when his car hit a barrier and burst into flames in
Queensland, Australia. (15th) [Playing for Wales]
2013/14 19 Oct 2013 Lawrence R Klein: economic theorist who predicted America’s economic boom after World War II
and was awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in economic science for developing statistical models
used to analyse and predict global economic trends. (20 Oct)
Noel Harrison: British actor and musician, son of the late actor Rex Harrison, who recorded the
Oscar-winning ballad “The Windmills of Your Mind,” the theme from the 1968 heist movie The
Thomas Crown Affair, which won the best-song Oscar. (19 Oct)
2013/14 2 Nov 2013 Editta Sherman: photographer who made portraits of celebrities and lived for 61 years in a
studio penthouse above Carnegie Hall until forced out in 2010 in a landlord-tenant struggle.
(1 Nov)
2013/14 6 Nov 2013 Clarence (Ace) Parker: oldest member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame (101) who spent
part of his career in baseball. (6 Nov)
John Cole: former BBC political editor who was chief reporter during the Thatcher era and
covered major stories including the Brighton bombing and the Miners’ strike (7 Oct)
2013/14 30 Nov 2013 Paul Walker: The Fast and the Furious star died after he lost control of his Porsche, which
crashed into a telegraph pole and burst into flames. (30 Nov)
(Plus, perhaps, Nelson Mandela & FT favourite Colin Wilson who both died on 5 December?
I know it’s stretching it!)
2013/14 20 Apr 2014 Alistair MacLeod: award-winning Canadian author best known for his short-story collections
and novel No Great Mischief (1999) (20 Apr)
2013/14 11 May 2014 HR Giger: Swiss artist who designed the creature in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror classic Alien. (12 May)
2013/14 17 May 2014 Dr Gerald M Edelman: leading theorist on the workings of the brain who shared a 1972 Nobel Prize
for a breakthrough in immunology and later contributed key findings in neuroscience and other
fields. (17 May)
Miss Beazley the Scottie: former President George W Bush’s beloved Scottish terrier. (17 May)
2014/15 11 Aug 2014 Robin Williams: American actor, comedian, film producer and screenwriter, committed suicide.
(11 Aug)
Lauren Bacall: American actress, and famously the wife of Humphrey Bogart, died following a
stroke. (12 Aug)
2014/15 16 Aug 2014 Sylvia Hassenfeld: matriarch of the founding family of the toy company Hasbro, maker of GI Joe,
Mr Potato Head, and the Transformers. (16 Aug)
2014/15 23 Aug 2014 Sir Richard Attenborough: Oscar-winning actor and director died after long illness. (24 Aug)

FT325 55
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This month’s books, films and games

reviews
The pebble chuckers of Oz
The reports of suburbia’s Humpty Doo, the screaming Coalbaggie Bogey and other
poltergeists of Australia are strangely similar to 600-year-old European tales

the unchanging nature of the the remarkable uniformity in

disturbances described. This “Fires cannot be the nature of the disturbances,
encourages the authors to bring
their own comments, arguments
explained away thousands of miles and hundreds
of years apart, effectively ruling
and sometimes wry observations as psychological them out as some culturally
to the cases. They are unafraid specific hallucination.
to share their perspectives and misperceptions; they Secondly, poltergeist
opinions, but admit that no theory
explains all aspects of the data
are objectively real” phenomena involve physical
events: they are defined by
Australian collected. physical effects and produce solid
Poltergeist The book begins with their evidence in the form of moved
The Stone-Throwing Spook of field investigation into the 10. Chapter 11 covers what the and damaged objects. Fires, the
Humpty Doo and Many Other Humpty Doo poltergeist, which authors dub “Spookiest of all: movements of large pieces of
Cases invaded a suburban home in the Coalbaggie Bogey”, one of furniture and the repeated falls
Tony Healy & Paul Cropper 1998. Stones and gravel seemingly the rare class of poltergeists that of stones observed by multiple
materialised from the air, inside acquired the power of speech, witnesses are clearly objective
Strange Nation Publishers 2015
Pb, 304pp, illus, bib, ind, £24.99, ISBN 9781921134340
and outside. Knives, broken glass, including “strange voices, loud occurrences leaving physical
FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £24.99 bottles and pistol cartridges cooeyings and awful screamings”, traces. It is these physical and
were thrown around, though no as well as a mix of sensible and public aspects which place
Renaissance Europe was plagued one was injured. Some kind of banal utterances. It is reminiscent poltergeist effects on a different
by noisy ghosts, recorded in books intelligence appeared to be at of other claimed cases such as the level to many other claimed
by Ludwig Lavatar (1527–1586) work, with words being crudely Bell Witch of Tennessee (1817– psychic experiences that occur on
and Girolamo Cardano (1501– spelled out with pebbles on the 21), Gef the Talking Mongoose a subjective level (e.g. telepathy
1576), which rapped and banged, floor. Most interestingly, they on the Isle of Man in the 1930s and clairvoyance).
upset objects and furniture, threw obtained anomalous thermal and the Enfield poltergeist of Fires cannot be explained away
stones and lit fires. Reformation signatures of a flying glass shard 1977–78. Chapter 12 provides a as psychological misperception
accounts of such manifestations and a bullet cartridge by using chronology and critique of other or individual mental aberrations.
featured in debates about infra-red equipment. 52 Australian cases reported Such physical events are
the existence of Purgatory Chapter two looks at the 1845–1998. objectively real, whatever their
and the fate of the soul. (See Mayanup Poltergeist that began The final chapter focuses on cause.
Poltergeists: A History of Violent on a large homestead in 1955 and the variables in poltergeist cases Importantly, the authors are
Ghostly Phenomena (2011) by P G spread to three neighbouring recorded across Australia. No prepared to examine and weigh
Maxwell-Stuart and Ghost Stories farms. The authors believe that one theoretical explanation the totality of evidence in each
in Late Renaissance France (2011) several hundred people witnessed can fit them all. Paul Cropper case, to try and find the most
by Timothy Chesters). the events – principally the favours psychokinesis unwittingly probable solution. In a few cases a
What have these stories to throwing of stones, which were generated by the subconscious hoax is suggested but others defy
do with poltergeist reports often hot and sometimes too hot minds of individuals; Tony Healy any normal explanation when all
from Australia, a country then to handle. Later stages involved favours discarnate action, perhaps the available facts are considered.
undiscovered by Europeans? falls of objects including potatoes, by spirits. Noting that “patterns of polt
Absolutely nothing, save that the tin cans and coins, inside and Finally, they add three activity in Australia confirm
phenomena they describe are outside. appendices on recent fire- very closely to those recorded
identical to those that have been Chapter three covers another raising poltergeists in Asia; throughout the centuries in
erupting in ghost-shattered homes farm-based poltergeist which three examples of ‘wild talent’ Europe, Americas, Africa, Asia
across Australia since 1845. attacked a milking machine in stories from archives involving and the Middle East” they draw
Veteran researchers Tony 1949. Chapter four examines a individuals; and a brief survey of attention to certain striking
Healy and Paul Cropper have Canberra case of 1992–97; and some of the more extraordinary similarities and matches in
delivered the most comprehensive chapter five, 1935’s fire-starting theories about the causes of reports individual incidents from
review of Australian poltergeists poltergeist of Cannibal Creek. poltergeists. widely separated locations. The
yet, making for fascinating Families troubled by poltergeists The fortean challenge posed details may be small, seemingly
reading, though it is repetitious over a century apart in 1887–1990 by these Australian poltergeist
in places, solely because of are reviewed in chapters six to cases is two-fold. First, there is Continued on p58

FT325 57
www.forteantimes.com
reviews BOOKS

Right or wrong Strandbeest Continued from page 57

The Dream Machines of Theo
Jansen insignificant when viewed alone,
but when taken together the
Lena Herzog & Lawrence Weschler
Science is right enough about many Taschen 2014
resemblance between cases is
striking. As the authors state,
things, and dismally wrong about others Hb, 328pp, illus, £34.99, ISBN 978386548496
FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £31.49
“most readers will agree it is
extremely improbable that
In 1990, Theo different people, so separated by
about what they’re denouncing or Jansen noticed distance and time, would simply
to be unaware of refereed papers that the high tides have imagined and invented the
in professional journals which cast of each passing same crazy little details.”
into doubt the favorite prosaic season seemed to be registering The authors have unwittingly
explanations for extraordinary higher up the beaches of the touched upon a working rule
experiences. Low Countries. He planned to of law known as ‘similar fact
One consequence is that the find a way to transfer sand grains evidence’, which has been used to
skeptics who appear on his show from the bottom of the beach to prove the guilt of serial offenders
are wont to complain of being the top in order to maintain the in cases before the courts in
“sandbagged”. Translated, that giant dunes, using wind-powered England and Commonwealth
means they found themselves creatures he called Strandbeests. countries for over a century.
Why Science Is up against an interviewer who By the end of the following year, With the poltergeist we do not
Wrong… About had done his homework. The he had a walking mechanism have the guilt of an individual,
relationship between debunkers consisting of 11 segments, and but rather evidence in the form
Almost Everything and reporters is ordinarily thus: had discovered the ‘magic ratios’ of potential hallmarks of an
Alex Tsakiris
debunker speaks, reporter writes that allowed the legs to make unexplained force or process
Anomalist Books 2014
it down. No probing questions long, slow strides. None of this manifesting across the Australian
Pb, 178pp, appdx, notes, ind, $14.95, ISBN 9781938398315
are asked or welcomed, and the was based on living creatures; he continent – and many other
FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £10.00
resulting article reads more like generated the ratios via computer places around the globe – for
When a review copy of Why stenography than journalism. algorithm in a kind of natural which there is currently no
Science Is Wrong showed up, my Tsakiris doesn’t play that game. selection. Cantilevered sails explanation.
reflexive response was to forget I leave it to those who read power the beasts, and compressed Thus, the authors have
about it till the next time I write the book to learn the names air is stored in plastic ‘lungs’ provided both a useful guide to
about crackpots. Then, fortunately, associated with the above, but for when the wind drops. “They Australian poltergeists and a
I noticed the publisher, Anomalist, a few will be familiar to FT are assembled in fact from solid valuable comparative resource
and blurbs from the likes of readers, including the prominent shafts of air protected by a thin for anyone seriously investigating
Jeffrey J Kripal, Dean Radin, and debunker who goes to comic layer of plastic,” he says. Each such phenomena in other parts of
Jeffrey Long. This is no crank lengths to salvage a “skeptical” new generation of Beests is the world.
book. Still, Rupert Sheldrake, claim in the face of assertions classified with a Latin name. Alan Murdie
who wrote the Foreword, feels from informants (in this case “They are very much alive,”
compelled to observe that science law-enforcement officers) whose says Jansen, but this book is Fortean Times Verdict
“is right about a great many patience he tries as he seeks unable to capture that. Instead,
things, or right enough.” to revise their testimony to his we have large stills of Jansen
ANTIPODEAN POLTS ARE NOT SO
VERY DIFFERENT FROM OURS 9
Alex Tsakiris, who hosts liking. A prominent critic of and his Beests. Deprived of their
the Skeptico podcast, is parapsychology admits that she main purpose, they look like The End of Days
trying to communicate that hasn’t read the literature in a long tubular sculptures. Without the Armageddon and Prophecies of
science’s materialist ideology is time and knows little or nothing centipede-motion of the legs, or Return
indefensible and has been since of the current findings that the gracefully waving sails that Zecharia Sitchin
physicists’ discovery of quantum discredit her well-worn talking gives the Beests a claim to being Bear & Co 2014
mechanics. Most FT readers would points. an artificial lifeform, the book Hb, 308pp, illus, ind, $24.00, ISBN 9781591432005
agree. Many who have followed Offsetting the chest-thumping falls far short of conveying their FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £16.19
developments in consciousness bloviation are observations other-worldliness. The engineer
studies, parapsychology and by physicists, neuroscientists wishing to study Jansen’s methods This, the seventh and
research into near-death and others who are engaged will find next to no technical concluding volume
experiences will find little to in consciousness research and information. Those wanting to see of Sitchin’s Earth
dispute here. uncovering data that upend the the Beests gliding eerily across Chronicles series,
What makes Tsakiris’s book so ever shakier official ideology the beaches will find no DVD seeks to demonstrate
eye-opening and often hilarious is while pointing to the new science to show their full glory. This is a ancient knowledge of wars and
that it exposes hardline defenders just around the bend. Tsakiris’s photographer’s book that freezes catastrophes to come, using
of the old order as woefully, even book isn’t fat and scholarly, but the Beests into sculptural forms, ancient Egyptian writings, the
militantly, ignorant. Tsakiris it’s smart and cheeky, and it’ll but misses what makes Jansen’s Old Testament, Leonardo da Vinci
politely pushes them until they’re confirm all your suspicions. creations so special. paintings – along with Sumerian
forced to confess as much, if they Jerome Clark Jerry Glover and Akkadian texts, taken from
haven’t slammed down the phone pictogram and cuneiform tablets.
by then. Prominent psychologists, Fortean Times Verdict Fortean Times Verdict It covers ground which will be
neuroscientists and professional
debunkers turn out to know little
PROBING DISSECTION OF MILITANT
SCIENTIFIC IGNORANCE 8 MISSED CHANCE TO SHOW THE
WONDER OF AN ARTIFICIAL PLYLUM 5 familiar to Sitchin devotees:
Ancient Near East myths

