Fortean Times

Dr Donald Omand, the Church of England vicar who in 1973 famously attempted to exorcise Loch Ness, has put in only fleeting appearances in these pages over the years, so we’re particularly pleased to present – at long last – a full-length article (p.

For all the “endless summer” imagery that surrounds them, The Beach Boys are a year-round band whose music offers something for every stage of life. Record Collector Presents… The Beach Boys reveals exactly why that’s the case. Through in-depth inter

New evidence has emerged about the photos of a UFO shadowed by a Harrier jet over Scotland from a friend of the two witnesses. Retired chef Richard Grieve claims he worked alongside the two young men who saw and photographed the diamond-shaped object

Since 1995, Tim Skelly from Ottawa in Canada has been restoring furniture as a hobby. Over the years he has found all sorts of things left in drawers and cupboards, but with a gentleman’s dresser he bought at auction he discovered something he’d neve

When their cat Dexter vanished from their home in Ledbury, Hertfordshire, Geoff and Shannon Smith spent weeks searching the town for her, but with no luck. Four months later they got a call from a vet in Orkney, more than 600 miles (966km) away, who

On 11 February, bricklayer Giovanni Barecca from Altavilla Milicia, near Palermo, Sicily, called the police and said: “Come and get me. I have killed my family.” Barecca, 54, confessed to killing his wife Antonella, 40, and their sons Emmanuel, five,

From the archives of FORTEAN TIMES, the world’s foremost journal of strange phenomena, comes a new collection exploring the fascinating world of UFOs. The perfect starting point for anyone wanting to get up to speed on the ever-changing landscape of

Two key astronomical events took place this year, and both hold significance for Stonehenge. First, the obvious one: the Sun’s Midsummer Solstice (the Longest Day), when it rises its furthest north and nowadays revellers and neo-Druids famously gathe

‘A Healthy City Loathes Athletes’ Thus Galen (Protrepticus 11), echoing a famous dramatic diatribe by Euripides who did not however scruple to prostitute his pen in celebration of Alcibiades’s chariot race victories. Should here be said that it was t

Back in 2007, a Fortean Times reviewer of the book The Haunted (2007) by Owen Davies asked if we needed another book on historic ghosts. One might as well ask, do we need another translation of Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey, or another study of Shakespear

James David Russell, 39, was arrested for the murder of David Flaget, 70, after Flaget’s remains were found upside down in the passenger seat of his car outside Russell’s home in Clark Fort, Idaho. On further investigation, police found that parts of

In a world where Noam Chomsky has become an avatar of Schroedinger’s cat, or a straight man to Mark Twain, anything might happen. But then, in a world where Nigel Farage is seen by some as a looming saviour, anything is probably obliged to happen. Gi

Charles Fort’s birthplace of Albany, NewYork, is in the grip of a foul and untraceable odour that has been causing residents to gag since September last year. Described as a horrible combination of urine and flatulence, the smell appears to be strong

John Broomhead, 68, from Aintree, Merseyside, regularly takes his caravan toTansley in Derbyshire for holidays with his partner and recently decided to go public with a startling experience he had there in July 2022. The couple would frequently host

Hampshire, and particularly the New Forest area, remains in the grip of a grisly plague of allegedly occult animal killing and mutilation. In 2019 St Peter’s Church in Bramshaw had “Satanic” symbols painted on its door and mutilated animal corpses re

We British live under a constitution so archaic that we are not even citizens – we are mere subjects of the crown. Unusually for this column, the truth in this case is incontrovertible: we’re citizens. Furthermore, we’re not subjects. (By “we,” I’m r

Roger Corman, who has died at 98, blazed a trail through cinema as “King of the B-Movie”, first as a director, then as a producer, churning out cheap, fast and lurid quickies with titles like Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Caveman, Caged Heat!,

British and Irish folklore are choc-a-bloc with references to fairies appearing as marching soldiers. Take, for instance, this Victorian account from Mellor Moor (Lancashire): “On other occasions the fairies are supposed to exhibit themselves in mili

As we find ourselves once again in a world full of conflict, we might wonder whether humanity has a death wish. The West had grown worryingly complacent about the possibility of war, and our recent reality check has made me ponder what link it might

The Daily Sport ran an article about me once. They sent me a mock-up before it went to press, and I had two notes of crucial feedback. Firstly, the headline read: “Possessed by Demons… we all have a fear of that happening to us”. I don’t know anybody

One night, while high on peyote, the American beat poet Allen Ginsberg met a demon. Gazing at the tower-like façade of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco from his own hotel window, Ginsberg suddenly saw it transform into a grinning, monstro

Sega’s unusual 1992 Mega Drive game ECCO the Dolphin was actually based in part on the cetacean-bothering ways of John Lilly. The game’s main creator at Sega of America, Ed Annunziata, spent time in his youth reading Lilly’s weird works, specifically

Britain’s pre-eminent scientific group, the Royal Society, has recently placed scans of some 250,000 documents and illustrations online (https://makingscience.royalsociety.org/) These date from 1660 onwards and cover a wide spectrum of topics includi

My article on ‘Middle-Aged Mulder Syndrome’ (FT415:58-59) seems to have touched a nerve. The response has been two follow-up articles in Fortean Times and some lively correspondence. Now that the dust has settled, I thought I’d review these responses

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

Why Our Minds Conjure the Paraanormal Chris French MIT Press 2024 Hb, 374pp, £30, ISBN 9780262048361 Chris French, emeritus professor of anomalistic psychology at Goldsmiths College, London, spent much of his academic career investigating everything

A True Story of a Fake Place Justin McHenry Feral House 2024 Pb, 197pp, £17.99, ISBN 9781627311472 The now-vanished continent of Lemuria has been a fixture in fringe and esoteric writing since the 19th century. Over that time, it’s featured in writin

“It’s summer hauntology,” says Adam S Leslie. “It’s sun-faded Lyons Maid ice cream menus, old road maps that seem to change whenever you look at them, a brass band on the green. And an ice cream van that you can never quite glimpse, chiming out creep

Dir Joshua John Miller, US 2024 On general release If there is one subgenre that has ruled horror in recent years, it is that of the religious horror, as new entries find their way onto streaming services and cinema screens with ever-increasing frequ

From a sceptical investigator’s point of view, I think the most fruitful alien abduction cases to consider would be those involving multiple witnesses, and especially those involving young children. When the children are then interviewed again years

For a number of years during the early to mid-1990s, my family would holiday in Broadhaven, South Wales, (which unbe-knownst to me at the time had been the focal point of a high-profile UFO case in the 1970s) and we would on each occasion take a walk

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John William Stephens was born in Attleborough, Warwickshire, in or around the year 1860. In December 1877, he enlisted in the Royal Artillery at Portsmouth, serving abroad in Mauritius and Natal. During the Anglo-Zulu war, Stephens served in the Gat

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