Paranormal Magazine issue 37

Paranormal CONTENTS

Exploring the world of the unexplained

IBE R C S B SU VE &2 ISSSUA £34.98 ES FOR 1 16.02 re details saving £ r mo 9 fo See page

Paranormal Magazine//Issue 37 14 EYE-OPENER

Clouds that look like flying saucers, from the FORTEAN PICTURE LIBRARY

16 PHANTOMS IN THE FOOTLIGHTS

Ghosts, including those of many celebrities, are encountered as the curtain is raised on haunted theatres around the UK by JOHN STOKER

22 NIGHTMARES OF THE DREAMTIME

Weird spectral entities in the lore of native Australians may not all be figments of the imagination, writes DR KARL SHUKER

26 THE ONE SIGHTING THAT STILL PUZZLES ME

Resurrecting a mystery from the early days of the UFO research carried out by top investigator PHILIP MANTLE

28 THE DAEMON INSIDE US ALL

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PHANTOMS IN THE FOOTLIGHTS

by JOHN STOKER

Several scientific disciplines are brought together to explain many aspects of the paranormal, in an absorbing new theory by ANTHONY PEAKE

34 GORY STORIES

That most durable of legends from British ghostlore, the indelible bloodstain, is revisited by THE EDITOR

36 THE DARK SIDE OF COINCIDENCE

When is a coincidence incredible enough to be considered paranormal? Clusters of bizarre – and horrible – coincidences are compiled by JERRY GLOVER

40 WHO ARE THE ABDUCTORS? ‘Alien’ abductions have been reported for millennia.

The history of such events and theories as to their perpetrators are considered by NIGEL WATSON

46 MY TOP TEN GHOST HUNTS

Ten of the most fascinating, and frequently unnerving, paranormal investigations carried out

by DARREN RITSON

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THE DAEMON INSIDE US ALL

by ANTHONY PEAKE

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WHO ARE THE ABDUCTORS?

by NIGEL WATSON

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TOP TEN GHOST HUNTS chosen by DARREN RITSON

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HOW TO HUNT MONSTERS

by RICHARD FREEMAN

52 SCREAMING SKULLS

Among the eeriest and most dramatic of hauntings, the tales behind these ghastly objects often defy assumptions, explains JANET BORD

58 HOW TO HUNT MONSTERS

Excellent advice on organizing your own cryptozoological expedition courtesy of experienced monster hunter RICHARD FREEMAN

64 THE DOOM THAT CAME TO THOMAS PARKES

A first-hand account of the fate that befell a young man who dabbled with dark forces in the 17th century is this month’s Unearthed

66 FEAR AND LOTHIAN

Haunted castles, grim graveyards, terrifying tunnels and an attack by alien robots feature in the startling stories collected from Edinburgh and Central Scotland by JAMIE ANDREW

REGULARS:

5 Editorial//6 News//9 Subscriptions//12 Sightings//45 Good Fear Guide//72 Investigation//74 Experiences//76 Strange Goings-On//79 Competitions//80 Reviews//82 Bookend

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EDITORIAL

‘Journeys into cyberspace’

General Enquiries Jazz Publishing, The Old School, Higher Kinnerton, Chester, CH4 9AJ, UK. Tel: 01244 663400 • Fax: 01244 660611 info@jazzpublishing.co.uk Editor Richard Holland editor@paranormalmagazine.co.uk Telephone: 01244 663400 GRAPHIC DESIGN Lindsay Burdekin lindsay.burdekin@jazzpublishing.co.uk Telephone: 01244 663400 Ext. 226 WEB EDITOR Fergus McShane fergus.mcshane@jazzpublishing.co.uk Telephone: 01244 663400 Ext. 232 Contributors Jamie Andrew, Janet Bord, Mark Fraser, Richard Freeman, Jerry Glover, Philip Mantle, Fergus McShane, Anthony Peake, Adrian Perkins, Darren Ritson, Dr Karl Shuker, John Stoker, David Valjalo, Nigel Watson, Dave Wood.

Production Manager Justine Hart justine@jazzpublishing.co.uk Telephone: 01244 663400 Ext. 235 Accounts Emma McCrindle accounts@jazzpublishing.co.uk Telephone: 01244 663400 Ext. 207 Advertising EXECUTIVE Richard Davenport richard.davenport@paranormalmagazine.co.uk Telephone: 01244 663400 Ext. 304 Advertising MANAGER Shelley Curry shelley.curry@jazzpublishing.co.uk Telephone: 01244 663400 Ext. 303 Administration Jan Schofield – jan@jazzpublishing.co.uk Telephone: 01244 663400 Ext. 219 Katy Cuffin – katy@jazzpublishing.co.uk Telephone: 01244 663400 Ext 237 Pam Coleman – accounts@jazzpublishing.co.uk Telephone: 01244 663400 Ext. 215 Subscription Enquiries Telephone: 01778 392468 subscriptions@warnersgroup.co.uk Publisher David Gamble – david@jazzpublishing.co.uk Telephone: 01244 663400 MANAGING DIRECTOR Stuart Mears – stuart@jazzpublishing.co.uk Telephone: 01244 663400 Printing Warners (Midlands) Ltd. DISTRIBUTION Jamie Wren – jamie.wren@mmcltd.co.uk Telephone: 01483 211222

Having trouble finding Paranormal Magazine in your newsagent?

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Reproduction of any matter contained in Paranormal Magazine is prohibited without prior permission.

Visit us online and join the community:

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Paranormal magazine has now gone viral. Don’t worry, that’s not another statement about Swine Flu. These pages should infect you with nothing more harmful than an enthusiasm for spookiness.

Anyway, they’re far too glossy to sneeze into.

No, ‘viral’ is one of those lovely buzzwords we all adore so much. In our case it means that we’ve been putting ourselves about a bit – out there in the ether, better known as the worldwide web. We’ve created numerous social sites and platforms in the hope of meeting you all, virtually at least.

We have created a Facebook group, a MySpace profile and a presence on MyPara, a networking site exclusively for those interested in the weird and spooky. We also have a Twitter profile. And we have joined lots of Forums so that we can follow trends in interest, learn what’s generating the most chat and join the debates.

By ‘we’ I mean myself, the Paranormal publisher David Gamble and web editor Fergus McShane.

On our various profiles we’ll announce each new issue as it appears on the shelves and keep you up-to-date with any offers, competitions and other advantageous bits of news. You’ll be able to meet (or at least ‘add’) not only the Paranormal staff but also many of our writers and other contributors.

In addition, as the mood takes us, we will

Paranormal

Links

Tell the editor about your own experience with the paranormal.

Email editor@paranormalmagazine.co.uk or write to Richard Holland, The Editor, Paranormal, Jazz Publishing, The Old School, Higher Kinnerton, Chester CH4 9AJ

comment on any high (or low) points in the creation of the magazine, anything from ‘That’s the 14th time today I’ve typed paranomral instead of paranormal’ to ‘Hurrah, the Greys have chosen us as the first magazine to carry out an exclusive

‘As the mood takes us, we will comment on any high (or low) points in the creation of the magazine.’ interview about their invasion’ or ‘Oh no, there’s so much supernaturalism in the office that it’s opened a gateway to another dimension and the Dread Cthulhu has eaten all our biscuits’.

Well, maybe not quite that interesting but we’ll do our best.

There’s another joy of the web you should know about. If you live in the UK and are having trouble locating a copy of Paranormal in your local newsagent (or are just really, really lazy), then you’ll be pleased to know that you can purchase a copy with no additional postage charge from our main website, www. paranormalmagazine.co.uk. Or if you prefer, you can purchase a digital version of the magazine on www.zinio.com (just type ‘paranormal’ into the search engine on Zinio’s homepage).

It’s an amazing place is cyberspace. We look forward to meeting you there.

www.paranormalmagazine.co.uk www.myspace.com/paranormalmagazine www.mypara.net/profile/paranormalmagazine twitter.com/ParanormalZine www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=23119295949&ref=mf

Richard Holland, Editor

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JULY 2009 //// www.paranormalmagazine.co.uk Paranormal Magazine

Paranormal News The latest from the world of weird

Area 51: It’s all true! (Well, nearly all) Former commander and others confirm existence of hi-tech secret spy-planes and reverse engineering at UFO researchers’ favourite airbase.

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ive insiders at the USA’s most notorious ‘secret’ base have spoken out. In an interview with reporter Annie Jacobsen in the LA Times, former personnel, including a commander, at Area 51 in the Nevada desert have confirmed that, yes, top secret aircraft were tested there and, yes, much of the technology was back engineered.

Declassification procedures instigated by the CIA have allowed the five men – including Colonel Hugh ‘Slip’ Slater, commander of the Area 51 base in the 1960s – to talk to the press. The other men interviewed by Jacobsen are radar expert Edward Lovick; Kenneth Collins, a CIA experimental test pilot; Harry Martin, who was in charge of spy-plane fuel; and Thornton ‘T.D.’ Barnes, who was an Area 51 special-projects engineer. The men are now aged between 72 and 90.

Despite the US Government refusing to acknowledge the existence of the Area 51 military base for decades, thousands of UFO buffs and crowds of the generally curious thronged to the site’s perimeter in the hope of spotting aerial acrobatics frequently reported above it. Many believe the UFOs seen here were planes built using technology retrieved from crashed spacecraft.

Barnes confirmed reverse engineering did indeed take place, but it wasn’t from extraterrestrial sources.

Paranormal

www.jonathan-e.com

Shorts

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He said: ‘We did reverse engineer a lot of foreign technology, including the Soviet MiG fighter jet out at the Area.’

Legends of an underground tunnel also have some basis in fact. Barnes said he worked on a nuclear-rocket program called Project NERVA, inside underground chambers.

Collins told the LA Times of his topsecret missions. For example, on May 24, 1963, he flew a spy-plane codenamed OXCART, built by Lockheed, out of Area 51. Over Utah something went wrong and he had to eject into a field of weeds as the aircraft crashed.

Helpful locals came to assist – with the secret aircraft’s canopy on the back of their pick-up!

‘I told them not to go near the aircraft,’ said Collins. ‘I said it had a nuclear weapon on-board.’

The unnerved men drove Collins to the local highway patrol and the CIA later covered up the accident, disguising at as involving a generic Air Force plane, the F-105. No wonder Area 51 got such a sinister reputation!

Oddly enough, the reporter failed to ask any direct questions about alien technology at Area 51, but, as Roger Marsh at Examiner.com pointed out, ‘those projects are likely still classified top secret’.

[SOURCE: The LA Times / Examiner.com, Apr 10]

RECORD BREAKER

An event described as the ‘World’s Longest Ghost Hunt’ is to take place at a notoriously haunted castle. Haunted Happenings has arranged the ghost hunt to take place at Tutbury Castle, Staffordshire, from 11pm on Friday, June 19, to 1am on Monday, June 22.

Vigils will be taking place in key locations continuously throughout the castle. Haunted Happenings’ team of paranormal investigators and mediums will be on hand to help the public take part in the overnight vigils and there will be lots of activities for the family during the daylight hours.

More from: www.hauntedhappenings.co.uk

REBEL ROBOT

Have sci-fi’s predictions of a revolt of the robots already begun? A Swedish company has just received a heavy fine after a machine apparently attacked a human co-worker.

The man was trying to fix the robot, which is used to lift heavy rocks, and thought he had disconnected its power supply.

But when he approached the machine, it turned on, and grabbed his head. He tried to fight it off but suffered four broken limbs and nearly lost his life in the assault.

As far as we know, the robot was not prosecuted.

[SOURCE: PopSci.com, Apr 29]

LADY GRILLER

More than 100 people have flocked to a restaurant in Calexico, on the CaliforniaMexico border, to adore a sacred griddle.

Restaurant manager Brenda Martinez noticed a likeness of the Virgin Mary in the griddle’s grease and charcoal while cleaning it.

Mrs Martinez has now placed the griddle in a specially made shrine in a storage room, where crowds of the faithful have come to gaze upon it. Among the worshippers was a group of masked Mexican wrestlers who were passing through Calexico. One, known as Mr Tempest, was quoted as saying: ‘This is amazing. It’s a true miracle.’

[Associated Press, Apr 30]

Own a haunted house? They’ve got it covered.

A US-based insurance company has introduced a new policy – haunted house insurance. What are you insured against, you may ask: cover for poltergeist damage, time off work due to spirit possession? Well, no. InPro Insurance Group’s new policy is to cover the kind of haunted houses you get at fairgrounds. It has been designed for ‘the unique property and equipment needs of these themed attractions’. [SOURCE: PR Leap, Apr 10]

Paranormal News

Mailbox for the litter people A member of the Isle of Man government has requested a new post box – for fairies.

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an, like all the Celtic parts of the UK, has strong traditions of fairies (known as Fenoderee in Manx). A wellknown tourist spot on the island is ‘The Fairy Bridge’ where traditionally those passing over should offer a greeting to the Little People in order to avoid bad luck.

It has also become the tradition to pin messages to the fairies on a tree beside the bridge. Over the years the tree has become bedecked with all manner of tat, including ribbons, key rings, a hat, flags, dolls, scarves – and also a red bra and a car’s wing mirror.

Now the work of the ‘litter people’ has spread to other trees and over the road, creating an eyesore and a distraction to motorists.

Lin Willams, who runs The Fairy Shop, in Duke Street, Douglas, suggested the letter box idea after growing dismay at the ‘horrendous’ appearance of the tree. People would be able to use it to post their letters to the Fenoderee in a tidy fashion, she said.

Mr Callister, a member of the Manx Parliament, the Tynwald, agrees.

HEAD CASE

Goodbye ‘Face on Mars’, hello ‘Martian skull’. A panoramic NASA camera called Spirit has snapped an object on the Red Planet that appears to show eye sockets and a nose.

The internet is a abuzz with speculation.

One UFO forum user stated: ‘The skull is 15cm wide, with binocular eyes 5cm apart. The cranial capacity is approximately 1400cc. There appears to be a narrow pointed small mouth, so this creature most likely is a carnivore.’

Another, less seriously, pointed out that the boulder ‘shows ample structure to support the musculature of antennae, although none are visible in this view’.

[SOURCE: Daily Telegraph, May 1]

LOST WORLD

Whatever wiped out the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago, it looks like some escaped their fate on an isolated plateau, just like in Conan Doyle’s famous novel The Lost World.

Palaeontologists say a ‘pocket’ of dinosaurs survived in a remote area of what is now New Mexico and Colorado. Doyle set his story in South America: the desert landscape of Mexico suggests another yarn of dinosaur survival, the Ray Harryhausen movie Valley of Gwangi.

Alas, these monsters only survived for another half-a-million years – if the findings are accurate. More work is needed.

[SOURCE: National Geographic, May 1]

CREEPY CAMPUS

The University of Singapore has posted warnings around the campus telling students to beware of headless Japanese soldiers marching up and down corridors.

The notice further advises that many people have ‘bumped into a ghost in white wandering around the upper quadrant of the building’, that chairs and tables have been thrown around rooms by unseen hands, lights keep switching on and off and the lift in the zoology department has been going up and down on its own.

Founder of Asia Paranormal Investigators, Charles Goh, has been called in to help.

‘I think a letter box would be a good idea,’ he said. ‘The historical interest in fairies is deeply embedded in the psyche of the people here.

People really believe this — they are convinced that if they say something rude to them, something terrible will happen.’

Mr Callister said he had personal experience of this. He described how, in his younger days, he made a scornful comment about there being no such thing as fairies when he passed over the bridge on his motorbike. Moments later, he said, the exhaust fell off.

Ms Williams already runs her own fairy post service, sending hundreds of fairy-dust sprinkled letters each year to people all over the world. So concerned is she with the state of this magical place that she has offered to reply to every letter herself.

Another idea is that the Manx Tourist Board collect the letters and send out a standard reply – together with a brochure.

Tourism director Geoff Le Page didn’t rule out the idea.

He said: ‘The Fairy Bridge has an iconic place in Isle of Man heritage and people enjoy the experience of communicating with the Little People.’

[SOURCE: IOMtoday May 5]

HE AIN’T HEAVY

Gavin Hyatt, 30, of Oxfordshire, found a lump on his abdomen. It’s a cyst, said one doctor; it’s an ingrown hair, said another.

An operation to remove the 4cm long growth was cancelled, but it started bleeding – and a parasitic twin emerged.

‘It was like something out of Alien,’ Mr Hyatt’s GP (allegedly) told The Sun newspaper. He explained the twin brother had died in the womb early in their mother’s pregnancy and had become absorbed into Mr Hyatt’s body.

Mr Hyatt said: ‘I have him in a jar at home and I call him Little Gav.’ [SOURCE: The Sun, May 9]

[SOURCE: Sin Chew Daily, April 23]

More Paranormal News B

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Paranormal News

Testing centres call for psychics Government petitioned to crack down on fakes and licence those who prove their abilities

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campaign has been launched to weed out fake mediums and other psychics from the paranormal community.

Dave Sadler, of the UK-based Unknown Phenomena Investigation Association, has started a petition and an accompanying Facebook group to gain support.

The UPIA are calling on the UK government to set up testing centres where fee-charging psychics would have to demonstrate that their abilities are genuine in front of psychologists and stage magicians experienced in spotting

techniques used by frauds. Those who fail or who refuse to take part in the tests should be banned from practicing, say the UPIA, with the rest being licenced.

Mr Sadler said: ‘Anyone who is interested in psychic phenomena has to be aware of the possibility of frauds, and while psychic readings used to be largely confined to musty Gypsy Rose-style parlours at holiday resorts, modern technology has brought the practice to a broader audience.

‘The Office of Fair Trading considers fake psychic readings to be one of the biggest scams in Britain, raking in about £140m per year.

Elderly people are particularly vulnerable. There are tragic stories of people being robbed of their life savings by psychic scam artists in the twilight of their lives. Women are also victimised disproportionately. According to the OFT, 70% of all psychic scam victims are women.’

Mr Sadler says the fraudsters will rely on their victims to supply cues and clues about their life, loved ones and expectations, with experienced perpetrators able to read reactions and use small talk to draw out information. The worst examples of their kind will use fear to extort more money by making claims of coming catastrophes or curses having been placed on the punter.

The campaign is also targeting pseudopsychic telephone hotlines in which actors are sometimes recruited to pose as psychics, or use computer software to tell your fortune, and the growing number appearing on the internet.

Until recently, in extreme cases, con artists posing as psychics or mediums could be prosecuted under the Fraudulent Mediums Act

1951. In 2008, the Fraudulent Mediums Act was abolished, and the problem of fake psychics is dealt with now as a fair trading issue rather than a criminal matter. Under an EU directive, all psychics now operating in Britain are required to post a disclaimer on their business premises, stating that the service is supplied for entertainment purposes only. The worst offenders advertising their services in Britain are registered outside the EU, however.

‘Even in the realm of the paranormal, you still have consumer rights,’ said Mr Sadler. ‘If you approach a psychic, it is usually in search of peace of mind in response to some issue which is troubling you, whether that be the loss of a loved one or concerns about the way your life is heading. There are people out there who can give you the experience you’re looking for. You just need to be wary, and learn to avoid the sharks.’

While Paranormal Magazine fully supports the campaign to expose fakes, especially those using intimidation techniques, we think it unlikely the Government would consider issuing licences to psychics considered ‘genuine’. Such licences would represent an official endorsement in belief in the spirit world and the paranormal, something the Government is hardly likely to agree to.

The UPIA admits ‘there are no experts in the field of paranormal investigation’, so perhaps the emphasis of the tests suggested by the petition would be to expose obvious fakes using ‘cold reading’ and other techniques about whom complaints had already been made.

The UPIA Psychic Testing petition can be viewed at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ PsychicTesting. For more information visit www.upia.co.uk

Farewell to famous figures in the paranormal world Two leading lights in the world of the unexplained have been extinguished. John Michell, whose books became the Bibles of the New Age in Britain, has died of lung cancer at the age of 76.

American ghost-hunter Hans Holzer has died at the age of 89.

John Michell’s death coincided with the 40th anniversary of the publication of his most famous book, The View Over Atlantis. Michell launched his writing career with The Flying Saucer Vision in 1967 but two years later the publication of The View Over Atlantis galvanized the ‘hippy movement’ in Britain with its visionary expression of a sacred landscape underscored by a wide-ranging and careful scholarship.

Michell developed and popularized the concept of the ley-line and encouraged the view that prehistoric man was far from uncivilized, but rather possessed a science and spirituality we could scarcely guess at but who had left clues behind in the form of a network of ancient monuments. His suggestion that this ancient belief system had survived down the ages

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through, for example, the siting of Christian churches was also inspiring.

Michell put Glastonbury on the map; it would not be the New Age pilgrimage destination it is today, and there would be no Glastonbury Festival, without him. His ideas proved so inspiring that he found himself befriended by such diverse people as members of Royalty and the Rolling Stones. Michell’s influence on other writers and the counterculture is incalculable.

Hans Holzer wrote more than 140 books on the paranormal and his investigations took him all over the world. He carried out his most famous investigation in 1977 on Long Island, together with the medium Ethel JohnsonMeyers. The case became internationally famous as The Amityville Horror.

Hans Holzer was born in Vienna.

His interest in the paranormal was inspired by an Uncle Henry, who told him ghost stories and encouraged him to offer greetings to the fairies he said lived in a tree in his garden. He earned a master’s degree in comparative religion, a doctorate in parapsychology at the London College of Applied Science, and went on to teach parapsychology at the New York Institute of Technology.

Describing himself as ‘a scientific investigator of the paranormal’, he also claimed to have fought at Glencoe in a past life and was a Wiccan high priest.

[SOURCE: The Guardian, May 6, The New York Times, April 29]

Paranormal News

Mind control – for the home Computers can read our brains to remotely click switches round the house

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ew technology could allow us to become our own remote controls, turning on the TV and lights around our homes or locking and unlocking our car doors through the power of thought alone.

The Brain-Computer Interface technology was demonstrated at a convention in Hannover in March.

‘The BCI lets people turn on lights, change channels on the TV or open doors just by thinking about it,’ explains Christoph Guger, the

CEO of Austrian medical engineering company g.tec that developed the application.

It’s early days but electroencephalogram (EEG) equipment has been used to identify the distinctive patterns of brain activity produced when people imagine tasks like flicking a light switch or turning up the radio. The implications for the disabled, as well as lazy couch potatoes, are obvious.

If that wasn’t enough, g.tec has developed applications in which people can type with their thoughts and control a small robot by commanding it with their minds. 82% of test

subjects using the type-by-thought process achieve 100% accuracy. Guger says he is now up to the same speed as typing with one finger.

Guger initially expects BCI technology to first find favour in the medical sector, for example by helping people getting over a stroke to regain use of their limbs by ‘willing’ virtual limbs to move. However, he believes BCI could become common in the domestic environment, too. Having been tested in virtual reality, BCI will soon be deployed in a real ‘smart home’ fitted with appropriate electronic controls.

[SOURCE: ScienceDaily, May 11]

Space travel opening up Why wait for the aliens to come to Earth when you can get out there and meet them yourself?

President Barack Obama is opening up the space-ways to the private sector. The shuttle has been put out to pasture and its controversial and highly expensive replacement, the Constellation, is on the backburner. In his first Nasa budget, President Obama has revealed that the spare funds will be used to help the private sector develop vehicles that can carry humans and cargo into space.

This may mean that in the not-too-distant future civilians will have the chance to journey into space, including, presumably, wealthy UFO spotters – although the 2010 budget puts the emphasis firmly on transporting Nasa personnel.

Last year Nasa agreed contracts with two private companies, Orbital Sciences and Space X, to develop cargo vehicles for missions in low Earth orbit. It also launched a competition for a commercial vehicle that could transport supplies to the International Space Station.

But without help from private companies, Nasa may be forced to buy its astronauts seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft or on vehicles being developed by other nations, including China and India. If the Agency fails to reach any agreements, it may not be able to bus its people to the International Space Station.

As another way of raising money, Nasa is also considering renting out space on board the International Space Station to commercial companies so they can carry out research in a microgravity environment.

And that’s just a step away from renting out space to private citizens, too.

Mystic piggy banks Magical wild boars kept at a Malaysian temple are attracting thousands of pilgrims who believe they are able to bring home the bacon. Swine flu fears are nowhere in evidence as Hindus from as far away as Singapore and Thailand queue up to feed and touch the paranormal porkers at the temple in Perak.

The boars, which started to appear near the temple about a year ago, are believed to be able to bring good luck – including lottery wins.

‘People come to offer food and then rub a four-digit number on a boar’s body to have better chances of striking it big,’ explained Ah Tong, a temple volunteer.

One visitor to the temple, when questioned about the supposed swine flu threat, said she had no qualms about touching the boars.

‘People say what is happening here is a miracle, so it is okay,’ she said.

[SOURCE: Reuters, May 5]

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[SOURCE: Daily Telegraph, May 9]

sightings GHOSTS FILM CREW SPOOKED: A film crew apparently became affected by some paranormal presence while filming a séance on infamous Pendle Hill in Lancashire. TV historian and presenter Simon Entwistle said the team got a fright ‘when three of them became obsessed, distressed and violently ill’. One apparently fit horse also became lame. Famous for its witch trials, Pendle Hill has a reputation of being one of England’s most ‘evil’ places. [SOURCE: Lancashire Telegraph April 9] HAROLD’S BACK: The ghost of Sarah Siddons is said to haunt Lancaster’s Grand Theatre, and it was she who the Clitheroe Paranormal Investigators (CPI) thought they would contact during a séance on the premises. Lydia Jenkins said: ‘A member of the group managed to contact one ghost, Harold. It made the room’s temperature drop by five degrees in the space of around seven minutes, in a room with about 22 people. Harold communicated with other members of CPI and told them that he was part of a travelling group of actors from the south and they were stopping at the Midland Hotel and the year was 1937.’ Orbs have also been photographed on the premises.

[SOURCE: Lancashire Evening Post, April 23] SC-AYRSHIRE: Security officers at the Kamshill housing development near Kilmarnock are being spooked by strange noises in the night, eerie voices and a figure in white. A phantom dog with red glowing eyes has been spotted, doors mysteriously opening and shutting and disembodied voices have been heard. Meanwhile in Galston a family moving into new premises have noticed strange things over the last few days. Objects from upstairs have mysteriously moved downstairs, footsteps in the empty corridor have been heard and their baby talks to someone who is not there! An ‘old style preacher’ has also been seen wandering among the gravestones in Kilmarnock’s Grassyards cemetery. [SOURCE: Mark Fraser, May 12] ETTRINGTON PARK: This Victorian neo-gothic manor hotel near Stratford upon- Avon has been described as one of Britain’s most haunted houses. The property has had many uses over the centuries. In 1935 it became a nursing home and in World War II it became a prisoner of war camp.

Among the ghosts reported is ‘an elderly Victorian lady who has a very strong presence’. A candle has been seen floating on its own and the ghosts of a man and his dog have been spotted in the reception area. There is also the spirit of a serving girl called Mary who died after a fall. In the Great Drawing Room many voices are often heard, mostly women in a musical gathering. Others include a bare-footed Edwardian woman, a grey lady, monks, priests, game keepers and an army officer. All are said to be responsible for book throwing, the sounds of someone playing billiards, male voices, curtains opening and shutting ... the list seems endless.

[SOURCE: The Times, May 3]

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Have you had a Sighting? Please let us know if you have seen a ghost, UFO, mystery beast or anything else strange and inexplicable. Send the details of your sighting to: editor@paranormalmagazine.co.uk or visit www.paranormalmagazine.co.uk

RAMS HEAD: The Rams Head Tavern in Annapolis, USA, founded in 1703 by Benjamin Fordham attracts punters for the many ghosts it has wandering its rooms. One ghost called Amy, who died ‘while entertaining a gentleman customer’, is said to haunt the premises and alarms the staff. One waitress said: ‘She’s terrifying. I see her all the time. She freaks me out. I’ve got plenty of stories.’ She added that she knows when Amy is around, because: ‘If you’re near a hot guy, you’re going to feel a cold chill.’ Pictures have been taken of alleged ghosts and the spirit of an old lady also frightens patrons on occasions. [SOURCE: http://www. hometownannapolis.com May 4].

FLORIDA PHANTOMS: Cora haunts the Lake City-Columbia County Museum. She twitches the curtains and has often spotted by members of staff. Cora, who is said to be a resident who died of yellow fever, also moves plates and heavy bookcases. Museum President Pat McAlhany said: ‘Four people left the museum at 9 pm on a Thursday and returned at 8 am on Friday. In those 11 hours, a bookshelf with 300 books on it somehow had moved to another room and was sitting at a 45-degree angle, and there were no scratches on the wooden floor from it having been moved – until two of us moved it back.’

[SOURCE: Lake City Reporter, May 5] CREEPY MANSION: Cortijo Jurado, a 19th century mansion near Malaga in southern Spain is up for sale. It is considered the most haunted house in Spain because, legend has it, former owners kidnapped young women and subjected them to Satanic rituals before burying their bodies deep within the property. Although it is true that many young women did disappear during this period, nothing was ever proven to connect their disappearance to the suspected family. A court forced the sale of the mansion so that creditors to the current owner can get paid.

It’s worth millions of Euros but whoever buys it will have to inherit the grim stories – and maybe the ghosts – associated with it.

[SOURCE: EuroWeekly.com, May 11] GHOSTLY HOARD: When treasure hunters in the Kaluga Region of Russia discovered a buried church and its treasures, they thought they had hit the jackpot. When they tried to sell coins to a local dealer they began hearing voices telling them to return the coins, they also had invisible ‘people’ tapping them on their shoulder. When they ignored the warnings they were treated to a ‘stronger hit on the shoulder’ which prompted the treasure hunters to return their loot to the church. [SOURCE: Russia Today, May 10].