58 FT325
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 BOOKS
reviews

Crypto cartography
apparently describing visits
to Earth by advanced space
travellers from the planet Nibiru.
These beings, the Annunaki, still
have a “probably robotic” (p296)
presence on Mars, which will be
Feast after famine, as two equally good books on marine
used as a stopping point for their monsters appear, so choose between historic breadth or depth
eventual return to Earth, 3,500
years after their departure.
Sitchin was allegedly one detailed chapters, each devoted assessed separately, means that
of few people able to read, to a different sea monster. These information is very accessible,
transliterate and translate are divided into Olaus Magnus’s collating all that the reader needs
Sumerian pictogram and commentary on the monster; a to know about each type in a
Akkadian cuneiform writings. As full-colour, detailed double-page single location. This information
such, he provides an intellectual, spread illustrating it; an ancestral is more dispersed in Van Duzer’s
scholarly foundation for spurious lore section documenting the book.
but ever-popular ‘God was monster’s origin and occurrence Van Duzer’s book is more
an astronaut’ theories. His in the texts used by Olaus; a fun, due to his talent for
undoubted facility with the discussion of the the map’s legacy unearthing amid the standard
languages and writing systems relative to the monster; and the fare all manner of quirky,
of the Ancient Near East has led Sea Monsters modern-day take on the monster. unexpected information. He is
him in curious directions. The Lore and Legacy of Olaus The book is completed with also documenting many different
In this volume, he writes Magnus’s Marine Map useful appendices and an index. maps, not just one, so the range
confidently of ancient spaceports Joseph Nigg In the glossary, Nigg speculates and variety of monsters he covers
having been established in on which animal(s) may have is greater.
Ivy Press 2013
Egypt’s Sinai desert, and Hb, 160pp, illus, appxs, bib, ind, £20.65, ISBN 9781782400431
inspired each of the monsters; Both books are comprehensive
ancient Iraq’s Nippur. Regarding FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £20.65 this will interest mainstream and remarkably lacking in the
the large platform-like stone zoologists and cryptozoologists. basic zoological errors that, sadly,
structure at Baalbek, Lebanon Van Duzer’s book pursues I have come to expect in even
(of unknown function), Sitchin
Sea Monsters on a chronologically arranged the most extensively researched
declares that the “landing Medieval and path through the history of cryptozoological tomes.
place” mentioned in the sea monsters on maps, from So, which is the better of these
Epic of Gilgamesh refers to
Renaissance Maps classical antecedents to the final two very fine books? For sheer
Chet Van Duzer
this structure. In fact, most examples of note from the late beauty, Nigg’s; for compulsive
British Library 2013
translations of Gilgamesh don’t 16th and early 17th Centuries. reading, Van Duzer’s.
Pb, 144pp, illus, notes, ind, 14.99, ISBN 9780712357715
feature the phrase “landing FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £13.49
His fact-filled, monster-brimming These labours of love will
place”; those that do appear to text is divided into sections with make handsome, informative and
be referring to a dock or harbour Sea monsters were frequently attention-grabbing titles such as invaluable additions to the library
for ships. depicted on early maritime maps, ‘Sea Monsters on the Ceiling’, of any sea monster enthusiast or
Sitchin finds supporting inviting discussion in modern ‘How to Buy a Sea Monster’, cartography aficionado.
evidence in the Old Testament times as to whether any of them ‘Lighting a Fire on a Whale’s If you’re seeking the origins of
too; the Tower of Babel was were inspired by real creatures. Back’, and ‘The Curious Career and explanations for sea unicorns
apparently a launch tower for Now two lavishly illustrated of the Flying Turtle’. There are and sea pigs, giant sea worms and
rockets. He also cites material book devoted to cryptozoological illustrations throughout, an even more gigantic sea serpents,
artefacts from the period – such cartography have come along in extensive series of endnotes and pristers and krakens, the rockas,
as those of ancient Egypt, which quick succession. two different types of index. owl-faced ziphius, aloes, hoge,
(he says) depict rocket ships The principal difference Nigg’s volume wins hands-down duck tree, winged sea dragons,
docked in underground silos. He between them is that Nigg deals on the illustrations front, with mer-folk, sirens, island whales,
uses an apparently disparaging with possibly the most famous dazzling images on every page. and much more besides, you
tone at one point, speaking of and influential of all the maps Van Duzer’s suffers from a surfeit definitely need these books.
“ancient astronaut” theories, as portraying sea monsters – the of dull browns and sepia pictures. Highly recommended!
if those 1970s cult bestselling Carta Marina, prepared in 1539 by By virtue of its larger page size, Karl Shuker
paperbacks were unconnected Swedish cartographer–historian Nigg’s book is able to present
with his own (admittedly more Olaus Magnus. Van Duzer surveys its images in a larger, clearer, Fortean Times Verdict
scholarly) offerings. and discusses not only this but more detailed format. Its layout,
Like other Sitchin books, also other monster-illustrated in which each monster type is
TWO FOR ALL AFICIONADOS OF
CARTOGRAPHY AND MONSTERS 9
The End of Days is a curious European maritime maps from the
mixture of quasi-academic work 10th to the early 17th centuries. To order any of these titles – or any other book in print – contact the
(citations, index) and baldly- By concentrating upon a single
stated, unreferenced claims such
as the above.
map, Nigg’s book provides more
information concerning it and
FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP
Chris Josiffe illustrations from it than does Telephone: 08430600031 Fax: 01326 569555 Email: FT@sparkledirect.co.uk
Van Duzer’s. He introducing the Address: Fortean Times Bookshop, PO Box 60, Helston TR13 0TP.
Fortean Times Verdict history and significance of the We accept all major credit and debit cards including Switch & Amex. Cheques or postal
Carta Marina, and then presents a orders should be made payable to the FT Bookshop. Delivery is 7–10 days, subject to
AN ODD MIX OF QUASI-ACADEMIC
WORK AND BALD ASSERTIONS 4 series of gloriously illustrated and availability. Postage & packing is free within the UK.

FT325 59
www.forteantimes.com
reviews

Fun ’n’ games Yurei they fulfil their aims, very rarely
The Japanese Ghost
hanging around in the same way
as, for instance, a Scottish ghost.
Zack Davisson
Yurei have a central position
How many books – however excellent – Chin Music Press 2014
Hb, 224pp, illus, £15.99, ISBN 9780988769342
in Japan. Davisson discusses
Lafcadio Hearn’s notion of The
on Roman entertainment do we need? FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £15.99
Rule of The Dead, where the
The growing popularity spirits of the dead look out for
of Japanese, or J-Horror, the living, so long as the living
Maximus’s much greater audience amongst Western make the adequate tributes and
capacity than the Colosseum audiences is bringing prayers, mostly during Obon, the
implies minority taste for ‘Death more entities like The season when spirits return from
in the Afternoon’ (or morning or Ring’s Sadako into our popular the afterlife to pay a visit to their
evenings). culture; the problem is, for the living nearest and dearest.
Fortean titbits include: pre- most part, we aren’t entirely sure Japan even has three
games mutual strangling by Saxon of just what it is we are seeing. ‘superstar’ Yurei, Oiwa, Otsuyu
gladiators; a novice fighter’s This is what Zack Davisson aims and Okiku, whose influence has
suicide by choking on a public to rectify in Yurei: The Japanese reverberated down the centuries.
The Day Commodus lavatory sponge (Roman bum-
cleaner); and circus fans sniffing
Ghost.
Davisson works primarily as a
These three are still feared,
and respected, today. Davisson
Killed a Rhino horse dung to check the quality of translator and writer of Japanese explores the origins of the tales
Understanding the Roman Games their favourites’ fodder. language and culture. A notable of all three in his unravelling
Jerry Toner Devilled details: Dio work includes his translation of the development of strange
Chryostom is mis-dated; Fronto of Mizuki Shigeru’s Showa: A stories, kaidan, from the tales told
John Hopkins University Press 2014
Pb, 136, illus, bib, ind, $18.72, ISBN9781421415864
is misrepresented on Bread and History of Japan series. Davisson in the Kojiki, to the mania for
FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £13.00 Circuses; and Tertullian’s crowd- also maintains a popular blog, strange tales in the Edo period.
slogan ‘Christianos ad leones’ Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, in This gave rise to a parlour game,
Toner’s latest is an excellent confirms the lion cafeterias were which he translates and presents Hyakomonogatari Kaidankai,
book, but neither needed nor frequently open. More might have Japanese ghost lore and weird where the players light 100
wanted: there are umpteen others been mentioned about women tales. Yurei: The Japanese Ghost candles, extinguishing them one
on Roman ‘entertainments’, performers, e.g. Petronius’s expands somewhat on the blog, by one as each tells a bizarre
though there is no mention British-style chariot combatant; exploring what Yurei mean to tale. Kabuki theatre also met the
(save Hekster’s) of Commodus and I fancy many rather than Japanese culture. thirst for kaidan by producing
biographies by Jasper Burns “few” free poor men signed up This is a book of many layers. terrifying plays, the appearance
(2012) and Geoff Adams (2013, in hopes of gladiatorial fame and Immensely enjoyable, it makes of a terrifying Yurei thrilling the
who scoops Toner on, for instance, fortune. Surprisingly little use a core feature of Japanese life audience. Davisson makes note of
the emperor’s Hercules mania). is made of the work of Kathleen accessible by virtue of the fact the influence of artist Maruyama
And, for light relief, since Coleman, the doyenne of the that it is extremely well written, Okyo’s painting The Ghost of
Commodus’s cognate ostrich subject and advisor to Gladiator; taking the reader on a lively Oyuki in providing the standard
massacres are its linchpin, see and John Traupman’s Princeton journey through history, culture image of what a Yurei looked like,
also Mary Beard’s superlative thesis is available in print. and religion. as well as describing the different
Roman Laughter (2014); Amanda Toner bashes the Romans for It is clear that Davisson is types of Yurei you may encounter.
Prantera’s The Dark Side of the their sadistic pleasures, but they passionate about his work, and Of particular significance is
Moon (1991) also provides novel had no monopoly on this. Read his enthusiasm is infectious. He Davisson’s profiling of Lafcadio
food for thought. Casanova on the crowd revelling makes it clear just how important Hearn, the writer famous for
In concision and readability, in the torture-execution of the supernatural is to Japan. It is bringing kaidan to the West
Toner out-writes the opposition. would-be French regicide Damien, a culture that is very comfortable with his translations, as well as
Six tersely lucid, jargon-free, Boswell on jostling for the best with the notion of spirits of the his general documentation of
wit-laced chapters and epilogue view of Tyburn hangings and the dead, right into the modern Japanese life. Hearn seems to
whisk us from rhinocerostomy regular tales from North Korea, era – evident in the casual way have fallen into relative obscurity
through gladiators, chariot races, not to mention ‘snuff films’ and Davisson describes his friends with the general public. Davisson
and racy theatrical mimes to a violent pornographic websites. noting he and his wife shared offers an excellent introduction
heart-wrenching finale on the Details, expense, and scale may their home with a Yurei when and good pointers of where you
unspeakable arena deaths of vary; human nature does not. they lived in a cultural apartment might start if you wish to explore
female Christian martyrs. The plethora of books on these in Ikeda, just outside Osaka. his work.
Chapter Four on the logistics of Roman horrors clearly implies an One thing that Davisson There is certainly a lot packed
transporting the countless hapless insatiable thirst among readers. is quick to point out is that a into what is quite a short book.
animals from far-flung provinces One thing neither Toner nor Yurei and a Western ghost are As well as bringing Yurei to life,
to Rome is the glittering jewel in anyone else can explain: how did somewhat different things. The for want of a better phrase, it may
Toner’s crown. ‘rhino’ come to mean ‘money’ in term Yurei doesn’t translate as also have the after-effect of some
Many striking (albeit preceded old British slang? ‘ghost’. rather eerie dreams.
by Fagan and Baldwin) aperçus Barry Baldwin Western ghosts, he argues, Mandy Collins
include ‘good’ emperors’ spending are storytelling devices of an
as lavishly on these blood-feats Fortean Times Verdict interchangeable nature, whilst Fortean Times Verdict
as ‘bad’ ones, and the hopeful
possibility that the Circus
ONE OF THE BEST (AND MAY IT BE
THE LAST) ON ROMAN GAMES 9 Yurei follow a strict set of rules.
They tend to dissipate when
AN EXCELLENT INTRO TO GHOSTS’
ROLE IN JAPANESE CULTURE 9
60 FT325
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 reviews

