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  1. MissViolet

    The Dog That Turned Into Green Mist, Cows Standing On Hind Legs & Other Cases Of Gibbering Insanity

    Oh, I know! I thought I was being terribly amusing, but no-one warned me that the thread would hang around for nearly twenty years. I was in my twenties when I posted this thread; now heading for fifty. With a few other changes here and there too...
  2. MissViolet

    FT403

    Project Palladium was (you might wanna check the precise details as I'm running this from memory alone) a 1950s/60s operation based around the idea that essentially overclocking a radar will allow you to project (paint) an image to someone else's screen. I think there's a suggestion that at...
  3. MissViolet

    The 'Evil Smile'

    John Keel wrote about the Grinning Man, and recounted a number of incidents that sound very similar to those above.
  4. MissViolet

    School Legends

    I love this thread's casual re-appearances over the decades. My secondary school had rumours about a teacher taking too close an interest in students. Which I would assign to the bin of myth, were it not for the fact that I saw a deputy head telling some girls that "It's OK to do that subject...
  5. MissViolet

    The Dog That Turned Into Green Mist, Cows Standing On Hind Legs & Other Cases Of Gibbering Insanity

    Agreed on the fictional bit, likewise the vast majority of stories on that site, I'm guessing.
  6. MissViolet

    How Old Is The Forum & Who Were The Earliest Members?

    I have very clear memories of the dawning realisation around a few incidents on the board like this; that just because someone was very well read on a subject I found interesting, they weren't necessarily the sort of person I'd want in my life. I was in my late twenties at the time, but I was a...
  7. MissViolet

    How Old Is The Forum & Who Were The Earliest Members?

    Will someone please ask us what this is all about, so we can say "Sorry. That's classified." with sunglasses on?
  8. MissViolet

    The Dog That Turned Into Green Mist, Cows Standing On Hind Legs & Other Cases Of Gibbering Insanity

    Looking back over a lot of the cases on that site, many of them sound very much like creative writing to my old and jaded eyes. Not saying that they are, but some of them have clear narrative structures, in exactly the way that normal life doesn't. Dancing Cattle, however, does not, and is...
  9. MissViolet

    How Old Is The Forum & Who Were The Earliest Members?

    Yeah, I SEEN things, man. Things they wouldn't believe. Like that time that REDACTED said he was mothman, or when REDACTED and REDACTED went full on legal-nuclear. You know what I'm on about. I find it fascinating that the very forum set up to discuss Forteana generates micro-forteana in...
  10. MissViolet

    How Old Is The Forum & Who Were The Earliest Members?

    That seems familiar. My loss of internet innocence, as I suddenly realised why no-one uses their real name! I vaguely recall that there was a lot of sock-puppetry and a very small number of people pretending to be many people in order to have vicious arguments with themselves. I have so much...
  11. MissViolet

    How Old Is The Forum & Who Were The Earliest Members?

    Heh! Well, seeing as you've also been here since forever, my initials were DH, and still are, just with different names attached now. Evilsprout is one that I often wonder about. Anyone recall the time that we got trolled apocalyptically (it seemed) and they set up a website with all our names...
  12. MissViolet

    How Old Is The Forum & Who Were The Earliest Members?

    It's a deadname, in the LGBT sense, so I tend not to acknowledge it (just a little self-image thing), but I started the "Dog that turned to Green Mist" thread. Just found the oldest reference to me in a thread dated August 2001, so I was there in the very early days!
  13. MissViolet

    The Dog That Turned Into Green Mist, Cows Standing On Hind Legs & Other Cases Of Gibbering Insanity

    The "oven's on fire" letter was reprinted in It Happened To Me volume 1, page 110 to be precise. One of my favourites. It walks the fine line between mundanity and the full on Night Gallery.
  14. MissViolet

    How Old Is The Forum & Who Were The Earliest Members?