UFOS HARROWING: Ahmad Zaigham photographed UFOS over South Harrow, London. He reported: ‘The light coming from this thing is something I have never seen the like. I don’t think any aircraft has a light like this. And

moments afterwards the object seemed to quickly fade in light and travel above at high speed. I did not hear any loud sound but I did hear a whistle kind of sound. I am still shocked.’

Mr Zaigham plans to pass the photographs to NASA. Meanwhile, on April 15 three ‘bright UFOS’ were captured on a mobile phone camera over north-west London.

[SOURCE: Harrow Observer, April 6] CUBE OUT OF LIBRA: The witness reports: ‘I saw a perfect cube appear right before my eyes!

I was looking at Zubeneschamali, which is the beta star in Libra, when the cube just came out of nowhere! Speechless, I quickly spotted it with the binoculars, through which I saw a brilliant perfect cube with an illuminated border. It was moving too quickly, so I knew I could not track it with my telescope. I just watched it with my binoculars. It changed colour from blue to aquagreen and stopped cold. I ran inside to grab my digital camera and managed to take one picture as it moved away and as soon as I took one picture it accelerated backwards to the point it appeared and it was gone. I waited for an hour just in case it came back, but it didn’t.’

[SOURCE: http://www.mufon.com May 9] CLOUD BASE?: Eight orange lights seen in the skies over Peterborough on the 3rd of May left local residents baffled. Stacie Dunn was driving along Fletton Parkway at 22.00hrs when she saw the bright lights, she said: ‘We all got out to look but there was no noise, a clear sky and these objects seemed to be heading towards Whittlesey.’ The incident is the latest in a long line of reports from the area, although Mike Dunne believes the lights were a result of somebody shining a strong light on a low cloud base.

[SOURCE: Peterborough Evening News, May 5] QUAKERS: An earthquake that shocked Italy on April 6 was preceded by several UFO sightings.

A well-lit, triangular UFO was spotted over Rome on the 6th and a few hours preceding the quake.

Antonio Urzi caught the UFO on video-tape.

[SOURCE: http://www.phantomsandmonsters. com April 16] MASSIVE CRAFT: On April 27 ‘a massive craft was filmed executing manoeuvres which were not of this planet’ over the skies of Lahore. One witness reports on the internet: ‘It was as big as five cricket fields, even bigger. An airplane passed under it, which will make you understand the immense size of this thing. It hovered really slowly over Cantonment and DHA area then disappeared into the sky in a flash. Everyone in my street saw it and many people made videos too. When we had the army over they just said it wasn’t anything to worry about, it was probably flares. I never seen flares in my life manoeuvre around the sky in unison with each other and then go in to space within a second. I never believed in aliens before, but now I sure do.’

[SOURCE: http://www.allnewsweb.com, May 9] NETHERLANDS: UFO footage has been taken over the town of Nijmegan in the Netherlands.

The website Phantoms & Monsters reports: ‘Time of recording: 8:25pm. This UFO was filmed in Nijmegen-West, at the time there was a clear

sky with stars visible. The object was visible for about 30 minutes, when it suddenly disappeared.

The footage can be seen at http://naturalplane. blogspot.com/2009/04/stabilized-video-ufocaptured-over.html [SOURCE: News First 5/30, May 9] AIRLINER FOLLOWED: On February 8 a witness reported to MUFON of a UFO he filmed which seemed to be trailing a Fed-ex airliner over the skies of Florida, he reports: “I was photographing an eagle with my Nikon Digital and 500mm lens.

I’ve always haphazardly shot photos of airplanes passing...especially with the telephoto - it really pulls them in closer. I shot one photo of a jet, then another photo less than 2 seconds after. I didn’t know what kind it was until I downloaded in on my computer. The first photo shows the jet with blue sky all around and some spots that were on my lens. Then I looked at the second photo... without thinking I cropped it closer to get a better look (deleted the originals off the camera). The object I saw was puzzling because in the photo shot seconds before... nothing. I don’t think it’s possible for that object to have appeared in two seconds from that great distance.’

[SOURCE: http://www.mufon.com, April 10] SUBMERGED: Photographs of ‘a strange object’ were taken in a farm pond south of Knoxville on land owned by Denny and Terry Straube. A UFO apparently crashed into the pond leaving a hole two feet across, during the winter. Underwater photographers recently took a photograph of ‘something’, but what they don’t know. Local residents believe there has been a cover-up.

[SOURCE: Phantoms & Monsters, May 11]

CREATURES UK ‘ALIEN’ INVASION: Dave Bennett was walking his two dogs in Keighley town centre, West Yorkshire, when the dogs ran off to chase what he thought at first was a black and white cat. He and the dogs had a bit of a shock when the cat turned out to be a skunk that sprayed the canines. Meanwhile, nurse Jackie Morgan stared in disbelief at a meerkat outside her conservatory window in South Wales. David and Ena Webber of Walcott Avenue, Christchurch, Dorset, called the RSPCA who rescued a raccoon from a tree in their garden. Ena said: ‘It had such a cute face.’ Snakes have been popping up all over: Kerry Allison found two reptiles, along with crickets and a swarm of locusts, in her flat in Bournemouth. They are believed to have escaped from a nearby pet shop. The police were called in Sunderland after a woman found an 18-inch, brown and bronze-coloured snake in her kitchen. Nick Redfern reports that a witness on Staffordshire Cannock Chase spotted ‘a pythonsized creature … brightly coloured with a powerful head’. African huntsman spiders turned up in boxes of bananas in Wick and Holsworthy. The corrugated crab was found in British waters in Cornwall for only the third time in a century,

and a (rare) common dolphin and her calf was beached in waters near Dundee. A three-metre long oarfish came ashore near Tynemouth, and a photographer snapped a dorsal fin swimming close to bathers in Cornwall. [SOURCE: Annova, Daily Post, BBC News, Daily Mail, Sunday Sun, The Metro, The Telegraph, Sunday Mercury, all May 2009] UK BIG CAT FLAP: Big Cats in Britain received over 30 reports from around Britain in April, while most are just glimpses of a black feline in the night, they nevertheless leave a lasting impression on the witnesses. The organization has trigger cameras placed at three more locations. One is in a large garden in Worcestershire, where a large black cat described as a ‘panther’ has been taking midnight naps on the lawn. Another, in Kent on a farm where a black mystery feline has been spotted, and the other in Sightings compiler Mark Fraser’s own back garden in Kilmaurs, Ayrshire, which looks out onto fields and the scene of several sightings.

[SOURCE: Mark Fraser www.bigcatsinbritain.org] SMALL BEAST OF BODMIN: A family in Bodmin had quite a surprise after photographing a mystery animal in their back garden; it was later identified as a palm civet, usually found in the Philippines, Himalayas and China. Stewart Muir, of Newquay Zoo, who caught the animal said: ‘This is not the sort of animal you would expect to find roaming in the countryside, so it came as a big surprise to see the film footage of a civet.

A small number are kept and bred in the UK as pets so I strongly suspect that it has escaped from a private collection. They are omnivorous and will eat almost anything. While they are not aggressive, they are capable of giving a nasty bite if cornered and would wreak havoc in anyone’s hen house. With the mild climate in Cornwall, this chap could easily survive in the wild.’

[SOURCE: The Sun, April 2009] SUV RIPPED APART: A ‘mystery creature’ ripped apart a utility vehicle in N Carolina, USA. The authorities are stumped as to what animal could have caused such damage, remarking that they have never seen anything like it before. Even though the animal has left behind bite marks and scratches along with prints on the hood as big as tennis balls, no identification can be made.

Vehicle owner Holly Gilliam, of Lincoln County, said: ‘If it can do that to a vehicle what can it do to us? It scares me I never heard anything.’

[SOURCE: WCNC News April 6] BIG NOISE: Locals are becoming increasingly concerned and worried about ‘strange screams or animal noises’ coming from the area around Lake Tahoma, Virginia. The eerie sounds are described as howls, screeching, moans and whoops. These noises have been heard near residences and by campers in their tents. Some folk think that there may be a Bigfoot in the area. [SOURCE: http:// www2.mcdowellnews.com, April 10] BAT MAN: What was described as ‘a very tall entity, standing some two metres tall, with two pairs of wings (one pair larger than the other) was seen in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. It was also said to have a face covered with fur, and red

bloodshot eyes, with ‘small kangaroo-like hands’.

The witness said: ‘I saw a bulk on the roadway asphalt resembling a hunched-over man who seemed to be covered in a blanket. The figure suddenly stood up, taking two leaps forward and displaying a set of wings similar to those of a bat.’ The witness accelerated away but the creature kept pace with the vehicle, looking in through the passenger window. Other witnesses in the area claims to have heard its screams.

After a search the authorities could find no trace of the creature. [SOURCE: Ing Francisco Prieto Torres, residents of La Junta, April 6] YOWIE FATALITY?: A seven month old puppy which had its head ripped from its shoulders is believed by Andrew McGinn to be the victim of a Yowie attack, although the dogs owners believe it was killed by dingoes. Mr McGinn said: ‘The way the guy’s dog was killed was typical of a Yowie. I know it sounds fanciful but over the past 100 years, dogs get killed or decapitated and people report feeling watched, having goats stolen or seeing some tall hairy thing in the days beforehand.’ Large human-like prints found at the scene near Darwin, Australia, were said to have been hoaxed. Meanwhile in the Blue Mountains two back-packers near the landmark The Three Sisters, in Leura, claim to have seen a ‘bigfoot’ as they described it. The tourists first heard loud footsteps and the breaking of branches behind them, when they shone their torch they were shocked to see what they said was a Bigfoot, ‘charge away into the distance’.

[SOURCE: Northern Territory News, April 21] MYSTERY ATTACKS: On April 9 four people in Ballia, India, were attacked by a mysterious animal: although the authorities say the culprit may be a fishing cat, others disagree. One victim was ‘seriously injured’ by the animal that has so far eluded not only capture but identification.

[SOURCE: Times of India, April 21] WORMS INVADE: In China’s northwest Xinjiang region, herdsmen have been forced out of the area by ‘mystery worms’. They have taken 20,000 head of livestock with them. The worms, which are about 2cm (1 inch) in length and ‘thorny green with black stripes’ have not yet been identified by the authorities. Samples have been sent to Xinjiang Agricultural University.

One herdsman said: ‘The pasture was green a week ago. But now the worms are creeping around, and they even come into my house. I have to sweep them out several times an hour.’

[Reuters, May 5]

Sightinilegds

is comp RASER

by MARK F arch of the rese on organizati tain Bri Big Catstsin ) inbritain.org (www.bigca

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eye openers Clouded judgement Lenticular clouds have sometimes been claimed as flying saucers – although rarely by anybody other than UFO sceptics. They fit into the same category of easy answer as weather balloons or ‘the planet Venus’.

Lenticular clouds are usually caused by condensing moisture in the air on the lea-side of mountain ranges. A series of lens-shaped clouds stack one on top of the other to create a beautiful formation.

Caught in the light of a rising or setting sun, they can indeed look unearthly but it would be hard to see how anyone could genuinely mistake a lenticular cloud for an alien spaceship, drifting, rather than zipping, through the sky.

This didn’t stop the Daily Telegraph announcing that the mystery of 2008’s UFO flap in South Wales had been ‘solved’ after a photo of such a cloud, taken over the Dyfi estuary, was sent to them in January this year.

It had drifted sedately over from Ireland, said the Met Office, and nobody (except the Telegraph) reported it as anything other than, well, a cloud.

The right image here is a classic of its kind, a ‘fleet’ of lenticular clouds taken over Santos in Brazil. The above image was taken in 1998 over one of the world’s great mystical places, Uluru, in the Northern Territory, Australia.

Bottom © Fortean Picture Library Top © Jes Henningsen/SUFOI/ Fortean Picture Library

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To advertise within the pages of

call Richard on

01244 663400 or email

richard.davenport@ paranormalmagazine.co.uk

Phan Phan Phant in the footlights JOHN STOKER raises the curtain on the UK’s many haunted theatres.

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toms ntoms toms A

ctors are members of one of the most superstitious professions.

They never whistle in the theatre and on opening night will never mention Shakespeare’s ‘Scottish play’. Some will even sleep with a script underneath a pillow in the belief that this will help them to memorise their lines.

These superstitions are probably fuelled by the theatres in which they work, for these buildings are some of the most haunted places in the country. This is hardly surprising when you consider that theatres are hives of emotion sparked by the drama which unfolds on their stages – and sometimes in the wings.

Many years ago I stood on the stage of the Theatre Royal in Bath with Michael Bentine who gazed into the darkness of the auditorium and said: ‘It may look empty out there but believe me it isn’t.’

And he certainly wasn’t the first person to experience that feeling. In 1963 during the Bath Festival the lights dimmed mysteriously and a prop clock on stage suddenly started chiming even though the mechanism had been removed.

The theatre’s most famous ghost is the Grey Lady who usually occupies one of the boxes. Many members of the audience have seen her wearing an oldfashioned dress and white gloves.

A lady in an adjoining box turned round and saw her clearly but by the time she had alerted her companion, the ghost had vanished. But the Grey Lady doesn’t confine herself to the box, for a stagehand once saw her in the circle walking not along the seats but through them. He ran to the circle but she had vanished, leaving only the smell of jasmine behind her.

In August 1975 Dame Anna Neagle was on stage and saw the Grey Lady, as did other members of the cast. The play was The Dame of Sark and later the cast was told they had a winner on their hands as the ghost only watched R

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IN THE WINGS: Dame Anna Neagle is one of the many performers to see the Grey Lady, the friendly ghost of the Theatre Royal in Bath, who will watch rehearsals of plays destined to be successful. © Isabelle Tillon

successful productions. Needless to say the play moved to the West End and enjoyed a lengthy run. Nobody can say for certain who the Grey Lady is but when a séance was held on stage to publicise a production of Blithe Spirit a medium claimed to have contacted the spirit of an actress who had hanged herself in her dressing room after her husband had killed her lover in a duel.

The Grey Lady is not alone in pronouncing a show to be a winner: the theatre’s other paranormal phenomenon is also a harbinger of success. Back in 1948 Reg Maddox, the producer of the annual pantomime, was lighting one of the highlights of the production, the Butterfly Ballet, when he collapsed and died. Since then a tortoiseshell butterfly has appeared on stage during many productions and to preserve the luck, the Butterfly Ballet backdrop has never been removed from its place above the stage.

In 1978 Leslie Crowther was playing Wishee Washee in the pantomime Aladdin and during the Boxing Day matinee was surprised to see a

tortoiseshell butterfly suddenly land on his left shoulder. In full view of a packed theatre he held the butterfly in his hands and released it into the wings, telling the audience that he would explain everything at the end of the performance, which he did. During the successful run of the show, the butterfly made further appearances backstage and in other parts of the theatre. Leslie Crowther could only say that he was ‘gob-smacked’ by the whole experience.

Sometimes a ghost may not confine itself to a theatre. This would appear to be the case for William Terriss who was murdered outside London’s Adelphi Theatre by another actor, Richard Archer Prince. Terriss had befriended Prince and even found him work, but Prince was mentally unstable and stabbed his benefactor. Terriss staggered into the theatre and died in the arms of his leading lady, Jessie Milward. The actor had a habit of tapping on dressing room doors as he passed and following his death the sounds have continued. On another occasion furniture was seen to move in

‘An offer was made to exorcise the ghost but the staff had grown quite fond of him and objected.’

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the dressing room which had previously been used by Jessie Milward.

Terriss has not only made his presence felt at the Adelphi but has also been seen at the Covent Garden Underground station. Jack Hayden, a ticket collector, first saw him one Christmas Eve and then began to have regular sightings of the ghost. Suddenly, London Transport began to receive transfer requests from a number of staff at the station and a four-page report was sent to its executive.

As luck would have it, one of the station foremen, Eric Davey, was a spiritualist medium and held a séance in an anteroom. Davey was able to spell out the first three letters of the actor’s name and link him to a murder at the Adelphi. He also made a sketch of the entity and when MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH: The supernatural has, of course, been a popular subject with dramatists. This Victorian engraving represents one of the most famous ghostly encounters on the stage – Hamlet’s with his father’s ghost.

Above LUCK BRINGER: A tortoiseshell butterfly – suspected of being paranormal in origin – has a habit of fluttering on stage at the opening of successful shows, even in the depths of winter.

Right HORROR SHOW: A Hammer Films employee had an unexpected scare when he saw a ghost in the New Wimbledon Theatre, where the company was filming its version of The Phantom of the Opera. © Maurice Joy

it was compared with a photograph of Terriss, Davey simply said, ‘That’s him.’

Some theatre ghosts who have a strong attachment to the theatre are not necessarily actors. When Hammer Films came to make their version of The Phantom of the Opera, they were hoping to use the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden as a location. When this proved to be impossible they had to settle for the more modest surroundings of the Wimbledon Theatre. During the shoot a member of the crew saw a man in one of the boxes watching the filming. He thought nothing more about this until the following day when he saw the man again. As the auditorium was supposed to be clear, he decided to have a word with him, but by the time he reached the box the stranger had gone.

‘The cast was told the ghost only watched successful productions.’

PLATFORM SOUL: The ghost of Victorian actor William Terriss has been known to wander round Covent Garden Underground Station, causing panic among ticket collectors. © Ian Muttoo

Astonished by this, he had a word with a member of the theatre’s staff who told him that he had probably seen J B Mullholand, the founder of the theatre.

Evidently Mr Mullholand always kept an eye on what he considered to be his theatre and he always checked up on anything that might be considered out of the ordinary.

The Theatre Royal in Drury Lane may well be home to more spectres than any other theatre in Britain. Its most famous phantom is the Man in Grey who only appears in daytime. W J McQueen Pope was a noted critic and theatre historian who used to conduct guided tours of the theatre and on many occasions he and his guests saw a man of medium height wearing a three-cornered hat and a grey cloak. Through the years members of the theatre staff have also witnessed the ghost and one member of the audience who saw him during a matinee asked an attendant if he was part of the show.

No one knows who the ghost really R

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STAGE BEYOND: Not only is the Pavilion Theatre in Cromer haunted, so is the pier on which it stands. © Stuart Patullo

COMIC’S GRAVEYARD: The Empire Theatre in Sunderland was notorious among comedians for its hard-to-please crowds. Tragically, Sid James died on stage here in the true sense and fellow comic Les Dawson may be among those who have seen his ghost in the dressing room. © Dave Webster

‘While he was putting on his makeup [he] saw the face of the longdead Leno in the mirror.’ is but when some workmen broke through a wall in a passage they found a small room which had been bricked up and inside was a male skeleton with a dagger between its ribs. An offer was made to exorcise the ghost but the staff had grown quite fond of him and objected – his appearance is considered a sign of good luck to the resident show. He seems to have a liking for the musicals of Ivor Novello and Rodgers and Hammerstein but when he failed to appear for Noel Coward’s Pacific 1860 the show had only a short run.

Other phantoms haunting the theatre include Charles Macklin, who in 1735 had a violent quarrel with another actor, Thomas Hallam, and killed him.

Macklin still prowls the corridors of the theatre. Stanley Lupino was given a dressing room which had been used by Dan Leno, one of Drury Lane’s greatest pantomime stars, and while he was putting on his make-up saw the face of the long-dead Leno in the mirror.

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But one ghost has proved to be extremely helpful to actors. During the long run of Oklahoma! Betty Jo Jones was brought over from America to take over the part of Ado Annie, but during her first performances found she just wasn’t getting her expected laughs. Then one night, while playing a scene with two other actors, she felt a tug on her dress followed by the pressure of two hands on her shoulders guiding her to another position downstage. That night she got her laughs. A similar incident occurred when Doreen Duke auditioned for The King and I. As a newcomer she was extremely nervous, but then she felt a comforting hand on her shoulder. The nerves vanished and she got the part. No one can say for certain who the ghostly helper was but many believe him to be the great clown Joseph Grimaldi, who was known for his encouragement of young artists.

Other theatres were not so kind to performers. In the great days of provincial variety, the Empire in Sunderland had

a fearsome reputation for being the comic’s graveyard, and it was said that if a comedian could successfully play the theatre he could get his laughs anywhere in the country. So when on April 26, 1976, the theatre manager rang the producer of the touring play The Mating Game and told him that Sid James had just died at the Empire the producer merely replied: ‘Don’t worry, everybody dies in Sunderland at least once.’ Unfortunately the great Carry On star had succumbed to a heart attack during the evening performance and died in the ambulance on his way to the Royal Infirmary.

Many claim that Sid James’s presence can still be felt in the dressing room he once occupied. Some actors have reported strange happenings there and a cleaner

The Afterlife of Riley

On May 17, 1954, Arthur Lucan was standing in the wings of the Tivoli Theatre in Kingston-upon-Hull waiting for his entrance music. Before a note had been played Arthur collapsed and was taken to his dressing room where he died.

It was a sad end for the performer who had created one of Britain’s most famous comedy characters, Old Mother Riley.

His marriage had collapsed, he had been drinking heavily and the Inland Revenue was pursuing him vigorously for £15,000 in back taxes. Arthur’s fee of £100 a week was paid to his wife’s company, Kitty McShane Productions, which allowed him a mere £30 pocket money.

He was buried in a nearby cemetery, his wife having thrown Old Mother Riley’s costume on top of the coffin, and a few months later the Tivoli closed its doors for the last time. The theatre was demolished and replaced by a large building called Tivoli House. On one of its floors staff claimed to have seen the ghost of Old Mother Riley which seems quite appropriate as it was the floor which housed the local branch of an organisation which Arthur hated, the Inland Revenue

‘Many claim Sid James’s presence can still be felt in the dressing room he once occupied.’ once saw Sid putting on his make-up.

During the pantomime season of 1989 Les Dawson was given the same dressing room and one night cast members noticed that he was visibly shaking before his first entrance. The comedian refused to talk about what he had just seen but he vowed later that he would never to return to the Empire, and he never did.

During the rehearsal of a musical in 2002 a young singer was driven from the theatre after he saw Molly, the Empire’s

other ghost, vanish in front of his eyes as she walked though the auditorium.

That night the cast, having failed to coax the young man back, performed without him. The young woman, who always dresses in white, is said to be the spectre of Molly Moselle, the stage manager of The Dancing Years, who vanished on the afternoon of January 14, 1949. Despite a nationwide search, she was never seen again. But Molly’s spirit would seem to have returned to the Empire. A

barmaid who was clearing up one night saw a lady dressed in white heading for the upper circle. Knowing that no one should be there at that time, the barmaid walked to the upper circle, but when she arrived it was empty. Molly’s appearances never bother the staff as she seems to be a very friendly ghost, as are many other theatrical spectres.

One theatre which certainly values its resident phantoms lies at the end of a Norfolk pier. In 2003 Richard Lawson, manager of the Pavilion Theatre in Cromer, was so worried about upsetting its ghosts with proposed renovations that he brought in a medium, David Wharmby, to attempt to contact them.

The theatre and its pier would certainly seem to be home to some varied spirits.

A number of actors claimed to have seen the figure of Dick Condon, the impresario who instigated the return of summer shows to the stage.

Ghostly figures in ragged clothes have also appeared on the pier itself and are thought to be the inhabitants of the town of Shipden which was swept into the sea in 1300 not far from where the structure now stands. A phantom lifeboat crew, whose station used to be on the pier, have been seen as well. In his investigations David Wharmby also identified the spirit of a Victorian chorus girl, a circus midget and a mysterious man and woman.

The management of the Pavilion Theatre regards the ghosts as its invisible guests – as should we, for they add to the mystery and magic of theatre itself. @

JohnStoker

John Stoker has spent 40 years working in radio and television, for such companies as the BBC, Thames, Central and NBC. At Anglia Television he helped to launch Tales of the Unexpected for Oscar-winning producer Sir John Woolf. He became a freelance writer and director and his output includes Flesh and Blood (the story of Hammer Films), The Templar Legacy and Michael Bentine Asks Is There Anybody There?

He is the author of The Illustrated Frankenstein and has contributed to magazines as diverse as Little Shoppe of Horrors and The Oldie.

STAR TURN: The Theatre Royal in London’s Drury Lane can lay claim to being Britain’s most haunted playhouse. © Magdalena Small

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Some of the strangest beings ever imagined are to be found in native Australian folk belief. However, as KARL SHUKER explains, there is some evidence that they may be more than myth.

SCREAMTIME: The ancient rock art of the native Australians is often crowded with bizarre representations of the human form.

‘The red-skinned dinderi are said to have kidnapped humans and kept them captive in their mountain caves.’

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n traditional Australian aboriginal lore the time of creation is known as the Dreamtime, Alcheringa.

During the Dreamtime all the animals existed in human form, as kangaroo-men, emu-men, crocodilemen etc, and co-existed alongside true men. However, there also existed other beings, even more bizarre and nightmarish than animal men.

It is natural to presume that these ancient spirit entities are completely imaginary. But if the testimony of modern-day native Australians,

and the descendants of European settlers Down Under are to be believed – they still survive today.

THE SHADOW PEOPLE Australia is famous for its marsupial (pouched) animals and the remarkable external similarity they share with true (placental) mammals found elsewhere in the world. The Tasmanian wolf, for example, bore a striking outward resemblance to the wholly unrelated wolves and other wild dogs of Europe,

THE THIN MEN: Spindly figures frequently occur in the rock art of the ancient Australians. Many represent the dreaded Mimi.

DEEP WOODS: The dense, extensive rainforests of Cairns and elsewhere in Australia may be home to any number of weird creatures, yet to be discovered by science.

‘The nyols are very like Europe’s dwarves and gnomes.’

THE SINISTER STICK MEN According to age-old Dreamtime lore, the first aboriginal people in northern Australia, including what is now Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, were taught how to paint, and also how to hunt and cook kangaroos, by a race of once-human entities known as the mimi. As the ages passed by, however, the mimi changed in form, becoming increasingly thin and attenuated, until today they are little more than animated stick people, thin enough to live and conceal themselves within the narrowest rocky crevasses and amid the densest bush and scrubland in this Australian region’s arid desertlands.

Moreover, whereas they were once friendly to humans, nowadays the mimi are firmly believed by the aboriginals to be very dangerous, eager to kill and eat any humans that they can catch. Happily, however, they can be avoided during windy weather because the mimi are so thin that even a gust of wind is sufficient to snap their fragile twig-like necks, and so they remain hidden during such weather. Ancient rock paintings depicting mimi exist, which, interestingly, modern-day aboriginals claim were painted not by their ancestors but by the mimi themselves.

Asia and the Americas. Its tiny sharpmuzzled marsupial mice are extremely reminiscent of shrews, and its marsupial mole is scarcely distinguishable from true moles found outside Australia.

Less well known, however, is that some of Australia’s paranormal Dreamtime entities also readily recall various legendary and supernatural beings reported from the rest of the world. Just as Europe and North America, for instance, are deemed traditional homelands of gnomes, dwarfs, goblins and other diminutive masculine humanoid entities, so too are many parts of Australia.

Particularly elusive are the nyols,

which are only spied by the sharpesteyed of Victoria’s Kurnai aboriginal people when they play among the shadows of dusk, scarcely more than shadows themselves on account of their stony grey skin and fleeting movements.

The nyols are very like Europe’s dwarves and gnomes in lifestyle, too, spending their days underground, hidden inside subterranean caverns within deep rocks.

Despite their reclusive nature and small size, however, these Dreamtime beings are not to be trifled with, as they can steal a human’s memory if encountered.

Equally mercurial are Victoria’s brown-skinned net-nets, which also live in caves but ones that are sited aboveground, and are more beast-like than the nyols, as their toes and feet have long sharp claws instead of nails. They are fond of stealing things from unwary humans, and leading hunters astray. And in Queensland, the hirsute red-skinned dinderi are even said to have kidnapped humans and kept them captive in their mountain caves for years at a time.

Rather more friendly are the 1-metretall, hairy-bodied yuuri from New South Wales’s central-western region, especially if treated with respect by their Wiradjuri human neighbours, and they enjoy playing with human children. So too do the bitarr, long spoken of by the Gumbangirr people, again in New South Wales.

Nor should we forget the ningaui,

reputedly inhabiting dense mangrove swamps on Melville Island, off the northern coast of Australia. According to the ancient Dreamtime beliefs of this area’s Tiwi people, the ningaui are hairy, 0.7-m-tall nocturnal beings with short hairy feet, which only eat raw food as they cannot make fire (and whose name was given by zoologists to a new genus of tiny hairy-footed marsupial mice discovered as recently as the 1970s). The Tiwi people even claim that the ningaui originally assisted them in their earliest Kulama ceremonies – initiation rites into religious cults.

Of course, it would be easy to dismiss such stories and beliefs entirely as simple native folklore – were it not for the somewhat disquieting but fascinating fact that unidentified beings closely matching these descriptions have also been reported in Australia by Western-originating eyewitnesses, and in modern times. Some investigators claim that there are undiscovered tribes of pygmies inhabiting remote regions of Australia, such as the Cairns rainforest, even smaller than the short-statured tribes already known to have once existed there.

Amateur historian Frank O’Rourke of Bloomfield, Queensland, has been actively researching reports of pygmies in the Cairns outback for many years, having amassed records dating back to the times of first European

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settlement. He has even unearthed some long-forgotten photographs from the 1880s depicting extremely small aboriginal people little more than 1-metre tall, from the Bloomfield region, found among documents housed in Brisbane’s John Oxley Library.

