Fortean Times

One of Britain’s legendary trees was felled by winter storms in December. The Hardy Tree in St Pancras Churchyard in central London was an ash tree surrounded by close-packed gravestones uprooted from elsewhere in the churchyard. It gets its name fro

The ancient Egyptians not only mummified pharaohs and notable individuals – oh, and cats – but crocodiles too. In fact, hundreds of them. Ten unspoiled recent finds, dating to the 5th century BC, have been discovered in an undisturbed rock tomb at Qu

The world’s oldest person, Lucile Randon, a nun also known as Sister André died in her sleep on 17 January at her nursing home in Toulon, France, at the age of 118 years, 340 days. She became the world’s oldest person after the death last April of Ka

Bit of a change here, though classically underpinned. Idea inspired by Julian Barnes’s latest (at the time of writing) novel Elizabeth Finch (2022). The middle part is devoted to Julian the Apostate, last pagan emperor of Rome. Near the end, the narr

Scotland has a longstanding tradition of spontaneous psychic experiences – so-called ‘second sight’ – and of mediumship. Lest we imagine such communications from the Beyond are things of the past, the story of Ann Treherne of Edinburgh over more than

In January a couple of videos went viral claiming to show “electric rocks” discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One showed a closeup of someone touching the two rocks together to generate an electric spark, while the second showed him conn

It’s a myth that you should squash your plastic bottles before putting them out for recycling. Or – it’s a myth that you shouldn’t. This is a myth about a myth – and also about the myth being a myth. Years ago, when we first started recycling cans an

“The rookery abandoned? Why there’ll be a death in that family before too long!” For generations it has been believed in Britain that rooks leaving their nests portend a death in the family of the garden or grounds where they live: rooks are social b

Growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, various tangible risks were waiting to ambush my adolescent self. Fortunately, there were numerous public information films aimed specifically at children to warn us of these dangers (see FT354:30-37, 395

“Ullstair University was a centre for esoteric further education, located above the basalt northern coast of a Parallel Ireland of 1987. Her students were free to explore the occult mysteries of people and place, without fear of the prosaic, physical

TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE EDITOR AT [email protected] Dir M Night Shyamalan, US 2023 On UK release M Night Shyamalan’s career has been one of great hits and equally substantial misses; unfortunately he’s had more of the latter in rec

Perched on a hill in a village in Mount Lebanon, Al Aamirya Hotel stands witness to prosperous times this country once knew. Built in the Fifties by Qaysar Amer, a renowned fireworks and toys merchant, the building comprised a hotel, administrative q

Susan McGlone was born in Glasgow in 1847, the daughter of poor working people; she had a younger brother and sister. After rudimentary schooling, Susie, as she was called, became a mill worker, but she did not like it much. Some time in the 1870s, s