    My earliest form has been lost to history, as have several incarnations since then. It would have been summer 2001 I think; I remember those days well, largely as I hadn't worked out not to have email notifications turned on for every single new post. So, we're about to hit 19 years? I've...
  15. MissViolet

    Sick Pope Replaced By Hologram

    This was my thought. Millions (conservative estimate) to put a hologram up. Or get one old bloke in the outfit to wave from the window. That said, a tiny part of me gleefully notes that there's always someone in every organisation who wants to do the really big difficult pointless method for...
  16. MissViolet

    Ooh-Err... Nasty House

    That house with the door wasn't in Herefordshire was it? A relative of mine tells a very similar story!
  17. MissViolet

    Top Hat Man

    Ha ha. Yes. This is amusing and I type these words with my human hands, yes, absolutely. I also definitely read the screen with all of my eyes, just like every other totally normal human person does, yes.
  18. MissViolet

    Top Hat Man

    Top of the stairs again? What is it with stairs? ...the room where I'm typing this is at the top of the stairs. Ah.
  19. MissViolet

    Top Hat Man

    In terms of content, a lot of these accounts remind me of black dog visitations; these are often in houses at night time as well as on lonely roads. And they grin sometimes! My own (non) siting puts me in mind of the way that Shucks sometimes terrify travellers, but sometimes protect them too...
  20. MissViolet

    Top Hat Man

    I mean...I have another story that might be relevant but it's a tag long. If people don't think it is, mods can chuck it somewhere else. I've been on these boards for nearly 20 years, in various shapes, so I might well have told this one before. I'm reminded of it now as my family immediately...
  21. MissViolet

    Top Hat Man

    Well, this has terrified me. Want to know why? Gather round. You see, we have a family legend. My grandfather died when he was only around 35 - Gran had to bring up my mum and my uncle. When they were still young, she was offered a brand new council estate house in a quiet part of...
  22. MissViolet

    The Dogs

    That's the one! Once more, my laziness pays dividends. If I get time (I'm like a kind of key worker and stuff!) I'll find some of my other references.
  23. MissViolet

    The Dogs

    Who knows? I'm not really adhering to any belief system about the reported experiences. My fields of semi-expertise are folklore, sociology, and psychology; I'm mainly interested in the manner in which the dog symbol reoccurs in Forteana, especially in UFO and high strangeness cases. The "dogs...
  24. MissViolet

    The Dogs

    I'll dig out the reference in a bit. By the banks of a river, in the UK, exceptionally dubious overall. The UFO siting, not me.
  25. MissViolet

    The Dogs

    Do you ever notice a recurrent motif in Forteana? There's one that's been drawing my attention for a few years now; the odd connection between contactee/high strangeness UFO reports and dogs. I'm using these criteria: 1. The description involves purported entities 2. The report is often (not...
  26. MissViolet

    Jekyll & Hyde

    I'm currently teaching this to a class of Y10 students (around 15 years old) and to my astonishment, no-one knew the essential twist/premise. They were convinced that Hyde was an illegitimate son. There was genuine shock when we read the reveal!
  27. MissViolet

    Missing In Action: Members Who've Gone Silent / Haven't Been Seen For Some Time

    Damn yes, I'd forgotten Jack! And I'd also forgotten that I was about 26 when I first joined. My god.
  28. MissViolet

    Missing In Action: Members Who've Gone Silent / Haven't Been Seen For Some Time

    Evilsprout! Amazingly knowledgeable and erudite. A true Fortean. And one day, just vanished. No big rows, just...gone. Mind you, so did I, but that was regeneration related.
  29. MissViolet

    Giving Up On FT

    I am deeply delighted, both that you're working on a history, and also that I was there from the start of a Big Important Fortean Internet Thing. Whilst I've spent many interim years as a lurker only, this is the only community I've been since first getting online. And that's another reason I...
  30. MissViolet

    Giving Up On FT

    It's not! It's in a letter I had published years and years ago. It's not a big deal. Off topic quick version: compare the Roswell autopsy footage with the alien autopsy in Quatermass and the Pit. They sort of match up, even down to the removal of the eye covering, suggesting that one inspired...
  31. MissViolet

    Giving Up On FT

    Which ones would I keep, you ask? I think I have all of them, in the loft... But I love the early 1990s ones, from when I was about 19. Things from that part of one's life are often sparkly! The Ghostwatch special, and an issue with an article on lost Arctic city myths. And any time that I've...
  32. MissViolet

    Giving Up On FT

    I've been reading for nearly thirty years, I think. And I enjoyed the last issue hugely. As an aside, the modern world is full of horror and also the most wonderful things imaginable. Personally, doesn't grind me down at all!
  33. MissViolet

    Teen Becomes Blind From Long Term Junk Food Diet

    I gently suggest that many posters aren't familiar with, or have experience of the kind of mental health condition that we're talking about. People in this situation are quite capable of starving themselves nearly to death rather than eat a food source that creates that kind of anxiety...
  34. MissViolet

    Was There A Dimensional Shift After The Turn Of The Century?