Moreover, fellow Queensland investigator Grahame Walsh has long been on the prowl through the rugged bush terrain around Carnarvon Gorge in search of junjuddis – very small ape-like entities only 1 m or so tall, with hairy humanoid bodies but long ape-like arms, and a somewhat odiferous presence. A former Carnarvon National Parks and Wildlife officer, Walsh has no doubt that these weird mini-beings are real, and has even encountered their tracks, preserved by him afterwards as plaster casts – which he likens to the footprints that a 5-year-old child would make.

During the 1970s, there was a spate of junjuddi sightings, but fewer in recent times, because people rarely traverse the wildernesses nowadays. Similar pygmies are claimed to exist in the mountains of Arnhem Land north of the Roper River in the Northern Territory, where they are called the burgingin.

How extraordinary it would be if the preternatural gnomes and dwarfs of Australia’s Dreamtime proved to be bona fide (albeit exceedingly elusive) pygmy tribes still evading formal scientific recognition. After all, certain strange Dreamtime entities, once deemed entirely fabulous, have since been shown to have been inspired by erstwhile native species of animal – so perhaps Australia’s

FROG MAN: The shy and retiring Potkoorok is an amphibious denizen of the Dreamtime. © Tim Morris

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shadowy Little People may also have an origin in reality instead of reverie.

A MEETING WITH THE MIRRII No less startling is the knowledge that those famously spectral canine apparitions known as Black Dogs, widely reported in Britain, mainland Europe, and North America, they have their very own counterparts among the denizens of Australia’s Dreamtime. Referred to by the Wiradjuri people of New South Wales as mirrii dogs or the mirriuula, these decidedly paranormal creatures are said to resemble large hairy black dogs, with pointed ears, and with very big red eyes like saucers but placed at the sides of their heads like those of fishes rather than at the front like those of real dogs.

Mirrii are often seen emerging from rivers, large pools, or other expanses of water, and sometimes attempt to lure humans into their aquatic domain, whereupon their victims are swiftly drowned.

Not surprisingly, the people warn their children to beware of these dangerous entities, although sometimes a mirrii is simply inquisitive rather than malevolent, following someone home before disappearing – which brings us to the most remarkable aspect of mirrii behaviour.

Namely, their ability to change size.

In his fascinating book, You Kids Count Your Shadows (1990), documenting the lore of the Wiradjuri, Frank Povah included the testimony of native eyewitnesses who claim to have witnessed these magical creatures.

According to their accounts, a mirrii usually appears small at first, no bigger than a terrier, but the longer that it is stared at, the bigger it grows – until it soon attains the size of a calf or pony, after which it will abruptly vanish completely in full view of its astonished observer.

As with Black Dogs, whatever the mirrii are, or aren’t, they certainly transcend the strictly corporeal constraints exhibited by cryptozoological mystery beasts.

WEB-FOOTED MAN-FROGS AND SUCKER-TOED VAMPIRES Two Dreamtime denizens that are even more esoteric than the mirrii dogs are the potkoorok and the yara-ma-yha-who.

During the early 1970s, Loveland in Ohio, USA, attracted fleeting fame as the provenance of some sightings by bemused police officers of a truly bizarre being referred to ever

VAMPIRIC: The grotesque Yara-ma-yha-who is a terrifying creature with blood-sucking fingers and the ability to swallow humans whole. © Tim Morris

TARSIER: This sinister-looking but harmless little creature may be the inspiration for the goblinesque Yara-ma-yhawho, half-remembered from far distant times before any people came to populate Australia.

‘The longer that it is stared at, the bigger it grows.’

‘The most feared of all supernatural beings Down Under is Old Red Eye.’ afterwards as the Loveland frog-man, as it was said to resemble a tall bipedal entity that was half-frog, half-man.

Many millennia before this baffling creature hit the world headlines, Australia’s equivalent had already long been a familiar entity to the aboriginal people of Victoria. Known to them as the potkoorok, this veritable man-frog is described as a small humanoid being but with huge webbed feet, long mobile fingers, and a wet pear-shaped body.

Totally inoffensive and extremely shy, it endeavours at all times to keep well hidden from humans in deep pools and rivers, so is only rarely and briefly spied.

Equally elusive, but far from inoffensive, is the dreaded yara-ma-yhawho. Although at first sight it may well resemble nothing more than a small, wizened, toothless old man sitting in a fig tree, anyone rash enough to draw nearer for a closer look will soon discover their mistake – to their cost.

Its hair and skin are red, its eyes are enormous, and – most alarming of all – there are suckers at the ends of its long fingers and toes, through which it sucks the blood of any hapless human that it can leap down upon. But even that is not the worst that will happen to its victim.

Like a snake, the yara-ma-yha-who can unhinge its jaws, until they gape so widely that they can swallow its human prey whole, and its stomach can distend to an obscene size, enabling it to swallow its prey entirely. But that is still not the end. Instead of allowing its prey to be digested within its stomach, the foul yarama-yha-who repeatedly regurgitates and reswallows him, with its prey remaining whole but smaller and

THE LUSTFUL QUINK IN Perhaps the most notorious Dreamtime stick people are the quinkin of Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula. Much larger than any other type of stick man, the quinkin are depicted in prehistoric rock paintings present in Cape York’s Laura rock galleries. As revealed all too clearly in these paintings, what makes the quinkin stand out so readily from all other stick men – and certainly explains why they are deemed to be personifications of human lust – is the excessively large size and often grotesque shape of their male genitalia. Clearly, as far as the quinkin are concerned, size really does matter!

redder on each occasion, until the final regurgitation – which reveals that its human prey has now himself become a yara-ma-yha-who!

There is no species of Australian animal even remotely similar in appearance to the yara-mayha-who, so it was traditionally discounted an entirely fictitious Dreamtime monster.

However, some scientists have speculated that as the ancestors of Australia’s aboriginals reached this island continent from Asia, perhaps the yara-mayha-who is a distorted but tenacious memory of a small but real creature that exists in Asia – the tarsier. Diminutive, hairy, with huge globular eyes, and, most striking of all, suckers at the tips of its fingers, all features likening it to the yara-ma-yha-who, this nocturnal, tree-climbing primate is completely harmless and reclusive. Nevertheless, it is more than sufficiently eerie and goblinesque in appearance to have conceivably inspired ancestral aboriginal belief in the vampiric yara-ma-yha-who.

OLD RED-EYE-MEDUSA OF THE OUTBACK Perhaps the most feared of all supernatural beings Down Under, however, is Old Red Eye, who features in the ancient lore of the Wiradjuri from New South Wales. According to Greek mythology, anyone who stared into the eyes of Medusa instantly turned to stone.

Similarly, those who catch the gaze of Old Red-Eye are also frozen, but in quite a different manner.

Old Red-Eye is often said to be quite amorphous in appearance, and can appear anywhere at any time, but sometimes adopts a vaguely PHALLIC: The prodigiously endowed Quinkin is a spirit that represents excessive human lust. © Tim Morris

MYSTERIOUS: Carnarvon Gorge in Queensland may be home to the Junjuddi, tiny people who feature in aboriginal lore but may be a surviving race of undiscovered pygmies. Artist’s impression of the Junjuddi © Tim Morris

human form – whose most distinctive feature is its eyes, bright red and piercing. Should a human observer look into them, even for just a moment, he is instantly mesmerised, and remains in this state for however long Old Red-Eye chooses, because time stands still for its victim.

The world beyond continues, with time passing at its normal pace, but as Old Red-Eye’s victim is now outside the realm of time, he cannot cry out for help, because no-one will ever hear him. Perhaps even the terrible fate of permanent petrification experienced by Medusa’s victims was ultimately a kinder one.

Australia and its surrounding seas are famous – infamous, even – for harbouring some of the world’s deadliest creatures, including the funnelweb spider, numerous venomous snakes, the stonefish, Flecker’s seawasp jellyfish, and the blue-ringed octopus. Judging from Old Red-Eye, the yara-ma-yha-who, and even the mirrii dogs, much the same may be said for its paranormal entities too!

Karl P N Shuker PhD is a zoologist and expert in cryptozoology, animal mythology and wildlife anomalies. A scientific fellow of the Zoological Society of London, a fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and a member of the International Society of Cryptozoology, he is the author of more than a dozen books on mysterious phenomena, including In Search of Prehistoric Survivors, The Beasts That Hide From Man and, most recently, Dr Shuker’s Casebook. His new website is www.karlshuker.com

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The one sighting that still puzzles me BUFORA’s former Director of Investigations, PHILIP MANTLE, recalls the one personal UFO encounter he has been unable to explain in 30 years of research.

I

have been involved in UFO research and investigation for 30 years and if there is one constant among those years it is a question that I have been asked over and over again. That question is, of course, ‘Have you ever seen a UFO yourself?’ The simple answer is, yes.

My own UFO sighting is nothing too extraordinary but it is something that still puzzles me to this day.

On the night of July 23, 1984, I was driving home from work to my parents’ house as normal. I finished work at around 9.55pm at a factory on the outskirts of Morley, near Leeds, in West Yorkshire. I headed straight down the A650 towards my parents’ home three miles away in Tingley. It was a beautiful July evening, with the red glow of the summer sunshine filling the darkening sky.

As soon as I turned my car right onto the A650, I could see a large bright light in the evening sky that I knew should not be there. I knew from experience that there were no bright stars or planets visible at this time of year and in 1984 Leeds/Bradford Airport used to close at

Above ARTIST’S IMPRESSION: David Sankey’s combination of photo and artwork to create an impression of the lights seen by Philip Mantle and many others on the night of July 23, 1984. © David Sankey Right VANTAGE POINT: A recent shot taken from the lay-by at Tingley from where the author observed the two bight lights. They were visible in the sky above the Leeds suburb of Middleton, which can be seen on the hill in the distance. © Philip Mantle

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10 pm. I kept a close eye on this bright light and about half way home pulled over in a lay-by to view it again. I lined it up with a lamppost and could see that it appeared to be stationary.

I jumped back in my VW Beetle and continued towards Tingley, where a short distance from my parents’ home, I pulled over to take another look at this light. I got out of the car and found my vantage point now gave me an excellent view of the surrounding area. I could see all of the city of Leeds in the valley below, and on a hill to the right the Leeds suburb of Middleton.

The light was now visible as two lights side-by-side. They were just above Middleton and were a pearly-white colour. I watched these lights for a while until, to my amazement, they vanished.

They did not move up or down or left

or right – they just blinked out. I stayed there for a minute or two looking round but did not see them again.

I drove to my parents’ house and phoned my colleague Mark Birdsall at the Yorkshire UFO Society to tell him what I’d seen.

I’d been an active member of YUFOS for several years and until now had not seen anything that I could not identify. I grabbed my binoculars and camera and returned to my vantage point in the hope of seeing them again but in vain.

The next day I was soon to learn that I was not the only one to observe these strange lights. All of my colleagues at work knew of my interest in UFOs and as soon I clocked on at 2 pm, two of them, who used the same route home as me, approached me to ask me about them.

The Yorkshire UFO Society also started

‘Despite an extensive search, no civilian or military aircraft could be found to be flying in these locations.’ to receive reports of the same lights on the same night. In the ensuing weeks and months my colleague Mark Birdsall and I conducted a full investigation into this incident. We interviewed or took statements from many other witnesses.

Fir example, at 9.30pm in Selby that night a Mr Walker was sitting in the kitchen with his neighbours. He reported: ‘My wife and I were sat in the kitchen with Mr and Mrs Davey. Mrs Davey saw what she thought was a bright star. We all looked and dismissed it as not being a star because of the brightness. At this time our son came down from his bedroom and said he was watching two bright lights in the sky. We all went outside with binoculars and telescope and discovered there were two lights, stationary and very bright. Using binoculars and telescope, it did not appear to have any shape.

Suddenly the lights disappeared ... when

SUGGESTIVE: Letters from Leeds/Bradford Airport and RAF Church Fenton confirming they were both closed on the night in question. © Philip Mantle

“The small and large light seemed to merge and pulsate and then the most astounding thing happened.”

FURTHER EVIDENCE: A report from the MOD and a letter from Humberside Police each giving brief details of a UFO sighting in Humberside reported to them on July 23, 1984. © Philip Mantle

we heard an aircraft approaching and the last time we saw them they were heading in the direction of Leeds.’

Another excellent witness was Mr Dennis Gibson, of Morley, who saw them at 10 pm. He reported: ‘I was about to make a cup of tea and looked through the kitchen window which looks due east towards Middleton. Saw these two, very bright large lights. They were too low for stars. I called my wife to come and see the lights and went and picked up my binoculars. It was a warm, clear night, just getting dusk. They were like nothing I ever seen before. Too low for aircraft. It was not a helipcopter. The small and large light seemed to merge and pulsate with coloured lights and then – the most astounding thing happened – the lights vanished as though someone had turned a switch off, and the sky was empty. It was 10.02 pm.’

These are just a couple of the dozens of reports received by YUFOS concerning the events on the night of July 23, 1984. As part of our investigation, Mark Birdsall and I tried to discover if there was any kind of aircraft that might have accounted for the lights.

In a letter to Mark, Leeds/Bradford airport director Mr G. C. Dennison, Airport Director, explained: ‘I am informed by the Senior Air Traffic Control Officer that this airport authority was not working any aircraft in the area of your sighting report at the time in question on July 23. Unfortunately, we

have no knowledge of whether or not any military traffic was operating at the time.’

D A R Hinchcliffe, Squadron Leader for Officer Commanding at RAF Church Fenton in North Yorkshire, responded: ‘These [unidentified lights] you assert must have come within visual/radar range of this unit. May I point out that we were not flying on that night – hence the ATC Tower and radar would not have been manned. In any event, I suspect most people who are closely involved with aviation tend to concentrate their energies upon identified objects. May I urge you to send any further enquiries direct to the Ministry of Defence.’

Squadron Leader D. A. Exley at RAF Finningley, in South Yorkshire, confirmed they were not flying that evening and had not received any reports themselves. The Ministry of Defence had at least one report submitted to them via RAF Binbrook on Humberside. The time was 22.50 pm on July 23. An unnamed 17-year-old had reported to Humberside Police that he had seen ‘two saucer shaped objects with one red light’ for approximately 45 minutes.

Humberside Police provided us with another report from a Clare Branton, who had witnessed the exact same thing.

Despite an extensive search, no civilian or military aircraft or helicopters could be found to be flying in these locations on the night of July 23, 1984. The late Graham Birdsall suspected that some kind of helicopter was ‘spying’ on the striking miners at the time, but there was no evidence to support his idea. Other researchers speculated that the UFO was some form of earthlight (a type of light allegedly produced around the time of earth tremors) but again, this is just a theory, nothing more.

I for one have no idea what these lights were. Mark Birdsall and I tried very hard to find a conventional, logical explanation for them but we never did. During my 30 years of involvement with UFO research and investigation this is the one and only time I can honestly say that I witnessed something that I could not explain. @ Philip Mantle is a former Director of Investigations for BUFORA and is an international UFO researcher, author, lecturer & broadcaster.

His books include: Beyond Roswell, Without Consent, Mysterious Sky: Soviet UFO Phenomenon and Alien Autopsy Inquest.

He is former features editor for UFO DATA magazine and lives in West Yorkshire. He can be contacted via his web site at: www.philipmantle.com

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The Daemon inside us all Are we literally in two minds? ANTHONY PEAKE introduces an astonishing new theory with far-reaching implications for the nature of the human condition, of life and the after-life.

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T

he young soldier was stationed on top of an armoured personnel carrier, manning a machine gun. The day had been very quiet, and he was looking forward to a cool beer back at his base. However, as the armoured vehicle approached a bend in the road he felt a prickly and ominous feeling, a sense of impending danger.

And then it happened. A ‘voice’ which seemed to come from inside his head said very clearly but with great urgency, ‘This is an ambush.’

As the words registered, the soldier spotted the tell-tale puffs of grey smoke on the left-hand verge of the road ahead, and a second later he heard the rifle-fire.

He immediately swung his machine gun to the left, but as he did so, he found himself being pulled quite violently and inexplicably forward. The power of the push was such that the next thing he knew, he was hanging: caught in the camouflage webbing at the side of the armoured vehicle. Something had pushed him out from behind the machine gun and away from the gunfire.

When he recovered himself, he climbed back into his seat. The ambush was over and a few of his comrades had been wounded. His only injury was a broken thumb, caused by his fall. But there were three bullet holes in the back of his seat – the bullets would have hit him in the throat, the chest and his groin, and any of the three could have been fatal. All three would have killed him instantly.

The experience above was described to me by Alan, a South African reader of my first book, Is There Life After Death, The Extraordinary Science of What Happens When We Die. The events he described took place in 1969 in Northern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during a particularly troubled time in that country’s history.

What actually happened on that hot day 40 years ago is of crucial importance to our understanding of not only human consciousness but also the very nature of reality itself. Something within him, but not part of him, knew that Alan faced peril. Not only that, but in its desperation to help him, this disincarnate intelligence had shouted a warning to him.

Although this heightened his awareness, Alan still failed to react in the way the ‘voice’ wanted him to. In a final attempt to save his life, the entity physically pushed Alan out of the line of fire and into the comparative safety of the camouflage webbing.

How can this be? Who or what was this being, and how did it know the future?

In my latest book, The Daemon: An Introduction to Your Extraordinary Secret Self, I present evidence for a secret, a secret that has been carried down from ancient times in various esoteric traditions, a secret that may even by the basis of the Holy Grail legend.

And what is this secret? Just this – that all conscious beings consist of not one but two semi-independent entities, one of which knows what will happen in the future. In this article I wish to present the evidence for such an idea. I will firstly review the philosophical, historical and theological background to such a belief and then I will apply some astonishing evidence from modern neurology and consciousness studies that may show that such a belief may, in fact, be true.

Daemon and Eidolon This concept of human conscious duality is not a modern one; belief in such an idea goes back as far as written language and probably even further.

However, it was the ancient Greeks who refined this into a coherent philosophy. For the Greeks human duality was reflected in two beings; a lower, everyday self called an Eidolon and an immortal, transcendental being they called a Daemon.

Greeks to describe an image or statue of a god. In turn it became associated with a copy of something divine (and the word itself became ‘idol’). As Greek philosophy became more sophisticated, so did the idea that our everyday self, the being that calls itself ‘I’ or ‘me’, was a facsimile of its own inner, divine (and hidden) nature.

It therefore comes as no surprise that the word Eidolon became associated with this lower nature of man. This lower nature was considered mortal and limited in its ability to perceive the real nature of reality.

Development and demonisaton The idea of this Daemon-Eidolon duality was to fascinate the ancient Greeks and Romans and soon a whole philosophy of universal structure was to be built around this relationship. The earliest known writer on the subject was Empedocles. For him the Daemon, although semi-imprisoned in the body, is a divine being exiled from its rightful place among the gods. It exists independently of its lower self, or Eidolon, and has great knowledge and power.

However, our knowledge of this interesting belief chiefly comes from the writings of Plato and his descriptions of the teachings of his master, Socrates.R

‘Something within him, but not part of him, knew that Alan faced peril.’

In its original Greek Daemon meant a deity, or god. The Romans, as we know, were heavily influenced by Greek culture so it comes as no surprise that the idea of the Daemon became Latinised. However, the Romans perceived this being as less of a god, more an inner or attendant spirit that sometimes gave humble man a touch of greatness.

The Romans had an alternative word for this being: they called it the Genius.

This being was considered to be immortal, with knowledge of the future life of its lower self, the everyday, and very mortal, Eidolon.

The word Eidolon was originally used by the

SOCRATES: From childhood, the celebrated ancient Greek philosopher heard an inner voice that guided and advised him. He called it his ‘Divine Sign’.

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HIGHER SELF: Concepts similar to that of the Daemon have occurred throughout history in cultures worldwide. The ‘guardian angel’ is just one such belief that could be interpreted as an aspect of the Daemon.

Matter is part of the Darkness. As such there is this ongoing conflict within the human condition. Man is imprisoned in this body of darkness but a part of him retains memories of his divine origin.

The part of man rooted in the darkness equates to the Eidolon. This being is made of matter and will cease to be when the body dies. However, that part of him that retains the memory of who he really is – the Daemon – never dies.

The concept of the Daemon-Eidolon may seem an obscure artefact of religion and mysticism but it has real relevance to 21st century psychology and neurology, too.

The Bicameral Mind

‘Could it be that most of us are living our lives in a 3D illusion?’

Plato describes how Socrates was not like other men. His Daemon was very active in his life.

Ever since his childhood Socrates had heard an inner voice that guided and advised him. Sometimes this voice would involve itself in really mundane things – such as advising its Eidolon to not go out on a particular day because it would rain later. However, what was odd was that this being – his ‘Divine Sign’ as Socrates called his helpful companion – was always right in its predictions. It was as if it knew the future, or at least the future of its own Eidolon.

For many of the early Christians the idea of such a duality of spirit was a dangerous heresy, particularly as it clearly had Pagan roots. In order to deal with this, the early Church Fathers applied simple semantics. They took the word Daemon and consistently applied it to designate a disincarnate spirit spawned

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by the devil to tempt man away from the true God. Over time the letter ‘a’ was dropped and the word mutated into one we all know so well – demon.

However, one group of early Christians did not accept this ‘demonisation’ of the Daemon. This group called themselves Gnostics – those who have secret knowledge, or gnosis. And what was this secret knowledge? Simply that the universe we live in is an illusion created by an evil God and that behind that illusion exists the real universe created by the real God. The illusory universe is the realm of darkness and the real universe – the ‘Pleorama’ – is the realm of light.

Gnostics believed that this duality of light and darkness was reflected within human consciousness. For them the Daemon was a spark that comes from the Light. It was therefore part of the positive side. However, the human body was formed out of base matter, not light.

There is something very curious about the brain of advanced animals. It is not ‘a’ brain at all, but two virtually identical brains that sit side by side within the skull. Indeed it is interesting to note that beneath these two hemispheres (known as the cerebral cortex) sits a third brain, a reminder of our fish and lizard ancestry.

But it is the hemispheres that are of particular interest. These two organs are virtually mirror images of each other. There are two of everything; two limbic systems, two temporal lobes, two amygdalas, the list goes on. The only exception is the mysterious pineal gland, long thought, because of its unique position, to be the location of the soul.

Research into how the brain functions has shown that these two hemispheres control different sides of the body. The right hemisphere is responsible for the left side and vice versa. This can be shown when a stroke damages one side of the brain. If the left is damaged, for example, the patient usually loses mobility to the right side of the body.

In some cases of severe brain injury strange things have been observed. It has been discovered that certain individuals can live normally even when one of the hemispheres is damaged or removed.

Indeed, in the last 50 years or so surgery has advanced to such an extent that the body that holds the two hemispheres together, the corpus callosum, can be cut, removing the line of communication between the two hemispheres. When this is done, patients literally have ‘split brains’. They also end up with two independent centres of consciousness.

The implication of this is mind-blowing: we have two independent beings sharing our perceptions.

It is generally the case that one side of the brain is dominant and one is passive.

The dominant hemisphere (usually, but not always, the left) is rational, objective and unemotional. The non-dominant (right)

is understood to be irrational, subjective and emotional. However, this does not on its own imply two foci of consciousness, just simply two aspects of the same consciousness. The two elements are simply seen as aspects of a unitary consciousness, with the left hemisphere being generally in control, with the occasional eruption of emotion from the right.

This is why in recent years there have been so many ‘self help’ books suggesting techniques by which people can attune to their intuitive right brain. But the reality is far more complex – and fascinating.

Usually the two hemispheres work in tandem: the left generating a constant stream of inner dialogue that gives us our sense of self, while the right hemisphere is still actively involved in all cognitive processes, working away in the background.

However, and here comes the surprise, the being known as ‘I’ or ‘me’ is generally unaware of what its silent partner is up to.

Indeed for most of the time ‘I’ is unaware its partner exists at all. Problems arise when the two fall out of phase. Suddenly ‘I’ senses ‘us’.

This realisation can be disturbing. The dominant hemisphere perceives its nondominant twin as an external presence, a being that is not self but other. To the experiencer this ‘sensed presence’ is an outside ego-alien being.

The Visitor Michael Persinger of the Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada, has spent many years studying this peculiar psychological effect and has a term for it: the ‘Visitor Experience’. Persinger has even been able to reproduce the sensation under laboratory conditions.

Persinger considers that the experience shows a linear progression. At its weakest the subject just feels that they are not alone – that there is something else in the room that he or she cannot see. However, at its strongest the subject perceives an objectively existing being of tangible reality, a being that has great emotional significance to him or her. For some this may be perceived as an angel or even a god.

‘For the Greeks human duality was reflected in a lower, everyday self called an Eidolon and a transcendental being called a Daemon.’

What is particularly interesting is that if the lower portion of the temporal lobes become activated at this time, long dormant memories may spontaneously enter the subject’s mind. The ‘being’ will then communicate information that seems intensely personal. This may be interpreted as telepathy or omnipotent knowledge. And there’s more. According to Persinger, memories of one’s life can be evoked in a panoramic re-run similar to those reported during the phenomenon known as the Near-Death Experience.

If this is the case, then could it be that the other major element of the Near-Death Experience – the ‘Being In White’ – is really an external projection of the experiencer’s non-dominant consciousness? If so it would certainly explain how this being shows such intimate knowledge of the dying person’s past life.

Could the experiments of Persinger, overall, demonstrate that the Daemon is a very real aspect of every human being’s neurological make-up?

Cheating the ferryman?

In my books I present powerful evidence suggesting that during the last few seconds of life we all split into the two entities I term the Daemon and the Eidolon. Up until this moment both entities have perceived themselves as a unitary being.

The Daemon, suddenly discovering its true vocation, is aware that it is responsible for the experience called the past-life review. It begins the review whilst at the same time manifesting itself as an image perceived by its Eidolon as a figure.

For some this will be seen as a classical ‘Grim Reaper’ figure, whereas to others the Daemon may be seen as a relative, a religious figure or even an animal: anything that will fit the Eidolon’s preconceptions of who will be there to welcome him or

her into the next life. The Daemon then starts the past-life review using the memory stores of the temporal lobes.

Of course, to be a reported Near-Death Experience actual death does not take place. The subject lives to tell the tale.

Many of these survivors describe how ‘my life flashed before my eyes’. This may be because the Daemon, suddenly becoming aware that death will be avoided this time, metaphorically presses the ‘fast forward’ button and aborts the process.

What happens in a Real-Death Experience is that the Daemon starts the review without the need to fast-forward.

The dying Eidolon, in the last few seconds of its life, falls out of time and relives again its whole life in a minuteby-minute 3D recreation of a life that is indistinguishable from the real thing.

However, there is one major difference – this time the Daemon is not only selfaware but remembers what happened last time. In this way the Daemon reproduces exactly the role as described

by The Gnostics, the Stoics and the Pagan sages. It becomes a guardian angel looking after the life of its lower self – exactly as described by Socrates.

Could it be that most of us are living our lives in a three-dimensional illusion?

If so, it would help to explain certain ongoing mysteries. Precognition suddenly does not defy scientific knowledge: it is simply a memory. Déjà vu can be seen for what it is: a jump in the playback mechanism or simply a flashback.

And what about those weird hunches, synchronicities and intuitions that seem to regularly enter our consciousness?

Could they be just messages from our own higher self – our Daemon? @

with An interview

ANTHONY PEAKoEn follows

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HEMISPHERES: The brain is really two mirrorimage brains sitting side by side in the skull. When the connection between these two hemispheres is cut, extraordinary effects take place.

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A chat with Anthony Peake The Editor meets the author of Is There Life After Death? and The Daemon: A Guide to Your Extraordinary Secret Self

A

two-hour conversation with Tony Peake isn’t enough.

One can scarcely scratch the surface of his galvanising new theory which not only seeks to answer the all-important question of What happens after we die? but which also suggests explanations for numerous paranormal phenomena.

Tony proves something of a Renaissance man, able to pull facts out of the air on a breathtaking range of subjects pertinent to his evidence for the Daemon (see preceding article). This is no mean feat considering these include disciplines as disparate as neurology, theology and particle physics. However, the real surprise is to discover he has no scientific training.

Tony lives in a village in Wirral, Merseyside, a few miles from where he was born, but he travelled about a bit before returning to his birthplace. Armed with a postgraduate diploma in Employee Relations and Management, he worked as a manager in a variety of sectors around the UK. Today, when he isn’t writing, lecturing, or answering the wealth of emails and forum questions he receives every week, Tony earns his bread as a management consultant.

It was while employed as Divisional Manager of the Nuffield Hospital in Harrogate that the seeds of his ‘Cheat The Ferryman’ theory were sown. A fascination with déjà vu led him to make friends with the hospital’s neurologists.

‘I’ve often experienced déjà vu myself and I wanted to know, does it have a neurological origin or is it a form of shortterm precognition?’ Tony explained. ‘The subject of near death experiences also came up and I began to ponder this, too.

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‘I started on a book about déjà vu but my interests grew wider and wider. In this way the Cheat The Ferryman theory found itself. I have an eidetic memory, which means I tend to remember everything I’ve read, and this has enabled me to make connections between disciplines others haven’t.’

Tony says he’s also been helped along by something he calls ‘syncrodipity’ – lucky syncronicity. Things just came together: ‘I happened to come across a paper by Art Funkhauser, for example, a physicist who had moved into psychotherapy.

He suggested that déjà vu is stuff we’ve dreamt which then goes into our subconscious. I got in touch with Art, we began a correspondence, and I made the link with his evidence and the effects of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, which I recalled from another article I’d read some

RENAISSANCE MAN: Anthony Peake gets to grips with his subject – his many subjects – in conversation with the Editor of Paranormal magazine. Picture by Chris Jones

in the next five minutes: she has shortterm precognition.’

Tony learnt that this experience was due to a neurotransmitter called glutomate.

