Fortean Times

THE HAUNTED SCREEN

JOHN LOGIE BAIRD AND THE OCCULT ORIGINS OF TELEVISION

COLONEL FAWCETT’S TOP TEN MYSTERY BEASTS

One hundred years after the disappearance of Colonel Percy Fawcett in Brazil, KARL SHUKER follows in the lost explorer’s footsteps, seeking possible identities for the cryptozoological creatures Fawcett described... and sometimes even claimed to have...

FORTEAN TIMES 463 Why fortean ?

Dancing in the Dark: Blackthorn Ritualistic Folk Ghost witches of Essex Ozzy’s Satanic panics Midsomer Murders Imaginary kingdoms The search for the Isle of Wight’s ghost clown A digest of the worldwide weird, including: Sandown Sam, Scotland’s...

THE URI GELLER EXPERIENCE

URI GELLER has been making headlines and dividing opinion for decades with his claims of telekinetic powers, remote viewing and alien encounters, and he remains one of the best known and most controversial figures in the world of strange phenomena....

RIOT SEASON!

Ghost hunts gone wrong, punch-ups at the opera and brawling clowns: history's weirdest cases of social unrest

Making the case for spontaneous human combustion

THE LURKER IN THE LOO

THE PANDORA’S BOX OF PARANOIAS

How does the bizarre and brutal murder of an agricultural worker in 1945 connect with Hammer films, naked witches and The Wicker Man, and what does this tell us about British identity? CATHI UNSWORTH talks to director Rupert Russell – son of the...

GHOST ARMY: THE PHANTOM MENACE THAT BEAT HITLER

BRIAN J ROBB explores the imaginative deceptions and fortean approach to warfare of the Ghost Army, a top secret US Army troop that played a decisive role in the defeat of Hitler and whose imaginative exploits were until recently largely unknown.

Sylt starfish strandings and other European oddities

STARFISH IN A STORM Strong winds washed ashore “several thousand” starfish –mostly just a few centimetres in diameter – on the sandy western beaches of the island of Sylt, in the German North Sea. The mass death appears to have been caused by the...

THE CLOSEST ENCOUNTER

TURN OUT THE LIGHTS

Was Captain Mainwaring a nascent Fox Mulder? ANDREW T SMITH dons his television archaeologist hat and goes in search of a long-lost ITV series that saw Arthur Lowe’s Coronation Street character Leonard Swindley opening his very own X-Files in 1960s...

Elvis: King of the Strange

Who is the most fortean musical icon of all time? Elvis Presley, of course, who was born 90 years ago this month on 8 January 1935. NEIL NIXON argues that while the living Elvis brought religious iconography and supernatural power to rock ‘n’ roll, his...

Opening The Box of Delights

In 1984, the BBC’s ambitious adaptation of John Masefield’s The Box of Delights became a highlight of the Christmas TV schedules. As the uncanny fantasy classic turns 40, LISA GLEDHILL meets the viewers who remain captured by its magic, while BOB...

On the trail with the Paranormal Rangers

August 1998. After a night in the neon hell of Las Vegas I had driven across an iconic desert landscape, arriving late at the tour departure point in the heavenly setting of Monument Valley. The last Moke excursion was ready to leave with just a...

WOMEN IN WHITE: THE MYSTERY OF PHANTOM LADIES

In updating Andrew Green’s classic 1977 book Phantom Ladies, ALAN MURDIE found that female spectres are as widespread, and difficult to identify, as ever – but what might they actually be?

FOLKLORE RISING

BEN EDGE has travelled the length and breadth of Britain painting the weird and wonderful folk customs alive in communities all over the country. Here he shares a strange Devon tradition and speaks to FT about the redemptive potential of folklore in...

REVISITED

WE GO BACK TO THE NINETIES WITH REV LIONEL FANTHORPE AND THE WORLD’S WEIRDEST TELEVISION SERIES!

COVER STORY DEMONS, VAMPIRES & SEA MONSTERS:

REVEREND PETER LAWS tells the story of globe-trotting Anglican vicar Dr Donald Omand, whose fight against the powers of darkness saw him tussling with hellhounds and vampires and exorcising everything from the Loch Ness Monster to the Bermuda Triangle.