Sci-fi and fantasy round-up

David V Barrett on an early PKD novel, post-apocalyptic sibling conflict, an irreverent
reworking of mythology, a cult policier, some alt hist and two Moorcock doorstops

Gather Yourselves this reissue is welcome. Though first of a trilogy, this very well of ancient and powerful
not science fiction, it shows written first novel by Francesca mythological beings is darker and
Together Dick beginning to work with Haig is a fascinating story of the scarier than in the previous books.
Philip K Dick
the themes that would become increasing conflict between the There’s even a brief mention of
Gollancz 2014
Pb, 377pp, £9.99, ISBN 9780575132542
hallmarks of most of his work two of them, as Cass becomes Fortean Times near the end!
FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £9.49
– the alienation of the ordinary more and more involved in a rebel
man and woman. Verne, Barbara group, refusing to be crushed by Irregularity is an
and Carl are left behind by the the Alphas. intriguing anthology
The Fire Sermon American Metals Development of alternative history
Francesca Haig
Company when it pulls out of its Resurrections is the stories from small press
HarperVoyager 2015
massive site in China; they are third and best-so-far of Jurassic London and
Hb, 419pp, £12.99, ISBN 9780007563050
FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £11.69
left to themselves, with the fairly Roz Kaveney’s startling the National Maritime Museum
undefined task of handing over reworking of mythology, at Greenwich. The stories, all
the site to the Chinese. Two of Rhapsody of Blood, with a scientific basis, are set in
Resurrections them had a very brief fling a few telling the interweaving tales tweaked versions of real history,
Roz Kaveney
years earlier; the third is sexually of two very different women. such as a steampunk Victorian
Plue One Press 2014
inexperienced; all three have Maya the Huntress, immortal but age – rather nicely illustrated by
Pb, 389pp, £12.99, ISBN 9780986008597
FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £12.99
their inner demons. Dick explores determinedly not a god, wanders Gary Northfield based on artwork
their inter-relationships as they through history protecting people in the Museum. Several of the
are thrust together in unusual from aggressive gods or, often writers are academics, including
Foxglove Summer circumstances as the factory site worse, vicious human warlords Profs Adam Roberts and Roger
Ben Aaronovitch
becomes a disorientating and and dictators. In the present day Luckhurst. A few problems: two
Gollancz 2014
alien environment; he excels at (some of the time) Emma Jones, of the stories are transposed
Hb, 377pp, £14.99, ISBN 9780575132504
FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £12.99
showing how apparently “normal” still without her ghost lover, in the Contents, and the book
people are screwed up and comes into a far greater destiny began physically falling apart
confused inside. There’s even a than she’d ever have imagined – on first reading. More seriously,
Irregularity brief mention of Gnostic duality, and discovers that Hell is full of several of the stories had great
ed. Jared Shurin
the focus of Dick’s final novels. It’s unpleasant people, as well as a lot situations but didn’t really follow
Jurassic London 2014
not his finest work by any means, of people who really shouldn’t be them through with satisfactory
Pb, 302pp, £12.99, ISBN 9780992817213
FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £12.99
but it’s a must for PKD fans. there. For anyone with a Christian plots – but despite that,
background it’s strange to see the highly recommended for some
Set in a fairly standard primary figures of the religion wonderfully left-field ideas.
A Cornelius Calendar post-apocalyptic world, treated with the same delightful
Michael Moorcock
The Fire Sermon has irreverence Kaveney has shown With A Cornelius
Gollancz 2015
a far-from-standard to other gods and goddities in the Calendar and Kane
Pb, 865pp, £12.99, ISBN9780575092525
FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £12.99
central concept. As a previous books; you’ll never view of Old Mars, Gollancz
result of radiation all human Jesus or Judas in quite the same have reached the end
births are twins, one boy, one way again. of their reissues of
Kane of Old Mars girl. One child is perfect; the many of Michael Moorcock’s most
Michael Moorcock
other has a physical deformity – a Ben Aaronovitch has influential works, revised and
Gollancz 2015
missing limb, for example – or become a cult writer updated by the author. The first
Pb, 409pp, £9.99, ISBN9780575092525
FORTEAN TIMES BOOKSHOP PRICE £9.49
more rarely a psychic ability. with his humorous is a massive volume containing
They are separated in early novels about Peter The Adventures of Una Persson
An interesting bunch of old childhood, the former to live Grant, a young and Catherine Cornelius in the
and new this time, both of comfortable lives as Alphas, the policeman in a tiny unit of the Twentieth Century, The Entropy
well-established SF writers and latter to be subsistence farmers Metropolitan Police dealing Tango, The Great Rock’n’Roll
newcomers. or corralled into ghetto villages with crimes with a supernatural Swindle and several novellas;
as Omegas – but there’s a strange element. This time, to his great the second contains Warriors...,
Gather Yourselves complication: when one twin dies, discomfiture, the very urban Blades... and Barbarians of Mars,
Together is Philip K so will the other. Having hidden copper is sent outside London originally published under the
Dick’s first- or second- her ability as a seer until her into the leafy countryside of pseudonym Edward P Bradbury.
written novel, with teens (causing tension with her Herefordshire. Foxglove Summer, But the best news of all, just
nearly half a century brother Zach because he can’t even when dealing with the dark announced, is that Moorcock’s
between its writing in 1948–50 be identified as an Alpha), Cass topic of child abduction, is a first new novel in nearly 10
and its first publication in 1994, is now living in the underclass, delightful and perceptive romp, years, A Whispering Storm, will
12 years after his death. Although while Zach has become a harsh a decidedly skew-whiff police be published in July – and will
not new, it’s not widely known, so young leader of the Alphas. The procedural. The involvement definitely be reviewed here.

FT325 61
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reviews FILM & DVD
SEND REVIEW COPIES OF DVDS, BLU-RAYS AND GAMES TO:
FORTEAN TIMES, PO BOX 71602, LONDON E17 0QD.

bartender/temporal agent who is

sent on a final assignment to catch
an elusive criminal, the ‘Fizzle
Bomber’, who is responsible for the
deaths of thousands of civilians in
New York City. Armed with a time
machine, neatly disguised as a vin-
tage violin case, and a transformed
“Unmarried Mother” (Sarah
Snook), the unnamed agent faces a
race against time to create a future
that would be better for us all.
Time-travel is often attempted
in films, but rarely is it as intricate
as in this tale, and seldom do the
twists and turns amount to an
engaging and affecting ride that
surprises right up until the end.
Directed by the Spierig brothers
and adapted from a Robert A Hein-
lein short story, Predestination is
an assuredly realised picture that
strikes the right balance between
X+Y ematical Olympiad team. Nathan – an approach that makes the film the fun stuff and the profound,
Dir Morgan Matthews, UK 2015 leaves his native Sheffield and all the more enjoyable and believ- and also manages to convincingly
On UK release from 13 March travels to Taipei under the tutelage able. Occasionally, shots attempt to tackle more delicate themes while
of Richard (Eddie Marsden) for a show how Nathan understands our still remaining firmly within the
X + Y marks documentary film- mathematical training camp with world through light, colour and pat- realm of science fiction.
maker Morgan Matthews’s first other international IMO contend- tern; it’s an effect that works very The brothers do, at times, try
foray into fictional storytelling, ers. Here, he meets Zhang Mei (Jo well when the film relocates from to cram a little too much into the
though the naturalistic look and Yang), a young Chinese girl who Sheffield to the Taiwanese capital, movie’s modest frame, so from time
feel of his non-fiction roots are awakens something new and emo- giving the viewer a unique look at to time we are left more bewildered
evident in this gentle story of a tional in the reticent Nathan. another culture and allowing us to than bewitched; but this in no way
teenage mathematical genius This is a remarkable debut for enjoy Taipei as Nathan does. detracts from an otherwise highly
diagnosed with a form of aphasia; Matthews. The cast excels, judging Matthews has excelled himself enjoyable film, that features an
the film connects with his world their performances beautifully and with this film, exploring in a gentle, ever-reliable performance from
emotionally rather than through mirroring the film’s natural look heart-warming way the beauty of Hawke and an outstanding turn
the limitations of his condition. to create a believable, touching mathematics, the beauty of the by fellow Australian and newbie
Matthews’s previous film, the docu- and at times funny story. The three world we live in, the beauty of Snook. Definitely worth a watch.
mentary Beautiful Young Minds, leads – Butterfield, Hawkins and Nathan’s innocence and his gentle Fohnjang Ghebdinga
featured a young subject suffering Spall in particular – give stand-out emergence into a bigger emotional
from a neurodevelopmental dis- performances, exercising their world. Fortean Times Verdict
order that fostered mathematical acting muscles and demonstrating Mark McConnell
ability who attended the Inter- that they’ve done some research
HAWKE IS AS GOOD AS EVER
IN FUN TIME-TRAVEL TALE 8
national Mathematics Olympiad to portray these individuals and Fortean Times Verdict
(IMO). This was clearly the inspira-
tion for X+Y’s main character and
articulate their conditions. The
interaction between Nathan, his
BEAUTIFULLY ACTED, AND
MATTHEWS EXCELS HIMSELF 9 Ganja and Hess
for the backdrop his story plays out widowed mother and the broken Dir Bill Gunn, US 1973
against. Mr Humphries seems organic and Eureka, £15.99 Dual Format