Glutomate floods only occur in moments of extreme crisis (such as car crashes), as well as at birth – and when we die.

‘Glutomate floods are probably responsible for the effects of near death experiences,’ said Tony. ‘But I believe that at the point of real death, the glutomate flood is so extreme that people effectively fall out of time, and they relive their entire life again, in 3D, Matrix-quality believability. That would mean many of us aren’t living our real lives at all, but perfect memories of them.’

This concept of reliving life again and again is found in many religious and magical beliefs, so Tony has intensively researched these, too. Such esoteric aspects

‘What I’m doing is spotting relevant research across numerous disciplines and bringing it together.’ time before. This article mentioned that sufferers of TLE often experience déjà vu.’

Then the ‘syncrodipity’ seriously kicked in when Tony received a routine call from a recruitment consultant in relation to his business. Having explained he wouldn’t need her services because he was writing a book on déjà vu, the consultant told him she had just been diagnosed with TLE, the very condition he was researching.

‘We met and she recounted some extraordinary personal experiences,’ said Tony. ‘Not least of these was the first time her TLE manifested. She felt a snap above her ear – and everything stopped.

Her friend opposite her froze in the act of pouring a cup of tea. She could see the liquid oozing down towards the cup in slow motion and the people round her barely moving. Her metabolic rate had increased so much it was if she’d dropped out of time.

‘She clicked back to normality a couple of seconds later. But she told me: “I could have spent a whole lifetime in that state,” which I found a very significant statement. She also told me she sometimes knows what’s going to happen

of physics as the ‘collapsing consciousness wave’ and the theory of multiple universes have also come under his notice.

‘People ask, what qualifies you to carry out this research? My reply is, what qualifies anybody? What I’m doing is spotting relevant research across numerous disciplines and bringing it together. Scientists tend to work in isolation but I’m talking to neurologists about particle physics, philosophers about chemistry and so on. It’s like a Venn diagram with ever-growing numbers of overlaps.

‘The important thing is this: scientists like my theory. The science works.’@

Life and Is There The Daemon ake Pe y on th

by An After Death? urus. ct Ar by ed ish are both publ rum at og and busy fo Visit Tony’s bl To read a m co e. ak pe www.anthony ena normal phenom list of the para d by the ne ai pl ex be which might sit: man theory, vi Cheat the Ferry e.co.uk/ in az ag m al m www.paranor ny-Peake features/Antho

Gory stories Paranormal editor RICHARD HOLLAND examines that most durable of ghostly legends, the indelible bloodstain.

‘It is averred that, on a certain night of the year, and at a certain hour of the night, if you go and look at the doorstep you will see the mark wet with fresh blood. Some have pretended to say that this appearance of blood was but dew; but can dew redden a cambric handkerchief?

Will it crimson the finger-tip when you touch it?’

S

o wrote the American writer of ghost stories and folk tales Nathaniel Hawthorne after spending a few nights at one of Lancashire’s most atmospheric old manor houses, Smithills Hall, near Halliwell. He was referring to Smithills’ legendary Bloody Footstep which is to be found, not on the door-step as Hawthorne avers, but on a stone in the passage leading to the chapel.

The Bloody Footstep was supernaturally created by the Reverend George Marsh who, keeping firm to his Protestant faith during the reign of Queen Mary, was examined by that bloody queen’s ministers at Smithills and, in the words of historian Fletcher Moss, ‘asked for justice but got Law’. He was burned at the stake in Chester in 1555.

Tradition states that after the

examination, Marsh, descending the stairs leading from the court-room, stamped his foot on the stones, and ‘looking up to heaven appealed to God for the justness of his cause; and prayed that there might in that place remain a constant memorial of the wickedness and injustices of his enemies’.

This memorial is a depression of a reddish hue on the grey flagstones, rather larger than the ordinary man’s footprint.

No amount of scrubbing would rub it away and when an insensitive subsequent owner of Smithills had the gory stone taken up and cast into a nearby wood, ‘ghostly noises became so troublesome in consequence’ that it had be fetched back and relaid.

The Bloody Footstep is a well-known example of the ‘indelible bloodstain’, a ghostlore motif to be found throughout the British Isles. There are variants on the

theme, but in most cases the bloodstain is the result of some violent tragedy, usually murder, and remains unwashable for all eternity so that the wicked deed should never be forgotten.

Another bloody footprint, or rather two of them, is to found at Dolobran, a venerable farm near Meifod in Mid Wales.

Centuries ago the owner took a pretty wife – perhaps too pretty – who took a lover not long after the marriage. When her husband was away, this lady would install her lover in a small room in a disused portion of the house. Soon they became careless, the husband grew suspicious, and they were caught.

The lover was found trembling in a closet, the outraged husband drew his sword, and a savage duel was fought.

At length the owner of Dolobran was victorious – he decapitated his unlucky rival. Ever after the room was known as Lloft Goch (Red Room), because of all the blood that was spilt there. The red heelmarks of the master of Dolobran remained an indelible memorial in Lloft Goch, recording the very spot where he stood in his rival’s blood while chucking his body back in the closet. The headless SMITHILLS HALL, LANCASHIRE: This 14th century manor house boasts the Bloody Footstep, a memorial to the injustice done to a reverend gentleman during the reign of the equally Bloody Mary. © Margaret Clough

ton ody skele The thbelo s and borders of Powy

On d little , in the seclude ique Monmouthshire n be found a un ca , ow ish rtr Pa – the church at ble bloodstain eli ind e th on variant st, tradition ton. In times pa d mural of a skele ed with mops an arm ers lag vil to has it, many attempts de ma es sh bru urch scrubbing age from the ch im sly gri e th eradicate ended to ton is clearly int ted wall. The skele no doubt they ha d an , ath De t lity represen their own morta of er ind rem is ay. But to see th em every Sund th on wn do grinning use, states re in vain, beca – their efforts we in human blood ed int pa is it d, ubbed the legen often it was scr w ho r tte ma and no urned. out, it always ret

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The Devil’s mark

In her Shropshire Folk-Lore of 18 83, Charlotte Burne recounts a legend of Pla ish Hall, near Cardington: ‘A party of clergy were assembled one Sunday night at Plaish playing cards. All the doors were locked, wh en suddenly th ey burst open without an y apparent caus e. The men locked them ag ain, but present ly they burst open a second time, and again a third. Then the Old Gentlem an appeared in the midst of the company, an d they all rose up and fled, excepting the ho st, whom the oth ers basely left face to face with the Enemy.

None ever saw that wretc hed man again, either alive or dead. Only a great stain of blo od, shaped like a human for m, was found on the floor of the room, and de spite all efforts, could never be the mark washed out. Ev er since then a ghostly troop of horses rides through the house at midnigh t with such a no ise that none can sleep !’

RAGLEY HALL, WARWICKSHIRE: The indelible bloodstain here is the result of a duel. One man cheated by distracting his opponent before running him through with his sword. The stain remained as evidence of this cowardly act.

ghost of the murdered lover is also said to haunt the room.

There is at least one account of a bloody handprint. This was to be found at an old manor house beside the church at Darlington, County Durham. The local legend is that one Lady Jarratt was murdered here by soldiers (presumably Cromwellians) who, having slain her, hacked off her arm and took it away with them so that later they could remove a valuable ring upon her finger. The record of this tragedy was a ‘ghastly impression of thumb and fingers in blood for ever’ – although, alas, the handprint was actually destroyed during alterations many years later.

John Ingram, in his classic The Haunted Homes and Family Legends of Great Britain, tells a story of a house in Great Pulteney Street, Bath, where a man murdered his wife in the kitchen and left her bleeding body lying on the hearth-stone. He had already taken the precaution of locking the front door and after the foul deed was done he sneaked out the back door, went round to the front and made a show of not being

able to get in. Then he called a policeman, who broke down the door and discovered the murdered woman.

Despite this ruse, the crime was brought home to the murderer and it was claimed that ‘ever since the ghastly body of the murdered wife was flung upon that hearth the stone there has had stains which cannot be got out. Even new hearth-stones have been put down, but the bloodstains force their way through and cannot be eradicated!’

In an ancient house at Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, the indelible bloodstain was caused by the murder of a woman by none other than Cardinal Wolsey in a fit of jealousy. The stain was to be found on the door of an upper room, where the woman was killed.

At Boulge Hall in Suffolk a man was murdered by a former owner, Mrs Short, the stain remaining where his lifeblood oozed onto the floor. The murderous Mrs Short’s uninspiring name was insufficiently awe-inspiring for the local inglenook storytellers, so she has earned

herself the nickname of ‘The Queen of Hell’. According to one account, the Queen of Hell would be seen driving through the gates in a carriage drawn by headless horses. A servant girl in the hall who was visited by the ghost said she felt its breath ‘like a wolf upon her’.

The bloodstains in an attic chamber in Waxham Hall, Norfolk, were caused not by murder but by suicide, after a member of the Brosgrave family cut his throat here.

At certain seasons of the year, they would become visible again. At Millichope Hall, in Shropshire, a squire fell to his death from an upstairs window, causing an indelible bloodstain on the ground below.

Like the Rev Marsh, of Smithills, clergymen often feature in these yarns.

Usually they are Catholic priests.

Elizabethan Clopton House near Stratford-upon-Avon, for example, is said to have an indelible bloodstain marking where the body of a priest caught hiding in the house was dragged across a landing into one of the bedrooms.

The mark in an old part of the Hall at Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire, is more unusual, however. The stain on the floor is said to be still damp after three centuries.

It records the death of a priest at the hands of Cromwell’s men, but one version of the story says that the red stain is not blood for once but Communion wine spilled when the unfortunate man tried to make his escape.

I can well believe this. The red wine stains on my own carpet have proved equally indelible. @

References

Shropshire Folk-Lore by Charlotte Burne (1883); Haunted Homes and Family Legends by John Ingram (1884); The Fourth Book of Pilgrimages to Old Homes by Fletcher Moss (1908); Bye-Gones, June 1910; The Lore of the Land by Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson (2005).

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The dark side of

coincidence

Some coincidences are so fantastic it seems unreasonable to dismiss them as random events. JERRY GLOVER selects clusters of incredible – and horrible – coincidence, and suggests the paranormal laws behind them.

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I

t is time to rescue coincidence from becoming a Cinderella of the paranormal sciences. Leave your cherished notions at the door, if you please, for we are about to delve into the deepest and the weirdest chambers of that facetious conceit popularly known as Reality...

On May 19, 1884, Captain Thomas Dudley, Edward Brooks, Edwin Stephens, and Richard Parker set sail from Southampton in the yacht Mignonette, bound for Australia. The uneventful voyage lasted until July 5, about 700 miles from the nearest land at Tristan de Cunha, when the ship was struck by a wave that washed away the bulwarks. Sensing the vessel was doomed, Captain Dudley instantly ordered abandon ship, and within five minutes the Mignonette sank.

Above FACT AND FICTION: Two Richard Parkers – one a The crew managed to board a flimsy character in an Edgar Allan Poe story, the other a real sailor lifeboat, but with only two tins of turnips – suffered the same horrible fate on almost the same date, decades apart. © eddi07 and no fresh water, the outlook was bad.

Right MEMORIAL: The gravestone, in Peartree, Southampton, Not even the capture of a turtle could of the real Richard Parker. The inscription reads ‘Sacred to the memory of Richard Parker, aged 17, who died at sea July 25th, relieve the horror of thirst, since the crew 1884, after nineteen days dreadful suffering in the open boat were unable to procure any rainwater in the tropics, having ben wrecked in the yacht Mignonette.

“Though He slay me yet I trust in Him” (JOB 15); “Lord lay not and refused to drink the turtle’s seawaterthis sin to their charge” (ACTS 11.60).’ © Andy Grace contaminated blood out of the belief that whaling vessel draw lots to decide who salt water was fatal. to eat. A sailor called Richard Parker first According to the subsequent court trial, proposes it (with ‘an air of self-possession on July 16 or 17 the matter of drawing which I had not noticed in him until now’ lots to decide the sacrifice of one person notes Pym), and despite the narrator’s to feed the others was discussed. Nothing attempts to dissuade him, loses the draw, came of it for about another week until, and is stabbed and eaten by the other with no prospect of rescue, Captain three. We find that two of the other Dudley and Stephens signaled to each crewmen ‘had long secretly entertained other that Richard Parker, a 17-year-old the same fearful idea’. The fictional cabin boy who was probably in a coma Parker’s killing takes place on July 16, by then, should be the victim. While Brooks stayed out of the way, Stephens held Parker’s legs while Dudley used his penknife to cut the boy’s jugular vein.

‘We all was like mad wolfs who should get the most,’ Dudley said later, ‘and for almost certainly the same day as the fate men, fathers of children, to commit such a of the real Richard Parker deed we could not have was conceived in the our right reason.’ minds of his shipmates, The three men Dudley and Stephens. survived on Parker’s Even allowing for remains until they were Richard Parker being a rescued on July 29. fairly widespread name, What interests me the other similarities – about these terrible the date, the four men, events is not the the connivance of two of cause célèbre of the them, factored with the survivors’ subsequent extreme rarity of being trial, but that 46 cannibalized – amount years earlier Edgar to an astonishing cluster Allan Poe had written of coincidences. Can a novel called The they and others like Narrative of Arthur POE THE PROPHET: Was the ghastly fate of them be explained in the Gordon Pym of the real Richard Parker somehow sealed by comfortingly dry terms Nantucket in which four Edgar Allan Poe’s imagination when he wrote The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym? of statistical probability? starving seamen on a

“A cosmic kaleidoscope which takes care of bringing like and like together.”

This is one area of the paranormal where science is at last beginning to vindicate those of us who are do not believe that such occurrences are ‘mere coincidences’.

One problem in approaching this subject is the immense variety of coincidence types, so I will leave aside amusing but comparatively trivial examples like aptronyms (names that match occupations); the 23 Enigma (see the works of William Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson for where that all started); the Redhead Cluster Phenomenon (don’t ask); the Bible Code (technically suspect); the Dark Side of the Rainbow (it works, see and hear it on YouTube); 911 weirdness; unfortunate anagrams; random tales of long lost books finding their owners; and other paranormal coincidences which R

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The victim was Barbara Forrest, another 20-year-old living in Erdington. She was returning from a dance on the night of May 26 (also a Monday) and by the early hours of the next day she had vanished.

Despite an intensive search, her body was not found for another nine days: less than half a mile from where Mary Ashford died. After sexually assaulting and strangling her, the killer had tried to hide her partially clothed body. A man called Michael Thornton, a co-worker, was accused of her murder. The jury also acquitted him.

Both tragedies took place on the same date in the early hours of the morning. The deceased were 20-yearold females, both reportedly virginal and uncommonly attractive. Both were returning from a night of dancing. Two men called Thornton were tried for

Above DEATH SCENE: Erdington, Birmingham, where two murders separated by more than 150 years shared many extraordinary factors in common. © Tilly Brookes Right MYTERY REPEATING: The murder of Barbara Forrest in 1974 featured sinister echoes of the death of Mary Ashford in 1817.

stray even further from where we began, such as telepathy, precognition, or the similarity of twins’ lives.

Instead, let’s look closer at events with that ‘Richard Parker factor’, where the incidents rack up to form a kaleidoscope so utterly improbable that getting a feel for what is going on must necessarily invoke both science and the paranormal. Coincidentally (or not...) these all involve tragedy.

The deaths of two young women, Mary Ashford and Barbara Forrest, are entwined with coincidences in relation to the location and circumstances of their deaths and also the men accused of murdering them. Mary Ashford, aged 20, was last seen alive around 4 am on May 27, 1817, as she was leaving a house at Erdington, a village a few miles outside the centre of Birmingham. Less than an hour later George Jackson found her bloodied clothes and shoes near a mill outside the village, and by 6.30 am workmen from the mill were raking Mary Ashford’s body from a nearby pit.

The presence of a man’s footprints and blood leading to the pit formed a universal belief that Mary had been raped, killed and dumped by a killer wanting to conceal his crime. Abraham Thornton, a local bricklayer who had danced with Mary the previous night and escorted her home, was quickly arrested and stood trial for her murder. Thornton contended that, while he had been with Mary that night, they had parted by 4 am. Thornton spoke to a gamekeeper around 5 am, three miles away from the place where Mary was found.

Interestingly, there is no certainty that she was murdered. The case against Abraham Thornton was all circumstantial.

The surgeon who examined Mary concluded that she had drowned, possibly, according to later investigators, out of guilt at having given herself to Thornton. When the jury acquitted Thornton, Mary’s brother William launched an appeal.

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‘This holographic principle reveals the deep interconnectedness of everything, mind as well as matter.’

Thornton’s response was to claim the right to trial by combat, the last of its kind in this country.

Celebrated as these events were, what interests us more are the startling parallels between this and a murder that took place on the same date in 1974.

murder, and both were acquitted.

Are these impersonal and meaningless sets of coincidences, or is there an organizing principle underlying them?

In the early 20th century Paul Kammerer, an Austrian biologist, developed his theory of Seriality to

CURSED CAR: James Dean’s Porsche Spyder after the actor’s fatal accident in 1955.

JAMES DEAN’S DEATH CAR

On September 30, 1955, the actor James Dean was driving his Porsche 550 Spyder on Route 466 in California when he hit a truck head-on. Dean died from the accident. Rolf Wütherich, a racing driver who was riding with him, sustained serious injuries.

The mangled car went on a tour of schools to impress kids to not take risks when driving, but during the tour the truck transporting it was involved in an accident, throwing the truck driver, George Barhuis, from the cab. The Porsche rolled off the truck bed onto Barhuis, crushing him to death. Fittingly, the car’s next owner was called George Barris.

In 1959, on the September 30th anniversary of Dean’s accident, the car rolled off an exhibition stand and crushed the legs of a 15-year old boy. Weeks later the car slid from the flatbed of a truck onto a road, where it caused a fatal accident.

In 1960 the car was placed into a train boxcar in Florida in order to be put into permanent storage in California. When it arrived in LA, the seal on the boxcar was still intact, but the car was missing, never to be seen again. The car, which had ‘Little Bastard’ painted on the back, gave a bad feeling to Alec Guinness, who was shown it by James Dean. Guinness thought the car looked sinister, and told Dean: ‘If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week.’

That was seven days before Dean’s death.

‘The deaths of two young women, Mary Ashford and Barbara Forrest, are entwined with coincidences.’ explain his collection of coincidences.

Seriality is a force which tends towards unity, acting selectively to bring about affinities outside the laws of physics.

Kammerer wrote charmingly of a ‘cosmic kaleidoscope which takes care of bringing like and like together’. Einstein himself liked the notion, and it must also have influenced Carl Jung’s better known idea of Synchronicity, generally understood as a meaningful coincidence that is personal to the one perceiving it.

While Jung tormented the limits of language to explain Synchronicity in terms of psychology, Wolfgang Pauli, a physicist and friend of Jung, extended the principle of events related outside of ordinary space and time from particle physics, where it was recognized in the ghostly world of quantum physics, to large-scale physics where it was not, and is still not, widely acknowledged. John C. Lilly, a scientist originally employed by the military to forge communication with dolphins, described the existence of hyperdimensional beings who arranged synchronicities from ECCO, the Earth Coincidence Control Centre. At last, lab physics is starting to converge with these ideas.

The latest research using extremely sensitive instruments to detect gravity waves is producing unexpected confirmation that the universe is a gigantic hologram. Holograms are flat surfaces that contain three dimensional images, and when a hologram is split apart each separate piece retains the entire image. This is because they are made of information, as is the universe at its deepest level. Energy, Matter, Time – these great buttresses of the classical physical universe – are incidental to the information that underpins it all.

Calculations show how the full stop at the end of this sentence contains enough information to extrapolate our entire galaxy.

And then some!

This also happens to be a useful way to get a grip on Synchronicity, since this ‘holographic principle’ reveals the deep interconnectedness of everything,

SOURCES:

PHONE PHREAKERY

IT’S FOR YOU: The author has noticed many odd ‘coincidences’ involving telephones – with two experiences of his own. © Carl Jones

When I was younger I lived near a phone box. One evening as I was walking past it, the phone rang, so I answered it. It was a wrong number from a stranger. Not an extraordinary or meaningful coincidence, just fairly unusual. While walking past the same phone box the next night, the phone rang again, except this time the caller was someone I knew (this was before mobile phones, so playing a trick was impossible.)

The sheer improbability of this – the large amount of wrong local numbers multiplied by the small number of people I knew multiplied by my location within a narrow window of time, and this happening almost twice – delighted myself and the caller, and surely qualifies as a meaningful coincidence.

The same thing has happened to me more recently in a different place, and again in a series of two. Never ignore a ringing phone box. Even a wrong number might be important.

mind as well as matter. The physicists’ confirmation that everything reflects everything else across all of Time is not so far from Paul Kammerer’s ‘cosmic kaleidoscope’, the Akashic Records of the Theosophists, and teachings found in ancient Indian and Japanese traditions.

Other experiments demonstrating how subatomic particles can instantly ‘communicate’ with each other across any distance, sidestepping the speed-of-light barrier, add more indications of a deeper, hidden reality, what some physicists call the ‘implicate order’. The ‘common sense’ idea that Time flows only in one direction is also kicked into touch – something you might want to bring up the next time someone accuses you of ‘wasting’ it.

So did the casual conjunction between four people in the village of Erdington on the same date at the same time provide enough impetus to evoke a holographic principle of cause and effect, enabling a pattern to ‘lock in’, binding the fates of the two women and the men accused of killing them? Did the actions of one pair influence the other, so that the deeds of either Thornton enmeshed his innocent namesake? Maybe both Thorntons were truly innocent, and their proximity to the women in mirroring aspects of spacetime was the catalyst for a ‘design’ that led to their accusation. Barbara Forrest lay undiscovered for nine days as police trawled a small lake just yards away from her body (as Mary Ashford’s finders did), adding to the symmetries.

Maybe when a few chance preconditions are met a threshold is

All The Year Round edited by Charles Dickens (1867); There Are No Accidents by Robert Hopcke (1997); The Roots of Coincidence by Arthur Koestler (1972); The Scientist by John C. Lilly (1996); The Rupture of Time by Roderick Main (2004); The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot (1985); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v._Dudley_and_Stephens; http://www.underworldtales.com/dean.htm With special thanks to Helen Sangha at Sutton Coldfield Reference Library, and Ann Pearce and Jill Turner at Erdington Library.

reached, at which point the ‘law of coincidences’ gains a momentum of its own, producing clusters of symmetry that erupt into existence, sometimes with terrible consequences.

And what about the two Richard Parkers? One of the implications of a holographic universe where everything is information could be that the real and the fictional Parker are interchangeable at the most fundamental level, and that the distinction between what’s real and imaginary is quite irrelevant. The Parker affair is a startling example of how the psyche can mirror – maybe influence – material reality, a bridge between worlds that magicians and mystics have explored ever since humans became self-aware. Now it looks like science is starting to catch up with them, as well as everyone else who has sensed that a given coincidence is more than ‘mere chance.’

Coincidence is related to the sense of déjà vu. The awareness of their existence allows us to notice them more often, giving the impression that they are ‘happening’ more when, had we had the vantage point of a god, we would see they are implicit everywhere, all the time. It is Nature’s way of saying, ‘This is all a lot more bizarre and wonderful than you can imagine, so pay attention!’ @

JerryGlover

Before becoming involved in investigations of all kinds of mysteries, JERRY GLOVER was for many years a prolific writer and producer of entertainment shows for radio and television. His video series, The World’s Mysterious Places, is widely available on the web. He also manages a band, and enjoys games of strategy.

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Who are the alien abductors?

Alien abduction is one of the most compelling phenomena of modern times.

But as NIGEL WATSON explains, similar phenomena have been reported for centuries.The following history of alien abduction casts doubt on whether the perpetrators are indeed extraterrestrial.

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I

n my new book The Alien Deception I attempt to explore the origins and nature of alien abductions. I try to answer the question of whether aliens from outer space or elsewhere are deliberately deceiving humanity to hide their real motives, or whether we are simply deceiving ourselves.

It is commonly thought that the crash of an alien spaceship at Roswell in 1947 was the event that started the alien encounters and abductions that have subsequently blighted the lives of thousands of abductees.

At best such stories are dismissed as hoaxes or as complex fantasies by sceptics. After originally being wary of abduction reports, ufologists now more readily accept that abductions are evidence of extraterrestrials visiting us. Some believe they are conducting scientific experiments on the human population, indeed researchers like Budd Hopkins even think they are trying to breed hybrid human/alien babies.

Chariots and cloud ships

Fairy links

Behind the headlines other researchers have looked at alternative answers and explanations for the abduction enigma.

They point out that people throughout history have had similar experiences but they have seen them in the context of dominant religious, supernatural or secular beliefs.

For example, the Bible seems to contain stories of encounters with extraterrestrials. In Chapter 2 of the Second Book of Kings, there is the story of Elijah who saw a fiery chariot that tore asunder. This was followed by a great whirlwind that sent Elijah skywards to heaven. It is easy to see why he is often cited as one of the first abductees.

Although deleted from the Bible by St Augustine, the Book of Enoch refers to several visitations of aliens, or as they saw them, angels from heaven. It tells of how the angels lusted after the comely daughters of humankind and took them as their wives. The results of this union were giants who turned against humanity.

In the Middle Ages, a country or region beyond the clouds called Magonia was believed to be the home of flying ships seen in our skies. One of the most influential accounts was given by Agobard (779-840 AD), Archbishop of Lyons, who reported the capture of four people who had fallen from ‘cloud ships’.

He reported: ‘We have seen and heard many men plunged in such great stupidity, sunk in such depths of folly, as to believe that there is a certain region [some accounts say country] which they call Magonia, whence ships sail in the clouds, in order to carry back to that region those fruits of the earth which are destroyed by hail and tempests; sailors paying rewards to the storm wizards (tempestarii), and themselves receiving corn and other produce.

‘Three men and a woman … said they had fallen from these same ships; after keeping them for some days in captivity [the townsfolk] had brought them before the assembled multitude, as we have said in our presence, to be stoned. But truth prevailed.’

Fairylore contains many stories that are similar to modern day alien abductions.

For example, a twelve-year-old boy called Elidyr told of meeting two little men when he was hiding in a cave near the River Neath, in South Wales. They said they could take him to a ‘country full of games and delights’. He followed them down underground pathways to a beautiful world that had trees, meadows and rivers but no sun or moon. The days were grey and nights were pitch-black. He was taken to their king, who told him he could stay as long as he liked so long as he learnt his letters. The people in this land were small, gentle and beautiful, and lived on a diet of milk flavoured with herbs and saffron.

In the year that he stayed in this otherworld, Elidyr regularly returned to see his mother. He told her that this wonderful land was full of gold and that he and the King’s son often played with a solid gold ball. She told him to steal this ball, which he did the very next day. As he left the otherworld, the two men he had first met ran after him calling for the ball. He got as far as his mother’s home when he fell and the ball rolled away.

Retrieving the ball the little men said, ‘We think it better to be neither faithless nor human.’ From that day, Elidyr was never able to find the cave that led to the otherworld. He later became a priest and was called Elidorus.

Modern-day abductees often try recovering objects from flying saucers with equal lack of success. Fairylore is full of stories of unwitting humans who are lured to fairyland for a few hours but on their return find they have been missing for days or even weeks. The fairies were often known to take away human babies and leave their weakly babies in exchange.

Grappling hooks As humanity came to grip with building balloons and airships, visions in the sky changed from being of angels, serpents, dragons or cloud ships to technologically advanced vehicles. This change was underlined by the great Phantom R

The abduction experience

A strange light follows your car and the next thing you know you are home. You can’t remember what happened after that light appeared and you discover that your arrival home is many hours later than you expected.

What is going on? You are the victim of alien abductors, that’s what, and they can shadow your life from childhood to the grave. Whole families of people from generation to generation seem to get targeted by these menaces that have no respect for human privacy and dignity.

The aliens nearly always implant a message in the abductees’ mind to forget their encounter, but over time the power of it weakens and the abductee either spontaneously recalls flashbacks to their abduction or through the help of regression hypnosis they recall the abduction in painful detail.

The typical abduction scenario is that you get floated into a hovering flying saucer where you are placed on an operating table where all manner of probes and scans are made on your body. Sometimes you get a quick trip to a strange planet or an alien tells you that our planet is doomed, and then you are unceremoniously dumped outside your home.

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Witchcraft and shamans

The belief in witchcraft throughout Europe from the 15th century to the 17th century can be compared to the alien abduction beliefs of today.

In those days witches were thought to have sold their soul to the Devil in return for a wide range of supernatural powers that included the ability to maim and kill anyone who crossed their path.

Instead of being beamed inside UFOs, they rubbed flying ointment onto their naked bodies and flew on broomsticks to their regular Sabbaths, held under the glare of the full moon. At their trial in 1664 a group of witches in Somerset confessed that a mysterious man dressed in black gave them this flying ointment – so even Men In Black have a long and sinister history.

Witches were believed to be able to stop vehicles at will, change themselves into the shape of animals, render themselves invisible and were regularly accused of abducting adults and children. Much like the abductees of today, people often reported being tricked or forced to have sex with male demons called incubi or female demons called succubi.

Whereas witches were regarded as being in league with evil forces, shamans are seekers after spiritual enlightenment. Through training and often very painful initiation, or from the guidance of powerful dreams and visions, shamans commune with the spirits of nature and the dead.

In this process they are taken on journeys that are reminiscent of those recounted by abductees and they often receive an implant that enhances their abilities.

