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Do Older Fortean Phenomena & Themes Make A Comeback?

GNC

King-Sized Canary
Joined
Aug 25, 2001
Messages
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Are there any Fortean phenomena that have made a comeback years after they were last seen, or does everything have its time and fade away? The Spring Heeled Jack story on IHTM made me wonder this. I don't mean if anyone has seen a Minotaur recently, but how about the ghost of Anne Boleyn or a phantom airship? Do most weird happenings just run out of steam after a while, like a fad?
 
very like a fad or fashion id say..tho "Phantom Airships" are probably interpreted as UFO's now and ghosts as some sort of newa age fairy!.... interesting idea tho misidentified UFO's..
 
The problem is that with the increase in advanced technology, any Fortean phenomenon is going to have a hard time remaining "unknown". UFOs are the best-known mystery that continually defies definitive analysis. Apparently, alien abductions are on the wane - presumably because it's not an "exclusive club" anymore and doesn't attract as much attention.

Bring back Spring-Heeled Jack, SHC and Nessie, I say!
 
IIRC, during the late 1800's-early 1900's, there was a spate of airship sightings in America. Some witnesses claimed to speak to the human-looking crew who'd cadge a buck of water, stamp or somesuch, hop into the gondola and bugger off at speed!
 
Wwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhoooooooooaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Good job my essays are in as I'm off for some serious phantom airship-surfing now!!!!!!!
:eek!!!!:

Edit- I wonder how this phenomenon fits in with the similar sighting reported by Charles Fort in the newspaper which I have?
 
And where do I find a minotaur? Im looking for a houseguest to eat all prospective visitors...
 
I seem to remember an excellent article in a volume of Fortean
Studies about Phantom Airships, if that's any help.

Anyway, no phenomena make a comeback then? Once they're gone, they're gone?
 
We still get mysterious falls from the sky. We had a fall of red dust here in West Michigan last week.

When a group of people mysteriously faint or fall ill a physical cause is looked for. We have more knowledge now that certain cleaning chemicals shouldn't be mixed together, but some are still considered mass hysteria.

I believe "fear of little men" has continued since olden times, they're just called "aliens" now.

No one one says "fantom airship" anymore but we still see UFOs.

Maybe it's only that phenomena with specific names seem to die out. Spring Heeled Jack and the Mad Gasser may have been a malicious prancksters whose days are done, but they have been easily replaced by Mothman and MIB's.

Is the ghost of Anne Boleyn really not seen anymore?
 
I'm holding out for the return of the airborne 'shining city' (a phantom airship variation) seen a few times over Alaska between -IIRC- 1890 and 1930 (according to the "Fortean Timeline" in the Call of Cthulhu rulebook (2nd. ed.).)

Sounds very Stephen Spielberg, and I'm hoping they'll slap him with a lawsuit when they show up... :D
 
is the "shining city" related to fata morgana?

I'm of the school that says we see the same old same old, we just name them differently....

Kath
 
I'm holding out for the return of the airborne 'shining city' (a phantom airship variation) seen a few times over Alaska between -IIRC- 1890 and 1930 (according to the "Fortean Timeline" in the Call of Cthulhu rulebook (2nd. ed.).) ...

is the "shining city" related to fata morgana? ...

I believe the Alaska incident being referenced here is the 'silent city' mirage reported over a century ago. In Fort's New Lands it's mentioned that a spectral vision of Bristol (UK) is visible in Alaska during the height of summer, as noted in the Mirages thread:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/mirages.21020/#post-512312
 
I have a chapter devoted to "Cities and Castles in the Sky" in the book I'm presently writing, Other Realms, about possible dimensional overlaps. Here's an excerpt:

Kentucky native Barton M. Nunnelly is best known as a cryptozoologist, being the author of books such as Mysterious Kentucky, Mysterious Kentucky Vol. 2, and Bigfoot in Kentucky. He has encountered phenomena outside the realm of unknown animals, however, including a spectacular vision that appeared before him and his brother in 1975, when he was nine years old.

The Nunnelly family had driven from the tiny hamlet of Spottsville to a larger town to purchase supplies. On the way home, Barton sat in the back seat with his older brother Dean. The Nunnallys were driving along Mountain Ridge Road when young Barton glanced out the passenger’s side an saw a large cloudbank. As the boy watched in astonishment, the central mass of clouds seemed to “roll swiftly outward,” leaving a circular opening in which sat a small, gray-brown castle!

“Two lofty towers rose from the main body of the turreted structure, the one on the left being slightly shorter in height than the one on the right. Each tapered at the top, forming points and, from the spires, a long, thin bright red banner billowed in the easterly wind.” [Nunnelly, p. 31]

Though medieval in appearance, the castle looked newly-built. Barton grabbed his brother’s arm and pointed. Dean saw it too. Unfortunately, the car then passed through a stand of taller trees, blocking the boys’ view. When the cloudbank came back into sight, the vision had faded.