At a young age Nathan (Asa realistic; nothing is forced, the dia- Predestination
Butterfield, last seen in Ender’s logue rings true and both Nathan’s Dir the Spierig Brothers, Australia 2014 Ganja and Hess was written and
Game) has two significant events autism and Mr Humphries’s Multi- On UK release from 20 February directed by (and co-stars) Bill Gunn
happen: he is diagnosed as being ple Sclerosis are acted with a sense in 1973. It stars Duane Jones (best
on the autistic spectrum and he of undiluted realism. Marsden, It’s not been a bad couple of years known as the hero of George Rome-
loses his father, the one person always a joy to watch, plays his typi- for Ethan Hawke. In 2013, along ro’s landmark Night of the Living
he can communicate emotionally cal grey character, likeable yet on with Richard Linklater and Julie Dead) as Dr Hess Green, a wealthy
with. Now raised by his single the edge of unnerving. Yang’s debut Delpy, he brought us the charmer academic who is stabbed with an
mother Julie (Oscar-nominated performance is also worth a men- that was Before Midnight, in 2014 ancient African dagger by his assis-
Sally Hawkins), Nathan relates tion, running through a range of he was back (sans Delpy) doing the tant George Mada, who then com-
to the world mathematically and emotions in the sweetest love story rounds with the triumphant Boy- mits suicide. After the incident,
through patterns and colours, a I’ve seen on screen for a long time. hood. In amongst all the drama, the Hess finds that he has contracted
symptom of his condition. When his Matthews and his cinematogra- depictions of adolescence and the a disease with symptoms similar to
mother decides to encourage his pher Danny Cohen (cameraman on Sun-setting relationship saga, how- vampirism. To compound his prob-
mathematical genius she enlists a This Is England) light and shoot the ever, lies this little sci-fi flick that lems, Mrs Ganja Mada (Marlene
private tutor, Mr Humphries (Rafe film in a documentary style, allow- explains why I’m currently feening Clark) arrives demanding to know
Spall), who urges the boy to try out ing the actors and the scenes to for a Hawke! where her husband is.
for the UK International Math- breathe and unfold in a natural way Predestination sees him as a Ganja and Hess is a difficult

62 FT325
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 FILM & DVD
reviews
film for several reasons. First off,
until recently it was very difficult
to get hold of. Secondly, if you
did manage to get hold of it, it
was usually in a poor quality and
The Reverend’s Review
severely cut form, which more or FT’s resident man of the cloth REVEREND PETER LAWS dons
less ruined it. Thirdly, it is deliber- his dog collar and faces the flicks that Church forgot!
ately slow-paced and there is little
(www.theflicksthatchurchforgot.com; @revpeterlaws)
incident. This Blu-ray reissue of the
original release version has been
mastered from a 35mm negative BIG FINISH (www.bigfinish.com) Survivors is a great example.
and provides a welcome and long The really big fans of vintage Terry Nation’s timely 1970s show
overdue solution to the first two TV shows are a little like histo- remains disturbing because it
of these problems. However, that rians. They stumble across a was a zombie apocalypse movie
third reason is perhaps the most programme that they love (often without the zombies, its central
important, because Ganja and Hess during their formative years) only question more pertinent than
has often been lumped in with the to see it cancelled and banished ever: how the heck would we
Blaxploitation films of the 1970s to the past as the TV world rebuild society if it really did fall
– it was produced by and concerns moves on. They’re left, there- apart? Here, grizzled hero Greg
African-Americans – and also with fore, with a limited amount of Preston (Ian McCulloch) has a
the horror genre because of the stories to enjoy, which become clash of ideologies with a crazed
vampirism angle. like precious artefacts. Episodes sociologist who wants to re-order
In fact, those categorisations, are watched and re-watched; the post-plague world with a
while understandable, are not a plots, actors and dialogue are copy of Haralambos in one hand
particularly good fit for Ganja and discussed online and at conven- and a rifle in the other. there’s an unavoidable air of nos-
Hess which is a world away from, for tions, where fans dig deep into More straight-up horror is to talgia about what they do; the
example, Shaft on the one hand and every inch of the limited data be found in Big Finish’s revival of company name derives from the
The Satanic Rites of Dracula on the available. Imagine the thrill then, the daytime soap Dark Shadows. title of an episode of the 1980s
other. There are horror elements, when they discover a show that I listened to their new series, TV show Press Gang.
albeit ones which call to mind they loved is still going on, com- called Bloodlust, and was sur- Revisiting these shows
other oblique genre films, such as plete with brand new stories, prised at how much ‘visual’ reminds us of a time when
George Romero’s Martin and Harry in some quiet corner of the depth it adds to the TV version. things felt a little more enchant-
Kumel’s Daughters of Darkness. But, Internet. I love the original show, but it ed, reality a little less dark. It’s
it seems to me, the film, with its That’s where Big Finish step sometimes felt inevitably bound an interesting human quirk, this
rudimentary, grainy photography, in, using the thrifty medium of by its studio-based sets. As desire to return to our earlier
has the look of an experimental audio drama to revive worlds charming and effective as the lives, and Big Finish creatively
feature and is striving for, and long thought lost, with full-blown, original was, Collinsport just plug into this common compul-
achieves, the social and emotional radio-worthy productions that feels bigger in the audio world. sion: those old monsters keep
concerns of someone like John contain the killer ingredient for It’s not just TV show revivals, coming, and those weirdly age-
Cassavetes. fans: actors from the original incidentally, rich productions of less heroes keep destroying
Gunn’s theme in Ganja and Hess series. Since an actor’s voice classic literature are on offer too them. Just when you thought
is not vampires in the mythological doesn’t age like their physical – Frankenstein, The Phantom of that old light was out, it turns
sense but as a metaphor for the appearance, it makes these new the Opera and Day of the Triffids out that, somewhere, it’s still
idea of preying upon others. Hess additions feel both contemporary are good examples – yet a look burning.
is shown to be a respected but and retro at the same time. This at the website proves that the
aloof man who seems distanced isn’t some reboot of the original Big Finish folks have cult TV run-
Fortean Times Verdict
from his ethnic roots, surrounding
himself with the trappings of the
series – these are more like lost
episodes.
ning through their veins.
Such an emphasis means
AUDIO TREATS FOR NOSTALGIC
TV FANS: RECOMMENDED 8
white upper-middle class and even
employing a black butler. Ganja is a
woman who has experienced a trou-
bled childhood and become deter-
mined to do whatever it takes to
survive. So when she learns Hess’s
secret, she uses it to what she con-
siders to be her advantage. The
two characters, now linked by their
shared ‘disease’, feed off other mar-
ginalised characters – black and
white – for sustenance. The film,
then, is perhaps less a celebration
of black identity than a critique of
the extent to which ethnic minori-
ties are perhaps too ready to prey
upon themselves, while at the same
time understanding that their often
limited opportunities give them no

FT325 63
www.forteantimes.com
reviews FILM & DVD

alternative. It could also be argued Institute’s science fiction season.

