Fortean Times

OLD RED EYES IS BACK Mothman, the winged monster with burning red eyes first reported from the previously unremarkable town of Point Pleasant, WestVirginia, in 1966, has enjoyed remarkable longevity and ever-growing fame in the fortean field and, indeed, the wider world: you know you’ve become a paranormal superstar when, like great Cthulhu himself, you’re immortalised with your own plushie. We’ve explored the genesis and development of the Mothman story on a number of occasions – most notably in a special issue (see FT153:26-54) occasioned by the 2002 film adaptation of John Keel’s 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies, the fortean masterpiece that put Point Pleasant and its mysterious visitor firmly on the map. There have been numerous sightings of ‘winged weirdies’ (as our friend Loren Coleman dubbed them) around the…

HIGH STRANGENESS IN CONNECTICUT Since 2021 Connecticut seems to have been experiencing something of a UFO flap, with a steady flow of reports from the state being made to the US National UFO Reporting Centre (NUFORC). While one sighting was clearly a partly deflated weather balloon and others are likely to be attributable to misperceived drones or Starlink satellites, there have been more than a few reports that are less easily explained. These include a bright, sightly bluish “ball of light with rope-like appendages hanging” from it seen over Naugatuck on 6 January 2021, which sounds like it could be ball lightning – but it was followed a short time later by an exceptionally large and loud helicopter – while in Weston, the day before, a local (the NUFORC database…

With Ukraine surprising the Russians by failing to welcome their invasion with open arms, and the subsequent war demonstrating the less than stellar performance of their military, Russia’s justification for invading Ukraine has taken on a more mystical tone in recent weeks. Having largely failed to convince the world that it is doing so to purge the place of Nazis, the Russian leadership has taken to claiming they have a moral imperative to “carry out the de-Satanization of Ukraine”. This seems to be meant literally, echoing Conservative Russian Orthodox ideas that the country is engaged in spiritual warfare against enemies who are actual demons in human form. Russia is a country where allegedly some 60 per cent of the population believe in some form of magic, and Vladimir Putin is…

LAST THYLACINE REDISCOVERED (PROBABLY) The remains of the last recorded living thylacine, which died in Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania, on 7 September 1936, were long thought to have been lost. They were known to have been passed to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG), but for years “many museum curators and researchers searched for its remains without success,” said thylacine researcher Dr Robert Paddle. “No thylacine material dating from 1936 had been recorded in the zoological collection, and so it was assumed its body had been discarded.” However, Paddle, along with TMAG curator of vertebrate zoology Dr Kathryn Medlock, found an unpublished internal report from the museum’s taxidermist that showed he had worked on a thylacine specimen in 1936/37, so they carried out a review of the thylacine…

METEOR WRONG Dustin Procita and his wife Jeanette believed that the massive fire that destroyed their home on a northern California cattle ranch, killing one of their dogs and two rabbits, was caused by a meteorite hitting their house. “I heard a big bang,” Procita said. “‘I started to smell smoke. I went onto my porch and it was completely engulfed in flames.” At around the same time, numerous people in Nevada and California saw a meteorite arcing across the sky, with some catching it on their door cameras. “I did not see what it was, but from everybody I talked to it was a flaming ball falling from the sky, and landed in that general area,” Procita said. “I’ve always watched meteor showers and stuff as a kid, but…

ORCA ASSAULTS Assaults by orcas off Galicia, Spain, (see FT401:17, 412:21) continue. On 20 September 2022, a Norwegian sailing yacht was attacked by a school of the killer whales, which bit and chewed on the vessel until it could no longer be manoeuvred. The yacht Bianca was sailing from Brest in France to A Coruña in Spain, when she came under attack. Aware of the previous incidents, the crew were determined to act, but were unable to protect the boat from the orca onslaught. Said skipper Svein Skeide: “My partner and I were prepared and followed the recommended emergency procedure step by step. We put Bianca into the wind, had the sail down, engine on and full power in reverse. It seemed to work for a few minutes, but then…