    Going to be blunt; it's early. On reflection, whilst there were lots of good things about previous decades (as I said) they were pretty ghastly for me overall. You know what my favourite time period is? Right now.
  35. MissViolet

    Was There A Dimensional Shift After The Turn Of The Century?

    Yes, the 90s seemed fun and optimistic; towards the end of the decade, it felt like everything was finally alright. Except it wasn't. There was so much below the surface that I just wasn't aware of because I was in my 20s and easily distracted by shiny things. Now, I have a bigger and more...
  36. MissViolet

    IDing An Obscure, Vaguely Remembered TV Drama From 1970s

    Or maybe The Moon Stallion? It's been too long since I saw it, but it's in the right subgenre even if it's not this particular show. And is well worth a watch. EDIT: read carefully next time, Violet. They found it. But watch Moon Stallion anyway.
  37. MissViolet

    Horror Films

    Ah, Possum. I was lucky enough to see a screening and Q&A with Matthew Holness last year. One of the most disturbing and unsettling films I've ever seen; a brilliant piece of work but quite definitely not for everyone. I recall the few seconds of dead silence in the packed cinema just after...
  38. MissViolet

    Rex Ball

    Ah. Yes. That seems pretty conclusive, doesn't it? The illustration almost seems like a bit of a wink and nudge, as does Ball's disappearance. But perhaps there was a core strange event buried away in the past somewhere? Maybe a simpler, more "standard" incident, that grew in the telling...
  39. MissViolet

    Rex Ball

    Sperry and Ball (sphere and ball? Just a random lexilink, sorry) are both chemical engineers, or variants thereof. I hesitate to draw conclusions from that, just yet.
  40. MissViolet

    Rex Ball

    This is Fortean research at its finest. I am deeply in awe. ...and increasingly of the opinion that this isn't a terribly reliable account.
  41. MissViolet

    Rex Ball

    This. It seems more like one of the ULs regarding foreign troops secretly stationed in a host country (the "snow on their boots" legend). The locomotive machine doesn't sound very high tech. Though the space guns are right out of Amazing Stories.
  42. MissViolet

    Rex Ball

    The line (from one version) "you are now underneath Fort Knox" is very reminiscent of some of the nastier Shaver era texts (the sadism and misogyny gets rather overpowering) in which mysterious tunnels below famous locations feature, but it's also very 50s contactee high strangeness. The detail...
  43. MissViolet

    Rex Ball

    Based purely on instinct, I wonder if this is an embellishment of a Shaver era story? Something doesn't quite add up, but I've no concrete basis for saying that. The judgemental woman seems Adamski-esque somehow.
  44. MissViolet

    Rex Ball

    Really? I had no idea! The story feels odd, and not for the obvious reasons. My instinct is that it's been embroidered upon by several different authors over the years. And yet it contains so much of the modern UFO mythology/narrative; that's a prototype Dulce Base right there, I'm saying...
  45. MissViolet

    Identifying Some 1970s Supernatural TV Dramas (UK)

    I was terrified of the BBC paranormal recreation/discussion show Leap in the Dark. I had never seen it. There was a scary article in the Radio Times about it and that, combined with a very 1970s title slide, suggested that it was the most horrifying thing ever committed to videotape. Still...
  46. MissViolet

    Rex Ball

    See, this is why I keep coming back after nearly twenty years. You people are quite wonderful! So, it didn't originate with Keel. The presence of the dread name Gray Barker gives me pause for thought, but overall, a fascinating little bit of high strangeness. It does seem to be more of a...
  47. MissViolet

    Rex Ball

    Not sure where to post this one, but I think it's more a question of folk tale than anything else. John Keel cites the anecdote of a man called Rex Ball, who stumbled into a strange tunnel network and discovered army officers working with "small men" or some such description. All standard...
  48. MissViolet

    How Did You Discover Fortean Times Magazine?

    Would have been about 1992, from Odyssey 7 in Manchester. I thiiiiiink the cover story was on the then recent showing of Ghostwatch. I'd forgotten that it only came out every other month in those days! I subscribed a few years later and got a free copy of Fortean Studies. This all seems like...
  49. MissViolet

    Digging Up Threads Of Fortean Excellence!

    Yep, I believe there's a reference to "Muppet dream", an old internet story from the ObiWan paranormal pages. In retrospect it feels a bit creepypasta. I confess to a hint of pride that my former incarnation's thread is still haunting people.
  50. MissViolet

    Folk Horror

    I was delighted that some of my A level film students were discussing a new and disturbing series they'd found online...Children of the Stones. I've taught them well.
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