Fortean Times15 min read
Letters
CONTACT US BY POST: PO BOX 1200, WHITSTABLE CT1 9RH, OR E-MAIL SIEVEKING@FORTEANTIMES.COM PLEASE PROVIDE US WITH YOUR POSTAL ADDRESS Let me add my congratulations to Fortean Times for hitting (now surpassing) its half-century milestone. After I addre
Fortean Times4 min readCrime & Violence
Db Cooper Found?
On 24 November 1971, a man boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle, carrying what he later told flight attendants was a suitcase bomb. Once airborne, he threatened to detonate it if they did not follow his instructions. He allowe
Fortean Times6 min read
Zimbabwe Goblins
A family from Magwegwe North in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, has been under relentless assault from an energetic poltergeist since last November. The family, who have understandably preferred to remain anonymous, have three children aged 13, 12 and eight, and
Fortean Times2 min read
The Reverend’s Review
When people hear I’m ordained, they often assume I grew up in the church. Wrong! I found churches (and Christians) kind of scary. Especially when they smiled during hymns or passed a cup to guzzle Jesus’s blood. The creepiest, though, was when congre
Fortean Times1 min read
ForteanTimes PRESENTS THE UFO FILES
The perfect starting point for anyone wanting to get up to speed on the ever-changing landscape of UFO research, this special edition from Fortean Times presents classic cases covering nearly 80 years of ufology – from the first modern UFO sighting i
Fortean Times4 min read
Beyond The Nuts And Bolts
I have just been revising, revamping and tarting-up my 1990 book Portraits of Alien Encounters, which features my investigation of high strangeness encounters and experiences in northern England in the 1970s and early 1980s. A large part of the book
Fortean Times6 min read
Strange Continent
On 6 November 2023, a mysterious sailing boat beached on the Weststrand on the German East Frisian island of Norderney and caused quite a sensation. It looked like a prop from a Hollywood pirate movie – the self-built boat was certainly no normal aff
Fortean Times3 min read
Strange Deaths
A 35-year-old woman driving at night along State Road 50 in Brooksville, Florida, stopped to see if she could help when she spotted a car that had crashed into the central reservation. As she investigated the wrecked GMC Sierra, its driver jumped int
Fortean Times11 min read
Appreciating Esoteric Symbolism
Examining the Nature of a Belief in Tarot Simon Kenny Iff Books 2023 Pb, 248pp, £17.99, ISBN 9781803413921 Johannes Fiebig (ed) Taschen 2023 Hb, 444pp, £100, ISBN 9783836586429 Titan Books 2023 78 cards plus guide, £24.99, ISBN 9781803367217 The most
Fortean Times3 min read
Putting Their Foot In It
While Bigfoot is commonly imagined to be a thoroughly North American phenomenon, there is a surprisingly strong tradition of ape men in Britain. They have been sighted near Newcastle at Bolam Lake, on Ben MacDhui in Scotland, where there is the legen
Fortean Times5 min read
Science Fiction And Fantasy
Geoff Ryman Angry Robot/Watkins 2023 Pb, 366pp, £9.99, ISBN 9781915202673 A young woman, Maryam, becomes pregnant in an unusual way: “I didn’t do anything.” She’s hurriedly married off to a troublesome preacher, Yosef, who is exiled from Yerusalam to
Fortean Times1 min read
THE WORLD OF STRANGE PHENOMENA Forteantimes
For anyone with a sense of adventure, an enquiring mind and a love of the weird and wonderful… Every month, ForteanTimes takes you on an incredible journey into the unknown where you’ll encounter some of the most fantastic phenomena on Earth… and som
Fortean Times4 min read
Haunted Soundscapes
Dystopic Visions, Alternate Realities, Paranormal Quests and Exploratory Electronica Stephen Prince A Year in The Country 2023 Pb, 237pp, £14.94, ISBN 9781916095274 A Year in The Country is a project and not just a series of books. A website with ove
Fortean Times13 min readWorld
Political Science Totalitarian Abuses Of Science, From Hitler And Stalin To Putin’s Russia
Science is the most objective of all spheres of human knowledge – isn’t it? Not when blinkered dictators like Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin march headlong into the laboratory it isn’t. Then, it becomes every bit as governed by lies, prejudice and the
Fortean Times2 min readChemistry
Mythconceptions
Water conducts electricity. (That’s why you’re not allowed to use a corded power saw in a municipal swimming pool.) Forgive the pedantry, but water doesn’t conduct electricity – i.e. allow electricity to pass through it easily. On the contrary, water
Fortean Times2 min read
Excluded Women?
