Fortean Times

WHAT ARTHUR DID NEXT Welcome to our June issue, in which we kick off a three-part retrospective of a classic fortean television series. Regular readers will recall that in 2021 Ryan Shirlow took a deep dive into Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World, the 1980 series that introduced a generation of TV viewers to a wide range of fortean topics, from entombed toads and dinosaur survivals to mysterious falls and UFOs. In 1985, Clarke was back with another series, this time focusing more on the human and esoteric dimensions of forteana: mind-over-matter, ghosts and poltergeists, stigmatics and fire-walkers, dowsing and telepathy. Arthur C Clarke’s World of Strange Powers was a worthy follow-up to Mysterious World, serving up some serious weirdness (including “a now unthinkable teatime gorefest that showcased the wounds of…

ALIEN BEEF BOTHERERS? Cattle mutilations back in the news in the USA and Australia Police in Madison County, Texas, have been left baffled by a wave of recent cattle mutilations. The Madison County Sheriff’s Office was first made aware of a case involving a six-year-old longhorn cross that was discovered dead at a local ranch. The cow was found lying on its side with its tongue removed. A statement from the Sheriff’s Office said: “A straight, clean cut, with apparent precision, had been made to remove the hide around the cow’s mouth on one side, leaving the meat under the removed hide untouched. The tongue was also completely removed from the body with no blood spill. It was noted there were no signs of struggle and the grass around the…

A Kenyan preacher, Pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, has appeared in court accused of inciting his followers to starve themselves to death after the discovery of more than 100 bodies in the fringe church’s remote forest community of Shakahola in the coastal county of Kilifi. Police had received tip-offs from human rights activists about the church’s activities and from local people about individuals going missing and began searching the 800-acre woodland in April. Soon, they had uncovered some 65 sites where people had been buried, often in shallow mass graves. So far 109 bodies have been exhumed, but the death toll is expected to rise and hundreds more people are still reported missing. Police have suggested that while most of the church members appear to have died of starvation, some bore…

With a price tag of £500 this new edition of Manly P Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages is unlikely to make its way onto the library shelves of Fortean Towers, but we can at least share some glorious images plucked from its pages. Embracing an expansive range of occult teachings, this vast encyclopædia unveils the arcane myths and mysteries of thousands of years of human civilisation. First published in 1928, Hall’s magnum opus has been meticulously reproduced in its original size in collaboration with his archives at the Philosophical Research Society. Available from www.taschen.com/en/…

AI POPE In March, a photo of Pope Francis wearing a particularly cool and funky puffer coat went viral on social media after appearing without comment in a tweet by a user named Leon (@skyferrori), garnering the Pontiff much admiration for his style choices. This was swiftly followed up by a disclaimer pointing out that the image is not a real one and had, in fact, been generated by the AI image synthesis programme Midjourney v5. Close inspection reveals the fingerprints of an image AI in the strange crucifix the Pope is wearing, the poorly executed right hand and the shadow of his glasses, but the image is a testament to the increasing sophistication of such systems. arstechnica.com, 27 Mar 2023. The statue has been weeping blood on the third…

FEAR OF CLOWNS Research from the University of South Wales published in Frontiers in Psychology claims to have got to the bottom of why so many people are afraid of clowns. The researchers carried out an international survey involving 1,000 adult participants from 64 countries and discovered that more than half of them suffered from coulrophobia, as the fear of clowns is known (see FT226:34-41), to some degree. Five per cent admitted to being “extremely afraid” of clowns, a higher percentage than suffered from more familiar phobias such as fear of heights, enclosed spaces, or animals. The main reasons people gave for fearing clowns was their exaggerated facial features and the makeup they wear hiding the emotional signals we usually get from facial expressions. In some cases, the fear was…