Fortean Times

fortean times

EDITOR DAVID SUTTON (drsutton@forteantimes.com) FOUNDING EDITORS BOB RICKARD (bobrickard@mail.com) PAUL SIEVEKING (sieveking@forteantimes.com) ART DIRECTOR ETIENNE GILFILLAN (etienne@forteantimes.com) BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR VAL STEVENSON (val@forteantimes.com) EDITORIAL ASSISTANT ABIGAIL MASON RESIDENT CARTOONIST HUNT EMERSON LICENSING & SYNDICATION FORTEAN TIMES IS AVAILABLE FOR INTERNATIONAL LICENSING AND SYNDICATION – CONTACT: Syndication Manager RYAN CHAMBERS TEL: +44 (0) 20 3890 4027 ryan_chambers@dennis.co.uk Senior Licensing Manager CARLOTTA SERANTONI TEL: +44 (0) 20 3890 3840 carlotta_serantoni@dennis.co.uk Licensing & Syndication Executive NICOLE ADAMS TEL: +44 (0) 20 3890 3998 nicole_adams@dennis.co.uk PUBLISHER DHARMESH MISTRY dharmesh_mistry@ dennis.co.uk CIRCULATION MANAGER JAMES MANGAN james.mangan@ seymour.co.uk EXPORT CIRCULATION MANAGER GERALDINE GROBLER geraldine.grobler@ seymour.co.uk CREATIVE REPRO ARTWORKER FRANCESCA CINQUEPALMI francesca_cinquepalmi@ dennis.co.uk GROUP ADVERTISING DIRECTOR LIFESTYLE ANDREA MASON 020 3890 3814 andrea_mason@ dennis.co.uk ACCOUNT MANAGER IMOGEN WILLIAMS 020 3890 3739 imogen_williams@ dennis.co.uk ACCOUNT DIRECTOR JENNIFER BRYAN 020 3890 3744 PRINTED BY WILLIAM GIBBONS & SONS LTD DENNIS PUBLISHING LIMITED GROUP CFO/COO BRETT REYNOLDS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KERIN O’CONNOR CHIEF EXECUTIVE JAMES TYE COMPANY FOUNDER FELIX DENNIS…

editorial

CONSPIRACY THEORY GOES POP Following last issue’s exploration of the pop cultural ‘occult explosion’ of the late 1960s and its ultimate, tragic expression in the murders perpetrated by Charles Manson and his ‘Family’, we’re once again looking back at 1969. As well as Woodstock and the Tate/ LaBianca killings, the year saw the release of the last recorded Beatles album, Abbey Road, with its iconic cover (recreated by countless tourists ever since) of the Fab Four on a zebra crossing near the eponymous EMI recording studios where the LP was made. At the time, though, Beatles fans were scanning said cover for clues which supposedly confirmed the truth of a strange urban legend that had been circulating ever since it appeared in a student magazine back in 1966; the idea was that…

the conspirasphere

THE EPSTEIN AFFAIR The untimely death of Jeffrey Epstein, billionaire playboy and convicted pædophile, in a maximum security jail in New York City, has opened up an almighty can of conspiratorial worms. Epstein was on remand before a trial that threatened to expose not only his own multiple crimes against vulnerable young women, but a veritable gallery of the rich and famous who, it is alleged, joined the disgraced tycoon in his crimes – crimes described by one of the lead detectives on the case as a ‘sexual pyramid scheme’ involving hundreds of young women. The mysterious circumstances surrounding his death, and the identities of the celebrities and politicos who may have raped and assaulted a large number of underage women, have unleashed a torrent of speculation, and not just from…

seagulls go bad

• On 21 July, a seagull seized and flew off with a family’s pet Chihuahua. Becca Louise Hill, 24, said the gull swooped down and grabbed Gizmo in Paignton, Devon. Gizmo, four, was described as a small, brown dog, weighing 4.4lb (2kg). Ms Hill, 24, said her partner Ashley was with Gizmo at the side of the house at 1pm, as he put the washing out to dry. She said: “A seagull swooped down and grabbed [Gizmo] by the scruff of his neck. Ashley tried to grab his legs, but he was not tall enough and the seagull flew away.” Tony Whitehead, spokesman for the RSPB, said that the bird, “undoubtedly a herring gull”, was either defending its young or may just have been hungry (well, blow me down, Tony!).…

sidelines...

SPOON CRISIS A woman who swallowed a 5in (13cm) spoon while trying to clear a fish bone in her throat had an operation to remove it from her small intestine in China. Sunday People, 21 April 2019. SUN SONGS The Sun’s ‘voice’ has been captured. Its vibrations produce bass notes thousands of times deeper than a human ear can hear, but speeding them up to higher frequencies that maintain their natural harmonies has revealed otherworldly tunes. D.Mirror, 17 June 2019. LAST ORDERS, PLEASE The French doctrine of imminent apocalypse goes under the unlikely Franglais name la collapsologie, coined by agronomist Pablo Servigne in his 2015 bestseller, Comment tout peut s’effondrer. It’s based on the assumption that climate change, declining resources, species extinction and rubbish mountains will drive humanity to the brink by as early as…

arctic fox’s epic trek

A young Arctic fox has walked across the ice from Norway’s Svalbard islands to northern Canada in an epic journey, covering 3,506km (2,176 miles) in 76 days. Researchers at Norway’s Polar Institute fitted the young female coastal or blue fox with a GPS tracking device and freed her into the wild on 26 March 2018 on the east coast of Spitsbergen, the Svalbard archipelago’s main island. The fox was under a year old when she set off west in search of food, reaching Greenland just 21 days later – a journey of 1,512km (940 miles) – before trudging forward on the second leg of her trek across sea ice and tundra. She was tracked to Canada’s Ellesmere Island, nearly 2,000km (1,243 miles) further, just 76 days after leaving Svalbard. What amazed…