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FT410

Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious world!

Golden Dawn down under!

The Sai Kung mystery!

maximus otter
Really looking forward to this issue- ACC'sMW has had a big influence on me. Fond memories of lying on the carpet watching it is a youngster with the rest of the family, and it was also something that I bonded with a kid at primary school over, and was one of the reasons we went to become (and still are) very good friends.

Oh, and, along with the Usborne Mysteries of the Unknown book, is probably the reason I have an enduring interest in Forteana!
 
no Hunt Emerson this month?
 
Trying to find the Goodies parody on line, where the running joke is Graeme Garden (playing a skeptical ACC-like show host) presenting gravely to camera that, for instance, in a month of searching they have found no evidence of Abominable Snowmen in the area, and therefore the reports must be hoaxes, mistaken identification, or just folklore. While Graeme is speaking to camera, in the background three or four yetis realise the camera is there, and form a high-stepping can-can line. Or Nessie swims on screen behind Graeme/ACC while he is denying the loch Ness Monster exists, and grins at the camera. In its way, the parody is every bit as Fortean.
 
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I’m a bit gutted as Max usually posts on the latest issue and a couple of hours later my issue drops through the letterbox. Not yesterday though…looks like it will now be tomorrow.
 
Trying to find the Goodies parody on line, where the running joke is Graeme Garden (playing a skeptical ACC-like show host) presenting gravely to camera that, for instance, in a month of searching they have found no evidence of Abominable Snowmen in the area, and therefore the reports must be hoaxes, mistaken identification, or just folklore. While Graeme is speaking to camera, in the background three or four yetis realise the camera is there, and form a high-stepping can-can line. Or Nessie swims on screen behind Graeme/ACC while he is denying the loch Ness Monster exists, and grins at the camera. In its way, the parody is every bit as Fortean.

That's the Bigfoot episode of their LWT series, the last they made. It was a flop and everyone said "Not as good as they were on the BBC!" but it's actually really funny in places. Anyway, it's on DVD from Network. Graeme was playing Arthur himself, I think!
 
Got mine the other day, love the Mysterious World article! I thought the Russian levitation video featured in the letter section was fully debunked as a hoax...
 
Loved the ACC update, though I suppose it's par for the course that most of the mysteries are now explained and mysteries no longer. I posted a question about the vitrified forts here when I rewatched the series on DVD, and now, a decade later, I have my answer.

Also nice to see the screen capture of the Cerne Abbas Giant beardie bloke saying "He does wonders for me every mornin'!" Hunt that guy down for an update!
 
Yes. Very enjoyable nostalgia kick reading the ACC article, even if the mysteries have all pretty well been subsequently debunked.

Made me think of all the woo-factor stories, such as timeslips and the Cumberland spacemum, which have been discussed and usually debunked over the life of this forum.

Very pleased to see that even Jenny Randles dismisses the infamous Nessie photo as a swimming dog with a stick in its mouth.
 
The little girl (Amelia Drewitt) who found a boa constrictor, or at least its discarded old skin, in bushes underneath a bridge at Headington, Oxford. First observation: Headington is where JRR Tolkein lived. What would he have made of this and if this had happened a century ago.... could a discarded alien snakeskin have made it into LOTR as a sign of the Forces of Evil encroaching on Hobbiton?

Second observation.... maybe the other half of Oxbridge heard about this, decided not to be outdone, and decided to go one better in the University Snake Race: this is from August 2021. Wild living python found in Cambridge. Maybe the Oxford one elected to change uni?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-58385875
 
The little girl (Amelia Drewitt) who found a boa constrictor, or at least its discarded old skin, in bushes underneath a bridge at Headington, Oxford. First observation: Headington is where JRR Tolkein lived. What would he have made of this and if this had happened a century ago.... could a discarded alien snakeskin have made it into LOTR as a sign of the Forces of Evil encroaching on Hobbiton?

