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FT393

Tempest63

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Dec 19, 2009
Messages
2,971
I see someone vaguely familiar is gracing the cover this month
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Is that you Gordon Rutter, on the vid.? I know your into cabinets of curiosity's as I read something on here you had posted ( Scottish newspaper article on you) but the link no longer worked . Just wondering .
 
Is that you Gordon Rutter, on the vid.? I know your into cabinets of curiosity's as I read something on here you had posted ( Scottish newspaper article on you) but the link no longer worked . Just wondering .
Yes that is indeed me. I'll be posting other cabinet of curiosity entries over the coming weeks. There's already one on the Ica Stones up and a couple of Edinburgh Fortean Society Meetings.
 
Looks like this thread isn't here yet, so opening one up. got my copy of 393 this morning, first of the sub. Damn, skipped 392.

A thought or two on the mystery person in Norwich walking around in Plague Doctor costume. Hellesdon isn't quite the district where the university is - that's West Earlham - but it's the next door suburb. while it's listed here as a "village", it's probably more accurate to describe it as a suburb of the city.

Having said that... some local angles. The University of East Anglia now has a medical school. I direct you to the well-known sense of humour of medical students. There will be a lot of students in this area who really don't have a lot to do while in house arrest. The Devil and idle hands and all that.

UEA also has the East Anglian Local History School or whatever it's called these days. They will almost certainly know that in mediaeval times and in Civil War and post civil war times, Hellesdon was far enough outside the city limits to have been used for mass burials for plague victims. Plague Doctors would have been seen in Norwich at this time. Well-substantiated rumour says when the university was built a mass plague burial had to be relocated.

The last time I looked there were plans to have a joint interdisciplinary degree in The History of Medicine.

I really don't think you'll have to look too far to find the hoaxer(s).

Or else my old uni, an institution that once voted a gerbil in as Student Union president, has lost its way completely...
 
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My FT393 has just dropped through my letterbox and I still haven't opened it yet. I'm saving it for when I go up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire.

I just want to take this opportunity to thank everyone at FT for continuing to produce the mag, on time, and distribute it out to us, during these....er.....'changed times'
 
Wow, where did all this come from? When I was here yesterday there wasn't an FT393 thread - looked hard, couldn't find one - so opened a thread... by the look of it this was here all the time. Brigadoon. Anyway, I now have the full kit;
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Wow, where did all this come from? When I was here yesterday there wasn't an FT393 thread - looked hard, couldn't find one - so opened a thread... by the look of it this was here all the time. Brigadoon. Anyway, I now have the full kit; View attachment 26372
There was a merge of two threads, one of which had been opened in the news section and the other of which had been opened in the magazine section.
 
There was a merge of two threads, one of which had been opened in the news section and the other of which had been opened in the magazine section.
Ah, I see. Fortean Times Magazine on the forums list is where I would automatically go to find the discussion thread for the current edition - I saw there was nothing there (at the time) headed FT393 and the latest discussion thread was for the previous issue FT392 - therefore I opened a page. I'm assuming the one opened up in the News section was merged to the one in the Magazine section.
 
Merged or not merged? The mods like too mess with our minds, like LSD without the dragon in the fridge.
 
There's now only one FT 393 thread, and it's in the Fortean Times Magazine section.
 
I've only just managed to get hold of the latest 3 issues since the subscription department insist on sending my gift subscription to the person paying for it instead of the person who's supposed to be on the receiving end of the gift. Had to visit my mum, first time during lockdown and picked them up from her.
Some of the features look interesting but, with the hassle of the subs address being wrong, and the fact I'm finding less and less I enjoy every month I've told her to cancel the next renewal.* Honestly, seeing that "Haunted Generation" column every month is doing my tits in more than it should. Why is it in there? If the magazine wants to cover "Fortean" music, how about black metal, or folk metal - there's plenty in there that would be interesting, even if you forget all the murders and stuff.
And a full page on weird postcards, of a dog at a table with a man? I understand a need for new things to cover but the one column I genuinely enjoyed recently was the Podcast one and it's just disappeared into the ether like the Hierophant.
Bah!

*I'll probably just ask her to get me the Kindle subscription since it's much cheaper and, well, I don't know if I could do without FT every month, even with that bloody haunted generation column.
 