that the ancient African dagger that The general concept of the story,
spreads the disease is a metaphor
for the curse of being of an African-
adapted from a trilogy of novels
by Peter Dickinson, is an excellent
SHORTS
American in modern US society. example of what Brian W Aldiss
It’s an interesting and unusual called “cosy catastrophe”, the clas- DEAD SNOW 2: RED VS DEAD
film, but it’s still not an easy one sic British disaster scenario, as in Entertainment One, £12.99 (DVD) £14.99 (Blu-ray)
to like. Some sequences go on for the works of John Wyndham, Terry
far too long, the cinematography Nation’s Survivors and so on, in A sequel to the entertaining gross-out original, this
is often dimly lit and rather ugly, which civilisation falls apart, our ups the ante in both the horror and comedy stakes.
Picking up where the first film left off, it follows sole
and the lack of any sympathetic social mores crumble overnight and
survivor Martin (Vegar Hoel) as he attempts to make
characters is alienating. However, local power is grabbed by the man
his way home pursued by Nazi zombies under the
the acting is terrific; unusual for with the biggest weapons and the
command of General Herzog (Orjan Gamst). It tran-
a semi-experimental low-budget nastiest thugs. Superstition and
spires that Herzog wants to complete a mission left
production. brutality go hand in hand; halfway unfinished when he and his men were killed during WWII – namely to
Bill Gunn directed only one more through the series Nicky is going to wipe out every living thing in town. For reasons I won’t bore you with,
project after this, but did enjoy be stoned as a witch, simply because Martin has Herzog’s severed arm attached in place of his own miss-
some critical success as a play- she is able to go near a tractor. The ing limb and finds that it gives him the power to create and control
wright. He died in 1989, aged just series also takes a healthy swipe at his own zombies; useful when facing down an undead army com-
54. Duane Jones , despite appear- mysogynistic attitudes – how easily plete with a tank stolen from a war museum. He also enlists the aid
ing in two landmark genre movies, women become subservient to men. of three American geeks – the self-styled Zombie Squad – who have
also had a short acting career, but The Changes is most notable for been preparing for just such a showdown. It’s very silly, unbelievably
became a drama teacher and cham- the four episodes in which Nicky violent and in monumentally bad taste; the ending in particular is
pion of ethnic theatre. He too died travels with a group of Sikhs, car- jaw-droppingly filthy. It has to be said, however, that there are decent
young, in 1988 aged 52. Marlene rying their possessions and their laughs amid the carnage, the attention to detail is good and techni-
Clark on the other hand had a long grandmother on hand-carts. In 1975, cally it’s very accomplished. DK 6/10
and varied career in film and televi- Sikhs were still fairly unusual in
sion, including some fondly remem- much of Britain, and the sensitive
bered genre movies including Enter portrayal of the way they care for
WHERE THE DEVIL HIDES
Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment, £9.99 (DVD)
the Dragon and The Beast Must Die. Nicky, as opposed the way they are
This release has an impressive stigmatised by white English villag- Almost certainly the best Amish slasher flick I’ve
array of extras, including an audio ers as “The Devil’s Children” (the seen this year, this has just enough about it to keep
commentary by Clark and members title of one of Dickinson‘s original you interested. Colm Meaney is Eli Beacon, the fire-
and-brimstone elder of an Amish community that
of the production team; a documen- novels), was a ground-breaking
believes in a prophecy about a devil child who will
tary; an e-copy of the script; and an statement by children’s TV against
be the sixth of six girls born on the sixth day of the
essay on the film by Kim Newman. racism, bigotry and ignorance. (The
sixth month. He intends to kill them all at birth, but
Daniel King DVD includes a 1983 educational
is prevented from doing so by Jacob (Rufus Sewell),
film from the Central Office of
the father of one of the newborn girls. Cut to 18 years later and
Fortean Times Verdict Information, At Home in Britain, those girls have grown into young hotties who, as all Amish girls do,
A LANDMARK IN AFRICAN-
AMERICAN CINEMA 7 in which three Asians – a Hindu, a
Muslim and a Sikh – talk about their
enjoy skinny dipping and going to the local keg party. Only someone
starts murdering them; are they doing it to stop the prophecy or
beliefs and practices and how these bring it about? It’s ludicrous, of course, but none the worse for that.
The Changes affect their way of life here.) Meaney, Sewell and Jennifer Carpenter, as Jacob’s wife, do most of
Dir John Prowse, UK 1975 Nearly 40 years on, The Changes the heavy lifting as far as acting is concerned, leaving the younger
BFI, £24.99 DVD stands up well in content and qual- cast members to do the necking, running around and, er, dying. As a
ity. Being shot entirely on location, slasher it works well and keeps you guessing until the big reveal. On
Nicky Gore (Victoria Williams) is in city and countryside, farms and the other hand, and I admit I may be placing the film under greater
doing her homework when there’s cottages, canals, quarries and caves, scrutiny than it was ever meant to bear, its attitude toward religion
a disturbing sound – and suddenly brings an at times startling visual is somewhat mendacious. I don’t want to give the game away so I’ll
her father is smashing the TV set clarity and a realism to the story say no more except that director Christian E Christiansen (no, really)
and everything else technological in that the wobbly sets common to TV rather wants to have his cake and eat it DK 6/10
the house. Down the street, across drama of the period could never
the city, throughout Britain, it’s the have achieved. DARK HOUSE
same: TVs, radios, kettles, toast- Music and disturbing sound
Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment, £9.99 (DVD)
ers, cars – any sort of machine is effects are by Paddy Kingsland of
smashed in horror and fear. People the innovative BBC Radiophonic Despite its almosy ostentatiously generic title, Victor
start to leave the cities in droves, Workshop, who contributes his rec- Salva (Jeepers Creepers) has turned in a really odd
many heading to the coast to get to ollections of composing and record- film here, throwing everything but the kitchen sink
France – but Nicky becomes sepa- ing the music in one of several into the mix: mysterious PK powers, the number 23,
shambling, axe-wielding inbreds, angels, demons, a
rated from her parents and is left to informative essays in the chunky
house that follows the protagonist around and the
fend for herself. 32-page booklet.
bloke from the Saw franchise. Sadly – despite the odd
This is the unsettling begin- David V Barrett
bit of visual invention – such prodigality isn’t really a
ning to The Changes, a 10-part BBC
good thing, it turns out, and even if you can figure out what’s going
children’s series broadcast in 1975 Fortean Times Verdict on, you’ll probably be hard presssed to care. DS 4/10
and now released for the first time
on DVD as part of the British Film
EXCELLENT CHILDREN’S SF
WITH A STRONG MESSAGE 8
64 FT325
www.forteantimes.com
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letters
Toad in the hole
Simulacra corner
challenge to Guffey that he use
orgone to cure any future cancers.
A friend of mine called Steve Re: Joseph McCarthy: I fear
worked in a factory that made that you suffer from the same
paintbrushes. One of his col- anti-McCarthy brainwashing as
leagues, the foreman in the saw- the unfortunate Guffey.You have
mill, showed him a log that was not been exposed to material written
feeding properly into the blade. and filmed by his enemies.Try
Steve suspected the familiar prob- reading these for a bit of bal-
lem of a knot in the wood, but after ance: Blacklisted By History by M
the log had struggled through, they Stanton Evans; American Betrayal
could see that the problem was a by Diana West; Clever Girl by
fist-sized void, within which was Lauren Kessler; Hollywood Party
a toad, neatly cut in half but still by Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley;
writhing in its death throes. It died or watch the un-edited films of
a few seconds later. By its width, the McCarthy and HUAC hear-
Steve reckoned the log, which was ings. McCarthy campaigned for
rosewood, was about 100 years old. and won the African-American
There appeared to be a tiny pin- vote in every election.Very few
hole leading into the cavity, which politicians even bothered with the
presumably had provided air and Black vote in those days. Joe was a
very small edible creatures to sus- staunch supporter of the NAACP
tain the toad; but how it managed and integration. Many of his
to survive so long was a mystery. opponents were segregationists.
Huw M Youd You quote Nigel Mortimer saying
Wheatley, Oxfordshire that Wilhelm Reich had “the most
honourable motives”. Really? OK,
Guffey cherry-picks from Fury On
McMinnville photo Earth in which Myron Sharaf (a
I read the article on the McMinn- Reich acolyte) admits that Reich
ville, Oregon, UFO photograph’s was a rapist. No doubt he was a
“exposure” [FT321:28] with Kevin Harvey noticed this quizzical face on one of the Stonehenge well-intentioned rapist; he merely
great amusement. By using Kevin megaliths. In 1995, Fortean Times ran a photo of this face taken by Evan wanted to adjust his victims’ or-
Dvorsek [FT80:17], but that was before we used full colour (apart from
Randle’s statement that the 1950 gone.The Reichian therapists who
the covers).
photograph taken by Paul Trent raped their child patients were
is “either a craft from another We are always glad to receive pictures of spontaneous forms and equally well-intentioned.The kids
world or a hoax” as the starting figures, or any curious images. Send them to the PO box above didn’t appreciate it, but...
point, Dr David Clarke and Andy (with a stamped addressed envelope or international reply coupon) or to You say that Reich’s early
Roberts propose that it is indeed sieveking@forteantimes.com – and please tell us your postal address. books are rated highly in the field
the latter. of psychoanalysis. Uh... you mean
Randle’s statement is absurd. the pseudo-scientific quasi-reli-
It would be more accurate to midair and that the Trents then en, and until it is, the question is gion that is discounted by medical
say that either the photograph’s photographed that. However, as open. It speaks volumes about the science and is an embarrassment
subject is “unidentified” or it is the authors admit, no one has evidence that the photographs to modern psychiatrists? That
a hoax. As forteans, we suspend proven that to be true. “As we have continued to be debated for psychoanalysis? You say that
judgement until something is ei- have often said,” the authors con- 64 years. I have no axe to grind opinion is split regarding Reich’s
ther proven or disproven. And the tinue, “the simplest explanation is here; I would be delighted to later work – yup, it’s split between
belief that UFOs represent some often the best one.” Especially if see this case decided one way or scientists and space cadets. I don’t
sort of craft from another planet that’s the explanation that one is another. If that can’t be done, then want to believe that you sprang to
or galaxy has been discarded by predisposed to believe. why are Clarke and Roberts even Reich’s defence because Fortean
an ever-growing portion of the “The simplest explanation” to bothering to bring it up? Times accepts advertising revenue
people who nevertheless believe any anomalous event is “it didn’t Bryan White from a company selling orgone
that they are something real. Keel happen”, or “it’s a fraud,” or that Duncanville, Texas products. I don’t want to but...
andVallee both rejected that “the witness is a liar” – but that Say it ain’t so, Fortean Times!
position in the 1970s. No honest hasn’t always proven to be the John Jerome
person can say that he or she best answer. If it were, then no
Reputations London
knows what they are. one would bother to examine the Thanks for printing part of my
At any rate, sceptics have long evidence of this or any other such letter in response to Robert Editor’s note: It ain’t so. Fortean
believed that, in the McMinnville event. I certainly admit that the Guffey’s article on horror comics Times has never self-censored or
case, a wire was used to suspend photograph could be a hoax; the [FT320:28-35, 322:68]; but I’m turned down a feature to please or
a car part (or some such thing) in point is that that hasn’t been prov- disappointed that you omitted my pacify an advertiser.

FT325 69
www.forteantimes.com
 letters
The Doors by Charles Fort, a decidedly Its place at the hub of a reputed include story elements that coincide
bizarre almanac of UFO sightings, battle between dark forces is prob- with something from other similar,
While it is well known that 1960s hostile weather and unexplained ably less familiar to the public. recent events. It is as if a motif gains
rock group The Doors derived phenomena, some of which Jim Clive also notes that I wrote currency for a while as it bubbles
their moniker from Aldous would eventually return to and about how synchronicity appears near the top of this collective pool
Huxley’s classic psychedelic essay re-describe in his poetry collec- to link fact and fiction as they fer- of images forming the cultural
The Doors of Perception, it is also tion The Lords: Notes on Vision” ment out of the collective subcon- mind-set.You can also see how the
interesting to note a more directly (pp.66-67). scious in slightly different ways. I form of the aliens being witnessed
fortean dimension to their music Hours of fortean fun can now be had (happily!) forgotten the rather morphs to follow an accepted norm
(or at least Jim Morrison’s soi- had interpreting the Doors’ œuvre pompous name I conjured up for that alters subtly as the years go by,
disant affectations as a rock’n’roll in light of this revelation.The it – psychic parallelism. I wonder without anyone really noticing that
‘poet’). Mick Wall’s recent biog- Doors’ most famous hit – ‘Light why that never caught on… But a huge game of unintentional follow-
raphy of The Doors, Love Becomes My Fire’ – is obviously about spon- I think there is something to this the-leader is taking place.
A Funeral Pyre (Orion, London taneous human combustion.Their suggestion that events emerge More interesting, given Clive’s
2014), contains the following pas- second album, Strange Days, is so from our psyche in the form of letter, many abductions subcon-
sage in a chapter discussing the named because it is actually the dreams, visions, real encounters sciously seem to include – without
formation of the band in relation first fortean concept album. And, and entirely imaginary stories all the witnesses realising the fact – bits
to Morrison’s friendship with given that Morrison’s reading of distilled from a soup of culturally from then current science fiction TV
keyboard player Ray Manzarek at Fort suggests a wider interest in topical ideas and images.You can and films. Blake’s Seven, Buck Rogers
UCLA in the mid-60s: esoterica, acolytes of David Icke see this in the way that Hollywood etc have all featured and I recall one
“When, in June 1965, Ray may argue that his rock-star per- or TV often conjure up several famous British abduction including
graduated with a Masters Degree sona as the ‘Lizard King’ indicates similarly themed ‘new’ projects an unusual alien entity that the wit-
from UCLA, Jim was mailed his that he was trying to tell us some- that they swear are just coinci- nesses appeared not to realise was
BA diploma, refusing – as with his thing about Illuminati control dentally like others that are being very like a race of aliens that had
high school graduation – to even of the music industry before his created concurrently. Echoes of recently been in Doctor Who.These
show up at the ceremony. Instead, premature demise (or liquidation Fort’s “steam engine time”. things are more common when
he chose to spend the afternoon for revealing too much?) I’ll leave I have also seen it in the world regression hypnosis is employed
with Dennis Jakob, gathering his the fortean analysis of The Lords: of the paranormal. Clive mentions to ‘uncover’ the abduction lurking
numerous ringed notebooks into Notes on Vision to someone with how I noted the numerous threads behind a screen of amnesia, for too
a pile then feeding them one by more appreciation for Morrison’s that wove the Stephen Donaldson long assumed by ufologists to exist –
one into the building’s basement poetry than myself. ‘Thomas Covenant’ novels in the in my view, disastrously. I feel there
incinerator. When Dennis asked Dean Ballinger early 1980s with the questing is no real memory to uncover, so the
for just one page to hold on to, Jim Hamilton, New Zealand stories – seemingly independently, subconscious delves into that col-
smiled that stunned, lazy smile because they preceded much of lective image pool to hone one that
and drawled, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll just his work. And I was fascinated to will convince.There has even been
make new ones.’ The books were
Borrowed scenes hear from gifted science fiction an abduction in which the witness
only ‘Things I’d seen and heard,’ It was interesting to read Clive writer Ian Watson that when he described imagery that had come
he told Dennis. ‘Especially things Potter’s thoughts about the origins moved into a certain part of the straight out of the then popular TV
that have no meaning’. Dennis of Psychic Questing and The Green Midlands and wrote his seminal soap Dynasty – even though they
wasn’t so sure but in they went, Stone affair [FT324:72]. He shows UFO novel Miracle Visitors, major seemed unaware of its source. How
into the burner, anyway. Along interesting parallels in the plot of UFO stories seemed to surround much – if any – of what emerges from
with the Senior Thesis that helped a Doctor Who story that ran in the him in real life. In fact, he was in this sea of imagery is ‘real’ is open to
him get his BA, which he had months leading up to the reported the midst of a veritable wave of question.
worked and reworked into some- psychic messages received by a some of the strangest UK close Jenny Randles
thing he titled Notes on Vision, group of UK paranormal witnesses encounters just as he was writing Pensarn, Conwy
heavily influenced, Dennis wrote and researchers in 1979.This led his novel about the link between
later, by The Book of the Damned them on quests to find buried mental images and UFO sightings.
artefacts and to collect as- I tend to think that this is down
The making of
sorted items such as swords to a wider consciousness shared Nessie
and stones.This period by us all from which we may not
of soothsaying spawned be aware that we are taking ideas The early episodes of the Loch
several popular books as the and moulding and shaping them in Ness monster story (see “Nessie,
questing movement became some way. daughter of Kong” by Charles
something of a cottage in- Some of us invent tales or Paxton, FT323:54-55) are certainly
dustry. It led to claims about fictionalise these ideas; others find not straightforward, and are often
the supernatural origins of them leaking into their dreams, vi- related inaccurately.
the great British storm that sions and borderland experiences One of these common errors is
devastated parts of southern that hover on the edges of reality. that the “monster” received its
England in 1987.That awful It may be down to the personal name in 1933 from the editor of
THE SURREAL MCCOY

night is infamously recalled psychology or visual creativity of the Inverness Courier, and that it hit
for the misfortune of BBC the person involved.Visually crea- international headlines only in the
weatherman Michael Fish tive people are at the heart of all autumn of 1933.
telling the nation that no this, which is why creative writing I recently came upon the fasci-
hurricane was heading our is so prominent. nating fact that the 1930 sighting
“Turns out there’s no advanced class”
way – just before one did! Alien abduction cases often of Nessie (Ian Milne’s report of a

70 FT325
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 letters

Black-eyed Swedes but there’s crime fiction for you.)

