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For as long as I can recall, going back to childhood, I have experienced what must be some kind of physical illusion – one I describe to myself as ‘phantom heat’. It doesn’t happen in every situation it might – it’s not an automatic reaction - but it happens often enough for me to think of it...

I didn’t want to side-track the The Haunted Social Housing Of Fontenay-Aux-Roses thread, but it got me thinking about the subject of French hauntings, the alleged paucity of instances, and the recollection of one counterexample I’d encountered recently, and which I’ve just tracked down after...

I have always had an odd relationship with sugary things; I will binge on stuff like chocolate, cakes and biscuits if they are in the house – but if I don’t buy them, I don’t miss them. The only thing I have ever actually consciously added sugar to is coffee - one flat teaspoonful - and I...

The general crop is probably rather sparse. There’s the pretty effective stage version of The Woman in Black, and some notable adaptations of classics like Dracula, but it’s not a particularly broad spectrum and I did wonder about putting the following in one of our other threads. On reflection...

When I was working in Edinburgh in November I noticed a lot of what looked like relatively new graffiti consisting of the two words 'Question Evolution'. This seemed to be quite common around the George Street/Princes Street New Town area - and although I didn't make a note, I reckon I saw it...

I was just wondering if there is any sort of protocol in regard to quoting a post in a different thread to the one it originally appears in. Some general threads have posts in them which are relevant to more specifically focussed ones. The general threads tend to trundle on like juggernauts...

Okay, did a bit of guerrilla marketing there – it’s maybe not the little green men you were thinking of. Anyway. On average I would say that I have a generally good reaction times - but that, like many things, maybe these are degrading slightly as I get older. However, even back when I was at...

This is an edited version of a couple of posts I made some years back on another thread. Kind of outwith the general thrust of this thread: it's not so much a mystery how they got where they got - but why they've been treated the way they have is still a bit of a headscratcher: These were...

Slightly old news, but intriguing – and, unless I’ve missed something in the mean time, I don’t think there’s been a resolution. I’ve had a quick shufty around the MB but can’t find that the following story ever made it here – which kind of surprises me. Bump me if I’m wrong. Full article...

Ouch! More from the Huffington Post, here. (Maybe NSFW, especially if it's bacon sandwich time.) As I said...Ouch!

The current historical abuse scandal got me going through some stuff from back in the days of the Satanic Ritual Abuse moral panic of the 80's 90's. At one point - I associate it most closely with the Orkneys case, and a seminar attended in (I think) Aberdeen by a local social worker - the...

Link I'm surprised that this hasn't already been picked up (or has it?) - possibly it's been somewhat eclipsed by the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. Which thought leads me to wonder how long before someone of a parapolitical bent tries to connect the two in some way. The only connection I can...

Thought the following was an interesting little story: Source. Caught my eye because I recently read Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel The Flanders Panel which revolves around the hidden message found under the top layer of an old Flemish painting of a game of chess. Makes you wonder what else...

Okay, so not really an Earth Mystery; I'd love to think that I'd discovered a piece of rock art - but I know I haven't. What I really want to know is what has caused this particular pattern in the rock. The pictures are pretty shoddy (I've fannied around with them a little in order to...

Is there already a Night of the Demon thread? Surely there must be, and to be honest, if there is I probably contributed and have since forgotten all about it. I may even have started it - but I'm getting to that age. Anyway, some things deserve repetition, if simply to get a few of the...

I have no firm opinions one way or the other concerning the reality (in whatever form that 'reality' might take) or otherwise of ghosts. But I do love a good ghost story and the tale I recently read in an old and battered copy of a book called Lancashire's Ghosts and Legends, by Terrence W...

I'm always after an excuse for a bit of flanerie, urban or rural, and it struck me that there might be some mileage in a thread a little less random in content than the Post a Pic Part DEUX thread for those of us who like to get our boots muddy - and take our cameras with us when while do it...