Anyway. Reading about the Toledot, the mediaeval Jewish texts where rabbinical scholars are trying to make sense of the fact Christianity was born out of Judaism via a Jew called Jesus. The texts also settle scores by being not very reverend at all - which of course you would pretty much expect from religious Jews dealing with a heretic who left Judaism to start a whole new religion which is not at all friendly to them.

BR didn't report on this, but a lot of this stuff has resurfaced in modern times in a related context, also to do with the strained relationship between Jew and Christian. Attacks on Christian churches in Israel and the West Bank have been happening over the past few years as part of what extremist Jews call "the price tag" - political and religious extremist Jews who resent any sort of non-Jewish presence in what they see as a purely Jewish country with no alien influences (Islamic AND Christian) . Graffiti spray-painted on Christian premises makes reference to Jesus being the son of an unclean and promiscuous whore; and I read of a reference to Jesus getting pissed on by a good god-fearing Jew - - jibes straight out of the Toledot, in a modern unpleasantness.
 
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No-one else spot the goof on page 12, under the heading "Old Bones"?

A "five million year-old dinosaur" would be anomalously young bones surely?
 
The short about Frank Zappa's paranormal experience in Marin Country, California. Just noting that Marin County is home to quite a lot of USAF stations, including several associated with air defence. It's conceivable what he saw might have been some sort of defence apparatus being fired up then powered down?

USAF in Marin County

And.. with wonderful Fortean symmetry. The USAF squadron at home there in the 1970's was...

  • 666th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron activated at Mount Tamalpais AFS 27 Nov 1950
Redesignated 666th Radar Squadron (SAGE), 15 January 1961 Redesignated 666th Radar Squadron, 1 February 1974 Inactivated on 30 September 1980
 
Excellent articles this issue, very well written. The poltergeist that wasn't was a good piece too.
 
I thought the poltergeist article was stating the obvious, apart from the taps turning on, back when I had a life I was on a ghost hunt and heard a loud bang from an empty room, an empty room in which the taps turned themselves on, I now wish I had read the article last year.

This issue was a good one, some good ihtm and Paul devereux has an excellent "green man" story, I wonder how many people have unexplained happenings that they keep to themselves for fear of ridicule.

Well done to everyone involved in the magazines printing and distribution, a glass of wine with you sir/ madam .
 
I've only just managed to get hold of the latest 3 issues since the subscription department insist on sending my gift subscription to the person paying for it instead of the person who's supposed to be on the receiving end of the gift. Had to visit my mum, first time during lockdown and picked them up from her.
Some of the features look interesting but, with the hassle of the subs address being wrong, and the fact I'm finding less and less I enjoy every month I've told her to cancel the next renewal.* Honestly, seeing that "Haunted Generation" column every month is doing my tits in more than it should. Why is it in there? If the magazine wants to cover "Fortean" music, how about black metal, or folk metal - there's plenty in there that would be interesting, even if you forget all the murders and stuff.
And a full page on weird postcards, of a dog at a table with a man? I understand a need for new things to cover but the one column I genuinely enjoyed recently was the Podcast one and it's just disappeared into the ether like the Hierophant.
Bah!

*I'll probably just ask her to get me the Kindle subscription since it's much cheaper and, well, I don't know if I could do without FT every month, even with that bloody haunted generation column.

I have no strong feelings on the column but I thought the original hauntology article and follow up discussion was excellent. I think "Fortean music" is something of a misnomer, is it music that is weird sounding or is it the themes and lyrics or both? As you say BM and Folk Metal could be covered but I guess most or all of that stuff doesn't appeal to most people, BM has been an ossified genre for a decade or more and FM has caught it up, much of that stuff was/is novelty music anyway. If you want to discuss Metal of any sort here I'm happy to do so. :)
 
I have no strong feelings on the column but I thought the original hauntology article and follow up discussion was excellent. I think "Fortean music" is something of a misnomer, is it music that is weird sounding or is it the themes and lyrics or both? As you say BM and Folk Metal could be covered but I guess most or all of that stuff doesn't appeal to most people, BM has been an ossified genre for a decade or more and FM has caught it up, much of that stuff was/is novelty music anyway. If you want to discuss Metal of any sort here I'm happy to do so. :)
I don't know about it being ossified. I personally kinda stick with the original bands in each genre without exploring much new, but Spotify started playing me new BM bands like Uada, Mgla, Drapsnatt who are very good. There's also less extreme stuff by the likes of Drudkh and Winterfylleth which would be more appealing to a mass audience.
I just really get irritated when I see that "hauntology" column!
 
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