The cover is by one Rolf Lagerson, who
Here’s a strange parallel seems to have been a prolific illustrator. A
to the ‘Black-Eyed Kids’ Google Image search will throw up dozens
feature [FT322:26-32]. of his book covers in typical Sixties style,
These graphics show a which are all rather better than this one – I
rather forgettable Swedish would guess this is one of his earlier efforts.
crime novel from 1956, Unfortunately he has no Wikipedia entry.
Döden skriver svenska. This was long before the familiar meme of
This literally means ‘Greys’ had been established – if it had been,
‘Death writes Swedish’, he couldn’t have drawn the girls like this, or
but a more meaningful translation would be everyone would have thought it was SF. He
‘Death sits an exam’. The cover illustration was probably experimenting with different
is equally undistinguished – except for the ways of stylising human figures; maybe
four black-eyed girls, who might just as well Swedish girls at the time went in for heavy
be interpreted as aliens. There is nothing black eyeshade. On the other hand, I wouldn’t
spooky or alien about the story, which is a think that became popular until the Sixties,
totally straightforward crime yarn involving a so he would be some 10 years ahead of his
19-year-old getting killed as she sits an exam. time. All in all, I’ve never seen ‘normal’ human
(Spoiler alert: She is pregnant by a teacher. faces depicted quite like this.
This doesn’t explain why he should choose Nils Erik Grande
to kill her in the most public way imaginable, Oslo, Norway

large back in Dores Bay which was talk of a monster, but of a large However, there was a film before tion. Indeed, the images of a long-
covered by the local paper, the fish. Despite this early publicity, 1933’s King Kong that could have necked dinosaur swimming down
Northern Chronicle, on 27 August the monster quickly faded away influenced Gould and others into the Thames that are seen in The
1930) was reported in at least two again. Local monster supporter thinking of the possibilities of Lost World are reminiscent of the
American newspapers at the time: Alex Campbell had to undertake a long-necked aquatic monsters. (in)famous 1934 ‘surgeon’s photo’
“People in the vicinity of Loch second start, in 1933, and this time The film in question is the 1925 of Nessie.
Ness in Scotland are much mysti- it worked. silent movie adaptation of Arthur As early as 1922, Conan Doyle
fied over reports of a monster hav- Regarding the long neck, there Conan Doyle’s novel The Lost showed a test reel of O’Brien’s di-
ing taken up its abode in the lake. must have been many different World. nosaur footage to a meeting of the
Three young bankers from Inver- influences: the traditional water- With hindsight, The Lost World Society of American Magicians,
ness were [angling?] from a boat horse, the fact that early witnesses can almost be viewed as a dry run which included Harry Houdini.
on a calm [night?].Then there was assumed it might be a sea-serpent for King Kong. It featured pioneer- Doyle refused to discuss the prov-
a churning and splashing of the trapped in the loch, and the fact ing stop-motion special effects enance of the film, leading to a
water as if a fight between two that the sea-serpent was already by Willis O’Brien, who would go front-page NewYork Times article
large fish was in progress.Then it then synonymous with a surviving on to produce the seminal effects that stated: “Monsters of the
suddenly came towards the boat plesiosaur. In that way, when the for King Kong, and also included ancient world, which he (Conan
at a great speed and when about Inverness Courier carried a satirical several dinosaur sequences. In Doyle) has discovered in the ether,
300 yards [274m] away turned to “interview with the monster” on one sequence, an Allosaurus were extraordinarily lifelike. If
the right and disappeared with a 15 August 1933, it referred to “Mr attacks an Apatosaurus, with the fakes they are masterpieces.”
wriggling motion into a deep bay. Otterserpentdragonplesiosaurus” latter falling off the isolated pla- It is at least possible that Ru-
It raised a wave about two and one and could assume that everyone teau – the titular ‘Lost World’ that pert Gould and some of the Loch
half feet [76cm] high sufficient understood what was meant. comprises the dinosaurs’ habitat. Ness monster’s ‘eyewitnesses’ in
to rock the boat. A keeper on the For a detailed account, almost Professor Challenger and his the 1930s might have either seen
shores of the lake says that some day by day, of the first few months expedition found the Apatosaurus or heard about The Lost World’s
time ago he saw a monster swim- of what was slowly to become Nes- trapped in a muddy swamp at the swimming dinosaur sequence in
ming down the lake and that it sie, please consult the essay in my foot of the plateau. Challenger the 1920s. Perhaps they also read
looked like a boat upside down.” book Investigating The Impossible brings the beast back to London about it – given Conan Doyle’s
(“Scotch Lake Becomes Place (Anomalist Books 2011). to exhibit it, thereby proving Scottish origins, one imagines the
of Mystery”, Hartford Courant, Ulrich Magin his tale. However, the dinosaur film received publicity in the Scot-
12 Oct 1930; the same story es- Hennef, North Rhine-Westphalia escapes when being unloaded at tish press upon its local release. As
sentially was covered by The Sun, the docks and wreaks havoc in such, it’s possible that one specific
19 Oct 1930, under the headline: Charles Paxton’s excellent Forum the city – a plot strand that will sequence could have influenced
“Weird Lake Monster Reported in piece on King Kong and the Loch feel very familiar to Kong fans the rise of descriptions of the
Scotland. Fishermen At Loch Ness Ness monster [FT323:54-55] – until it reaches Tower Bridge. Loch Ness monster as being a
Report Being Startled By It”.) notes that Rupert Gould, author The bridge collapses under the long-necked dinosaur, which have
So the Loch Ness monster of the 1933 book The Loch Ness creature’s weight, causing the now become an established part of
already made headlines in the US Monster, “was definitely thinking dinosaur to fall into the river and Nessie lore.
in 1930! Interestingly enough, the about long-necked aquatic mon- swim down the Thames, thereby Martyn P Jackson
original Scottish reports do not sters before the film’s release”. making its escape from civilisa- Cramlington, Northumberland

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letters
John the woodwose? covered by his green robes, the hair on the
shirt falling in ordered waves. Initially, I thought
that the woodwoses described in Matt Salus-
bury’s woodwose article [FT318:28-33] were
representations of St John; however, once I did
some research, I could see that this was not
the case. In his iconic representation, St John
always has his robes over his hair shirt, which
is obviously clothing; he frequently carries a
cross and may have wings as well. A good
example of this icon can be viewed at icon-
reader.wordpress.com. Comparing this to the
woodwoses, they appear to be hairy, unwinged
men who carry clubs.
In Christian ideology, as well as foreshadow-
ing the coming of Christ, St John is the first of
the Green Martyrs, those saints who chose to
struggle with their faith in the wilderness. In
the aspect of the woodwose as a warrior for
God, is it possible that in their association with cases, the women also have their breasts ex-
baptismal fonts, in particular, they represent St posed, although there were plenty of other indi-
John the Baptist? cators of their gender. Also, in these tapestries,
While I was researching this, I stumbled both the woodwoses and the woodwosettes
across more images of ‘woodwosettes’ as appear to be wearing hairy clothes rather than
mentioned by Angus Crowe [FT319:73], this being hairy in and of themselves.
To continue with the topic of the wodewose/ time in tapestries (specifically on the website Catherine Gilbert
woodwose [FT320:72], I may have a possible polarbearstale.blogspot.com.au). In these By email
explanation of the association with baptismal
fonts. At the beginning of December 2014, I
was able to view the interior of the Russian Or-
thodox church of Saint John the Baptist in Nar-
rabundah, ACT, Australia. The church contains
a number of icons including a Black Madonna,
and the upper walls feature exquisite late-20th
century Greek-style murals, scenes from the
life of Jesus on the right and those of St John
the Baptist on the left.
As I was studying these scenes, I realised
that one of the pictorial attributes of St John
was his goathair cilice. This hair shirt was
consistently depicted as a blue undergarment

Not more caviar! that nice without butter, and set off eating lobster every day that they objectivity the article should have
to track some down for them. took their masters to court, and pointed out that the idea that the
Mat Coward asks if there is any Ian Simmons the judge ruled in their favour, killers had anything but contempt
evidence of anyone going on strike Newcastle upon Tyne ruling the servants would only for Manson or Goths in general
for the right not to eat oysters or have to eat lobster three times was an invention of sensationalist
similar [FT324:23]. I have come Editor’s note: reader Erwin a week.” http://knowledgenuts. reporting, discounted over 15 years
across something along these lines Snelders directs us to an article com/2013/11/05/lobster-was- ago.
in the Adventures and Inventions by Nolar Moore on Knowledge- once-a-poor-mans-food/ The lazy meme that invariably
of Stewart Blacker by Barnaby nuts.com, which points out that seeks to blame such crimes on the
Blacker. Blacker was an inventor lobsters were so plentiful on the entertainment industry does much
and aviation pioneer who had US east coast in the 17th and 18th
Marilyn Manson to obscure their true causes and
some involvement in the British centuries that “the crustaceans It was disappointing to see Jenny leads to the demonisation of ‘al-
Occupation of the Caucasus during eventually acquired a stigma, and Coleman repeating the tired old ternative’ subcultures. While I am
the Russian Civil War of 1919, and – according to American observer tabloid myth [FT322:29] that the unable to summon up much enthu-
he records a complaint from British John Rowan – became ‘signs of Columbine School massacre was siasm for Mr Warner’s music or his
troops in Ashkhabad about being poverty and degradation’. They inspired by the two perpetrators’ creepy persona, the irony behind it
fed too much of “that ‘ere fish were only served to prisoners and alleged admiration for Goth rock is self-evident and his comments on
jam” – caviar.While they didn’t mu- indentured servants, but even star Marilyn Manson (aka Brian ‘Bowling for Columbine’ are lucid,
tiny or go on strike they certainly these slaves and crooks had Warner). Although admittedly the intelligent and not at all defensive.
weren’t happy about it. Blacker rights. Indentured servants from statement is qualified with the Mike Chivers
agreed that caviar really wasn’t all Massachusetts got so fed up with phrase “said to”, in the interests of Waterlooville, Hampshire