A graphic depiction of an Australian aborigine being initiated by two spirits called Mundadji and Munkaninji, is quoted by ufologist Bill Chalker: ‘Mundadji cut him open, right down the middle line, took out all of his insides and exchanged them for those of himself, which he placed in the body of Kurkutji. At the same time he put a number of sacred stones in his body. After it was all over, the youngest spirit, Munkaninji, came up and restored him to life, told him that he was now a medicineman and showed him how to extract bones and other forms of evil magic out of them. Then he took him away up into the sky and brought him down to earth close to his own camp, where he heard the natives mourning for him, thinking that he was dead.

‘For a long time he remained in a more or less dazed condition, but gradually he recovered and the natives knew that he had been made into a medicine-man. When he operates, the spirit Munkaninji is supposed to be near at hand watching him, unseen of course by ordinary people.’

By communing with shamanic spirits that can be in the shape of little men, beautiful women or even animals, the shaman can help and heal people rather than inflict evil on them. Some shamans have even married their spirit guides and borne children by them.

Such stories indicate that the forces of good and evil can be unleashed by communing with beings from the sky and that they contain many elements of modern-day alien abduction reports.

References

Manfred Cassirer, ‘Nightmares, Sex and Abductions’, Magonia, No. 31, November 1988, 3-6; Bill Chalker, ‘Alien abductions – a shamanic perspective on UFOs’, www.theozfiles.com/ufo_shaman.html; Bill Chalker, ‘Australian Aboriginal Culture and possible UFO Connections’, www.project1947.com/forum/ bcabor.htm; Bill Ellis, ‘Flying Saucers from Hell’, Magonia, No. 40, August 1991, 14-15; Douglass Price-Williams, ‘Shamanism and UFO Abductions’, www.nidsci.org/articles/price-williams.php

COMMUNION: This old engraving shows a Siberian shaman, in a trance, flat on the ground with his magic drum on his back, communing with the spirits.

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Many of these stories were rather tongue-in-cheek but show that there was a fear of being snatched by strange unworldly beings that travel in vast technologically superior craft.

Gort and the Metalunians

TINY ABDUCTORS: A mother struggles to save her baby from the clutches of marauding fairies in this 19th century illustration.

Airship Wave that struck the USA from 1896 to 1897.

Hundreds of people said they saw the lights of the mysterious airship and there were many stories of encounters with the landed craft and its crew. The general opinion was that an inventor was secretly trying out his craft before he made it public, although a few people did think it was an alien craft. The pilots of these craft were described as darkskinned, slant-eyed and Oriental-looking gentlemen or women much like some of the alien abductors seen today.

In some instances there were stories of airships trying to abduct people and/ or animals using a grappling hook. For example, The Daily Chronicle (Muskegon, Michigan), of 30 April 1897, reported that on the previous evening at 11.30 pm an airship visited the town of Holton: ‘It came from the north and descended until it was about 200 feet from the ground, directly over the bridge. It was lighted with electricity and loaded with revellers who were making a good deal of noise.

‘The music was entrancing; the like of which never was heard in this place.

It wasn’t long before everybody was on the street to look and listen, many in their nightclothes. Not a few thought the Judgment Day had come. It was 300 feet long, tail about 40 feet. Its breadth and depth was about 90 feet. It stayed 55 minutes. Its tail commenced whirling and it moved off toward Fremont. But just as it began to move, a grappling hook was let down and caught one of our most truthful citizens who was instantly hoisted on board and carried away. The truthful citizen came back on the 11.30 train from White Cloud and has been talking ever since about aerial navigation.’

In the 1950s alien invasion, abduction and possession was the topic of many Hollywood movies. Notable examples are The Day The Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951), The Thing From Another World (Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks, 1951), Invaders from Mars (William Cameron Menzies, 1953), Earth versus the Flying Saucers (Fred F. Sears, 1956), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956) and This Island Earth (Joseph Newman, 1956). This Island Earth contains several potent images that have been incorporated into ufology. The plot of this colourful movie centres on the Metalunians who come to Earth to kidnap our top scientists. They are doing this in the hope the Earth scientists can help them fight the Zahgons on their warstricken planet.

At the same time contactees, like George Adamski, were telling stories of what they said were real alien encounters and trips inside flying saucers. As a consequence serious UFO researchers dismissed all contactee reports and anything that went beyond the observation of a flying saucer.

An exception was Harold Wilkins, who in his 1954 book Flying Saucers on the Attack (UK title: Flying Saucers From The Moon) wondered if mysterious disappearances of men and women in 1948-1952 might be due to the work of flying saucer activity.

COVER STORY: An airship story from a Californian newspaper of 1896, showing that such accounts could make front-page news. The commonest explanation offered at the time was that such craft were piloted by mysterious human inventors rather than visitors from other worlds. From the author’s collection.

‘The 1980s can be seen as the decade when abductions became a regular part of UFO and mainstream culture.’

SPACE INVADERS: A raft of movies in the 1950s and 60s popularized the notion of hostile aliens poised to take over the Earth, urging an increasingly paranoid public to ‘keep watching the skies’.

‘Implants, scarring, amnesia and paralysis featured in an incredible story given on a radio show in March 1957.’

It would be safe to say that there was a constant dribble of contact stories circulating within ufology and mainstream media that hinted at the abduction experiences of today.

Modern motifs Implants, scarring, amnesia and paralysis featured in an incredible story given by John Robinson on the Long John Nebel radio show in March 1957. He said that a former neighbour, Steve Brodie, told of meeting two strange figures in 1938. They pointed a rod-like device at Brodie that paralyzed him and burnt his partner, who was prospecting with him.

Brodie lost consciousness when a set of earphones was put on him.

He woke up to find himself with other prisoners in a cave. The earphones were readjusted on his head, and when he became fully conscious again, he found himself in Manhattan, two years later.

As evidence of his story, Brodie said he had small scars behind his ears. The experience also made him become a vegetarian, which is not an uncommon feature of contactee and abduction stories.

The turning point came with the story of Betty and Barney Hill, who said that on the night of September 19, 1961, their car was followed by erratically moving coloured lights. On arriving home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, they discovered that they could not recall a significant part of their journey after seeing the UFO. Under expert hypnosis

by Dr Benjamin Simon, they both remembered being medically examined by aliens inside a flying saucer.

The quality and power of their testimony was such that even serious scientific ufologists could no longer ignore similar abduction reports. Nonetheless, it took

several years for the concept of abductions to become fully acceptable to ufologists.

Abductions go mainstream The 1980s can be seen as the decade when abductions became a regular part of UFO and mainstream culture. It began with Budd Hopkins’ investigation of seven abduction cases detailed in his 1981 book Missing Time and six years later he elaborates on his concept of the alien breeding programme in Intruders.

The same year saw the publication of horror writer Whitley Strieber’s Communion. In this he confesses that he has been subjected to alien experiences and abductions since childhood. He tells of alien beings floating him from outside his cabin in upstate New York on December 26,1985. Here he finds himself in a smelly, circular room where he is subjected to several medical procedures, these include a needle being jabbed behind his right ear, and a probe inserted into his rectum. With that striking image, alien abductions were never to be forgotten by the media and the general public.

Abduction experts like Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs favour the idea that the aliens come from outer space and are as real as fish and chips. John E.

Mack favoured the idea that the aliens transcend our own view of reality and that they are trying to make us more conscious of our spirituality. John Keel and Jacques Vallee are less sure of the good intentions of these visitors. They regard them as mischievous interdimensional beings or entities who change their behaviour and appearance in line with our own expectations. To them this is certainly not a modern-day phenomenon, instead alien abductions represent an ongoing interaction between humanity and forces that are constantly with us and controlling our behaviour.

As time passes there is no clear all-embracing answer to the mystery surrounding alien abductions. Indeed, it looks like there will always be a continuing controversy about whether they are pure fantasies, psychological anomalies, the work of extraterrestrial visitors or mysterious tricksters who shape themselves to our expectations and beliefs. @

References

John G. Fuller. The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours Aboard a Flying Saucer, Souvenir Press, 1980; Budd Hopkins. Missing Time, Richard Marek, 1981; Budd Hopkins. Intruders, Random House, 1987; David M. Jacobs. Secret Life, Simon & Schuster, 1992; John Keel, Operation Trojan Horse, Abacus,1976; John E. Mack. Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, Simon & Schuster, 1994; Whitley Strieber. Communion, Morrow, 1987; Jacques Vallee. Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers, Tandem, 1975; Harold T. Wilkins, Flying Saucers From The Moon, Peter Owen Ltd., 1954.

Nigel Watson

Nigel Watson’s latest book is The Alien Deception (Youwriteon, 2009). He is also the author of Portraits of Alien Encounters (1990), and editor/writer of The Scareship Mystery (2000). He has written for numerous publications, including Fortean Times, History Today, Magonia, The Unexplained, Flying Saucer Review, Alien Worlds and UFO Magazine. He has a BA in Psychology and a BA (Hons) in Film and Literature. He produces the media website Talking Pictures at: www. talkingpix.co.uk.

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Notice this?

So did all the other readers of Paranormal Magazine‌ Be seen by our 22,000 readers each month by calling Richard on 01244 663400 ext. 304 or via e-mail on

richard.davenport@paranormalmagazine.co.uk

The

Good Fear

Craig-y-Nos Castle Pen-y-Cae, nr Brecon

Guide

VOICE PHENOMENON: An opera singer is just one of the ghosts said to haunt creepy Craig-y-Nos. © Craig-yNos Castle Hotel

Adelina Patti is the name most associated with the splendid Victorian mansion of Craig-y-Nos, a romantic gothic extravaganza of a building designed to suit the Alpine-like scenary of South Wales’s Upper Swansea Valley.

Built by a Captain Rice Davies Powell in the 1840s, the Castle was sold in 1876 after a series of family tragedies to one of the superstars of the day, who saw it as the ideal retreat from her glitzy but frenetic public life.

Adelina Patti was a celebrated Italian opera singer who had performed before royalty all over Europe, including private parties held by Queen Victoria. She chose to settle in Britain and made the redevelopment of Craig-y-Nos her pet project.

She added two wings, a clock tower, conservatory, winter garden and theatre, all of which still survive. Craig-y-Nos was also the first private residence in Britain to have electric lighting fitted. Shockingly for the time, she moved in not with her husband but with her tenor, with whom she’d been touring. She lived ‘in sin’ with Ernesto Nicolini for eight years.

It’s no surprise to learn that such a strong character is still making her presence known in her former home. There are many accounts recorded over the years of Patti’s benign presence being seen or felt throughout the Castle. One of the most charming is of a lady pianist tinkling the ivories in the theatre, who felt somebody behind her and then found herself playing – faultlessly – Home Sweet Home, a song made famous by Patti. When she turned round, there was nobody there.

Other spirits may also be haunting Craig-y-Nos, with Room 36 being claimed as the scariest in the Castle. When the Most Haunted team spent a night in Craig-y-Nos, Richard Felix stayed in Room 36 and awoke to see a shadow moving through a point where, he later learnt, a doorway used to be.

He also saw a figure lying on his bed!

Ghost events are frequently held at Craig-y-Nos Castle, so you too have the chance to hold a vigil in Room 36, or coax out the spirit of Adelina Patti with a bar or two of Home Sweet Home.

FACTFILE

Craig-y-Nos Castle Hotel, Brecon Road, Pen-y-cae Powys, SA9 1GL. Tel: 01639 731167 / email info@craigynoscastle. com / www.craigynoscastle.com • Stunning location in Brecon Beacons National Park • Grand Edwardian manor house • 25 en-suite and 11 other rooms, plus budget accommodation • Wide range of public rooms, including bar, billiards room and music room • Restaurant due to open in the cellar • Listed gardens, lovely to stroll around • Meeting/banqueting facilities and Bridal Suite • Free parking

The Editor

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CREEPY CASTLE: The author has carried out several investigations in historic Chillingham Castle.

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My Top Ten ghost hunts Based in the North-East of England, ghost-hunter and author DARREN RITSON has carried out many fascinating investigations into the paranormal. Here he selects his ten favourites.

B

efore we begin the rundown of my top ten investigations let me tell you a little about the two groups of people I work with.

Firstly, we have The North East Ghost Research Team, which I founded in 2003 and whose patron is Mike Hallowell. We are a group of diverse individuals all dedicated to trying to find out the truth behind ghosts and hauntings. Our goals are simple: to collate data and signed witness testimonies and to gather evidence from our own investigations in order to make some sense of ghosts and

hauntings. We take a scientific approach to each investigation and although I believe in ghosts (whatever they me be), each investigation is approached sceptically. Evidence collated is viewed and looked at objectively and a process of elimination is carried out before I produce our findings in a full investigation report.

The Ghost and Hauntings, Overnight Surveillance Team (G.H.O.S.T.) was formed in January 2005 with myself, Drew Bartley, Fiona Vipond and Lee Stephenson. Like the North East Ghost Research Team, this is a non-profit investigating organisation. Through

my ghost hunting work I have had the opportunity to investigate many, many alleged haunted venues across the country and I can say with all sincerity that I have had some very harrowing experiences along the way. So much so, I have been able to write nearly ten books on the subject to date.

It is through working with the above-mentioned teams that I am also able to compile this list of my top ten investigations. Of course there are many, many investigations that could have featured herein but after much deliberation and lots of careful reflection, here is my top ten. R

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DEBUT: The Stately House Pub on the Northumberland-Cumbria border was the first location chosen for an investigation by G.H.O.S.T. The team wasn’t disappointed. © Darren Ritson

10 – The Stately House Pub, Northumberland

9 – Blackpool Ghost Train, Blackpool

This case study was the very first investigation for G.H.O.S.T. It is a pub that lies on the county borders of Northumberland and Cumbria and we were called in to investigate after the owner saw an apparition of a man in uniform at the bar on many occasions.

On our visit we took a photo in Room 1 which revealed an odd mist effect. We also photographed a strange red mist downstairs in the main bar.

Lights bulbs blew, the ceiling fans turned on for no reason and footsteps were heard coming from an empty part of the bar. We concluded that the spirit man was a residual playback or place memory apparition who could do no harm whatsoever, but the rest may have been attributed to an impromptu ouija board session, which took place in the premises some time prior to our investigations. We advised this should not have been done.

During a twelve-month stint on the Northeast Ghost-Hunters team (now G.H.O.S.T.), I had the opportunity to visit Blackpool and conduct an investigation at the Pleasure Beach. The venue was the infamous haunted ghost train. This ghost train is reputed to be haunted by a man who has been seen and heard clumping around the tracks with his clogs on. He is believed to be the builder of the ride back in 1930 and after his death, as he loved his ride so much, it is said that he never left it.

Cloggy, as he is known as, is said to follow the workers and staff around the train tracks and is said to touch them

and breathe in their faces, giving them a terrifying shock. During our investigation there we encountered a number of strange occurrences that we found rather hard to explain away. The first was the sound of a machine being turned on, as though the actual ride was beginning. However, after talking to the Blackpool Pleasure Beach attendants who accompanied us on the investigation, we were told this was impossible. As well as an interior door throwing itself wide open as we walked past it, we all heard the sound of ghostly footsteps clumping around the tracks while conducting a séance. No one else was in the vicinity and all the investigators were accounted for. So, was it Cloggy?

8 – The Grange at Hurworth on Tees During investigations at this Victorian mansion, we encountered a number of strange occurrences. On one investigation, event organiser Cindy Nunn saw a figure walk past the frosted glass in one of the doors in the building.

No one was in that part of the building at the time. On another occasion, Colin Nunn photographed what appears to be a ghostly pair of legs on the main stairwell in the building. This area of the old house is reputed to be haunted by one of the daughters of former residents the Backhouse family.

We have also recorded many strange EVPs inside this old home and, combined

‘My survival instinct took over and I ran like the wind. I was terrified.’

Left GOING LOCO: The Blackpool Ghost Train was one of the more unusual locations chosen for an investigation by the author. Weird sounds were heard by several investigators. © Darren Ritson Above MANSION FAMILY: Members of a Victorian family are said to haunt The Grange at Hurworth on Tees. One may have been glimpsed during an investigation. © Darren Ritson

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MY top ten

Ghost Hunts

MESSAGES: In St Oswald’s Institute, G.H.O.S.T. recorded eerie examples of Electric Voice Phenomena. © Darren Ritson

‘We all heard the sound of ghostly footsteps clumping around the tracks.’ with the other photographic evidence and witness testimonies from the nonghost hunting fraternity as well as the investigators, we can safely surmise that the Grange in Hurworth is indeed haunted.

7 – St Oswald’s Institute, Durham City In County Durham G.H.O.S.T. investigated an old church hall and community centre, which was built in 1902. Later investigation of the locations proved rather exciting when an extraordinary, chilling EVP recording was made. It is of a woman imploring, ‘Can you help me?’ Another anomalous recording simply said in a whispering voice, ‘Nighty-night then, the night is over…’ Further investigation of this property is planned and we hope to find out the answers to some questions that arose during this first investigation.

6 – The Schooner Hotel, Alnmouth, Northumberland The Schooner Hotel has very fond memories for me. I have investigated it no less than 15 times, and on many of those occasions, it has proved a worthwhile exercise. On one occasion while exploring this 400-year-old former coaching inn, I witnessed a door opening very slowly and then banging shut abruptly, giving myself and another investigator a bit of a fright.

In Room 7 one night the lights flickered violently and then all present heard the sound of a heavy thump as if someone had jumped on the floor. Footsteps were heard in the room and they seemed to exit where

the door was. The footfalls then continued outside, down the corridor and away.

As always, everyone was accounted for at the time, either sitting on the beds or the chairs.

By far the most terrifying experience I had at the Schooner was when I was investigating the area known as the back kitchens when I suddenly became aware of an overwhelming presence. I made a retreat to a section of the kitchens where the lights were still on and as I climbed the four or five steps, I clearly heard footsteps coming up the stairs behind me.

I guess my survival instinct took over and I ran like the wind. I was terrified. I have never felt fear like it. I am certain there was an unseen presence with me.

The sound of the footsteps reinforced my suspicion and for once, on all the investigations I have attended and carried out – I lost it.

Above DEAD SCARY: The Coroners Court on Newcastle Quayside has previously been used as a morgue.

Here the author and another team member felt an undeniably physical but invisible presence. © Darren Ritson Left TRIGGER OBJECT: This cross was found to have been moved by some unknown force during a vigil at the Coroner’s Court. It has clearly been twisted out of the pencil outline that was drawn round it. © Darren Ritson

5 – The Coroners Court Building, Newcastle Quayside The Coroners Court building which stands on Newcastle Quayside is another investigation for G.H.O.S.T. Once used as a morgue and a place to dissect the dead, this lonely building is reputed to have had some strange goings on. Our investigation proved to be absolutely superb, with a controlled trigger object being moved; motion sensors being tripped when no one was near them; one of the investigators (Drew Bartley) was grabbed by the arm by an invisible force; and I had my clipboard pulled out of my hand when no one was near me. Also, an EVP of a harrowing laugh was recorded. R Below HAUNTED HOTEL: Darren Ritson has spent many years investigating the sometimes alarming paranormal activity in The Schooner, Alnmouth. © Darren Ritson Left TERRIFYING: An unseen presence in this corridor in the Schooner Hotel made Darren lose his nerve, for the only time in his long history of paranormal research. © Darren Ritson

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FREEZING FOG: A corner of the Golden Lion, Seaham. The weird mist in the above photo may look like some sort of photographic anomaly but the author says it was also visible to the naked eye – and unbearably cold. © Darren Ritson

‘One of the investigators was grabbed by the arm by an invisible force and I had my clipboard pulled out of my hand.’

4 – Harperley Prisoner of War Camp, Co Durham This is the one and only investigation I can say, with hand on heart: ‘I saw an apparition’. I investigated the former POW camp back in 2005 as a guest of Anomalous Phenomena Investigations (API) and it is an investigation I will never forget. It was during a break from the vigils when the incident occurred, at a time when I least expected to see anything.

At 12.30am, while standing outside Hut 13 near the base room, I was chatting to colleagues when I became aware of a figure out of the corner of my eye. At first, I thought it may have been another investigator, but when I turned to look, I realised it wasn’t. The figure moved forwards and walked straight into – and

PHANTOM FIGURE: The author saw his only ‘full figure apparition’ at Harperley POW Camp – it passed through the tractor seen in the second photo. © Darren Ritson

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through the back of – a tractor that happened to be parked in its path. It simply vanished before my eyes. All I could ascertain was that it was a clear figure of a man and it was, I believe, a ghost.

3 – The Golden Lion Pub, Seaham The Golden Lion, in Seaham, near Sunderland, was first investigated by the G.H.O.S.T. team not so long ago, with good results. During a séance later in the investigation we all heard the sound of a woman sobbing. It was very harrowing yet very sad in the same respect. Later on, while investigating the downstairs bar area I took a photo of what can only be described as thick white anomalous mist. In addition,

the area in which I was standing went freezing cold in an instant, and I saw the mist clearly with my naked eye. I took one frame and then made a sharp exit.

On another investigation there a few years later we all heard the sound of a pint glass being smashed across the floor in the main bar. No one was in there at the time as we were the only people inside this derelict, and ready to be demolished, building.

2 – Chillingham Castle, Northumberland I have investigated Chillingham Castle on a number of occasions now and have found the place to be very interesting indeed. On one occasion I attended an investigation there with the famous medium David Wells in which we experienced some rather odd activity.

In one location fellow investigator Mark Winter and I distinctly heard the sound of a voice when no one else was around to account for it. Other investigators claimed to hear something of a very similar nature later on in the same area.

On another occasion I booked into the famous Grey Apartment for the night to see if we could document any odd activity.

Objects were moved around, strange light anomalies were recorded on videotape, doors banged on their own and the plug to our video camera was pulled from the socket as we were using it! Old friend and fellow investigator Leonard Butler also took a very strange photograph during our visit. On it you can clearly see a shape of a see-through figure near to the table in the centre of the room. What it is we don’t know, but perhaps we have indeed caught the ghost of the Grey Apartment on camera. The picture is featured in this article, so you decide.

MY top ten

Ghost Hunts 1 – The South Shields Poltergeist We end the run-down with the most documented and well-attested case of poltergeist activity that has been investigated since the Enfield Poltergeist back in 1978. From late 2005 to the end of 2006 a family in South Shields, Tyne and Wear, endured a horrendous poltergeist infestation that almost terrorised them out of their own home.

During this intense and protracted case, co-investigator Mike Hallowell and I saw things that every investigator on the planet dreams of witnessing: furniture being moved; doors being slammed (and opened for us as we entered rooms); objects being thrown around the house, including carving knifes and children’s toys; coins raining on us from out of nowhere; and other objects including coats, ornaments and other normal everyday objects, would be found in locations where they had not previously been.

The young child in the house was moved from his bed on a number of occasions and was left hidden in one of the cupboards, and the man who lived in the house was severely attacked by the poltergeist on numerous occasions, leaving his torso covered in ghastly cuts and weals that often drew blood. All of this and more were caught on video

NUMBER ONE: Three records of the weird and often frightening phenomena associated with the South Shields Poltergeist – a kitchen knife thrown by an invisible hand; cuts and weals which appeared mysteriously on a family member’s skin; and a plastic bottle found being supported at an impossible angle. © Darren Ritson

‘During this intense and protracted case I saw things every investigator on the planet dreams of witnessing.’ camera and on one occasion in front of more than ten people at once.

The case, which made the news around the world and which was featured in-depth in Paranormal Magazine last summer [issue 27], is the most exciting of its kind in recent history and has been termed by some as the modern-

‘During a séance we all heard the sound of a woman sobbing.’

day Enfield. It is certain to go down in psychical research history with other great cases such as Borley Rectory, the Cardiff infestation, the Runcorn case, Sauchie, the Bell Witch, the Amherst Mystery, Willington Mill and Cock Lane.

To have been able to help this terrified family (when no one else would) and document the case for psychical research really was a privilege, so it should be no surprise that this case takes the number one position in my top ten list of investigations.!

Darren W Ritson

Above right BUSY NIGHT: A vigil in the Grey Apartment in Chillingham Castle was marked by memorable paranormal activity.

Above SPECTRAL SHAPE: This intriguing man-shaped image turned up on a photo taken by one of the author’s fellow investigators in a room in Chillingham Castle. © Leonard Butler

Darren W Ritson is a ghost hunter and author from the North-East of England and lives with his partner Jayne and their daughter Abbey. He has been investigating the paranormal for many years now after a lifelong interest in the subject.

He is a member of the Incorporated Society for Psychical Research, the founder of the North East Ghost Research Team (2003), and one of the four co-founders of Ghosts and Hauntings Overnight Surveillance Team (GHOST, 2005).

He is the author or co-author of many books on the paranormal, his two latest being In Search of Ghosts and Ghost Taverns.

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Screaming Skulls: Haunting headbones or ghostly guardians?

JANET BORD examines one of the most persistent

and dramatic categories of haunting, but reveals that such stories are not all they may seem.

T

he skull is an obvious symbol for Death: on tombstones and memorials it acts as a memento mori, a reminder to the living that ‘You too will die’. But it can also symbolise the vital life-force contained within the head, and so may in some contexts symbolise strength and power – and hence possess protective aspects.

This appears to be the role assumed by the so-called ‘screaming skulls’ which have been preserved in a number of houses around the country. Andy Roberts and David Clarke have identified almost 30 examples, although only a few of the skulls actually survive today, many having been lost or buried. The skulls’ stories are similar in so many ways, and it is probable that they are the few surviving examples of what was once a widespread practice. However, there may be many more as yet undiscovered, as they have often been found embedded deep inside ancient rubble walls.

The special treatment of heads can be traced way back into prehistory – the Celts used to cut off the heads of their enemies and display them, and so too did later generations – but there is no real evidence for the existence of a so-called ‘head cult’ in the sense of the heads being actually worshipped. They may have been viewed as providing a link to the gods, and were probably used to symbolise power, hence their later role in protecting buildings against evil spirits, either as carved heads displayed

on the exterior, or sometimes as skulls kept inside.

We will probably never know for sure what the precise thinking was behind the decision to incorporate a human skull into the fabric of a house, but it is likely to have been intended to bring good luck and to keep evil spirits at bay. Other objects were also concealed on a regular basis, especially shoes, and horseshoes were fastened over doorways. Magical symbols were carved into the woodwork, witch bottles were hidden up chimneys, cat corpses were concealed (or possibly even walled up alive), horse skulls were buried – all with the intention of protecting the household.

Each ‘screaming skull’ has its own tradition which tells where it came from, who it belonged to, and what happened when people tried to get rid of it. The stories have been told and retold down the centuries, probably being embroidered in the process. They are all different, but the same basic themes recur. The term ‘screaming skulls’ itself was probably invented by a romantic writer who was fond of alliteration and drama, since the traditional stories do not contain any description of the skulls screaming when removed from their houses – although strange noises have sometimes been heard.

The bare bones of the traditions are always that a skull (possibly originating with a murder) has been kept inside an old house for hundreds of years R

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© Fortean Picture Library SACRED: St Teilo’s skull is now preserved in a shrine in Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff. © Fortean Picture Library

Skulls at holy wells vessels,

Skulls have been used as drinking and at a few holy wells it was believed that the well water’s healing power would only be activated if drunk from the saint’s skull. The best example is the skull of St Teilo which for many years was used to administer the water from Ffynnon Deilo (St Teilo’s Well) in Pembrokeshire when the sick sought healing there. St Teilo’s skull is now kept behind glass in Llandaff Cathedral in South Wales.

Below GETTING A HEAD: An ancient Briton carrying the severed head of an enemy, to demonstrate his power and superiority. From Speed’s History of Britain (1680). © Fortean Picture Library

‘The route of a new railway line had to be changed because it was felt unwise to disturb the skull.’

and it must never be removed. If it is, something bad will happen, such as poltergeist-like disturbances breaking out, until the skull is taken back inside again.

One of the most famous skulls is the one at Bettiscombe Manor in Dorset (already described in ‘Dark Dorset’ in Paranormal 35). Despite the elaborate story told to explain its presence, it is probable that the skull originally came from a prehistoric hillfort close by, or was even found in a spring there. It may have been brought into the house as a good luck charm during rebuilding around 1690.

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There are other examples in the south of England. At Pinkney Park in Wiltshire there is a skull said to be indestructible: despite having been hammered to pieces and burned, it always returns in one piece to its niche under a window. In Somerset the skull at Higher Farm in Chilton Cantelo is said to be that of Theophilus Brome who died in 1670. An attempt was made to bury it in the churchyard, probably in the late 18th century, but the spade broke at the first attempt, and so the skull was taken back to the farm, where it still remains. It is said that workmen once used it to drink beer from in 1826, but strange noises were heard ‘portentive of sad displeasure’, and so it was returned to its cabinet. The owner wrote in 1990 that it was definitely not a ‘screaming skull’: ‘he has always been a quiet and respectable gentleman’.

Other skulls in the south of England include those at Warbleton Priory (East Sussex), Woodnesborough Manor (Kent), Tresmarrow Farm and Looe Island (both in Cornwall), and Waddon Farm (Dorset). But the majority of household skulls are to be found in the north of England.

Derbyshire has a couple at least, with the most famous being ‘Dick’ or ‘Dicky’ at Tunstead Farm in the parish of Coombs. The farm dates back to the early 13th century, but the first printed

description of the skull only dates from 1807, though it was said to have been there for two centuries at least. The tenant in 1807 had heard ‘singular noises’, and many people had seen an apparition which had performed ‘good offices’, presumably meaning that the spirit was helpful. In fact it was looked on ‘more as a guardian spirit than a terror to the family’, the only problems arising when attempts were made to bury it in the churchyard, when there was ‘no peace’ and the skull had to be replaced. When it was thrown into the reservoir, it had to be retrieved because all the fish died.

