Fortean Times

EDITOR DAVID SUTTON drsutton@forteantimes.com FOUNDING EDITORS BOB RICKARD (ft-bobrickard@mail.com) PAUL SIEVEKING (sieveking@forteantimes.com) NEWS EDITOR IAN SIMMONS (simmons@forteantimes.com) ART DIRECTOR ETIENNE GILFILLAN (etienne@forteantimes.co

The weeks leading up to the release of the Pentagon’s UFO report saw more ink spilled on the topic than we remember in many a year. Suddenly, there was a feeding frenzy of interest in a subject the mainstream media – tabloids aside – don’t usually ca

FT’S FAVOURITE HEADLINES FROM AROUND THE WORLD FRENCH WOMAN SPENDS THREE YEARS TRYING TO PROVE SHE IS NOT DEAD theguardian.com, 12 Jan 2021. Missing man found dead inside Spanish dinosaur statue theguardian.com, 24 May 2021. GARDAI PAID FOR BEING IN

Rambo the Rottweiler had to be rushed to the vet for emergency surgery after he vomited a surgical glove. On being given an endoscopy his stomach was found to contain 29 more that had to be removed during a three-hour surgical procedure. His owner, D

Lewis Carroll’s two Alice books were probably the first introduction for many of us to the weird and wonderful, to absurdity and contradiction, to the Other. The young Charles Dodgson’s headmaster wrote that the 12-year-old was “marvellously ingeniou

In May, Samantha Azzopardi’s international trail of confusion and chaos came to a temporary end when a Melbourne, Australia, court sentenced her to two years in prison for child stealing. Over a period of at least 10 years, Azzopardi, 32 – also known

For some years now, artist/sculptor Kendall Hart has been travelling across North America with a show entitled Gardens of Myth, which consists of several incredibly detailed, larger-thanlife-sized sculptures of various legendary monsters and fantasti

• A pair of glasses once owned by Mahatma Gandhi sold for £260,000 at auction in Bristol on 21 August 2020, 26 times their guide price. They were given to the current owner’s uncle in the 1920s and sold to a US collector. A shawl worn by Gandhi sold

The promise of apparent UFO disclosure by the US Government in the form of the Pentagon’s UAP report (see p2) has seen all manner of experts, sceptics and flying saucer fans crawl out of the woodwork. Robert Sheaffer, on his Bad UFOs blog, as usual p

Some years ago I was asked for an online interview about the infamous 1980 Rendlesham Forest case by the late writer Georgina Bruni (obit. FT234:30). It was for her book about the case, which she later called You Can’t Tell the People and, after she

In the summer of 1979, Morag wasn’t the only strange and elusive entity in the vicinity of Loch Morar: two LN&MP (Loch Ness and Morar Project) members told of encountering a mysterious American who claimed to be living in a cave on the northern shore

“Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny; and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge… At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” So spoke Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minist

Competitors will be assigned bouts at random, with winners of all rounds gaining entry to a final bout. Usually, there will be a maximum of 12 contestants. 1. Equipment. Competitors must wear long trousers or tracksuits and may cushion their shins by

SEND FORUM SUBMISSIONS TO THE EDITOR: DRSUTTON@FORTEANTIMES.COM Sceptics often dismiss ghosts, fairies and UFOs as people “just seeing things”. If you hear a poltergeist knocking, you’re “just hearing things”. The sulphurous smell of a demonic presen

Of all the writers ever to win the Nobel Prize, it’s hard to think of any who were as obsessed with fortean subjects as Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991), whose given name was Yitskhok Bashevis. Often stereotyped as a specifically Jewish author, he m

TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM Imants Barušs Imprint Academic 2021 Pb, 228pp, £14.95, ISBN 9781788360418 The late William Corliss was very fond of a particular quotation from the 19th-century psyc

Joe Banks Strange Attractor Press 2020 Pb, 496pp, £22, ISBN 9781907222849 If there were ever a band who embodied the psychedelic British hippie underground it is Hawkwind. Often pigeonholed as “space rock”, but in reality much broader and deeper than

Angela Youngman Pen & Sword 2021 Hb, 185pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781526785817 The Victoria & Albert Museum’s delightful exhibition Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser (see pp14-15) focuses on Alice and reinterpretations of her story, rather than on Lewis Carroll

Heather E Quinlan Visible Ink Press 2020 Pb, 397pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781578597048 Lockdowns. Social distancing. Fake news. For all our medical sophistication, a mediæval physician would recognise our responses to Covid-19. During the waves of plague tha

History Channel / Blaze There’s something about Star Trek actors. From Leonard Nimoy hosting In Search Of… in the 1970s to Jonathan Frakes fronting the rather more febrile 1995 Fox Alien Autopsy Special, Roddenberry’s children possess a quality that

We have quite the fortean cocktail this month, starting with Unearth (on digital platforms), where a family of cash-strapped farmers reluctantly let corporate America frack on their land. Rather than release new funds, the drilling unleashes a dorman

Duncan Foy photographed this ‘petrified dog’ on the Greek island of Zakynthos. Lee Scudder noticed this apparent cat’s face on cliffs in the Baranca Binigaus gorge, near Santa Thomas in Menorca. The photograph was taken from the western side of the v

The death of John McAfee – malware pioneer, maverick exponent of cryptocurrencies, outspoken blower of the Deep State whistle – caused a chain of eruptions in the conspiracist magma. McAfee had long hinted that elements of the Deep State were out to

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Ray Galindo was leaving an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Modesto, California, when he was struck by drunk driver Brandon Howze and killed. Armando, one of Galindo’s fellow AA members, said: “What an irony of life to come here and try to be sober, t

I am an artist working on a film project about people’s paranormal experiences. I have a longstanding interest in all aspects of the paranormal, and am planning a project incorporating first-hand accounts of these experiences, especially those involv

Regarding ‘Hunting Bigfoot’, in “Creatures on the Loose” [FT405:26]: adopting Justin Humphrey’s position on the reality of Bigfoot, surely one would be required to establish its nature before designating it a suitable subject for the huntsman. If it

Further to Jenny Randles detailing the Oz-factor [FT398:30-31], I outline a strange experience with multiple witnesses. I had a chance to revisit the site of the event with my children and this sparked off a need to record what happened. In 1977 I wa

FORTEAN TIMES is a monthly magazine of news, reviews and research on strange phenomena and experiences, curiosities, prodigies and portents. It was founded by Bob Rickard in 1973 to continue the work of Charles Fort (1874–1932). Born of Dutch stock i