72 FT325
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towards me. She

Colour precedent had with her three
dogs, two spaniels
Whenever FT publishes a “TV message from and a Labrador, and I
the future” story [e.g. FT304:75, 306:69], I’m commented that she
reminded of my very own television mystery. must be nearly as
Australian television in the 1960s was strictly mad as me. As the
black and white; colour was not introduced until lady and I continued
the mid-1970s. Around 1965, I was watching our walk all the dogs
daytime television on one of the three commer- trotted alongside as
cial stations then operating in Melbourne. A com- we talked, and she
mercial came on, filling the screen with the told me a few strange
familiar AMPOL logo. In those days, AMPOL (the things including how
Australian Motorists Petrol Company) operated she came to own the
service stations throughout the country. Its logo Labrador – through a
was an oval filled with three horizontal stripes charity auction – and
– red at the top, white in the middle and blue she predicted the
at the bottom. The central white stripe held the breed and colour. She
name AMPOL in either red or, in this case, black. said she was being
As the commercial began, an announcer taught to develop her
stated gravely: “This is an AMPOL Technicolor psychic abilities and
commercial!” At this point, the logo began to wasn’t surprised by
flicker noticeably – clearly a stroboscopic effect her prediction.
caused by alternating blank frames with the logo. We walked and
Incredibly, this produced the illusion of not one talked for a further
but two distinct colours, with the AMPOL logo half hour until we
standing out in its usual red, white and blue. I came to the park
vividly recall being not only amazed that this was exit, when she put
possible, but also slightly disappointed that the “When I described the Labrador and one spaniel on leads. I asked
colours were washed out and pale, with the red why she wasn’t doing the same to the second
stripe looking pink. the second dog, she spaniel. She replied that she didn’t have another
It’s now about half a century since I saw this spaniel and asked what I had seen. When I
revolution in television technology and to this said it sounded like described the second dog, she said it sounded
day I have been unable to find any mention of like her dog that had recently died and who loved
it. I never saw the advert again, have never met her dog that had that particular walk. His death had left a space,
anyone who saw it, and can find no references to enabling her to bid for the puppy. I haven’t seen
it on the Internet. recently died” the lady since, although she lives within a couple
I’m now left wondering if it’s even possible. of miles of the park.
Can the illusion of two separate colours be ings and went to stay with my parents in Boston. Lindy Pickering
created on black and white television? (The TV I didn’t want to go back to the lodgings. East Bierley, Bradford
system in use at the time was 25 frames per “At my parents’ home, I went into my normal
second, 625 lines vertical resolution PAL.) If not, room, hung the dressing gown in the wardrobe Shed of mystery
just what did I see? Any insights from readers and climbed into my old bed. That night there
would be most welcome. were loud bangings on the ceiling and roof, so A few years ago, my son and I happened to visit
CF frighteningly loud that my parents heard it in the a local branch of a large DIY chainstore in Not-
Brisbane, Australia next bedroom. We all got up, asking ‘What the tingham. As it was summer, there were a number
hell was that?’ My father and I were about to go of display garden sheds outside the store, all
Noisy dressing gown to the front door to check what it was, when the with their backs to a blank wall, and their doors
banging started on the front door – so loud it was opening out onto the path outside the building.
My father, Barry Gibbons, and my aunt often told frightening. I returned to Warrington the next day, As we walked along, I noticed a stocky figure
me the following true story, and I recently got and forgot to take the dressing gown. My mother of indeterminate gender with long hair, wear-
my father to write it down. He is from Boston, rang me up two days later, and said that more ing what I thought was a pale jumper and dark
Lincolnshire, but now resides in Denmark. bangings on the door had occurred while I was trousers, step out across the path and into one
“In the 1970s, when I was 21, I went to War- away. My sister heard it too. We worked out that of the garden sheds.
rington [in Cheshire] to find work. I found lodgings it must be the dressing gown. After throwing it Now, as my son and I were walking in the
at an old lady’s house. Her husband had recently away, the disturbances ceased.” direction of the sheds, when we got to the one
died. Over breakfast she said: ‘Would you like Ayeisha Kirkham that the figure had walked into, I had a peek to
my husband’s dressing gown? I only bought it for Newark, Nottinghamshire see what they were doing in there… but the shed
him just before he died. It’s silk.’ After two weeks was empty. I would have put this down to a trick
the lady fell ill and I had to find other lodgings. I Canine revenant of the light, or even my imagination, had my son
went to sleep in my new lodgings with my new not exclaimed: “Where did that person go?”
dressing gown in the wardrobe, only to be woken I own four dogs, two of them inherited due to the Needless to say, there was no back door to the
by my bed being violently shaken. This happened deaths of both my brother and mother. Walking shed and no hole in the ground. Where the figure
several times during the night. I was so scared these four in my local park – Oakwell County went is a true mystery.
that I stayed under my blankets until the morning Park, West Yorkshire – I was approaching a Chris Shilling
light came. I immediately packed up my belong- wooded area when a lady came out of the woods Sheffield, South Yorkshire

FT325 73
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 home of a mythical

FORTEAN
monster: the legend seems
tangible when you set foot
in the ruins of the palace,
just three miles to the south
of Heraklion, the busy capital
of the island. Knossos is the second
most visited ancient site in Greece; a

TRAVELLER
vast, positively labyrinthine structure,
which explains why it’s generally
identified with Dædalus’s creation.
Our bus stops on an avenue of tourist
shops crammed with straw hats and
Minotaur fridge magnets. We’ve been
awake since six to avoid the crowds
and it pays off: it’s just after 8am now;
the morning light is exquisite and the
98. Knossos, Crete ruins are silent.
The palace became a cultural icon
thanks to Sir Arthur Evans, whose
bronze bust, brooding into the sky,
MARIA J PÉREZ CUERVO travels to the myth-rich island of Crete in search of welcomes the visitors by the main
the goddesses and monsters that fed her childhood imagination entrance. He excavated Knossos
from 1900 and was responsible for
the controversial restorations that

E
verybody, I believe, treasures Helped by her cunning, Theseus killed BOTTOM: The ruins became its trademark: the bright
at least one tale that speaks the Minotaur. of the palace of rusty-red columns and the vibrant,
to them, and it doesn’t matter The story had a monster, a labyrinth, Minos at Knossos stylised frescoes depicting dancing
if it comes from the other side a smart heroine and a great deed; but discovered by princes and princesses, ecstatic bull-
Sir Arthur Evans,
of the world. My father told me the what I found most exciting was that, leapers and sinuous dolphins. With
who later rebuilt
myth of the Minotaur when I was too unlike in other favourites of mine and repainted his archæological work in Knossos,
young to understand the difference (Puss in Boots or Snow White), the large parts of the Evans unveiled a sophisticated
between mythology and fairy tales. On place where the adventure occurred structure. and hedonistic civilisation that
the island of Crete a wise man named could be seen on a map. Naturally, I fascinated the masses, much like
BELOW: The bust 1
Dædalus built a labyrinth to house a decided I had to visit the island of of Sir Arthur at the Schlieman’s Troy or Howard Carter’s
half-human, half-bull monster who had Crete, although this didn’t happen main entrance. Tutankhamun. He called them the
to be appeased with regular human until nearly three decades later. The Minoans after Karl Hoeck’s initial
sacrifices, and whom everybody called turquoise sea and the promise of a use of the word, in honour of King
the Minotaur. Athenian prince Theseus feast of olives and kalitsounia were Minos, Crete’s legendary ruler. Like
wanted to confront the monster, but appealing, but if I’m honest, I was Schlieman’s discovery of Troy, the
no man, not even wise Dædalus, knew just answering the call of the myth, of excavation in Knossos had a clear
how to get to the heart of the maze the monster trapped in the labyrinth euhemeristic appeal: with it, Knossos
MARIA J PÉREZ CUERVO

where the Minotaur lived. However, and the mysterious Ariadne, wise as emerged from the darkness where
my father continued, there was a smart a witch. myths dwell, suggesting that there
young woman named Ariadne who did. was, perhaps, a historical basis for the
She gave the prince a ball of thread KNOSSOS: IS IT THE LABYRINTH? myth of the Minotaur.
so that he could unwind it to mark his It doesn’t matter that Knossos was
way and follow it back to the entrance. likely a political centre and not the TRACES OF THE MINOTAUR
Overlooking the scenery at the East
Propyleia in the palace there’s a pair
of stylised bull horns, awe-inspiring
in size, almost like the Minotaur’s.
They’re a modern reproduction of a
protective symbol that Evans called
the horns of consecration, common
in Minoan Crete, usually placed on
the roofs of buildings of religious
significance, tombs and shrines. The
ubiquituous symmetric double axe
is also part of the iconography of
Minoan bull sacrifice. Its name, the
labrys, is probably the root of the
word ‘labyrinth’, the palace of the
double axe, that referred to Knossos.
But perhaps the most suggestive
traces of this ancient civilisation
HULTON ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES

are the taurokatharpsia or bull-

leaping frescoes, representing bold
rituals with stunts and acrobatics.
Reproductions can be seen on the
walls of Knossos, though we have to
wait until the following day to see
the originals at the Archæological
Museum in Heraklion.
When we think of bull-worshipping
civilisations, the Minoans might be
74 FT325
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 MARIA J PÉREZ CUERVO
the first to spring to mind, but bulls
have been considered sacred animals
since Antiquity. Aurochs and bison were
already depicted in Palæolithic caves.
What makes bull symbolism fascinating
is that it shares both lunar and solar
qualities: the Egyptian bull Apis or
the Sumerian Gugalanna were lunar
deities, yet the Vedic god Sûrya was
solar and the Mythraic Mysteries of the
Roman Empire are a celebration of a
Sun god killing a bull.
But let’s get back to the Cretan
monster. Since Homer, poetic tradition
has considered the Labyrinth the
home to Asterion, or Minos’s bull,
the Minotaur. He was the monstrous
descendant of the Cretan bull, a
beautiful snow-coloured creature that
Poseidon gave to king Minos as a gift.
Minos refused to sacrifice it to the
god, so Poseidon punished the king’s
hubris by cursing his wife Pasiphæ to
We want to TOP: Two views
of the palace at
Knossos.
More recently, three archæological
discoveries have suggested that
the sophisticated bull-worshipping
fall madly in love with the white bull
– so much so that Pasiphæ desperately
believe that civilisation had a darker side.
In 1967, archæologist Peter Warren
ABOVE: One of
asked for the help of one of the wisest
men in Greece: the mythical inventor
there is some the bull-leaping
frescoes on the
found fragments of a human skull
at the early Minoan site of Fournou
Dædalus. He built a hollow wooden cow
for her to hide in and copulate with truth in myths palace walls. Korifi. The lack of other bones ruled
out the possibility of a burial, so he
the animal. Thus, the unlikely affair worked with the hypothesis that the
was consummated, and the Minotaur skull had been deliberately placed
– “the twin form of bull and man”, as Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative there, which would indicate ancestor
2
described by Ovid – was born. He was Religion (1890). He pointed out that worship or human sacrifice. Over a
nursed by Pasiphæ until his ferocity the Minotaur sacrifice, held every decade later, in 1979, the discovery
became impossible to tame. Then the eight years, coincided with the “normal of several skeletons in Anemospilia,
king had to seek advice from the oracle length of the king’s reign”. After each a Minoan site near Heraklion, raised
of Delphi. The pythia told him to have eight-year period, the king would retire many questions. The scene that the
Dædalus build a maze to house the to the oracular cave on Mount Ida to archæologists found remained frozen
3
monster. However, the Minotaur would receive guidance from Zeus. Frazer in time, buried by the effects of a
have to be appeased with regular suggested that the monster could violent earthquake. A skeleton found
human sacrifices: every seven to nine have been a red hot brazen bull in a on an altar-like construction appeared
years, seven young men and seven sacred ceremony that involved roasting to be that of a young man who had
maidens would sail from Athens to feed humans alive to renew the strength of died of blood loss, probably after
the monster. One of these chosen seven the king or the Sun. The brutal image his carotid artery was severed, and
was Theseus, the prince of Athens, who is reminiscent of that of Moloch, the there was evidence that his legs had
would eventually kill Asterion. god of Canaan, which jumped out of probably been bound. Next to him was
the pages of the Old Testament to a large blade, and among the debris,
HUMAN SACRIFICES influence iconic silent films Cabiria and a jar that contained bull’s blood. A
Perhaps because we want to believe Metropolis. third discovery was unearthed, again
that there is some truth in myths, it’s Of course, Frazer’s suggestion wasn’t by Peter Warren, in Knossos in 1980:
tempting to search for an historical based on archæological evidence, since about 200 bones of children between
explanation for them. JG Frazer Knossos hadn’t even been excavated 10 and 15 years old were found in the
certainly attempted to do so in his yet. But could there be a fragment North House. At least 20 of these bones
seminal (and deliciously Victorian) The of truth to that part of the story? showed butchering marks, perhaps
FT325 75
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 made with a thin obsidian knife, which
again pointed to ritual cannibalism.
It’s difficult to reconcile this darker
side with the elegant vitality and the

MARIA J PÉREZ CUERVO

intelligence that the frescoes exude.