Most amazingly, it is reported that the route of a new railway line had to be changed in 1863 because its initial MEMENTO: The skull kept at Wardley Hall near Manchester is most probably that of the Catholic martyr Father Ambrose Barlow, who was beheaded in 1641, his head then displayed on a spike. © Fortean Picture Library

‘It was looked on more as a guardian spirit than a terror to the family.’ path took it through part of the farm and it was felt unwise to disturb the skull. When the house was rebuilt in the early 19th century, Dicky was placed temporarily in the barn, but soon had to be moved back to the house because a ghost appeared and a low moaning noise was heard. The skull’s special place was a downstairs windowsill overlooking the farmland, and a local man told Roberts and Clarke that it had been found in the thick rubble wall under a window-ledge during renovations.

A horse’s jawbone found at Littledean Hall (Gloucestershire) was also embedded in the wall beneath a windowsill, and this ‘coincidence’ suggests that the location may have been of great significance. Perhaps the window, like the chimney, was an access point that needed guarding against evil spirits, or witches, trying to get in.

Back at Tunstead Farm, one of the window panes behind the skull was often displaced ‘as though the skull required ventilation’. Each time it was reglazed, next morning the new pane would be found lying undamaged on the grass. At the end of the 20th century the skull was secretly buried to discourage the streams of visitors wishing to see it. Research had shown that it was in fact a woman’s skull,

OFFERING: A horse’s jawbone was found concealed beneath a windowsill in Littledean Hall (Gloucestershire) when restoration work was being carried out. © Fortean Picture Library

and it is possible it may have come from one of the prehistoric burial mounds on the moors.

Whoever he or she was, Dicky definitely took the role of a guardian spirit, and his favoured location at the window also suggests he was protecting the whole farm and not just the house.

The protective role of the skulls has led some people to ask whether they may

DEATHLY: A Mexican sugar skull and a carved death’s head in Exeter Cathedral, both symbolising the same thing – our brief mortality – but with a rather different attitude. © Fortean Picture Library

represent foundation sacrifices, but it seems highly unlikely that people were actually killed so that their skulls could be incorporated into a new building.

It is more likely that animals were sometimes killed for this purpose, however, and there have been numerous instances of mummified cats being found inside walls, and also horse bones. Three horse skulls were found buried in the foundations of a medieval manor house on Halkyn Mountain in Flintshire – the same part of North Wales, incidentally, where a human skull (now just a fragment) resides at an ancient farmhouse.

Another Derbyshire skull is that at Stoke Hall, Grindleford, and one was also kept at Flagg Hall, but Roberts and Clarke’s research led them to believe that despite having all the usual traditions, the latter was probably not of any great age and may have belonged to a doctor or surgeon who once lived there. It was kept on a cheeseboard on a staircase R

g death Skulls symbolisiniconograp hy is widespread, and when used on a tombstone in a The use of the skull in Christian to the viewer that Death is graveyard or on a memorial in the church, it is an obvious reminder looking at such reminders close to us all. Although we may give an involuntary shudder when the beginning of November of our mortality, in Mexico they celebrate the Day of the Dead at skulls are seen everywhere, as a time to get closer to their dead family and friends. Symbolic for heads being made, and with sugar skulls being given as gifts, decorative figures with skulls skull masks being worn.

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‘Her body was unmarked, but there was no flesh on her skull and it had separated from her spine.’

windowsill and had possibly accumulated its folklore only because of the proximity of Dicky at Tunstead Farm.

Lancashire’s most famous skull is that at Wardley Hall, once thought to belong to Roger Downes, but when his tomb was opened in 1799 the skull was found to be still attached to the body. The most likely identification is that it is the skull of a Catholic martyr, Father Ambrose Barlow, who was beheaded in 1641.

Two skulls held at Turton Tower Museum (though not on display) were

said to have been retrieved from the Bradshaw Brook by a farmer from Timberbottoms Farm and placed on his mantelpiece. Poltergeist phenomena broke out, which did not abate until the skulls were placed on a Bible. It proved impossible to either return them to the brook or bury them, and calm only returned when the skulls were replaced on the Bible. Other skulls in Lancashire are at Browsholme Hall, the Pack Horse Inn at Affetside (possibly a third skull found in Bradshaw Brook), Skull House at Appley

‘Workmen once used it to drink beer from in 1826, but strange noises were heard so it was returned to its cabinet.’

The Ffagnallt Skull

At the age of 24, when I wrote my first book Supernatural Clwyd; the Folk Tales of NorthEast Wales, I referred to this region’s only ‘screaming skull’ as ‘grinning down’ from a bookcase. Oh, the follies of youth! I had not at this time visited the house where it was kept and was dismayed to discover, several years later, that all remained of the skull was a fragment of the cranium and the ridge of the eye-brows. It had no teeth to grin with!

Ffagnallt farm (née Hall) is a medieval building in Flintshire and possessor of one of the least well-known ‘screaming skulls’ in Britain. Like its more famous cousins, the Ffagnallt skull is said to belong to a former occupant (a ‘Prince Dafydd’), who was murdered and placed a curse on the house, stating that if his head should ever be removed, dire consequences would be the result.

The earliest record of this legend dates from 1863 when the then vicar’s wife recorded it for posterity in execrable rhyming couplets. This Mrs Clough also refers to an incident when a maid, disgusted with the skull’s dustiness, chucked it into the farmyard pond (which might explain its current condition). Unearthly sounds erupted throughout the house that night and the silly maid was found splashing around in the pond, apparently in a trance, retrieving the presumably outraged skull.

A later version of the story, possibly an invention, refers to attempts to bury the skull in consecrated ground, resulting in loss of crops and the mass death of farm animals.

The Editor

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Bridge, Lane End Farm at Mawdesley, and Chapel House Farm at Chaigley.

Tradition has it that the skull at Burton Agnes Hall (East Yorkshire) is that of Anne Griffiths who was attacked by beggars. Dying at home in the Hall, and wanting to stay there forever, she asked her sisters to remove her head and place it on a table. However, they interred her in the churchyard instead – but shortly afterwards the Hall was disturbed by noises. A link was made with the broken promise to Anne and her grave was opened. Her body was unmarked, but there was no flesh on her skull and it had separated from her spine, so they took it back to the Hall, whereupon the noises ceased. As with other guardian skulls, this one also protested if removed from the house – as was discovered when a maid threw it into a wagon standing outside the Hall. The horses reared and the house shook, with normality only being resumed when the skull was put back on to its table.

The ghost of Anne Griffiths, known locally as ‘Owd Nance’, is also said to haunt the Hall. The only problem with this story is that there appears to have been no such person as Anne Griffiths!

So it would seem that the whole story is a fiction. Another house in East Yorkshire, Lund Manor, was said to have a skull walled up in the attic. Further RUTHLESS TOOTHLESS: Wales’s only ‘screaming skull’ has no jaw to scream through. © Richard Holland

Above BONE OF CONTENTION: The skull at Burton Agnes Hall is said to be that of Anne Griffiths, known as ‘Owd Nance’, whose ghost is also said to haunt the Hall. But no Anne Griffiths is recorded as living at Buron Agnes. © Fortean Picture Library Right CURSE YOU: The screaming skulls of Calgarth (Cumbria). An illustration from Elliott O’Donnell’s Famous Curses (1929). © Fortean Picture Library

north in Cumbria, the skulls of Calgarth Hall are the best known (see ‘Curses!’ in Paranormal, issue 27); others in that county are at Threlkeld Place, Hayfell, and Brougham Hall.

The stories of ‘screaming skulls’ demonstrate two aspects of human nature that are still active today: the widespread (though rarely acknowledged) belief in the power of magic to protect against evil spirits, and also the inventiveness of human storytelling. It is possible that very little

‘Poltergeist phenomena broke out … and calm only returned when the skulls were replaced on the Bible.’ of any of the tales is factual, and even the reported poltergeist effects may simply be a way of emphasizing that the skull should never be removed from the house it protects. Forced removal and burial by people who do not subscribe to the belief in the power of a skull has not been followed by any retribution at all. The imagined effects are always far more powerful than the reality, which tends to be rather more prosaic. ‘Screaming skulls’ therefore throw a fascinating light on magical beliefs and human nature.

(The most comprehensive description of ‘screaming skulls’ is Andy Roberts and David Clarke, ‘Heads & Tales: The Screaming Skull Legends of Britain’, in Fortean Studies Volume 3 (John Brown Publishing, 1996). There are full descriptions of the most famous skulls in Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson, The Lore of the Land (Penguin Books, 2005); and for heads generally, see John Billingsley, Stony Gaze: Investigating Celtic and Other Stone Heads (Capall Bann Publishing, 1998).) @

Janet Bord

Janet Bord lives in North Wales, where she and her husband Colin run the Fortean Picture Library, the premier collection of images of the weird and unexplained. Singly or with Colin, Janet has written more than 20 books on folklore and mysteries since their first successful joint venture, Mysterious Britain, in 1972.

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Illustration Š Steph Murta / http://rainbowgeek.deviantart.com/

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How to hunt monsters RICHARD FREEMAN, one of the directors of

the Centre for Fortean Zoology, offers some expert advice on how to organise your own cryptozoological expedition.

Richard Freeman is one of only a handful of professional cryptozoologists in the world.

He is the zoological director of The Centre for Fortean Zoology, the world’s only full-time scientific organization devoted to the study of unknown animals. He has hunted giant snakes in South America and Indo-China, mystery apes in Indonesia, dragons in Africa, relic hominids in Russia and the infamous Mongolian Deathworm.

Y

ou might think that trekking through steaming jungles and swamps or crossing deserts and mountains on the track of monsters was something confined to the pages of pulp novels and Boy’s Own Adventures of the 1920s and 30s. But you would be wrong!

A small but dedicated group of people around the world, cryptozoologists, brave the dangers of the unexplored corners of our planet on the track of unknown animals. I am one such person.

As the zoological director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology, I have travelled the globe trying to track down these beasts of legend. This is not a hobby for me but a full-time job.

In this article I will explain how to mount a cryptozoological expedition of your own.

I hope to inspire others to take up the challenge and hit the trail. If successful, scientific immortality awaits you.

If you are thinking of going monster hunting for profit, think again. No one got rich through this game.

Cryptozoological expeditions devour money. Cryptozoology is a calling; it’s about dedication, adventure and scientific endeavour, not profit.

The jargon for an unknown animal is ‘cryptid’ but I make no apologies for occasionally referring to them as ‘monsters’ in this article. The original definition of the word monster was ‘a revelation’. There can be no more fitting description of a cryptid.

Organizing a monster hunt might sound daunting but if you break it down into steps it is not really so hard. To be honest, the most difficult things I have dealt with on expeditions are getting to and from the airports across London!

The main thing to remember are the six ‘Ps’. Perfect Planning Prevents Pretty Poor Performance!

Choose your monster First of all you will need to select a cryptid that you want to search for.

You don’t want to waste time chasing shadows. What makes a good target creature? There are several factors to consider. Is your target creature likely to exist? It makes sense to look for a creature that has been reported by witnesses for a very long time rather than something seen only once or twice. In some cases, such as the Canadian sea serpent dubbed ‘Cadborosaurus’, the Sumatran mystery ape orang-pendek, and the thylacine or marsupial wolf of Tasmania, some of the witnesses have actually been scientists.

Such witnesses strengthen the case for the existence of the animal in question.

Another consideration in choosing your monster is the location. This is tied up with other factors, such as finance and transport. For example, in order to take a decent expedition into the Congo, on the track of Mokele-mbembe, the supposed living ‘dinosaur’ (more likely to be a giant monitor lizard) would be an expensive undertaking. In order to get R

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‘I have travelled the globe trying to track down beasts of legend.’ get information on where the creature was last seen and concentrate your searches on that area.

However be ready to move on if the monster turns up elsewhere whilst you are in the country.

Guides may do some groundwork in advance for you, such as finding witnesses for you to interview.

With e-mongol.com the © Steph Murta CFZ designed posters that were then translated into Mongolian and distributed to nomads in the desert.

They explained how a group of British scientists were visiting the area and wanted information on the deathworm – preferably a specimen. Though no specimens were forthcoming, the posters attracted many witnesses, some of whom travelled several days to see us.

In Russia our Ukrainian and Russian counterparts had been in the area for two weeks chasing up stories and finding there and transport yourselves, bearers eyewitnesses. and equipment into the very deep jungle You might want to set up camera you would need a large team of people. traps in the hope of photographing your You would need to weigh this against quarry. Test your trigger cameras before the noise such a large group would make setting them up in the wild. The same and its possible negative effects. goes for all your equipment.

In an expedition to the wilds of Siberia after the Irkuiem or god bear you would be hundreds of miles from the nearest Control your finance town. You would need to take enough Sadly there are no academic bodies that provisions to last for the whole time you finance cryptozoological expeditions. were there. You would need to think The Centre for Fortean Zoology about how you would transport this or if generally finances its own. We publish you were going to store it at a base camp. our own books, do lectures and write Try to select a creature you have a for magazines as well as publishing our fighting chance of seeing or at least gaining own quarterly magazine Animals and fresh information from eyewitnesses.

Men. The money from this goes towards Don’t forget to do your research: read expeditions. Members generally pay their as much as you can on both the creature own way on such trips. and the country it inhabits. Guides such If you have a day job you might want as the Lonely Planet series are excellent to save up and take your annual fortnight for gaining traveller’s info on almost any (or should that be ‘Fort’ night?) off on country. a monster hunt. Remember, though, this is not a holiday. Cryptozoological

Plan ahead

Always have an itinerary for your expedition.You will only have limited time and you want make the most of it. Try to

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ON THE TRACK: Richard finds the trail of an anaconda – the biggest snake known to science – during an expedition in South America. © Richard Freeman

expeditions can be dangerous and often take you to remote places. A monster hunter needs to be brave enough to follow the quarry into places most people would never dream of going.

Expenses can differ greatly. This can include flights, equipment and native guides. The cost of my trip to West Africa on the track of the dragon-like Ninki-Nanka was a little over £300. My Russian trip looking for relic hominids known as almasty ran to about £1500.

More expensive expeditions have included my hunt for the Mongolian Deathworm in the Gobi and the giant anaconda in Guyana, costing £4,000 and £7,000 respectively.

You might think TV companies would be interested in financing cryptozoological expeditions in order to make exciting documentaries out of them. Nothing could be further from the truth! Of all my expeditions only one, the 2000 trip to Indo China in search of the serpent dragon called the naga, was financed by a TV company. About six or seven times per year the CFZ is approached by researchers for companies who are toying with the idea of making a film about an expedition.

They all end up the same way, the researchers go back to the company, the company approaches the TV station with the idea and the TV station says no.

Usually there is no explanation but in the past we have been told we were rejected for being too real (too much natural history not fitting in with dross like ‘pet psychics’ and rescue mediums).

‘But wait’, I hear you cry, ‘I can’t afford to fly to the other side of the world.’ Don worry, is my reply; sometimes monsters are on your doorstep. An investigation in the UK can be done for next to nothing. The CFZ have hunted big cats and lake monsters all over the UK. In fact our most successful expedition was to

REFRESHMENTS: The author (in camouflage jacket) and his team take time out for tea in the Gobi Desert during their search of the Mongolian Death Worm. © Richard Freeman

Martin Mere in Lancashire, where we investigated reports of a monster attacking full-grown swans. It turned out to be a giant catfish.

You don’t have to clamber up the Himalayas or delve into the Amazon to be a cryptozoologist. There are a wealth of poorly investigated creatures in the UK and Ireland such as the ‘earth hounds’ in Scotland and the ‘master otter’ in Ireland.

Pick your team If you intend to take a group of people on your expedition you need to select them with care. Don’t just bring along anyone. Ask yourself if the people you have in mind will be physically and mentally up to the job. I recall that on one expedition to Africa, one man who

claimed to have much experience in the Dark Continent proved to be of no use whatsoever once he was there. This ‘old Africa hand’ spent most of the trip in a seedy hotel room whining about the humidity whilst the rest of us traversed swamp and jungle.

Look for people with zoological experience or tracking experience. Those well versed in the use of cameras will also be a boon to your team. Most of all, make sure all members can rub along together well. You don’t want fights braking out whilst you’re up a mountain or in a rainforest.

Don’t make your team too big, unless you plan to split up. Most of my expeditions have consisted of three to five members. Remember you will have guides as well. If you get too many people tramping through the wilds like a herd of demented elephants any selfrespecting cryptid will hear you coming and vacate the area post haste!

‘Remember, though, this is not a holiday.’

Get a guide This is perhaps the most important factor in any monster hunt. It is vital to get hold of trustworthy and experienced local people to help you in your expedition. I have been lucky in having worked with some of the best guides in the world. Some companies will provide excellent guides with intimate local knowledge.

When we investigated the Mongolian deathworm we worked with the brilliant Mongolian company e-mongol.com.

They provided us with English speaking Mongolian guides and drivers who knew the desert and the nomads like the back of their hands.

In Guyana we were lucky enough to have a native chief of the Eagle Clan Arrawak Indians as our guide. Damon Corrie of guidedculturaltours.com took us off the beaten track and into native villages.

We were honoured to be the first westerners allowed into caves where an ancient burial had taken place. Thanks to Damon we uncovered information on monsters unheard of outside the country. Getting away from tourist areas is one of the keys to carrying out a successful expedition.

Sometimes your guide will be as interesting as the monster you are R

© Steph Murta

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© Steph Murta

‘A monster hunter needs to be brave enough to go places most people would never dream of going.’

Get the right transport Getting around in third world countries can be an adventure. In some countries you will have to traverse vast distances. In my experience there are two types of expedition. The first is when most of the exploration is done on foot due to the terrain. You may drive to the area initially but then you spend weeks in the jungle or mountains. The second is where you drive from place to place and spend comparatively little time walking. Sumatra, Russia and Guyana fell into the former type and Thailand and Mongolia into the latter.

hunting. In Sumatra our guide Sahar was a shaman said to be able to bring down the ‘tiger spirit’ to possess him. In the jungle his bush craft was second to none and we even found and followed the tracks of an orang-pendek. His friend Debbie Martyr, head of the Indonesian Tiger Conservation group, had seen the orang-pendek several times.

Often the guides will not only know monster witnesses but will have often seen the creatures themselves. An elderly man in Thailand took me into a maze of caverns in the jungle to show me where he saw a 60 foot naga crawling through a subterranean river. In Russia the respected Ukrainian scientist Grigrory Panchenko had twice seen the almasty, one at very close range.

Roads, where they exist at all, tend to be much worse than in the UK. Full of potholes, driving along them can be as dangerous as hacking your way through the rainforest. Mountainous areas like The Caucasus and Sumatra have tortuously twisting roads which make a journey that would last two hours in the west last up to eight hours.

I recommend you get a four-wheel drive vehicle of decent size. This way you can use it to carry equipment and even to sleep in if needs be.

Gather equipment What you need to take can differ radically from expedition to expedition. Generally you will be camping out in the wilds.

Good, hardy footwear is essential. I once knew a man who came on an expedition with tatty old boots whose soles fell off

‘Make sure you know about the climate of the country you are visiting.’ three days into the trip. He spent the rest of the arduous expedition in slip-ons!

Make sure you know about the climate of the country you are visiting. Remember many countries have rainy and dry seasons.

If you are going to a wet climate you will need a rain poncho and a waterproof bag to keep your extra clothes dry.

© Steph Murta

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HARD GOING: The author takes a breather after hacking his way through the jungle on Gunung Tuju in Sumatra, during an expedition to find evidence for a mystery hominid, the orang pendek. © Richard Freeman

Take warm clothes for a cool climate and lighter ones for a tropical country.

Remember, even in the tropics it can get cold at night. On my first trip to the mountains of Sumatra I was freezing cold at night because I had not brought an adequate sleeping bag. A good multiseason sleeping bag is a must.

Sometimes guides will provide tents and camping equipment but don’t bank on this: ask first. Guides usually double up as cooks and have their own cooking equipment. Sometimes the guides’ fees cover food expenses but make sure this is all worked out in advance.

You need to travel as light as you can.

If your expedition is to be made mostly in vehicles, then this is not too much of an issue but on foot, believe you me, you can feel every ounce in your backpack.

Apart from tents and bedding, take as few clothes as you can. Yes, you will end up smelling like a tramp but this is a monster hunt not a fashion show!

You will need to leave room for other equipment and any evidence you find as well. If you carry too much there will be an additional charge on flights.

Always take both moving and stills cameras. Imagine if you saw a cryptid and had no camera on you! Who would ever believe you? I find digital cameras the best. Take extra batteries as electric sockets for recharging are few and far between in jungles, deserts and mountains. Trigger cameras or camera traps can be picked up relatively cheaply on line. Remember where you set up the traps. You don’t want to forget where you

Inoculations

TINY DRAGON: On a dragon hunt in the Gambia, Richard Freeman makes friends with this less fearsome reptile, a python. © Richard Freeman

put the camera and lose it in a forest!

In the UK there is also the risk of the camera trap being nicked, so chain them in place. The CFZ has had one camera trap swiped when it was put up in a field to photograph a big cat.

Also, carry scientific specimen bags for any skin, hair or dung you may find. These bags are easily brought on line. When handling evidence always use surgical gloves so as to not contaminate the DNA with your own. A good resin for making casts of footprints is a nice idea. Resin is generally stronger and keeps the shape better than plaster of paris. I remember carrying a plastic bag full of plaster of paris through customs and worrying what they would make of my bag of white powder!

Sound recording equipment such as a powerful Dictaphone is good for capturing vocalizations of creatures and eyewitness statements.

Make the best of your time If you are taking a big group then split up to cover more ground.

Smaller groups also make less noise. Record all interviews with witnesses and film as much of the expedition as you can. This will come in use not only as a record in itself but also as a tool to improve future trips.

You will be very lucky to get a glimpse of your target creature, so gleaning information from locals and witnesses is the next best thing.

It is a good idea to prepare a list of questions when interviewing a witness. Be patient as English will probably not be their first language.

You will have to work through an interpreter. In Sumatra, when speaking to the Kubu tribesmen of their encounters with orang-pendek and giant snakes we needed two

interpreters. Our guide Sahar translated our questions into Indonesian and then these were translated by a second man (who spoke no English) into the language of the Kubu and visa versa.

Generally I have found native peoples to be very hospitable and honest. They are usually surprised at scientists from ‘the outside world’ being interested in their sightings. They ask for no payment and often do not consider what they have seen to be anything special but just ‘another kind of animal’. One Russian almasty witness was amazed that we were interested in such a ‘crazy topic’, as she put it.

The only real exception to this was in The Gambia, where everyone seemed to be out to twist money from Europeans and would tell any kind of tall tail if they thought they could get their hands on some cash.

Always keep a journal of your trip with entries every day. Such notes are invaluable when it comes to writing an account of your expedition. In the modern day you may even be able to do a daily computer blog with a laptop if you can get a signal.

When you get home If you have got lucky and managed to film a cryptid do not hoard the film and exchange

‘This is a monster hunt not a fashion show!’

© Steph Murta

it only for money. As noted before this is a scientific endeavour not a way of making cash. Share the film with fellow cryptozoologists and the scientific community. This is all about exchanging knowledge and advancing knowledge. If you hold out for cash people will be suspicious. If you have indeed filmed an unknown animal, then your reward will be scientific fame.

If you have bone, skin, dung, scales or other organic matter that may come from a cryptid

The biggest killer in the tropics is crocodile, the sh not the ark or venomous snakes. It’s the mosquitoes. Ma laria kills thousan ds of people ever year. It is vit al that before go ing on a trip you consult your GP about what ino cu you will need. De tailed information lations on every country and its dis ea ses is readily av Malaria is prevente ailable. d by a course of tablets taken prior to, during an d for a number of da the trip. Most oth er diseases are pre ys after vented via injections. Depend ing on where you are going, you may need ino culations against things like yellow fever, rab ies and tetanus, as well as possibly many oth ers.

you will need to get it scientifically analysed. Approach reputable museums, universities or zoological organizations. If these cannot do the analysis themselves they may be able to furnish you with contacts who can. Most of the organic matter from CFZ expeditions are analysed by Copenhagen University where our friend Dr Lars Thomas works.

Whatever the outcome, publish the findings. There is no shame in mistaking something mundane for something strange. Supposed orang-pendek hair the CFZ brought back from Sumatra turned out to be from a golden cat. Possible almasty hair was in fact human. Such negatives do not mean your monster does not exist, just that you don’t have a part of it. It’s better to have made a genuine error whilst looking for a cryptid than to never have looked for it at all. One day someone will get lucky and come up with the goods.

That someone might just be you!

Always record your findings and your trip in a write-up. This can be as a book, a magazine article, an online account or as we at the CFZ do, all three. Recording your work for posterity is vital. You would not want the things your expedition discovered to be lost and forgotten would you? By recording them they will be here forever and be a useful resource to other cryptozoologists.

The best way…

Finally, the best way to have a chance to hunt real life monsters in the 21st century is to join the only fulltime, professional cryptozoological organization in the world, The Centre for Fortean Zoology. The CFZ organizes monster hunts all over the world. Any CFZ member can come along if they can pay their own way. The great thing is that you will not have to organize a thing! The CFZ do all the organization. Check out our website, www.cfz.org.uk Even now monsters still stalk the world and great discoveries are waiting to be made. Adventure is just around the corner if you’re brave enough. Now it’s all up to you. @

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Unearthed

Doctor of Divinity George Frederick Lee was concerned that people should not dismiss stories of ghosts, telepathy, precognition and witchcraft because he believed they were all manifestations of a supernatural world of which God was simply the most important part. He wrote several books of theology-cum-paranormal research.

In his Glimpses in the Twilight, published in 1885, Lee reprints a fascinating, and rather eerie, letter detailing the tragic career of a young mathematician who risked consorting with dark powers to increase his knowledge. Lee writes: ‘The record is a notable account of a certain person’s conversation and intercourse with evil spirits, to his own ruin, in a letter sent to the Bishop of Gloucester, by the Rev. Mr. Arthur Bedford, Minister of Temple parish, in Bristol.’

Unfortunately, Lee neglects to provide a date for this communication, but a web search revealed the existence of a will, dated 1702, leaving money to ‘Arthur Bedford, Minister of Temple’. The incidents which follow can therefore be presumed to have occurred during the latter half of the 17th century.

The Doom That Came To

Thomas Parkes

M

y Lord. Being informed

by Mr Shutes of your lordship’s desire that I should communicate to you what I had known concerning a person who was acquainted with spirits to his own destruction, I have made bold to give you the trouble of this letter – hoping my design to gratify your lordship in every particular may be an apology for the length here-of.

Whilst I was curate to Dr Read, rector of St Nicholas, in this city [Bristol], I began to be acquainted with one Thomas Parkes, a young man about twenty years of age, who lived with his father at Mangotsfield, in Gloucestershire, and by trade a gunsmith, with whom I contracted an intimate acquaintance; he being not only a good tempered man, but extremely well skilled in the mathematical studies, which was his constant delight – vis., arithmetic, geometry, gauging, surveying, astronomy, and algebra. He gave himself up to astronomy so far that he could not only calculate the motions of the planets, but an eclipse also, and demonstrate also every problem in spherical trigonometry from mathematical principles in which he would discover a clear force of reason.

When Mr Bailey, minister of St James’, in the city, endeavoured

to set up a mathematical academy, I advised him to this Thomas Parkes, as an acquaintance, in whom, as he told me, he found greater proficiency in those studies than he expected, or could imagine. After this he applied himself to astrology, and would sometimes calculate nativities, and resolve horary [timekeeping] questions, which he told me oftentimes proved true; but he was not satisfied with it, because there was nothing in it which tended to mathematical demonstration.

When by the providence of God I was settled in Temple parish, and having not seen him for some time, he came to me, and we being in private, he asked my opinion very seriously concerning the lawfulness of conversing with spirits. After I had given my thoughts in the negative, and confirmed them with the best reasons I could, he told me he had considered all those arguments, and believed they only related to conjuration; but that there was an innocent society with them which a man might use, if he made no compact with them, did no harm by their means, and was not curious in prying into hidden things; and that he himself had discoursed with them, and heard them

sing to his great satisfaction.

He gave an offer to me at one time, to Mr. Bailey at another, that if we would go with him one night to Kingswood, we should see them, hear them talk and sing, and talk with them whatsoever we had a mind to, and we should return very safe; but neither of us had the courage to venture. I told him of the subtilty of the Devil to deceive mankind, and to transform himself into an angel of light; but he could not believe it was the Devil.

I proposed to try him a question in astronomy relating to the projection of the sphere, which he projected and resolved; and afterwards did so demonstrate from the mathematics, as to demonstrate that his brain was free from the least tincture of madness and distraction. I asked him several particulars concerning the method he used, and the discourse he had with the spirits he conversed with. He told me he had a book where there were the directions he followed.

Accordingly, in the dead time of the night he went into a causeway with a candle and lanthorn [lantern], which was consecrated for the purpose with incantations. He had also consecrated chalk, consisting of several mixtures, with which he used to make a circle of what distance he thought fit, within

‘The spirits appeared to him in the shape of little girls. He told me they spake with a shrill voice, like an ancient woman.’