(This should possibly be in chat but as I’ve always held that all books contain at least something which would be of interest to Forteans I’m going to stick it here. So, ner!) As a self confessed part-time book-pimp and full-time user who travels about a lot I‘m interested to know where...

Ooh, er! Just been reading the Will Storr thread. Drifted from there onto DrPLee’s website and the case of an abandoned cottage at Levington, near Ipswich. The following is a quote from that particular case - The reason this gave me a mild dose of the shivers was that a few years back I posted...

Before poultry-borne, instant-death became the latest fifth horseman of the apocalypse to leave our cowering, pathetic, crisis-addicted society mewling and puking behind the sofa and at the mercy of those fear-pimps in the media there was this little thing called MRSA - which isn’t sexy any...

I thought we should have a thread for those events that we might experience occasionally which aren’t at all paranormal but which are nevertheless bizarre and ludicrous enough to stick in our minds and which, if you saw them in a movie you’d think were far-fetched or contrived. A kind of...

This monument was mentioned in FT 155. I was reminded of the story when I read in Timothy Taylor’s book The Buried Soul that Myra Hindley had been photographed posing next to it. According to the article, which is lifted from The Scotsman, the “white paint is fresh, and it will remain so. A...

I've just watched M R James A Warning to the Curious which a friend recorded for me over Christmas. What struck me watching it was that although archaeological excavations present many of the criteria required for a good haunting in fiction I can't recall having heard of any supposed...

Obviously American culture has always had a very strong vein of bible-thumping, river-baptising, hard-core, Old Testament religion going through it. But the almost overbearing influence the religious right now brings to bear on US politics is a relatively new phenomenon. This might sound a...

I have no opinion one way or the other concerning UFOs. In fact they aren’t really a subject that interest me much but the following story struck me as a bit odd. At the moment I’m reading Evan S Connell’s book about Custer, Son of the Morning Star, in which the following incident is...

Not really cryptozoology this as there is nothing peculiar about Ravens as such. It’s just that in the town where I live (Peak District, bottom end of the Pennines) we seem to have developed a small colony of Ravens despite it being well outside their traditional territory. There has been one...

I have to admit that I’ve started reading more books by Iain Sinclair than I’ve actually finished. Lights Out for the Territory is one of my favourite books but I couldn’t get on with Landor’s Tower or indeed much of his earlier stuff. Having said that I love the idea of Iain Sinclair and the...

Radio 4 news said today that three arrests had been made in connection with the death of veteran peace campaigner and anti-nuclear activist Hilda Murrell in 1984. Can't find anything on the web re arrests but here is an article about the reopening of the case. There is also something here...

During the mid to late 90’s I had reason to visit Dublin on a fairly regular basis. On at least three occasions I came across a smartly dressed lady dancing on the pedestrian strip that splits O’Connell Street down the middle. Actually I suppose she wasn’t exactly dancing but moving backwards...

One of the TV reports I saw concerning the Stocksbridge bypass ghost, sometime in the late 90’s, contained the evidence of a witness who claimed that they had seen a ghostly figure running towards their vehicle at an impossibly high speed. Originally I put the element of exaggerated pace down to...

Spook recommends Go and see Belleville Rendezvous and Spirited Away as soon as possible. I was going to say that I make no apologies for bringing up non-fortean subjects on a fortean website but on second thoughts they are both pretty weird...and absolutely, utterly beautiful in completely...

A few years ago a saw a documentary about the death of the Glasgow Lawyer and SNP activist Willy McRae. McRae was found barely alive at the wheel of his damaged car near a lay-by north of Fort William. His papers were found “shredded” and strewn over a wide area. It was only after he had died...

I know this sounds a bit bizarre but I have a memory of reading a story in a national newspaper which concerned the arrest of two Mossad agents on the west coast of Scotland somewhere in the mid to late 80’s - possibly even the early 90’s. For a long time I put this down to an overactive...