THE MISTRESS OF THE LABYRINTH

Ariadne remained the most elusive
figure on my visit to Knossos. In the
myth, she is the daughter of King
Minos and Pasiphæ, and therefore the
Minotaur’s half-sister, a detail often Minoan religious rituals. According
overlooked but one that gives her to Kerényi, there could have been a
more complexity. In the fascinating connection between these and the
(if snubbed by academics) The White Eleusinian mysteries, the religious
Goddess, Robert Graves translated ceremony held around the autumnal
Homer’s verses from the Iliad as equinox in Eleusis. These so-called
“Dædalus in Cnossos once contrived/a Greater Mysteries, ta Mysteria,
dancing floor for fair-haired Ariadne”. were cults to Demeter, the goddess
Scholar Károly Kerényi translated it of agriculture and fertility, and her
as Ariadne of the “beautiful braids of daughter Persephone, abducted by
hair”, an epithet that Homer used more Hades. Little is known about the
often to refer to goddesses. Both Graves celebration, but Kerényi quotes first
and Kerényi theorised that Ariadne, century BC historian Diodorus of Sicily,
arihagne, the utterly pure, was therefore who writes: “Elsewhere such rites are
GETTY IMAGES

a goddess; Kerényi identified her as the communicated in secret, but in Krete,

“mistress of the Labyrinth” and noted in Knossos, it had been the custom
that, in an inscription on a Linear B since time immemorial to speak of
tablet, the libation offered to her was these ceremonies quite openly to all”.
equal to the amount of honey offered Earlier, I referred to my journey
to all the other gods. For him, this as a pilgrimage. Visiting the place
extraordinary distinction could only be where a myth may have originated
explained if she was a Great Goddess. over a long flounced skirt. In her right ABOVE: The can be a numinous experience,
Kerényi also noted that Plutarch (c. hand she held a slithering snake. Evans faience ‘Snake particularly when the myth has a
AD46-120) referred to a cult of Ariadne referred to the figure as a “priestess or Goddess’ personal meaning, as it has in my
in the island of Naxos in his Vita of votary” and thought it part of a shrine. figurine. case. Reflecting upon it, I realise it’s
Theseus. Curiously, according to him, the The figure was promptly reconstructed because it holds the first reference
Naxians recognised two Ariadnes. The with another snake in her left hand TOP RIGHT: The to women’s wisdom that I can recall.
celestial one was married to Dionysos, and a head with expressive features, ‘Ladies in Blue’ The mysterious Ariadne doesn’t reveal
whereas the earthly one helped probably inspired by that of the bigger, fresco. herself – or perhaps she does, but
Theseus, eloped with him, and was somewhat rougher statuette that was under the appearance of a goddess.
abandoned by him shortly afterwards. found next to it. The physical traces of a bull-
She retired then to Naxos, where she The small figurine is widely known worshipping cult and the references
died. Plutarch wrote that there were as the Snake Goddess, and Evans NOTES to a Great Goddess feel like glimpses
two celebrations for these two Ariadnes, referred to the larger one as a Mother 1 Schlieman had of the great mystery, a passage to an
though they were very different in Goddess. They share the same glass actually wanted otherworld populated by archetypes
spirit: the one for the goddess was case, and the same enigmatic stances, to excavate and mythical creatures. The myth is
the hill where
joyful, the one for the mortal, gloomy proudly showing their breasts. Knossos sits, serving its function, at least according
and sorrowful. Evans suggested a link to the cult of suspecting there to Mircea Eliade: in answering its
Wadjet, the Egyptian cobra goddess was a complex call, as I walk among the ruins, I’m
THE SNAKE GODDESS who offered protection to women at underneath. detaching myself from the present,
Searching for references to Ariadne in childbirth and who had an oracle in the 2 The Minotaur is returning to a mythical age and coming
usually depicted
Knossos I look at Minoan art, where city of Per-Wadjet, still active in times closer to the divine. FT
with the head of a
anonymous women appear prominently. of Herodotus. However, they could also bull on the body of
I see no threads and no labyrinths, be linked to Kebechet, the daughter of a man. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
but there is a bull: two fair-skinned Anubis, depicted as a woman with the 3 “Knossos, Diodorus of Sicily: Bibliotheca historica
female acrobats stand next to it in the head of a snake. This goddess assisted where Minos JG Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890)
4
taurokatharpsia fresco. I also find out her father in embalming during the reigned who every
nine years had a Robert Graves, The White Goddess (Faber and
that the iconic ‘Ladies in Blue’ fresco process of mummification, and was conference with Faber, 1948)
is a reconstruction based on very therefore connected to the renewal Zeus himself”
Homer: The Iliad and The Odyssey
small fragments, visible because they of life. Snakes aren’t just a symbol of (Homer, The
appear slightly offset from the main fertility and rebirth, they are also the Odyssey, XIX, 172- Carl Kerényi, Dionysos: Archetypal Image
178 ). of Indestructible Life (Princeton University
composition. Despite the critics (Evelyn guardians of the underworld, and, in
4 In Minoan Press, 1996) and Eleusis: Archetypal Image
Waugh thought it looked like a cover of this chthonic form, they’re part of an frescoes, women of Mother and Daughter (Princeton University
Vogue), it’s a beautiful piece of art. oracular tradition. are portrayed Press, 1991)
The most intriguing Minoan female There’s a third female figurine in with pale skin,
as opposed to Plutarch: Parallel Lives.
figures can’t be found in the palace, the museum that intrigues me, with
men, whose skin
but in the museum of archæology her stylised lines, sphinx-like smile appears brown-
of Heraklion. They’re two faience and eyes that appear closed. Her MARIA J PÉREZ CUERVO
red in colour,
5
figurines that have become the hands are raised in a silent greeting, a convention
is a Bristol-based
borrowed from journalist whose odder
Rosetta Stone of the collection, as the and she’s wearing the pods of opium
Egyptian art. interests include
crowd gathering around them suggests. poppies around her head. This Poppy gothic Victoriana and
Discovered by Evans in 1903, during his Goddess dates from the 13th century 5 Faience was
used in Ancient doppelgängers. A
fourth campaign at Knossos, the first BC and was found in a sanctuary in Egypt and regular FT contributor,
was a large fragment of a female figure Gazi, suggesting that opium could symbolised the she is on Twitter as @mjpcuervo.
sporting bare breasts and an apron have been used as an entheogen in renewal of life.
FT325 76
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COMING
NEXT STRANGE
UNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL
DEATHS
MONTH Last summer, police in Mount Laurel,
New Jersey, were allegedly called to
an unnamed motel after the body of a
young woman had been found under
a bed. According to medical opinion,
it had lain undisturbed for about five
park in Yucatan, southern Mexico, had
to use a rope and a pickup truck to
pull the camel away from the body.
It was suggested the camel was
annoyed at not getting a drink of Coca-
Cola, which Mileski gave it most days.
years. “I dropped the television remote, MX News (Sydney), 16 Oct; rt.com/news,
and when I went to check under the bed I 17 Oct 2014.
found her,” said Aaron Silver, who was staying
in the room. “I clean that room every day,” A male camel in rut trampled two people to
said housekeeper Anita Rodriguez. “I noticed a death at Camel Kisses Ranch in Texas. It
smell several times, and told my manager. He charged ranch owner Mark Mere, 53, as he
told me to just use extra Febreeze in the room entered the pen it shared with two females,
and it would go away eventually. I always hated before killing Peggy McNair, 72, when she tried
cleaning that room.” Empire News, 24 July; to shut the gate of the pen. The camel was put
nymeta.co, 26 Aug 2014. down. Metro, 12 Jan 2015.
After this news story was published, Mount
Laurel Police spokesperson Lt Stephen Beekeeper Steven Adderson, who was allergic
WESTMINSTER WEIRDOS Riedener described it as “absolutely false”,
further noting that it didn’t even correctly name
to bees, suffered fatal anaphylactic shock
on 17 June 2014 after being stung once on
BRITAIN’S MADDEST MPS AND his department’s police chief, identifying him the ankle. The 39-year-old engineer from
as “Joe Goldsmith” instead of Dennis Cribben. Downham Market, Norfolk, died as he tried
MOST PECULIAR POLITICOS Besides, the story originated at Empire News, to help a neighbour tackle a rogue swarm of
one of many fake news sites. Folklorist Jan bees. “He had put on his suit,” said his father
Harold Brunvand first heard a “dead body Graham, “but was in such a rush to get to
under hotel bed” story in 1991, and the lack work that he forgot the boots.”
of circumstantial detail led him to class it A gardener in Arizona died after 800,000
as an urban legend. However, many similar Africanised bees attacked him, having been
stories are undeniably true: the Snopes legend driven into a frenzy by his lawnmower. The
website recounts 10 authenticated cases of 32-year-old man suffered a heart attack
odorous dead bodies being found under hotel and was dead on arrival at hospital. He was
and motel beds since 1982 (www.snopes. tending a lawn at the house of a 90-year-old
com/horrors/gruesome/bodybed.asp). On 15 man in Douglas, near the Mexican border. The
March 2010, for instance, the remains of Sony bees swarmed from the attic; their hive, 4ft
Millbrook from Memphis were found inside (1.2m) wide and 6ft (1.8m) high, was thought
the frame of a bed at a Budget Inn motel an to be a decade old. It was later destroyed
alarming 47 days after her initial disappearance by a beekeeper after workmen removed part
– even though the room had been cleaned and of the roof. Eve. Standard (London), 9 Oct;
THE AMAZING DR FALK rented several times. For a 1999 case, see
FT127:16. antiviral.gawker.com, 30 July 2014.
D.Telegraph, Sun, 10 Oct; D.Mirror, D.Mail, 24
Oct 2014.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE
William Wilson of Cape Coral, Florida, thought A wild boar caused the death of a motorist
BAAL SHEM TOV OF LONDON he was getting a great deal on a foreclosed on the M4 near Swindon on 5 January. The

+
home he bought at an auction for $96,000. unnamed 47-year-old man, from Wootton
However, he discovered an unexpected ‘bonus’ Bassett, Wiltshire, was killed when his Seat
inside: a corpse on the master bedroom floor. Ibiza collided with the animal before hitting a
Neighbours said two sisters had lived in the lorry. Wild boar were hunted to extinction in
house but no one had seen them for a while. Britain at least 300 years ago, but have been
CRUCIFIXION SCIENCE, Police blocked off the property and launched making a comeback in the last few decades;
THE MANNA MACHINE, an investigation. Fort Myers (FL) News-Press, 5 they have virtually no natural predators. A fully-
Nov 2014. grown male can weigh up to 200kg (440lb),
KILLER KANGAROOS, and the animals often stray onto roads. In
AND MUCH MORE… A television fitness instructor killed while 2013 there were 43 road accidents involving
filming on a railway line in Los Angeles was wild boar in the Forest of Dean, which for the
reportedly trying to outrun a train for a sports first time was more than those involving deer.

FORTEAN
drink commercial. Greg Pitt, 37, the star of the D.Telegraph, 7 Jan 2015.
Bravo television series Work Out, tripped and
couldn’t get out of the path of the train near Lucie Brownlee was trying for a baby with

TIMES
Burbank station. “He wanted to push things to husband Mark, 37, when he suffered cardiac
the limit,” said his girlfriend, Christina Stejskal. arrhythmia and died. His last words were:
“He’s just like Superman.” D.Telegraph, 21 Jan “You’ve still got your socks on.” Sun, 18 July
2015. 2014.

Richard Mileski, 60 (or 70), from Chicago, the

THE FORTEAN TIMES

326
owner of a Mexican wildlife sanctuary, died on
14 October after being kicked, bitten and sat BOOK OF STRANGE
on by an enraged camel. “Between the blows
and the weight of the camel on top of him, he DEATHS VOL 2
was asphyxiated,” said a civil defence official. ON SALE NOW FROM
The camel weighed over 600kg (94 stone). WH SMITH AND AMAZON.CO.UK
Staff at the Tulum Monkey Sanctuary wildlife TO ORDER DIRECT CALL 0844 844 0053

ON SALE 2 APRIL 2015

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