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‘He found it was not in his power to lay them, expecting every moment to be torn in pieces.’

moment to be torn in pieces. which no spirit had the power This was in December, about to enter. After he invoked midnight, when he continued the spirit by several forms there in a great sweat; and of words, some of which he from that time he was never told me were taken from well so long as he lived. the Holy Scripture, and In the course of his therefore he thought them sickness he often came to lawful; without considering Mr. ---, the apothecary, in that they might, as the Broad Street, concerning apostle saith, ‘be wrested a cure; but I know not to his own destruction’ (2 whether he told him the Pet. iii 16). original cause or not. He Accordingly, the spirits also came to me at the same for which he called time, and owned every appeared to him in the matter of fact; which he had shape of little girls, about told before unto the last a foot and a half high and and insisted that whenever played about the circle. he did anything of that At first he was affrighted, nature, he was deluded in but after some small his conscience to think it acquaintance this antipathy lawful; but that he was since in nature wore off, and he convinced to the contrary. became pleased with their But still asserted he made company. He told me they no compact with those spake with a shrill voice, spirits, never did harm to like an ancient woman.

EVOCATION: In this old engraving, a young magician struggles to control the myriad demons he has conjured up. others by their means, nor He asked them if there ever pryed into the future fortune of was a God; they told him there was. himself or others: he expressed a hearty He asked them if there was a Heaven he had taken my advice; for he thought repentance for, and detestation of, his and Hell; they said there was. He asked he had done that which would cost him sins: so that though these matters cost what sort of place heaven was; which his life, and which he did heartily repent him his life, yet I have room to believe hey described as a place of glory and of. He appeared to me as if he had been him happy in the other word. happiness. He asked what place hell was; in great trouble, as his countenance I am not certain whether he gave this and they bid him ask no questions of was very much altered. I asked him account to any other but myself, though that nature, for it was a dreadful thing to what he had done; he told me that, he did relate something of it to Mr. relate. ‘The devils believe and tremble.’ being bewitched to his acquaintance, Bailey, minister of St James’, in the city.

He asked what method or order they he resolved to proceed further in the Perhaps your lordship may be further had among themselves; they told him art, and to have a familiar spirit at his informed by his relations and neighbours they were divided into three orders: command, according to the directions of Mangotsfield, which is not above a mile that their chief had his residence in the of his book; which was to have a book out of the road to Bath. I have often told air – that he had several counsellors, of virgin parchment, consecrated with the story, but never mentioned his name which were placed by him in the form several incantations; as also a particular before; and therefore if your lordship has of a globe. Another order, they said, is inkhorn, ink, and pen. With those he a mind to print such accounts as these, I employed in going to and fro from thence was to go out as usual to a cross-way, beg it might be with such tenderness to to earth to carry intelligence from those and call up a spirit, and ask him his his memory as he deserved; and so it may lower spirits. And a third order was in name, which he was to put in the first not be the least prejudice to his relations, the earth according to the directions they page of his book; and this was to be his who have the deserved character of received from those in the air. familiar spirit. Thus he was to do by as honest, sober people.

This description was very surprising; many as he pleased, writing their names I am, with due respects, your but being contrary to the account in distinct pages, only one in a leaf; lordship’s son and servant, we have in Scripture hierarchy or the and then, whenever he took the book Arthur Bedford. @ blessed angels, made me conclude they and opened it, the spirit whose name were devils; but I could not convince appeared should appear also.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The reader may recall in him thereof. He told me he had desired The familiar spirit he had was called last month’s issue (Phantom Felines, issue them to sing, and they went to some Malachi – i.e, my King; an Hebrew name 36), a story of 17th century Cambridge distance behind a bush, from whence he of an evil signification to him – i.e, that featuring a mathematician who may also heard a perfect concert of such music, an evil spirit was become his king. After have had dealings with the Devil, giving him the like he never heard; and in the upper this they appeared faster than he wished he power to transform himself into a cat. part he could hear something very them, and in most dreadful shapes – like In the opinion of his Puritan colleague, ‘his harsh and shrill like a reed, but as it was serpents, lions, bears &c., hissing at him, devotion to arcane symbols such as plus managed it came with particular grace. which did very much affright him; and and minus signs had more than a sniff of About a quarter of a year after he the more so when he found it was not in the Black Arts’. came to me again, and said he wished his power to lay them, expecting every

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A whistle-stop paranormal tour of Lothian in Central Scotland, including the very haunted City of Edinburgh, courtesy of resident JAMIE ANDREW. 66

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‘Mutilated, dismembered and disease-ridden apparitions were soon reported by the inhabitants.’

T

he City of Edinburgh oozes modernity. Every year hundreds of thousands from around the globe descend upon its cobbled streets to enjoy its feted festival of culture. For a whole month in summer the city dances with life, lights and laughter. Throughout the rest of the year, visitors marvel at the city’s striking gothic architecture, its museums, galleries and sculptures, and its fizzing night life, perhaps forgetting the dark history that weaves its way through – and often under – its streets.

Beneath the Royal Mile lies a series of streets and tenements that used to teem with life during the Middle Ages.

Unfortunately for those residents, much of this life had four legs, whiskers and a tail, and carried with it the plague, which swept with vicious speed throughout the population. Unable to contain its spread, in 1645 the city fathers took the inhuman decision to

seal off the affected streets and leave the impoverished victims of the plague to die, trapped in fear and agony.

The corpses were eventually cleared – hacked, chopped and carted off – and in time new residents had the dubious privilege of inhabiting the squalid streets again. Mutilated, dismembered and disease-ridden apparitions were soon reported by the inhabitants, including moaning, disembodied heads and a floating arm. A ghostly, hovering child was also frequently seen.

Mary King’s Close was part of this network, which now, due to demolition and renovation in the 1750s, can only be accessed on official tours. It is in this dark, long-buried street far beneath Edinburgh’s City Chambers that a Japanese medium discovered the restless spirit of a little girl. Annie, as she is known, tugged at the medium’s jacket as she prepared to leave one of the underground rooms. She was sobbing and wailing for her lost

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EDINBURGH: Scotland’s capital is one of the most haunted cities in the world, with many of its ghosts sighted below its streets in ancient catacomb-like ‘closes’.

‘She was sobbing and wailing for her lost doll as much as for her lost life.’ doll as much as for her lost life, telling the medium that she had been taken by ‘the sickness’ long ago. It has become something of a tradition for those visiting Mary King’s Close to leave a child’s doll at the place where her spirit is said to linger.

Lord Advocate of the Covenanters’ Prison, George Mackenzie, still lingers at the Greyfriar’s Churchyard, home of the famous Greyfriar’s Bobby. Mackenzie left a particularly bloody legacy in Edinburgh’s history.

The Covenanters were Presbyterians united in anger against the ruling royalty, disputing their ‘divine right’ to rule as monarchs and propensity to meddle in the affairs of the Presbyterian church. The privilege of divine right, asserted the Covenanters, was open only to Jesus Christ himself.

The Falkirk Triangle

The Covenanters found themselves very much powerless in the face of their opponents, and, once imprisoned in an ad hoc facility in the churchyard, George Mackenzie made it his mission to wipe as many of them from the face of the earth as possible.

So many were sentenced to death at his behest that Mr Mackenzie earnt a reputation as a brutal, heartless murderer.

Not surprising, then, that Greyfriar’s Churchyard still holds many ghosts, and none of them peaceful; a local medium estimated that there were in excess of 200 restless spirits.

Mackenzie’s poltergeist, however, is the one that causes the most mischief. Visitors and ghost hunters alike have reported unpleasant physical sensations while in the vicinity of Mackenzie’s haunting ground: bites, punches, kicks, scratches and even a few attempted throttlings. Several ghost hunters claim to have recorded his voice from beyond the grave, snarling

complete without mention of its No exploration of the paranormal in this part of Scotland would be in Central Scotland dwarf those most famous visitors: those from space. Extraterrestrial encounters known as the Falkirk Triangle. of the spiritual kind, by virtue of the area on the borders of Lothian, number of reported UFO This part of the country has long been known for boasting the highest sightings not just in Britain, but arguably in the world. that was both a UFO mystery In 1979, forestry worker Bob Taylor became embroiled in an event called Dechmont Law in and a criminal investigation. He had been walking in a wooded area a strange, spherical object Livingston, on the edge of the Falkirk Triangle, when he came across about 20 feet across.

DECHMONT LAW: Aerial shot of the wooded area where Bob Taylor about three feet across and Before he had time to register the impact on his senses, two orbs, was molested by robotic entities in 1979. © Robert Bradshaw larger object, and rolled their way with the spiked appearance of old naval mines, emerged from the last The knees. his to fall him making and him towards him. They ejected an acrid smoke, choking spheres attaching themselves thing Mr Taylor witnessed before losing consciousness was the spiky The police conducted a full to his trousers and dragging him along the grass towards their parent. open despite his death in 2007 at the age of 89. investigation, sympathetic to Mr Taylor’s experience, and the file remains government take the existence of UFOs seriously. e resident Billy Buchanan, who has been trying for years to make the None of this will come as a surprise to Falkirk councillor and Bonnybridg understandable position, given that the MoD, imploring them to investigate the phenomenon fully. An and Blair, Tony to Thatcher Margaret from ministers prime He has written to successive a UFO. close to half of Bonnybridge’s 5,500 residents claim to have sighted twinning their respective villages.

Mr Buchanan is in talks with the Mayor of Roswell, New Mexico, about So many UFOs have been seen in the vicinity of Bonnybridge that it?’ about special so ‘What’s Buchanan.

Mr ‘But why Bonnybridge?’ some have asked ‘Well,’ counters Mr Buchanan, ‘why Bethlehem?’

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EDINBURGH CASTLE: This formidable fortress is haunted by former prisoners, a dog and a piper, among others.

‘Visitors and ghost hunters alike have reported unpleasant physical sensations: even a few attempted throttlings.’ at them to ‘get out’ of his churchyard. There is even talk of a curse afflicting those foolish enough to anger the spook.

Edinburgh Castle looms over the city, built upon the remains of a long extinct volcano. Like most castles, constructed in bloodier times when murderous whims were more easily satisfied, it holds its fair share of ghosts, from long-dead dungeon victims, to a spectral canine that wanders the grounds.

Edinburgh’s love of the subterranean continues at the castle.

Hundreds of years ago a set of secret tunnels was discovered that led down to the Royal Mile. A piper was chosen to investigate the route, and instructed to play his bagpipes all the way down the narrow network so his progress could be charted. Not long after his journey began it abruptly stopped, and the sound of the pipes with it. The piper was never seen again, though it is said he still can be heard today piping his way through the darkness, lost for eternity beneath the surface of the city.

Keeping the musical theme, the sounds of a ghostly drummer boy at work have also been reported around the vicinity of the castle. Many have heard him, but few have seen him, owing to his preference for manifesting only when the castle is in imminent danger of attack. The last time he was seen was immediately prior to Oliver Cromwell’s bloody advance on GREYFRIARS: Edinburgh’s most famous cemetery is home to a poltergeist, possibly the enraged spirit of one George Mackenzie. © A. Laine

Edinburgh. The drummer was said by witnesses to have performed his mournful dirge minus his head. The people of Edinburgh must hope that this spirit, above all the others who haunt the city, will never be seen again.

The city is certainly famous for its blood-soaked history and abundance of supernatural entities, but the pickings are no less slim when you venture out of its boundaries and journey into the heart of Midlothian.

The eponymous Borthwick Castle was once home, many centuries ago, to Lord Borthwick, a charmless tyrant of a man

John and Charles

John and Charles are the names of the two ghosts of Penkaet, a 16th century house in East Lothian.

That’s according to Alasdair Macgregor, author of The Ghost Book (1955) and Phantom Footsteps (1959).

When Macgregor interviewed the owners of Penkaet, they told him that they had named the ghost that made its presence known most frequently ‘John’ after John Cockburn, a historic owner of the house. Although rarely seen, John would make himself busy about the house, especially in the bathroom, where he would fill the room with steam or the bath with water and steal towels. On one occasion he made a heavy family crest lift off the wall, give a sort of bow, and replace itself.

Most often John kept himself entertained with repeated bouts of knocking.

These he would continue unless a member of the family stood up and asked him to stop – then he would cease knocking immediately.

The other ghost, ‘Charles’, was so named because he began to manifest after a four-poster bed, believed to be one (of the many) Charles I may have slept in, was installed in a bedroom. This spook restricts his activity to this room, and has been heard by several occupants making noises ‘exactly like a man groping and stumbling in the dark’. One wag suggested it was King Charles looking for his head! On other occasions the bed-clothes in the four-poster have been found in disarray, even though no-one living had slept there and the door to the room had been locked.

The Editor

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The mysterious stranger

BORTHWICK CASTLE: Haunted by the victim of the eponymous Lord Borthwick, a fiendish tyrant of the past. © Michael Grogan

There is a strange story told about an ancient East Lothian manorhouse, Garleton, of which only its foundations remain.

In the 18th century, states Horace Welby in his Signs Before Death (1825), Garleton was the residence of an elderly spinster, Miss Janet Hepburn. Hepburn was a solitary figure, friendless and austere, and with the odd habit of wandering round the countryside at night.

In the early hours of one morning, Miss Hepburn had a fright.

Part way through one of her nocturnal rambles, she had settled herself on a comfortable knoll to rest her feet when she was approached by ‘an odd-looking man’. He seemed overly anxious to make himself known to her, so she fended him off with her walking stick and hastened home. Here, she went straight to bed and locked her bedroom door, placing the key under her pillow as an extra precaution.

Her adventure was not over yet, however. She lay awake, having palpitations, when suddenly she heard the (locked) front door of the house open. Then heavy footfalls began to ascend the stairs. She felt certain that the ‘odd-looking man’ had entered the room – she could feel his presence in the adjoining bed-closet (a bed enclosed by wooden panels). She summoned her courage and took a peak above the bed-clothes – and there he was before her, the very same man!

‘Who’s that?’ she croaked out.

‘This is my native place,’ replied the mysterious stranger. ‘I have a long history to tell you.’

Miss Hepburn, convinced he was a burglar, tried to shove various valuables on the stranger, hoping he would spare her person. But he ignored all such attempts, saying he only wished to have an audience with her. At last, realizing he was not welcome, he left and Miss Hepburn could hear his feet descending the stairs and out through the front door.

The next day Miss Hepburn’s maid found the bedroom door still securely fastened. The old woman was therefore all the more convinced the intruder had been ‘not of this world’.

If the stranger had indeed been the spirit of somebody who had formerly lived in Garleton, as he implied he was, Miss Hepburn may well have done well to listen to him. Other similar stories usually end with the spirit revealing the site of hidden treasure.

The Editor

‘The piper was never seen again, though it is said he still can be heard today, piping his way through the darkness.’ who saw fit to order the murder of one of his servant girls upon learning that she was pregnant with his child. This rather extreme approach to birth control condemned the poor girl not only to the end of her mortal life, but also to an eternity prowling the halls and corridors of Borthwick Castle, where strange and eerie happenings have been reported ever since.

In 1911 a group of revellers in Bridgend, Dalkeith, were consigned to a similar fate to the servant girl’s after having the misfortune to attend a silver-wedding soiree at the home of Mr Charles Barrett Hutchinson and his wife. The coffee served as a nightcap to the 18 guests was found to be laced with arsenic, causing painful symptoms in a smattering of the guests, and death to the rest. John Hutchinson, Charles’ son, was quickly implicated, as it was he who had served the deadly drinks.

Added to this rather a recently when TANTALLAN CASTLE: In the news even sceptics sit up circumstantial photograph of an alleged ghost made and take notice. © Brian Robertson evidence was the fact

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of his apprenticeship to a local chemist, affording him the means to acquire the poison, and his exceedingly bad debts, giving him a motive for attempted patricide and murder.

After many years on the run and mere minutes from apprehension, John decided that he would rather send himself over to the other side with a vial of prussic acid than submit to the authorities. While it is not clear what became of John Hutchinson’s spirit, those of his many victims still roam Bridgend, making their tragic presences felt from time to time.

Tantallan Castle, over in East Lothian, sits on the shoreline like a fist set in stone. Its tumultuous history is one of capture and recapture, filled with feuds and bloody sieges. The ‘Red LINLITHGOW PALACE: Birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots but haunted by the forlorn ghost of her mother.

Douglases’ and the ‘Black Douglases’, two warring arms of the Douglas Earls of Angus family, routinely clashed over it. Oliver Cromwell tried to lay waste to it in 1651, using thousands of soldiers, but never quite managed it.

Perhaps if he’d been successful we would have lost out on a most intriguing mystery that has recently brought the eyes of the international ghost-hunting community to bear upon the castle.

The controversy arose from the discovery of a photograph taken on a family day out which seems to show a figure in 16th century dress peering out of a barred window.

No actors in period dress have ever been hired to work at the castle. Many sceptics have analysed the photograph and, to their chagrin, can find no evidence of trickery or tampering.

Professor Richard Wiseman, of the University of Hertfordshire, a man with a healthy interest in researching the paranormal despite his sceptic credentials, was quick to admit his curiosity and open-mindedness after three photography experts deemed the photograph authentic. Other sceptics have cautioned that just because there is no evidence of computer trickery does not by default prove that the figure in the photograph is a spirit. Brave souls

‘The coffee served as a nightcap to the 18 guests was found to be laced with arsenic.’

© Falkirk Castle

BLACKNESS: This well-named fortress is known for its eerie and inexplicable noises, and at least one dramatic apparition.

armed with cameras are sought to help put an end to this baffling mystery; but be prepared for a possible shock when reviewing your film. You never know what might have been behind you.

There are two more creepy castles for you to brave as you leave the City of Edinburgh and cross over into West Lothian.

First along the trail is Linlithgow Palace. Although in 1542 it was the birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots, Mary’s soul does not wander its ancient corridors: her mother, though, one Mary of Guise, occupies the palace, and often has been seen looking out from the tower across the lonely loch, waiting – locals believe – for her husband, James V, to return from battle.

Another apparition has been witnessed at the same address, assuring that Mary of Guise does not spend eternity completely alone and bored. This other resident is not quite so famous as her historical roommate, going by the simple title of ‘The Blue Lady’. Her haunting seems benign in comparison to that of other spirits, content as she is simply to wander from the entrance of the palace to the nearby parish church of St Michael.

Finally, we must consider a haunted location with an extraordinarily apt name – Blackness Castle (although its name is pronounced with the same cadence you’d use for Loch Ness rather than simply ‘blackness’). Situated very near Linlithgow Palace, Blackness Castle sits half-crumbled on the coast, constantly battered by the howling wind and rain. Its historical uses as royal residence, fortress, arms depot and prison make the castle and its bleak, imposing tower an ideal setting for paranormal activity.

Visitors claim to have heard strange thuds, scrapes and bangs at the castle, made all the more eerie by the sparse, scattered emptiness of the structure and its grounds. But the most dramatic encounter here was reported some years ago by a young mother and her sons. They claimed to have been chased from the tower by a maniacal knight in armour!

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Investigation Part 9 – Investigation Equipment and Methods, A-B

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any ‘Paranormal investigators’ gauge how ‘scientific’ they are by how many pieces of equipment they take to an investigation.

There is almost a stock armoury of equipment for many investigators. The standard list of equipment (and methods) used usually includes: audio recorders, baseline testing, camcorders, cameras, EMF meters, EVP, ‘ghost boxes’, hand-held meters, K2 meters, mediums and sensitives, negative ion detectors, notebook and pens, Ouija boards and dowsing, séances and calling out, spot thermometers, thermal imaging, thermometers, torches, triaxial meters and trigger objects.

Unfortunately, the rule of thumb is: the more equipment and ‘experiments’, the less scientific and often less ethical an investigator tends to be. This A-Z will explore the use of such equipment during investigations.

The common theme emerging is one of equipment not suitable for purpose, being used for no justifiable reason.

IN ONE PLACE: To establish a baseline you need to have a static meter – hand-held meters instantly destroy a credible baseline.

‘The more equipment, the less scientific and often less ethical an investigator tends to be.’

Audio Recorders Voice recorders are actually useful for some purposes: recording interviews, experiences and providing objective verification for camcorders, CCTV systems and the like. Unfortunately, the humble recorder has been misused for several useless purposes.

Voice recorders are perhaps most often seen during ‘electronic voice phenomena’ – that bedrock of pseudo-science – which we will look at later. Voice recorders are also often used for ‘paranormal fishing’. A common practice is setting a dictaphone to record, leaving it in an allegedly haunted room for several hours then reviewing the footage, listening for anomalies.

This assumption-led approach often leads to unexpected raps, bangs and even distorted voices. Those capturing the ‘evidence’ will ask you to take their word for it that no-one was in the area / no-one said that / no-one’s voice sounds like that (delete as appropriate).

The problems with using voice recorders for this purpose includes the limitations of non-digital recorders, the autogain circuit and lack of objective verification.

Using non-digital recorders is next to useless.

The internal movements of the recorder’s mechanism often produce perfectly normal sounds that can appear ‘odd’ to the expectant and uncritical mind.

Whether using digital or non-digital recorders, the auto-gain circuit is a problem in all but the most prohibitively expensive models. The FOR THE RECORD: Digital voice recorders are more useful than their flawed counterparts with moving parts. http://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Olympus_Digital_Voice_Recorder.jpg

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Auto Gain Circuit was an invention of supposedly thoughtful developers. The role of the AGC is to keep a consistent level of sound: when a noise is too loud it ‘turns down’ the volume and when the environment is silent it turns the volume ‘right up’ in order to try to record something, anything! The result is that a recorder left alone in a room will capture distorted sounds from some distances away, the voice of an investigator two rooms away suddenly records as a ‘spooky’ voice up close, particularly compelling when there was ‘no-one in the area’.

The final flaw is one of verification. Many investigations are run as uncontrolled events, with fallible memory alone left as the arbiter of who was where and when. Memory counts for nothing when presenting evidence, so unless voice recorders are backed up with camcorders, CCTV systems or some other method of verification the results are meaningless.

The ethical damage of such a method is clear: an investigator may innocently misinterpret a normal sound as something spooky, but it is not the investigator who has to live with or work around that frightening mistake.

Verdict: Useless and unethical (unless used for recording notes, or for multiple verification).

Baseline Testing Establishing ‘baseline’ is a staple activity for almost all paranormal investigators. The logic is simple and compelling: if you measure an ‘unusual’ reading, you need to know that it really is a deviation from what is normal. So, if you feel cold and measure 10 degrees Celsius on your thermometer, you need to know what the

BASICS: To build an accurate baseline, equipment needs to be fit for purpose. Most equipment – like the non-contact thermometer – is unsuitable.

temperature was before you felt cold. So far, so good (apart from the use of a thermometer – but more about that in a moment).

Unfortunately, where 99% of paranormal investigators fall down is in establishing exactly what the baseline is. The first problem is the time sensitivity. If you are measuring a temperature fluctuation, the change is likely to be sensitive down to the second. If you conduct a ‘temperature baseline’ at 20.00, 20.15 and 20.30 – and record an odd reading at 20.22:15 – what use are the baseline readings? You have no idea what the temperature was at 20.22:14, or at 20.22:16. Taking 15-minute baselines serve no purpose in building an accurate ‘picture’ of an environment. Researchers even report horror stories of investigators making one ‘baseline check’ at the start of an investigation!

The second problem is only investigating over one occasion.

If an investigator is trying to build a picture of the typical electro-magnetic fluctuations of a location, where is the sense in only taking recordings on one occasion? What if that one occasion was, in itself, atypical?

The third problem is the love affair of the investigator with ‘hand-held kit’. Baselines are precisely geographic-specific.

Taking a ‘baseline’ in one part of a room and then moving even two feet to another location destroys any sense of baseline. So even if you were monitoring temperature continuously and quickly moved to the colleague who was experiencing ‘cold’, that simple act of movement means you have no baseline for the location of the experience.

Another issue relates to establishing what is called a ‘positional baseline’. This means that if you want to know if you are

recording an unusual reading in a ‘haunted’ location, you need to be able to compare it to readings in a ‘control’ location at the same time. This means having identical units of equipment, static in both ‘active’ and ‘control’ locations.

The final issue relates to the usefulness of the equipment used to take the reading. If you are recording ‘down to the second’ temperature fluctuations then your standard thermometer (whether digital or not) is unsuited to the task. Although many thermometers appear to fluctuate on a second-by-second basis, this does not mean that they are producing ‘live’ figures of the actual temperature. Almost all thermometers are incapable of measuring accurate temperatures within ten seconds of an actual event – many cannot differentiate changes within three minutes!

Combine all these confounding factors and you are left with a set of readings so far removed from an accurate baseline as to be operationally useless when used to compare with possible ‘anomalous’ readings.

Verdict: Baselines are a scientific necessity, but when you get it wrong, they become nonsensical when used to justify ‘anomalous readings’, creating another ethical nightmare when dealing with vulnerable clients. @ Dave Wood is chairman of the national education and research charity the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP), as well as of regional investigation group Paranormal Site Investigators (PSI). ASSAP was established in 1981 to scientifically investigate strange happenings.

ASSAP provides training, research and operates a network of Affiliated Paranormal Groups and Approved Investigators.

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Do you have a story to share? Here at Paranormal, we are always interested to hear of our readers’ true life experiences of the supernatural. Email your story to: editor@paranormalmagazine.co.uk or write to The Editor, Paranormal Magazine. Jazz Publishing,The Old School, Higher Kinnerton, Chester CH4 9AJ.

Upon leaving the church, we listened to our tape and what we heard amazed us all. Firstly we heard ourselves leave the church, then after five minutes we heard heavy footsteps (possibly wearing clogs) walking down a stone-clad aisle, although the aisle was carpeted. They reached our recorder, which sent loud static for a couple of seconds, and then the door slammed shut. The steps then moved away and we heard the belfry door open and then the bell rang. The belfry door then closed and the heavy footsteps continued back up the now carpeted but once stone aisle, this time not bothering our recorder. The next sound was us entering the church and switching it off.

This phenomenon was recorded three more times on the hour. Although the tape is now lost to the ravages of time, I often wonder, was it the old parson or church warden, not realising the bells are now automated and continuing on his ghostly duty?

Mick Crispin, via email

Only half a man

OUT OF TIME: Youthful ghost hunters recorded the sounds of ghostly footsteps in Pluckley Church, Kent, three times, bang on the hour. © Heart of Kent

Strolling round the church

Myself and three friends from school (about 30 years ago now) decided to take a week’s camping one summer holiday in the village of Pluckley in Kent. Having already heard of its supposed ghostly reputation as Britain’s most haunted village, we decided to do a bit of ghost hunting ourselves.

After a couple of nights and days in the ‘screaming woods’ and the site of the old brickworks (well-known Pluckley haunts) with nothing at all, it was decided we would investigate the church the next day. We got to the church at about 12.30pm on a beautiful summer’s day. After having a good look around the church to make sure we were the only people about, we left a tape recorder about 10 feet away from the front door (a typically thick church door) on the last pew and set it to record. We then waited outside the church door, leaving it open about a foot.

After about 10 minutes the great door slammed closed – and without wind this took some doing. Two minutes later the automated church clock chimed the hour at one o’clock, and five minutes later we re-entered the building, immediately turning off the tape recorder.

My dad used to work for Ford’s motor company in Dagenham, manufacturing moulds for engine parts, and building various bits and pieces for the casting processes in the foundry. He often worked a night-shift, and so as I would be getting up for school, he was already having his breakfast, having just arrived home.

One Tuesday morning – about 8 o’clock – I came down the stairs half-asleep, but could see that my dad was visibly agitated. He told me and my mum that while he and his workmates were cleaning up in preparation for the 3am lunch break, they had heard terrible screams coming from the canteen, which was just around the corner. Running around to see what was wrong, they were shocked to find one of the canteen women unconscious on the floor, and the other one backed into a corner screaming her head off, her hands held in front of her, as if being attacked by something invisible.

One of the men ran off to get the doctor, while my dad and another chap tried to revive the unconscious woman who, according to my dad, was ‘out like a light’. When the doctor arrived, the woman had to be taken out on a stretcher, while the other lady, who was still screaming uncontrollably, had to be sedated.

The doctor managed to calm her down, and when she had regained her composure somewhat, she said that while she and the other lady had been getting the meals ready for the 3 o’clock lunch hour, a man had walked into the canteen. Initially, they had only seen him in their peripheral vision, but as they turned to speak to him, they realised, to their horror, that he was invisible from the waist down, as though he had been chopped in half. There was no sign of blood or torn clothing, it was just as if he only existed above the waistline.

He seemed to float towards them, and as he did so, one of the women – understandably perhaps – fainted dead away, and the other became hysterical. The woman who had passed out did not regain full consciousness for about 15 minutes, but when she recovered, she reported exactly the same details of the legless ghost.

Of course, my dad saw none of this, but he felt something in the atmosphere, something

‘They realised, to their horror, that he was invisible from the waist down.’

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‘Articles disappear for days then sometimes reappear in plain sight, sometimes never appear.’ cold and sinister. The other blokes said that they felt the same thing, and my dad was completely sure in his mind that the ladies had really seen something terrifying.

This would have happened in the mid-1970’s, and I can remember the details as clearly today as when my dad first told them to me. As far as my dad knew, there was no record of anyone being killed in that horrible way, although there were plenty of other terrible accidents that had happened through the years.

When I first heard this story, the incident was only about five hours old, and it scared the absolute crap out of me, mainly because my dad, who was fairly unflappable, was obviously affected by the experience. My dad passed away a few years ago, and so I have no real proof of what happened. I don’t know anyone else involved in the incident, but I have a clear memory – as does my mum – of the story my dad told, and I have no doubt whatsoever that it actually happened.

Alan Friswell, Dagenham

Laughed at – but not for long

About twelve years ago my girlfriend’s family and I spent a week in Dorset. We stayed in an old converted brewery. It had been converted into about six terraced cottages. The group consisted of myself and my then girlfriend in one room; her mother and father in another; and their friend was in a room on the lower floor.

About three nights into the stay I became restless during my sleep. When I woke and raised my head I could clearly see the silhouette of a lady standing at the window in our room looking out into the garden.