The future cryptozoologist told his mother what happened. To his surprise, Mrs. Nunnelly believed him. It seems that she and her sister Pauline, when little girls, had seen something similar. The sisters often visited a specific place in the woods just to sit and talk without interruption. One day at their private spot, they happened to look up and see a log cabin hanging in the clouds, so clearly visible that they could make out every log. “This happened in Smith Mills, Ky., in the 1950s on Klondike Road.”
 
it happens sometimes, fairies are still reported every now and then, and i have heard of some quite obscure modern reports of what look like the airships of old times
Though some airships were dirigibles, most were anomalous --alien devices, imo. Airships were described as large lights or illuminated discs, above which nothing was visible, or as cigar-shaped UFOs, with one or several lights, and they moved in ways impossible for craft then (or now in some instances). When seen in daylight, there were often no people or gondolas visible. Cigar-shaped devices were not uncommon in the 1950s as well. Same stuff.
 
humanoidlord said:

saying that i am interested would be an understatement

In that case I'll print another excerpt!:

Kilometer 29

In early May, 1980, at about 8:30 PM, according to the Argentine newspaper El Independiente of May 14, a busload of country people and schoolteachers were riding toward the city of Chapas la Sur to go to work. (I wonder if “PM” wasn’t a typo – that seems rather late for country folk and teachers to start work.)
Anyway, the bus made one of its usual stops at “Km 29”, “where the road that goes to Corral de Isaac intersects with the one to Las Toscas,” according to bus driver Dionisio Pere. At that intersection all the passengers of the bus saw something bizarre in the sky: a vast, well-lit “city” with “houses”, windows and multicolored lights.
This sounds like a spectacular UFO sighting, but the witnesses were of a different mind. “It did not seem to be an ‘airship’, rather a city,” as Sr. Pere put it. The bus driver also told the El Independiente reporters that the inhabitants of this semi-arid junction had seen the “city” a few days earlier. One of the schoolteachers added that he had seen the phenomenon on several occasion, but told only a few close relatives, fearing ridicule.
Although theories of the Aurora Australis, a mirage of an actual city nearby and the inevitable alien mothership were given, the passengers of the bus simply repeated: “It was a city in the air.”
Jane Thomas, who translated the newspaper story for the INFO Journal, points out that the sighting area is a very seismically active zone, a factor in many fortean events. The INFO editors note that the local people were probably familiar with auroras. Also, it was surprising than none of the witnesses seemed to think it was a religious vision or a spaceship.
Finally, the “city”, when it did appear, was visible only from the small area surrounding “Km 29”. Perhaps in some parallel world there is an advanced metropolis rising to the clouds at the same point a humble bus stop sits in our own.

“Another City in the Sky,” tr. Jane Thomas, INFO Journal no. 41 (October 1982), p. 16, originally printed in El Independiente (La Roja Province, Argentina), May 14, 1980.
 
humanoidlord said:



In that case I'll print another excerpt!:

Kilometer 29

In early May, 1980, at about 8:30 PM, according to the Argentine newspaper El Independiente of May 14, a busload of country people and schoolteachers were riding toward the city of Chapas la Sur to go to work. (I wonder if “PM” wasn’t a typo – that seems rather late for country folk and teachers to start work.)
Anyway, the bus made one of its usual stops at “Km 29”, “where the road that goes to Corral de Isaac intersects with the one to Las Toscas,” according to bus driver Dionisio Pere. At that intersection all the passengers of the bus saw something bizarre in the sky: a vast, well-lit “city” with “houses”, windows and multicolored lights.
This sounds like a spectacular UFO sighting, but the witnesses were of a different mind. “It did not seem to be an ‘airship’, rather a city,” as Sr. Pere put it. The bus driver also told the El Independiente reporters that the inhabitants of this semi-arid junction had seen the “city” a few days earlier. One of the schoolteachers added that he had seen the phenomenon on several occasion, but told only a few close relatives, fearing ridicule.
Although theories of the Aurora Australis, a mirage of an actual city nearby and the inevitable alien mothership were given, the passengers of the bus simply repeated: “It was a city in the air.”
Jane Thomas, who translated the newspaper story for the INFO Journal, points out that the sighting area is a very seismically active zone, a factor in many fortean events. The INFO editors note that the local people were probably familiar with auroras. Also, it was surprising than none of the witnesses seemed to think it was a religious vision or a spaceship.
Finally, the “city”, when it did appear, was visible only from the small area surrounding “Km 29”. Perhaps in some parallel world there is an advanced metropolis rising to the clouds at the same point a humble bus stop sits in our own.

“Another City in the Sky,” tr. Jane Thomas, INFO Journal no. 41 (October 1982), p. 16, originally printed in El Independiente (La Roja Province, Argentina), May 14, 1980.
damn i am loving this! good luck in the project!
 
Wwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhoooooooooaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Good job my essays are in as I'm off for some serious phantom airship-surfing now!!!!!!!
:eek!!!!:

Edit- I wonder how this phenomenon fits in with the similar sighting reported by Charles Fort in the newspaper which I have?
My husband's grandad was an engineer who worked on the R100 (and others too I forget the names of). Somewhere we have some photos of it. Something about airships and hot air balloons is seriously creepy, I think.
 
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