How Women Transformed the Empire Emma Southon Oneworld Publications 2023 Hb, 416pp, £18.99, ISBN 9780861542307 This book is both pot-boiled from the author’s previous books and an outdated feminist moan about the exclusion of women from male-written
Fortean Times9 min read
Mermaids And Manimals Of Suffolk
In the Ipswich Journal of 27 May 1721 there appeared the following plea from a letter writer: “Pray resolve me in your next Week’s Paper, whether there be any such Thing in Nature as Mermen and Mermaids, I being not yet satisfied in the verity thereo
Fortean Times6 min read
Fortean Follow-ups
Last year, Harvard Astronomer Avi Loeb led a controversial expedition to the waters off Papua New Guinea in search of what he believes to be a meteorite from outside the Solar System that could be the remains of technology from an alien civilisation.
Fortean Times1 min read
Coming Next Month
A HAUNTING IN VENICE A FORTEAN TOUR OF THE FLOATING CITY THE HACKNEY MOLE MAN AND OTHER TALES FROM THE NEW MILLENNIUM + LATIN AMERICAN HORROR, CURIOUS CALLING CARDS, JOE ROGAN VS BAPHOMET AND MUCH MORE… FORTEAN TIMES 445 ON SALE 16 MAY 2024 ■
Fortean Times2 min read
Television
I tend to steer clear of conspiracy-themed TV programmes. Even fictional ones (looking at you, X-Files) can easily end up digging colossal holes that can only be repaired by digging even bigger holes; so series purporting to be factual often entangle
Fortean Times2 min read
Peculiar Postcards
43. THE TRIPLET GIANT AND OTHERS In February 2020, I was informed by a Scandinavian reader of The Lion Boy and other Medical Curiosities that a number of postcards featuring human curiosities were offered for sale on the Swedish internet auction site
Fortean Times4 min read
Fortean Traveller
140. Overtoun House and Bridge After reading about the mysterious “dog suicide bridge” in Scotland (see FT196:4, 331:22), I decided to visit the place myself. Overtoun Bridge became infamous when the media reported that hundreds of dogs had leapt fro
Fortean Times6 min read
Monolithomania!
Following the mysterious appearance of a 10ft (3m) tall shining steel obelisk in a remote location in a Utah canyon in 2020, found by ranchers carrying out an aerial count of the region’s bighorn sheep, the world seemed briefly seized by monolithoman
Fortean Times4 min read
Future Shock
Dir Mitch Jenkins, UK 2023 On digital platforms A Million Days is a British sci-fi drama that belies its limitations to produce an engrossing and complex chamber piece. The Earth is experiencing a catastrophic environmental disaster and a ‘Space Seed
Fortean Times1 min read
Fortean Times
EDITOR DAVID SUTTON drsutton@forteantimes.com FOUNDING EDITORS BOB RICKARD (ft-bobrickard@mail.com) PAUL SIEVEKING (sieveking@forteantimes.com) NEWS EDITOR IAN SIMMONS (simmons@forteantimes.com) ART DIRECTOR ETIENNE GILFILLAN (etienne@forteantimes.co
Fortean Times9 min read
It Happened to Me…
On the evening of 10 October 2023, my son and daughter and I were eating dinner in a local Mexican restaurant in Tucson, Arizona. We were eating soft food with the usual restaurant utensils. I told my son the anecdote about how Uri Geller got a woman
Fortean Times3 min read
Alien Zoo
During mid-January 2024, the media carried a number of reports appertaining to a very large decomposed carcase discovered and photographed on a remote beach at Hayburn Wyke, near Scarborough in North Yorkshire, by rockpool explorer Caroline Pindar. E
Fortean Times6 min read
Archæology
Last September, the head of a marble statue of Alexander the Great was unearthed amid the ruins of a second century AD theatre at Konuralp, north of the city of Düzce near Turkey’s northwest coast. Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, so the statue ma
Fortean Times8 min read
New Lands And Other Worlds
“My subject is New Lands – things, objects, beings that are, or may be, the data of coming expansions.”1 Charles Fort’s second book appeared in 1923 and was a product of his time in his own new land – Great Britain. He and Anna sailed on the RMS Olym
Fortean Times4 min read
Tracks And Ticks
In an event reminiscent of the famous “Devil’s hoofprints” mystery of 1855 (see FT70:65), Janice Heidt-Dubray was visiting a friend’s house in Prince Albert, Canada, shortly after a light snow fall, when she noticed a set of bizarre tracks crossing t
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