Second observation.... maybe the other half of Oxbridge heard about this, decided not to be outdone, and decided to go one better in the University Snake Race: this is from August 2021. Wild living python found in Cambridge. Maybe the Oxford one elected to change uni?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-58385875
My daughter lived in Headington whilst at Oxford. Sigh. I miss my visits there. Wonderful city.
 
the "Fortean Library" thing about the Barney and Betty Hill abduction. It summarises six or seven different hypotheses as to what happened, laying out the known details and the recollections of the Hills. I don't know if this angle has been suggested before, it probably has, but the recollection of ending up in a hospital-like environment being "examined" and possibly drugged.

About this time there is so much evidence, increasingly hard evidence, of agencies within the US govt pulling outside-the-law stunts involving experimentation with various forms of mind control. This invariably seemed to involve drugs. Experimental subjects tended to be drawn from "captive" populations - servicemen, prison inmates - or else from groupings seen as low social status or outside the law (allegations of California hippies being funneled deliberately tainted drugs to share around.) Only about thirty years earlier in the Deep South, black people had either deliberately been infected with syphilis, or else had only been given placebo drugs whilst being led to believe the disease was being treated, It wasn't. they were seen as expendable subjects, in much the same spirit that the Nazis used concentration camp inmates for "medical experiments".

The ideal candidate for experiments like this.... as Douglas Adams put it, "some poor soul who nobody's ever going to believe".

Enter the "aliens" strutting up and down with silly antenna on their heads and making "meep-meep" noises. In front of a mixed race couple, in 1961, living in a US state which is only socially liberal in comparision with, say, Alabama. This is the pre Civil-Rights era: I'm guessing from the historical context the Hills would only barely be accepted by their neighbours, the fact they are mixed race would offend many, and they would definitely be alienated and not fully accepted, socially. I'm guessing this would make them nervous, jumpy, suggestible. Also ideal starting material for mind-games.

so.... a shadowy group on the fringes of legality but protected by government has a couple of ideal experimental subjects, whose minds they can screw with, in pretty much ideal conditions where nobody is going to investigate too hard, with nobody very much inclined to take their side?
 
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20210929_121746.jpg


Does this pic from #410 remind anyone else of the title sequence from Dad's Army?
 
Hello, my name is Judith. I joined the forum yesterday and this is my first posting. I am an on-off Fortean Times reader. I have never had a paranormal experience but have an occasional interest, and as a teenager, I used to scare myself sleepless by reading a Peter Underwood book from the library.

Anyway, back to FT410. Has anyone read the contribution ‘Missing Time’ by Elizabeth Lloyd-Folkard in ‘It Happened To Me’ (page 75)? It relates the loss of about 3 hours on an unremarkable car journey taken by 2 friends in 1993. The only odd feature was that when they stopped for coffee at Membury Services, only one other person was in the cafe, even though it was a Saturday ‘with plenty of traffic’. The upshot is that a trip that should have taken 2 hours 15 minutes, actually took more than five.

When I first read it I thought, ‘How banal. Why have they printed this?’ As time has gone on, it has stayed with me. If it had happened to me, I would want an explanation.

Perhaps both friends misread their watches at the start of the trip. Perhaps they drove at a more leisurely speed than they realised. Perhaps they were in the cafe 40 minutes rather than the 20 they thought.

Even so 3 hours is a long time to lose. Is Membury Service Station a liminal space?!
 
Hello, my name is Judith. I joined the forum yesterday and this is my first posting. I am an on-off Fortean Times reader. I have never had a paranormal experience but have an occasional interest, and as a teenager, I used to scare myself sleepless by reading a Peter Underwood book from the library.

Anyway, back to FT410. Has anyone read the contribution ‘Missing Time’ by Elizabeth Lloyd-Folkard in ‘It Happened To Me’ (page 75)? It relates the loss of about 3 hours on an unremarkable car journey taken by 2 friends in 1993. The only odd feature was that when they stopped for coffee at Membury Services, only one other person was in the cafe, even though it was a Saturday ‘with plenty of traffic’. The upshot is that a trip that should have taken 2 hours 15 minutes, actually took more than five.

