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FT403

Mine arrived today! I remember Toni Arthur from Play School, so was pleased to be introduced to her creepy folk music on the radio a few years ago. One drawback this ish: no Mythconceptions! Or did I miss it? Well, I'm missing it now...
 
Got mine yesterday, never even heard of the album before, looking forward to getting stuck in. I've neglected the past few issues, they've built up on me and have about 3 issues I haven't even read properly! :D
 
Toni Arthur.

Still gorgeous.

The reason why so many adolescent boys watched TV shows meant for pre-schoolers and seven year olds. Hey, seventies TV wasn't all about sinister, strange, liminal and weird. Although discovering an adolescent fantasy from "Play Away", somebody otherwise as squeaky-clean as a Blue Peter presenter, had a secret life as a witch.... yup. That's Seventies TV. You can't keep the strangeness out.
 
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Mine only arrived yesterday.
Got as far as reading that Chinese biotech labs have previous when it comes to letting viruses escape.
 
having had a day or two to read more of it, more reflections. the case of the invisible UFO that the radar station spotted, and was screaming to the interceptor crew that they were going to crash into it - but the aircraft crew saw only a completely empty sky. I'm thinking here about "tinsel" in WW2 - dedicated aircraft throwing vast amounts of aluminium foil into the air to overwhelm and confuse German radar with lots of false readings.

I read somewhere - can't remember where - that as well as trying to make the current generation of aircraft as invisible to radar as they can, the Americans are refining the WW2 "tinsel" idea and finding ways to somehow project false images onto enemy radar screens - so that the radar can't tell the difference between a false and a genuine contact, and/or that they'll send aircraft chasing after ghosts. Was this ghost UFO over Hong Kong an early attempt at this, somebody trying out the tech (unknown to either the radar operator or the pilots) to see if it worked? (Any American warships in the vicinity at the time trying out their tech on the Brits?)
 
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Also, the gap in the record where Hitler falls out of sight for a year or so. The bloke making this assertion - the correspondent reports this was a preacher on an alt-Right radio station in Texas who believes this is where Adolf was brainwashed in Moscow to serve the communist cause ("Here is our cunning plan. You will become Leader. You will mismanage a world war so badly that Russia effectively gets to move its western border a long way into central Europe. Communism wins!" (Ewan McVicar, Letters).

Errr... if we're dealing in speculation here, wasn't Hitler in Liverpool at about this time, trying to fit in among Scousers?
 
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having had a day or two to read more of it, more reflections. the case of the invisible UFO that the radar station spotted, and was screaming to the interceptor crew that they were going to crash into it - but the aircraft crew saw only a completely empty sky. I'm thinking here about "tinsel" in WW2 - dedicated aircraft throwing vast amounts of aluminium foil into the air to overwhelm and confuse German radar with lots of false readings.

I read somewhere - can't remember where - that as well as trying to make the current generation of aircraft as invisible to radar as they can, the Americans are refining the WW2 "tinsel" idea and finding ways to somehow project false images onto enemy radar screens - so that the radar can't tell the difference between a false and a genuine contact, and/or that they'll send aircraft chasing after ghosts. Was this ghost UFO over Hong Kong an early attempt at this, somebody trying out the tech (unknown to either the radar operator or the pilots) to see if it worked? (Any American warships in the vicinity at the time trying out their tech on the Brits?)
Arguably, a large part of the UFO phenomenon is all kinds of military tests hidden behind an extraterrestrial smokescreen. That doesn't make the subject less Fortran.

...

It's Fortean, silly phone. No one uses that old computer language anymore.
 
The Fortean comes with reflecting on an odd and apparently inexplicable event and coming up with possible explanations for it - the more the merrier. Applied imagination. And the joy is that you don't have to make the mistake of believing any of them are right!
 
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I read somewhere - can't remember where - that as well as trying to make the current generation of aircraft as invisible to radar as they can, the Americans are refining the WW2 "tinsel" idea and finding ways to somehow project false images onto enemy radar screens
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 least one of the classic radar visible cases is a Palladium test run - a case where the scrambled pilot saw nothing of the battleship sized target and was asked to not discuss it afterwards. It's one of the really famous UK ones, but the books are too far away from my desk right now...
 
Toni Arthur.

Still gorgeous.

The reason why so many adolescent boys watched TV shows meant for pre-schoolers and seven year olds. Hey, seventies TV wasn't all about sinister, strange, liminal and weird. Although discovering an adolescent fantasy from "Play Away", somebody otherwise as squeaky-clean as a Blue Peter presenter, had a secret life as a witch.... yup. That's Seventies TV. You can't keep the strangeness out.

If anyone's interested, the entire album Hearken to the Witches Rune is available on YouTube.
Toni's voice is quite ethereal and haunting, but Dave's rather high-pitched nasal twang reminded me of a certain camp and flared-nostrilled Carry On actor:

 
Following through, as far as is possible, the South African haunting story given in outline on page 53. (article: The Weirdest Ghosts of All?)

Outline:

From a book called "They Walk in the Night" by E Rosenthal, pub. 1949. Citing a newspaper called the Cape Town Dagblad, concerning events at the plaas owned by stolid Boer Minheer J. van Jaasveld, who, when his young niece Meisie Mayer came to stay, also attracted Something Eldritch, and triggered a poltergeist-ish set of events.

The location is given as Hartebeeste River, in the municipality of Uniondale in the Little Karoo region of the Western Cape. The timing of the ghost story is 1896, which is interesting: about this time lots of little incidents, misunderstandings, flare-ups and skirmishes were building up to the Boer War proper. (Dated this by the reference to "The Jameson Raid", a skirmish between Britse and Boer in 1896) So lots of fear, apprehension, worry and uncertainty in the air. Adolescent (?) girl sent inland, a long way from places where trouble was thought most likely, to get her out of the firing line. (Classic ingredients for a polt story?)

Looked up Uniondale in SA - Wikipedia says the only thing this town is even remotely famous for is a ghost story. Surprisingly, not this one - it has a repeated ghost hitchiker legend dating from a fatal car accident in 1968. funny what you turn up when digging.

Wikipedia:
In stormy weather on Easter weekend of 1968 a young engaged couple had a car accident on the Barandas-Willowmore road around 20 kilometres from the town. The woman, Maria Charlotte Roux, was sleeping in the back seat of their Volkswagen Beetle when her fiancé lost control of the car. The car overturned and she was killed.

The first reported sighting of a ghost matching her description occurred during the Easter weekend of 1976 and since then many other sightings have been reported. All involve a female hitchhiker who is given a lift, then disappears a few kilometers down the road, and some have reported car doors opening and closing, laughter and a chill in the air.
 
Jamaican Gibbering Insanity! Just read the brilliant letter today ''Travelling Coffin'', this was a new story for me. I love the imagery of a coffin with three wheels and three John Crow birds and a ghost moving around Jamaica and the birds talking and asking for a Mr. Brown!
 
My copy arrived today, but still waiting on issue 402...
 
Nice obit Alan Murdie wrote for Dr Haraldsson. Quite unlike the cup of poison he got for Randi.
 
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