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FT347

PeteByrdie

PeteByrdie

Privateer in the service of Princess Frideswide
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Jan 19, 2014
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Does anyone else think Alan Murdie went on a bit too much about the supposed demon and poltergeist detecting machine in his Ghostwatch article? The fairly obvious point seems hammered home a little too emphatically.

Killer clowns this month, almost inevitably. It's obviously the fortean topic of the moment, but I'm not sure how much there is to be said about the phenomenon. Hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised by deep insights.

Sad to see there's no folklore column from Simon Young this month. I hope he hasn't concluded his musings on the subject for FT.

Blasts from the Past includes the fortean classic, the moving coffins of Barbados. I look forward to revisiting that story.

Most looking forward to reading Jan Bondeson's Illustrated Police News article about eagles carrying children away.

The forum piece on the inspirations for the very entertaining Stranger Things looks interesting.
 
Weren't we supposed to have 'Face in the window' this month not next month? Don't tell me it was bumped for the sodding clowns? The more people went on about the clowns the more idiots did it. That's what happened.
 
It isn't the first time that an upcoming topic gets bumped from one issue until the next, but I guess the Clown Trend is running ahead of other trends...
 
I pretty much gave up on the clown article. Dry compilations of incidents are very much following Fort's example, but a few pages of 'a clown was seen here, another was seen there, this one had a machete' had me disinterestedly scanning the print. The following article about Mormons was an eye-opener.
 
Anything about Mormons usually is an eye opener!
 
One aspect of the Mormon polygamy thing that only gets incidentally touched upon is the way it inevitably destabalises a society. Given that in all human societies, roughly equal numbers of males and females are born, there's going to be an obvious inescapable result of a polygamous society where a relatively small number of sucessful and high-status males corner multiple wives - especially where a strict, authoritarian, heirarchy applies. If each successful male gets at least six wives, then you're going to have a high number of unsuccessful, lower-status, un-mated males. Where do they go and what happens to them? If extra-marital sex is a social taboo and virginity is highly prized in a wife, then there isn't much of an outlet here. And at least some of those excluded males are going to challenge the dominant minority in one way or another, or else that energy is going to displace in other ways that cause tension in the society.

Daughters may be prized as potential wives for the high-status males. But what of the sons? Only a few will suceed their fathers, and in fact only a few would apparently be needed.

I recall reading other sociological studies of polygamous Mormon communites that flatly state the surplus sons are encouraged to leave, to move on: or are not encouraged to hang around; or sometimes are even driven out and actively ejected, often on some sort of pretext that they've transgressed the morals or religious laws of the community. In one of these studies, it was fairly explicitly said the dominant males get paranoid concerning the possible competition and see to it that this is minimised as much as possible; if memory serves me right, there have been legal or child-protection cases concerning boys as young as thirteen, thrown out, disowned by their fathers because puberty has set in and they are considered "disruptive to the community". it'd be interesting to follow through with an exploration of this aspect.

Also, if surplus males are being excluded from the gene pool, incomers (new blood) are discouraged unless they meet the arbitrary rules and high requirements for acceptance, and only a relatively small number of males provide the genes for the next generation - AND these males "trade" in daughters as new wives for each other - then the potential for incest and inbreeding has got to be sky-high. Like Norfolk, Utah. What are they storing up for generations further down the line?

This article deserves follow-up!
 