When I first read it I thought, ‘How banal. Why have they printed this?’ As time has gone on, it has stayed with me. If it had happened to me, I would want an explanation.

Perhaps both friends misread their watches at the start of the trip. Perhaps they drove at a more leisurely speed than they realised. Perhaps they were in the cafe 40 minutes rather than the 20 they thought.

Even so 3 hours is a long time to lose. Is Membury Service Station a liminal space?!
Welcome to the board,

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Hello, my name is Judith. I joined the forum yesterday and this is my first posting. I am an on-off Fortean Times reader. I have never had a paranormal experience but have an occasional interest, and as a teenager, I used to scare myself sleepless by reading a Peter Underwood book from the library.

Anyway, back to FT410. Has anyone read the contribution ‘Missing Time’ by Elizabeth Lloyd-Folkard in ‘It Happened To Me’ (page 75)? It relates the loss of about 3 hours on an unremarkable car journey taken by 2 friends in 1993. The only odd feature was that when they stopped for coffee at Membury Services, only one other person was in the cafe, even though it was a Saturday ‘with plenty of traffic’. The upshot is that a trip that should have taken 2 hours 15 minutes, actually took more than five.

When I first read it I thought, ‘How banal. Why have they printed this?’ As time has gone on, it has stayed with me. If it had happened to me, I would want an explanation.

Perhaps both friends misread their watches at the start of the trip. Perhaps they drove at a more leisurely speed than they realised. Perhaps they were in the cafe 40 minutes rather than the 20 they thought.

Even so 3 hours is a long time to lose. Is Membury Service Station a liminal space?!
Hi Judith, welcome to the boards!

I find missing time stories quite creepy in general, and it was interesting to read that one. I don't have any suggestions other than to mention that time spent with friends can sometimes go quicker than we realise, but even so, over 2.5 hours is a long time to lose track of!
 
Hello, my name is Judith. I joined the forum yesterday and this is my first posting. I am an on-off Fortean Times reader. I have never had a paranormal experience but have an occasional interest, and as a teenager, I used to scare myself sleepless by reading a Peter Underwood book from the library.

Anyway, back to FT410. Has anyone read the contribution ‘Missing Time’ by Elizabeth Lloyd-Folkard in ‘It Happened To Me’ (page 75)? It relates the loss of about 3 hours on an unremarkable car journey taken by 2 friends in 1993. The only odd feature was that when they stopped for coffee at Membury Services, only one other person was in the cafe, even though it was a Saturday ‘with plenty of traffic’. The upshot is that a trip that should have taken 2 hours 15 minutes, actually took more than five.

When I first read it I thought, ‘How banal. Why have they printed this?’ As time has gone on, it has stayed with me. If it had happened to me, I would want an explanation.

Perhaps both friends misread their watches at the start of the trip. Perhaps they drove at a more leisurely speed than they realised. Perhaps they were in the cafe 40 minutes rather than the 20 they thought.

Even so 3 hours is a long time to lose. Is Membury Service Station a liminal space?!

All services stations are pretty odd no man's land type places, a little like out of town shopping centres. Liminal in an atmospheric and practical sense, rather than a paranormal one.

Also, welcome!
 
Is Membury Service Station a liminal space?!
By definition, it is. It may also have depended upon the time when they got there. It may have been in the early hours of the morning.
 
Hello Judith, and welcome to the boards!

That story reminds me of a few Christmasses ago, when Daughter One and I went to visit a friend who was hosting a pre-Christmas Christmas lunch for the local writing group. We'd never been to her house before, so followed the Sat Nav and drove to Doncaster accordingly. On the way back, daughter and I were chatting, didn't need the Sat Nav because we were just retracing our steps. Suddenly we found ourselves on the A64, practically home, and we both looked at one another and said 'what just happened?'

The journey had taken about half an hour less (because there was no uncertainty about the route) and passed in a flash (because we were talking). I was driving on 'automatic pilot' and not really taking much notice of surroundings. It could have seemed paranormal if you were that way inclined, but really it was just humans being humans and not paying proper attention.
 
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