I thought it was my girlfriend, so I turned to see her lying in the bed fast asleep. I knew it couldn’t be anybody else, as the doors in the cottage had the latch on the inside only and not the outside, and the door was closed shut. Thinking nothing of it, I went back to sleep.

The following morning I went to breakfast and described what I had seen. Laughter was what followed. I told them it had to have been some sort of spirit (I firmly believe) but the reply came that there was no such thing as ghosts.

The day went by with a few jokes aimed in my direction but the following morning I got an apology off my girlfriend’s mother. Due to a bad hip, she had to sleep in a separate bed and that night she had an experience.

She explained she felt someone sitting on her bed beside her and felt a depression on the blanket. At first she thought it was her husband so she told him to get off the bed and go back to sleep, which to her surprise it did. She then realised that all through her experience she could hear her husband still snoring.

It felt good the following morning when I got a handful of apologies.

Wayne Seadon, via email

Weird gifts from beyond

I am retired after spending most of my life in the radio, TV broadcast engineering field. I have always had an avid interest in science and electrical engineering and never thought much about life and death until my wife died eight years ago. I became interested in a possible life after life. I did spend some

time reading and researching the internet, but never became convinced.

About a year after my wife died, strange things started happening to me here. Articles disappear for days then sometimes reappear in plain sight, sometimes never appear.

Articles found in plain sight I had never seen before. I live alone, my only visitors are my grown-up grandson and my daughter-in-law. A few could be connected to my wife and religion, but many had no apparent EERIE: A 46-year-old funeral card that suddenly turned up on the floor in Mr Mangold’s connection to her. home. © William Mangold This activity is still going on I have spent seven years and hundreds of hours documenting them and I have kept many of the objects. For example, when I got up one morning, I noticed something on the floor by my bed. When I picked it up I found it was a small, clear plastic packet. It had powder in it and some printing on it: ‘Lot 04 Exp. 10-07 / Phenocopline HTV / Do not use if strip pack is broken.’

I showed it to my neighbor, who is a pharmacist, and he said it was a drug prescribed to treat urinary infections, and it usually comes in tablet form. I showed it to my own pharmacist and he said he had never seen one like it. How could this current prescription drug with unusual packaging get placed on the floor of my bedroom overnight? Anyway, no one I asked had had any urinary infection lately.

No less than 83 light bubs have failed here during the last four years. The line voltage has never checked over 121 volts.

They don’t blow, just fail to come on and the filaments, and sometimes their leads, are missing.

Last month I noticed a card on the floor of my spare bedroom.

When I picked it up, I found it was a card from a Funeral Home, the type they give out at funerals. It apparently was one given at a funeral for Edward Plemmons, a friend of my son. My son had mentioned him but neither my wife nor I had ever met him. It was dated September 1962, 46 years ago. Our son was at the Coast Guard Boot Camp at that time and he told us later Ed had killed himself at Florida State University. Neither my wife and I, nor my son, went to his funeral or even knew where it was held. How would a poltergeist get hold of a funeral card?

This ‘Something’ can also operate my cameras and can make thing happen to my computer, which no person could have done, and make recorders do things impossible for a ANOTHER MYSTERY: Another gift human to have done. from the spook was this piece of William Mangold, paper in a handwriting Mr Mangold recognise carrying names he St Petersburg, Florida didn’t didn’t know. © William MangoldWilliam Mangold

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strange goings-on Paranormal Magazine will be pleased to publish summaries of notable investigations by regional paranormal groups.

Please contact the editor in the first instance with a short summary of ‘where, when and what happened’ by emailing: editor@paranormalmagazine.co.uk

GLOOMY: The northern end of the Blisworth Tunnel, looking anything but inviting, as the narrow-boat approaches. © Adrian Perkins

INVESTIGATORS: The Blisworth Tunnel team from left, Lisa, Judy, Adrian, Ken, Tim, Roberta and Richard, with camera-shy dog, Lady, in the centre. © Adrian Perkins

The tunnel of death ‘Ghost Detective’ ADRIAN PERKINS recalls what happened when he and a team of investigators checked out an unusual haunted location – a tunnel on the Grand Union Canal.

This investigation was the result of radio interviews I did on BBC Radio Northampton in the early part of 2007. People phoned in to the programme with their tales of ghostly goings on, and with my experience in the paranormal I would try to shed light on what they had seen or experienced.

During one afternoon show I explained it was the obscure and uninvestigated places that held the most interest for me. Following someone else’s investigation was all too easy. I picked Blisworth Tunnel, Northamptonshire, as an example of how difficult a place could be to investigate, echoing noise interfering with sound recording, humidity problems for video cameras, not to mention the water cascading in at several points throughout the tunnel. However, this is just the sort of challenge I like, and it seemed I was not alone!

Listening in to the interview were local boat owners Tim and Roberta Casentieri. Tim phoned in to the radio station and offered to take me through the tunnel whenever I wanted to do an

investigation. People had told me they thought the tunnel was haunted but nobody could offer any tangible proof. An investigation was well overdue so I decided to get one under way.

Intrigued by the proposal Tim’s offer of the boat was the first step but I needed to find out if British Waterways would give permission for a midnight run through the tunnel. I contacted Angela Brown, of Southeast Waterways, and she was intrigued by the proposal. To do an investigation through the near two-mile long canal tunnel would be possible if we met certain requirements; official permission would then be granted. After some back and forth, conversations all parties were eventually happy and a date was set.

On board for the investigation would be Tim and Roberta and five members of the investigation team, with one place left for any reporters who would like to attend. Angela Brown e-mailed the written permission for the

‘Judy, Tim and myself were experiencing a very strong smell of coal fire fumes.’

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investigation to me and we were all set to go. We were met by the boat at the Blisworth entrance to the tunnel at 6.30pm on Friday, June 15. After a talk from Tim pointing out safety procedures in the event of things going wrong, we were ready to set up for the investigation.

The 50ft narrow-boat was a snug fit for the seven of us, but we managed to sort out who would be where with what equipment quite easily. Up front and inside were Richard, Ken, Lisa and Roberta. To the rear by the tiller of the boat were Tim, Judy and myself, exposed to the elements. After the initial run through, it became clear quite quickly that the positioning of people was right. All night vision camera work and still photography was shot from the front of the boat. The paranormal side of the investigation was carried out from the stern with Judy, Tim and myself. I took one or two still shots from the stern and also did the sound recording from there, but from the first run it was clear we would have our hands full with paranormal contact.

At this point I must stress that only Tim had prior knowledge of the history surrounding Blisworth Tunnel, and he wasn’t going to let us know anything until after the investigation had ended.

After the first run I knew something was going to happen. It’s a feeling I have had many times in the past and it has never let me down.

On the first run the atmosphere in the middle part of the tunnel was different. We had also experienced the strange smell of a coal fire, similar to that of a steam rally.

Now all the equipment was set, we were ready to start the midnight run. No boats had been through the tunnel for some time, so we knew it was clear of fumes. Tim checked the boat’s electrical systems in case we experienced any power drain; all checked out fine. The cameras started to record as we drifted into the tunnel.

The low rhythmical drone from the engine and

‘I knew something was going to happen. It’s a feeling I have had many times in the past and it has never let me down.’

HALFWAY THROUGH: This ‘waterfall’ of leached mineral deposits add a welcome dash of colour in the monotony of weathered old brick. © Adrian Perkins

the sound of water dripping into the canal from the bricks above our heads set the scene.

Part way into the tunnel the first names I picked up on were Bill and Edward. Bill, or William, was the younger of the two and it felt as though he was a local man and he had something to do with wood. Edward was older and harder to identify properly. I felt both men died together in this tunnel, and slowly. I also picked up on two steamboats but couldn’t get names for them.

By now Judy, Tim and myself were experiencing a very strong smell of coal fire fumes. We knew it wasn’t our boat and there was nothing else to be seen in the tunnel. I then got a surname of Webb, which I think was CAPTURED: Odd effects were recorded by the cameras on board the narrow-boat, including this ‘mist’. © Adrian Perkins

Billy’s, and the years 1860 and 1861. Judy then began to pick up on an accident, a cave-in where a number of men had died. She also got the names Goldsmith and Anthony Werrett.

Goldsmith had a feeling of pride with him and Werrett seemed to be a worker.

Strange orbs and mists Judy also picked up on a member of Tim’s family, whom she described and he identified. This spirit was standing with us at the rear of the boat. At the same time as we were picking up on these individuals, the people at the front of the boat were getting some strange stills shots on camera.

Strange orbs and mists were being photographed.

Judy felt someone was standing on the ledge in the tunnel as we drifted by a specific point.

Tim and myself also had identical feelings but could see nothing.

We drifted past the halfway point and waited to see what else would happen. Sure enough, Judy began to pick up on a baby being lost. It was a strong feeling and towards the Blisworth end of the tunnel it got much stronger. It seemed people were looking for the child but without success. She also got the name of a company, Hicks and Co. All too soon the trip through the tunnel was over and we sat and chatted over what we had experienced. Tim then told us what he knew of the history of the tunnel. Judy was spot on with

her cave-in and the name Goldsmith, and the baby being lost. There were ledgers who had died from smoke fumes and these could have been the men I had picked up on. I now needed to do some more research into the names of the people mentioned, investigating the facts to see if we could get a match.

Findings were correct On the Wednesday after the investigation, I went to see David Blagrove. David is a well-known writer and knows all there is to know about Blisworth Tunnel. If anyone could verify our findings it would be David. To say I was a little pleased when David said that what we had found in the tunnel was correct would be an understatement. When he told me the whole story, all the pieces fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle. Bill Webb was a carpenter who had been one of two men who died in the tunnel on a steamer in 1861. The other man was Edward Broadbent.

Judy’s information was also correct. However, more searching into the names will need to be done. I think Judy may have picked up on things that are still to be placed into the Blisworth Tunnel history books.

I have been investigating the paranormal for nearly 15 years and have written and published the first three books in the Ghost Detective series. Read more about my work at www. ghost-detective.org.uk. @

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IN

Competitions

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Photo courtesy of Peter Foster ©

A Glow-in-theDark Alien Head We’ve got one of these fantastic luminous Alien Heads to give away, courtesy of Adam Hellier.

Overnight Paranormal Investigation with Phil Whyman and Dr Ciaran O’Keefe

Exeter-based Adam Hellier has been a special effects sculptor for 20 years, using his expertise in creating models, props and sets for the entertainment industry.

This spectacular model is crafted from an environmentally-friendly resin called Jesmonite, to which light-absorbing Glow Powder has been added to give the Alien Head an eerie effect.

The model weighs in at 5 kg (11lb), and stands at an impressive 38cm (15 inches) tall, by 34cm (14 inches) wide, with a depth of 29cm (12 inches).

To win a green glowing Alien Head from Adam Hellier just visit www.paranormalmagazine.co.uk and be ready to answer this question:

The term ‘flying saucers’ was first used following a famous UFO sighting by pilot Kenneth Arnold.

In what year did his sighting take place?

Dead Haunted Nights is hosting an exclusive event at one of Britain’s most haunted houses, and we have a pair of tickets to give away.

The venue is the infamous Woodchester Mansion in Gloucestershire which featured in Paranormal magazine issue 30, when former secretary of the Ghost Club, Robert Snow, described witnessing glowing letters and inexplicable bangs and crashes in the building.

For the first time well-known paranormal investigator Phil Whyman and parapsychologist Dr Ciaran O’Keeffe will be teaming up on an investigation.

The lucky winners will meet the two experts and then be invited to take part in activities such as séances, table-tipping, glass divination and more, all in spooky low-light conditions. There will also be the option of using investigation equipment such as laser-point thermometers, EMF meters, trigger object setting, digital voice recorders (for EVP) and automatic writing planchette, among others.

A Q&A session with Phil and Ciaran will also take place. Hot and cold snacks and refreshments will be provided throughout the event, which takes place from 8.30pm on Saturday, August 29, to 4am on the following Sunday.

Please note, winners will need to organize their own travel arrangements (directions will be given) and, if required, accommodation at a nearby hotel (there is none available at Woodchester Mansion).

To win a pair of tickets to the Dead Haunted Nights Woodchester Mansion investigation just visit www.paranormalmagazine.co.uk and be ready to answer this question:

A story about a haunted house investigation has been filmed twice, first in 1963 starring Julie Harris and again in 1999 starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. The movies share the same title: what is it?

Inkheart DVDs Inkheart follows on in the tradition of children’s films that have an element of intertextuality between book and film. As a storytelling method this has always been an ideal way to bridge the gap between reality and fantasy on screen, best seen in children’s epic, The Neverending Story.

Adapted from the best-selling book by German novelist Cornelia Funke, Inkheart is an adventurous film that throws fantasy and reality together with thrilling results. When protagonist, Silvertongue fatefully discovers his ability to literally bring characters to life by reading aloud, he must undertake a quest to find his wife lost to the pages of Inkheart and return the villains inadvertently released.

This family-friendly thriller stars a whole host of talented actors, including Brendan Fraser, Helen Mirram, Jim Broadbent, Paul Bettany and Andy Serkis.

Paranormal magazine has FIVE copies of Inkheart provided

by Entertainment in Video to give away. Just visit www. paranormalmagazine.co.uk and be ready to answer this question:

Who plays the lead role of Mo ‘Silvertongue’ Folchart in Inkheart?

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Reviews Books

Parapsychology and the Skeptics

Written by Chris Carter Published by Paja RRP £9.50 pb Reviewed by Richard Holland

Science is continually being rewritten.

Accepting the challenge to study parapsychology scientifically could lead to further rewrites in our understanding of the world around us. Learning more about our world and ourselves is the whole point of science – or so you’d have thought.

Unfortunately, as we know all too well, science has been reluctant to embrace such a notion. Chris Carter – not to be confused with the creator of the X-Files – is a graduate of Oxford University with degrees in Economics and Philosophy who has sought to determine why parapsychology has been such a controversial subject over the past 200 years.

Parapsychology and the Skeptics is a unique and valuable volume: the first book-length critical account of militant sceptics in the scientific world.

As Dr Rupert Sheldrake – often on the receiving end of scientific militants himself – explains in his forward: ‘The kind of scepticism Carter is writing about is not the normal healthy kind on which all science depends but arises from a belief that the existence of psychic phenomena is impossible.’

Indeed Carter reveals that militant scepticism is not just directed at psi, but can occur throughout the scientific world, when the results of research does not support entrenched views.

Revolutions in scientific thought which later became orthodoxy have occurred throughout history. They include the Copernican model of the solar system; the mechanistic approach that effectively removed God from science; and Darwin’s theory of evolution (today an orthodoxy so entrenched that it is the one most contemporary arch-sceptics gather round to sharpen their knives).

Why then is it so difficult for so many scientists to even consider parapsychology as a worthwhile avenue of study? Carter brilliantly dissects the paradigms – the world views – of science to explain this, while focussing a clear lens on the motivations of the militant sceptics.

Writes Carter: ‘The story of parapsychology’s struggle for legitimacy is an epic tale spanning centuries and continents, containing victories, sudden reversals, intrigue, scandal, heated arguments, wild

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accusations, ruined reputations, and some of the most bizarre characters ever to walk the Earth.’

Carter ensures that this history remains entertaining and readable, but never strays from using valid scientific and philosophical principles in his analysis. The reader is therefore also given a sense of ‘true’ scepticism and its value – a commodity admittedly in short supply in many areas of psi investigation – as well as that of kneejerking naysayers.

The first of three related books

by Carter (the next will deal with attitudes towards the possibility of an afterlife), Parasychology and the Skeptics is, to quote Sheldrake again: ‘Essential reading for anyone who wants to be part of a scientific revolution in the making.’

SAME BUT DIFFERENT: Resident Evil 5 still packs a punch.

being a retread of other ‘haunted inns’ books, Ghost Taverrns presents unique and unfamiliar material on a wide variety of ghostly occurrences and is a handsomely presented as a well-illustrated hardback.

Ghost Taverns: An Illustrated Gazetteer of Haunted Pubs in the North-East of England

Devon Ghosts and Legends Written by Mike Holgate Published by Halsgrove RRP £8.99 pb Reviewed by Richard Holland

Written by Darren W Ritson and Michael J Hallowell Published by Amberley RRP £20 hb Reviewed by Richard Holland

Hostelries are often haunted. Public houses play an important role in the life of a community and so much life is played out in them that it should perhaps be no surprise that echoes from the past still resound within them.

Another factor, of course, is the great antiquity and historical importance of many of Britain’s pubs and inns.

Several books have been published over the years on haunted pubs but Ghost Taverns is the first I can recall on the haunted hostelries of a specific region of Britain; in this case, the North-East. The authors are well-known paranormal investigators in the region: Ritson founded the North-East Ghost Research Team in 2003, Hallowell has written WraithScape, a spooky column in The Shields Gazette for more than ten years; both investigated the terrifying South Shields Poltergeist case and each has written for Paranormal.

One gathers that this has been a bit of fun for both of them, a ‘supernatural pub crawl’ (as the blurb has it) from the Albion Inn to the Ye Olde Crosses Inn, throughout the North-East. The result is a chatty, informative read that embraces history, folklore, first-hand accounts of the supernatural and general bon homie.

Many of the venues are little known outside of the area, others benefit from detailed reports of investigations carried out by the authors. Far from

to explain why having one horn is somehow better than having two.

The Natural History of Unicorns Written by Chris Lavers Published by Granta RRP £18.99 hb Reviewed by Richard Holland

In all myth perhaps the most romantic crypto-beastie is the unicorn. First suggested in a Greek text more than 2,000 years ago, the idea of a onehorned animal with magical properties captured the imaginations of people all over the Old World and it was embraced, in various morphologies, by many cultures.

Treated as a living animal by ancient scholars, a unicorn – of sorts – found its way into Old Testament texts before becoming a symbol of Christ. In the Middle Ages it became the symbol of courtly love, a mystical creature which could only be captured by a purehearted maiden.

Lavers’ scholarly but accessible work traces the history of the unicorn throughout its many forms, natural and supernatural, and the histories of the peoples, travellers, traders and scientists who have believed in it. On the way we meet many fascinating characters, as well as a selection of beasts either mistaken for the unicorn or which have contributed to its legend.

All in all, The Natural History of Unicorns is a splendid smorgasbord of zoology, folklore, biography and anthropology which does much

Why is the West Country so steeped in legend? Just mention ‘Devon’ and visions of ghosts and goblins, wild moors, deep lanes and any number of ancient cottages, manses and crumbling churchyards spring to mind – or at least they do if you’re into ghosts.

Its spooky fame has encouraged many books on the folklore of Devonshire to emerge over the years, mainly by regional publishers, but Holgate’s is a welcome addition to the roster. Although there is little here that will be new to the dedicated reader of Devon lore, Holgate, a regular writer for Devon Life, scores thanks to his careful research and engaging, skilful prose.

Devon Ghosts and Legends focuses on well-known characters from the county’s history, such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh to those who made their mark while just passing through, from the horrible Judge Jeffries to the charming Oscar Wilde, who rented a house in the county. The story that Wilde’s ghost strolled onto the stage during rehearsals by the Torquay Operatic and Dramatic Society of one of his plays is delightful – and entirely new to me. There are several such gems to be found in Holgate’s book, and I rather admire the way the author sneaks unexpected ghosts into his snippets of history so that they take the reader by surprise – as a good ghost should.

Best read in a deep armchair by a roaring fire in an old Devon inn – but enjoyable anywhere.

Reviews DVDs

Blindness

Directed by Fernando Meirelles Price £15.99 Reviewed by Fergus McShane

It’s difficult to portray the physical conditions of human suffering on screen and have the audience thoughtfully empathise, especially if the condition is to do with the removal of vision (impossible to present in cinema). But this is exactly the apocalyptic setting of Blindness.

From acclaimed director Fernando Meirelles, of City of God and The Constant Gardner fame, Blindness is a visceral, sense-deprivating film based on the novel from Spanish Nobel Prizewinning author Jose Saramago.

When an outbreak of sudden blindness occurs in a nameless metropolis and quickly develops pandemic proportions, similarly nameless victims are quarantined in a derelict hospital: a brutal, unforgiving home. Only Julianne Moore’s character keeps her sight as she is forced to watch the world descend into chaos, all the while taking care of her husband (Mark Ruffalo) and a ramshackle group of infected followers.

In a style reminiscent of Children of Men, Meirelles portrays a dystopian world that questions just how quickly our society would crumble in the face of adversity. Realistically, too quickly is the answer we get...

While Blindness may not have been too well received at cinemas, this chilling, bold and thought provoking alternate reality is definitely worth keeping your eyes open for on DVD.

Twilight

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke Reviewed by Fergus McShane Price £15.99

With the vampire resurrection now in full swing, it comes as no surprise to see the infamous gothic villain hitting cinemas in search of younger blood to allow the revival a few more years of popularity. When Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) moves to a small, gloomy

town to live with her father, she gets involved with some of the less than usual residents, a family of vampires.

Falling in love with vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattison), she must risk everything to be with him and stay alive in the process.

Aimed squarely at female teens, Twilight ticks all the necessary boxes by providing a strong female lead (from the Buffy school of thought) and a brooding, good-looking vampire to make the girls swoon. And entering into this period of post-gothic vampire films, Twilight has all the atmosphere, mood and temperament you would expect from what can best be described as Emo-drama.

Twilight may not have the same level of insight or quality as some of director Hardwicke’s other teenage market offerings, most notably Lords of Dogtown and Thirteen. But as a good quality adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire-romance novel series, Twilight is a surefire sensation among teenage fans that will undoubtedly grant the franchise vampiric ever-lasting life.

The Day the Earth Stood Still Directed by Scott Derrickson Reviewed by Fergus McShane Price £19.99

Another year goes by, and Hollywood doles out another set of remakes.

Among them, The Day the Earth Stood Still stands out, being the modern version of a cherished 1951 sci-fi cult classic. Unfortunately, this particular remake doesn’t quite live up to the status of the original.

When humanoid Klaatu arrives on Earth with a gigantic ominous robot, the end of the world is in sight, with a group of alien worlds having deemed humankind too destructive to be allowed to live.

More of a thriller than the thoughtprovoking, war-questioning original, The Day the Earth Stood Still runs with the idea that a modern sci-fi should first and foremost be used to provide spectacle over substance. And while the film looks utterly impressive, the message is muddled – Keanu Reeves’s Klaatu comes to Earth to stop the destruction of the environment, but he instead gives Earth another chance simply because of humanity’s ability to love. Will this really solve any of the problems humans were condemned for?

Opting to cash in by cliché rather than character, The Day the Earth Stood Still languishes in its own destruction.

A pity, given that there are some great actors present (Jennifer Connelly, John Cleese and Kathy Bates) who are just not allowed to perform.

Games

Persona 4

Format PS2 Publisher Square Enix Developer Atlus Reviewed by David Valjalo

A hybrid of lifestyle-sim and paranormal mystery is a rarity in games. So too is a title as stylish and engrossing as Persona 4. No prior experience is required before entering the teenage world of Persona, where high schools meet ghouls and nothing is quite what it seems (not least the Japanese horror staple of the television set).

You assume the role of a new arrival in a foggy old town and quickly fall into a world of angst, murder and… daily chores. Though the opening act is more of an interactive movie designed to immerse the player in Atlus’ wonderfully spooky world, more crucially it serves as an introduction to the idiosyncrasies of the Role-Playing genre for the uninitiated.

The lifestyle aspects (day jobs, school, dietary concerns) are brought to life by a brilliant script translation and voice-work whilst the Role-Playing steadfast of turn-based battles and point-building is invigorated by a simple interface and slick character design.

With the Playstation 2 (surely) approaching the end of its ten-year tenure, it’s hard to think of a better send-off than Persona’s world of sleek design and luring, deceptively addictive gameplay. An inviting world of Japanese beauty where nothing is at all what it seems.

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Director’s Cut Format Wii (also available on DS) Publisher Ubisoft Developer Revolution Reviewed by David Valjalo

This is a director’s cut in the loosest sense: more a re-release of the heralded PC point-and-click game with added content courtesy of famed artist Dave Gibbons (Watchmen).

You assume the interwoven roles of everyman George Stobbart and journalist Nico Collard as they unravel a plot woven around a café bombing in a beautifully drawn Paris. For the story to still engross over ten years since release is testament to the

skill of the original team and it’s a medieval web of relics and revelations that stands up to – and overshadows – any Dan Brown concoction.

Though the characters are as charming as ever they were, the puzzles are the stars of the show.

Never too frustrating (there’s a clever hint system if you must know) and always well-thought out, they act as small tiles in the mammoth mosaic of the main story which leapt and bound across two equally great sequels.

The additional scenes make the smart move of adopting the look, feel and nuance of the original game, fitting in and providing exposition rather than overpowering the original story. The Wii controls are a fitting substitute for a mouse and keyboard and make investigating the locales an arm-achingly immersive joy.

Broken Sword provides a fresh slice made from an old recipe; a remembrance not a rebirth but a fitting salute to a classic adventure game.

Resident Evil 5

Format PS3, Xbox 360 Publisher Capcom Developer Capcom (in-house) Reviewed by David Valjalo

Assuming the role of Chris Redfield, it’s time to go once more unto the breach and do battle with a village of marauding zombies and their unquenchable thirst for your blood.

The second game in the series to bring in a mandatory and (mostly) trustworthy sidekick, the action in Resident Evil 5 is, paradoxically, the same but… different.

After the critical and commercial success of the franchise’s reinvention/ resurrection with Resident Evil 4, Capcom were always going to stick to the new, improved formula. The control scheme and set-up are almost identical to its predecessor (no strafing here), albeit with a few structural changes. Partner Sheva replaces the need for a munitions box and also mucks in when the going gets tough (often with mixed results).

It’s the new features – on-the-go inventory, sprint command, co-op play – that ultimately prove Resident Evil 5’s curse, placing the title in a grey area between solitary survivalist horror and arcade action thriller. Separating the story into rapid-fire chapters removes any real sense of threat and the actionoriented story that eggs players on from one set-piece to another is too aggressive and brash to be intriguing, memorable or even fun. More than the additions to the series’ hallmarks, however, it’s the removal of Resident Evil’s deadliest weapon – silence – that renders it a little pale in comparison to what has gone before.

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Bookend

It’s time to slay the Logic Monster

By Jimmy Lee Shreeve

‘The dominance of the left brain, logical thinking we see today has stripped the vibrancy out of our lives.’

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Celebrated 1930s bluesman Robert Johnson sang about having a ‘hellhound’ on his tail. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve all got another altogether uglier critter hot on our tails – the logic monster. The modern world is ruled by its despotic creed of rationalism, which is the offspring of the left brain, or conscious mind.

But why is logic a ‘monster’, you ask? After all, it’s brought us many benefits, from cars and air travel to the internet and iPhones.

That may be so. But in my view, the sheer dominance of the left brain, logical thinking we see today has stripped the vibrancy out of our lives. It has made the world drab and colourless. As a result, we rarely see the ‘bigger picture’ anymore. Everything has to be stripped down to its component parts (including the human body and brain) and analysed to death.

What’s more, in its tyrannical bid for domination, the logic monster will not accept anything that doesn’t fit into its narrow view of reality. And if it gets a whiff of the paranormal, its scorn knows no bounds.

Sadly, the artistic, intuitive and creative side of us – the right brain or subconscious – has been battered into submission by the logic monster.

It has been consigned to the shadows, fighting for life and expression.

Yet once, long ago, it was a different story. According to the late Julian Jaynes, Princeton psychologist and author of a brilliant and convincing book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), our right brain held sway in ancient times (up until around 1200 BC). And arguably, its more holistic mode of thinking led to the creation of an altogether different technology – one that saw the building of stone circles like Stonehenge and Avebury in Britain, and the Sphinx and Great

Pyramid monuments in Egypt.

What these intriguing constructions were used for is a mystery to us today.

But that’s hardly surprising since they were built by cultures with a totally different mindset to ours – a mindset that was essentially pictorial and nonlanguage based (in that they didn’t think in words as much as we do).

It’s certainly possible that, as a result of right brain thinking and technologies, structures like Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid were harnessing energies we have no conception of now. And these energies may have allowed early astronomers to gain awareness of distant star systems that in modern times can only be seen with powerful telescopes.

So has the right brain mode of thinking died out entirely?

No. It can still be seen today in prodigies. For example, during the course of his work, neurologist Oliver Sacks looked at two mentally subnormal twins in New York. They could sit swapping 20-figure prime numbers, which according to mathematicians can’t be done without a powerful computer. Other prodigies of both average and lesser intelligence can solve complex mathematical problems merely by looking at them. It is as if they can see – in a blinding flash – the bigger picture.

All of us could regain some of our right brain heritage by listening more to intuition and hunches, and by following our instincts. This involves a degree of risk, however, as most of our culture, economies and financial systems are built on left brain thinking. So allowing the right brain to dominate might not make it easy to make a living, for example.

But casting off the chains of the logic monster, even just now and again, could lead us into exciting unknown territories – and take our lives in directions we’ve never dreamed of (with our left brains) before. @

Jimmy Lee Shreeve is an investigative journalist who has written for national newspapers and magazines in Britain and the US, including The Independent, Sunday Express and Financial Times. His books include Human Sacrifice: A Shocking Expose of Ritual Killings Worldwide (Barricade 2008) and Cannibals: True Stories Of The Horrifying Killers Who Feast On Human Flesh (Blake 2008). He’s been called ‘the British heir to Hunter S. Thompson’s early gonzo journalism’. Work aside, Jimmy collects Bowie knives and old books on arcane subjects. He currently lives in Norwich with his wife, two daughters, and three cats. More at www.JimmyLeeShreeve.com

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