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drbates said:
It does sound like a socialogical study - I'm struggling to see whats Fortean about it.
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Hmmm. A remote isolated community deliberately cutting itself off from a wider world which it sees as contaminating and poisonous. Perpetuating what was a dissident minority viewpoint even a century ago. Based on a religious viewpoint which itself is an extremist schism from a religious world-view thought strange and variant even by the standards of religiosity. Effectively a cult of personality in which a single charismatic male decides for the whole community, citing his prophet-status granted by a higher power as validation. (Shades of jonestown and the solar Temple?) When you dig into Mormon theology, it posits a cosmos with an infinite recursion of Gods sponsoring human, or at least sentient, evolution on many planets, with the possibility we will all rise to Godhood and get a planet of our own to be God to. (and that's interestingly Fortean in itself - has FT ever explored this?) Lesser members are expected to put up with the privations and the inequality in which the dominant males appropriate most of the benefits, as they will be rewarded in the next world if they cannot manage it in this one. In the here-and-now, a large degree of cognitive dissonance and altered state of reality is necessary to live in a halfway sane manner in such an environment. What does this do to people and what sort of a society evolves under these pressures? What does it do to human heads? And the manner in which Mormonism was born in the first place is an interestingly Fortean story - it involves an Alternative Reality in which at least some of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel made it to North America - a proposition for which there is absolutely no archaeological, genetic or linguistic evidence. I do agree these more Fortean aspects of the LDS church should be investigated further, though - even if the tale of Hildale and Colorado City is weird enough in itself!
 
drbates said:
Very little in this issue grabbed me on first flick through. Maybe I'm jaded by what's happened this week but i don't regret cancelling my sub. Looking back over the last year it's not the mag it used to be.
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I've thought that many times over the years only to find the next issues are great and draw me right back in again.
As for this new issue, mine only arrived today but I've still not read the last one yet!
 
My copy of this issue arrived today - still waiting for last months issue to arrive! Who do I have to glare at to find out if it is just lost in the mail?
 
Dinobot said:
My copy of this issue arrived today - still waiting for last months issue to arrive! Who do I have to glare at to find out if it is just lost in the mail?
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There should be some "complaints" details on the cover sheet.

Or you could contact someone at the magazine. Details on page 2, next to the Editorial.
 
Haven't read much of 347 but I agree with the review of Dr Strange, 8/10. Other films reviewed which sound interesting are Creepy and Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World.
 
ramonmercado said:
There should be some "complaints" details on the cover sheet.

Or you could contact someone at the magazine. Details on page 2, next to the Editorial.
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Will follow that up! Thanks!
 
ramonmercado said:
Haven't read much of 347 but I agree with the review of Dr Strange, 8/10. Other films reviewed which sound interesting are Creepy and Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World.
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Creepy's not bad, but I did wonder if you had to be Japanese to believe that the characters would be quite THAT accommodating? A cultural thing? You'll understand when you see it.
 
The creepy clown article was necessary, but if you're not bothered by clowns it was pretty middle of the road. However, the Mormon article was an excellent bit of journalism and justified the whole issue. To think that they are getting a strong foothold in politics (where, say, the Scientologists have failed) is very worrying.

Loved the moving coffins piece too, I was fascinated by the Barbados story as a kid, and now I find it's not exclusive to that region. Mind blown (if they're true).
 
I always loved the Barbados coffins story as a kid too, really looking forward to that one. The clowns don't really interest me, it's just a passing fad stupid teenagers think is cool. Twats.
 
XEPER_ said:
I always loved the Barbados coffins story as a kid too, really looking forward to that one. The clowns don't really interest me, it's just a passing fad stupid teenagers think is cool. Twats.
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The Clowns piece was mainly a collation of incidents, a Fortean approach to Odd Events. But I really would have liked a bit more analysis. Kudos though to Brian Chapman who sent hundreds of reports to Paul Sievking. I posted some here and sent some to Paul but soon tired of it!

Brian, if you are here, stand up and take a bow!

Woof!
 
an ok issue, i really enjoyed ghost watch, the clown article and (surprisingly) flying sorcery, i wish brookesmith always wrote to well.
 
"Any teleport in a storm"? A whole page of nothing.
 
Some issues are top notch, some are below par, some are average - this is average, no real faults, and no real joy...
 
The IHTM story about the care home resident who was seen walking around when she was apparently dead in bed was nicely creepy. When I worked in places like that I heard about lots of similar incidents, some of which I have shared on here.
 
The Stranger Things inspiration piece was interesting and incredibly unsettling...
 
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