Does anyone else remember this story? The survivors of an abortive ascent of Aconcagua in Argentina, the highest mountain in the Americas, were found in a state of shock, gibbering about a strange city on the mountain and being attacked by its residents. Many members of the expedition were...

Has anyone here ever read The London Nobody Knows by Geoffrey Fletcher? Is it worth hunting down?

Somewhere (I’m pretty certain) I have read that during the battle for Berlin in WW2 Russian soldiers stumbled into a building which contained the dead bodies of what appeared to be Tibetans in Nazi uniforms arranged in a circle. Does anyone know where I might have read this or have any other...

I was flicking through Graham J McEwan’s book Mystery Animals of Britain and Ireland which covers all the usual suspects like Nessie, Black Dogs and ABCs when I came across a section which covers even more bizarre creatures. The one which really caught my attention was the "Horse-Man of County...

Just received the latest copy of my (second) favourite magazine, 3rd Stone, through the post. I’ve been meaning to recommend this for ages but never got around to it. Anyone on the board with an interest in archaeology and folklore should try and get hold of a copy. The current issue has...

While working in Edinburgh recently I picked up a copy of The Ghost that Haunted Itself by Jan-Andrew Henderson. The book is about the McKenzie poltergeist which supposedly bothers people in Greyfriars Cemetery on a fairly regular basis. It’s a very entertaining read, witty and gripping, but for...

The mention of Strines reservoir and a discussion on landscape and culture on other threads has reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to bring up for ages. Although not much of a fortean nature has ever happened to me I am very sensitive to that vague notion we tend to call the...

On Monday, October 16, 1972 a twin engine Cessna 310 disappeared while on a flight from Anchorage to Juneau in Alaska. On board were the US House majority leader Hale Boggs, of Louisiana, and Congressman Nick Begich, of Alaska, the latter’s aide, Russell Brown, and their pilot, Don Jonz. The...

Sounds like a folk band I know! I've recently read a couple of Alan Furst's novels in one of which he suggests that the famous film that appears to show Hitler dancing a funny little jig on the fall of France in WW2 was in fact doctored by the British secret services to make Adolf appear...

Just heard on the radio that Casement's "black" diaries have been proved to be genuine after all and not part of some fiendish British plot. Although there is plenty about Casement and the diaries on the net there is not much about this new story apart from this.

Went to see The Devil's Backbone a few days ago. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who likes to watch a good ghost story as opposed to a gore-fest or lots of pretty teenagers running around suburban America screaming their lungs raw. As it doesn't seem to be that well publicised here's a...

A few weeks ago I was dog-sitting for my brother and his girlfriend while they were on holiday. They have a smallish 1930’s era semi-detached house to which they have done a lot of work. Chester, that’s the dog, is old, deaf, short-sighted and stupid. Now, I was aware of what I can only...

A while ago I suggested we should have a “fortean places” forum. This would let us request and share information on individual sites and areas and suggest places to visit. One of the drawbacks of being interested in fortean phenomena is that there is little opportunity to get hands-on and the...

Flicking through a book on Cheshire ghosts at a book-fair earlier today I stumbled on a particularly horrific story from Stockport. Apparently a young woman looking after a baby had heard it crying frantically and gone to see what was wrong. On doing so the figure of a man approached her with...

70's childrens TV drama? I was trying to recall the TV programmes I watched as a wee’un in the seventies that might have inspired a taste for the Fortean. Children of the Stones and The Owl Service come straight to mind but there is one I absolutely loved and can now remember nothing about...

Does anyone know what the response to the events of September 11 was from the far-right in the US (Aryan Nations, Christian Identity and the like). I imagine that there was initial jubilation by some of the good citizens of Hayden Lake, Idaho and like minded compounds of the cross-eyed followers...

In his book Borderlands, Mike Dash mentions the occurence of Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome (SUNDS). This appears to be confined to men from SE Asia. Those affected "die abruptly and inexplicably in their sleep...in a manner that suggests they have been killed by sheer terror."