• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

FT416

Mine was snatched from the postman's hand just now, and worried through the living room.

By the dog, not me, I'm not THAT desperate. Anyway, looks good.
 
Yes, got mine too. Looking forward to the boggarts article.
 
Oh, incidentally, did anyone else get a bitcoin offer with their mag? I hope the new publishers aren't investing in dodgy dealings.
 
Yup, got the bitcoin advert. Almost as bad as the lottery syndcate one! Here's a coincidence: reading it justnow, while Tony Blackburn was doing his Friday evening slot on Radio Two, I got to the sidebar short about whether Superman was Jewish. I looked down at the cartoon of Supermensch that accompanied the text, and Tony Blackburn said at the same instant "No, that's not Superman." Odd and definitely reportable!
 
Oh, incidentally, did anyone else get a bitcoin offer with their mag? I hope the new publishers aren't investing in dodgy dealings.
Yes, it was tucked into the copy I bought in WH Smiths yesterday.
 
Oh, incidentally, did anyone else get a bitcoin offer with their mag? I hope the new publishers aren't investing in dodgy dealings.

Yes, I am now a bazillionaire.
 
Noel Rooney's article may be somewhat unfortunately timed.

...The sabre-rattling contest that has gone on around Ukraine (almost exclusively in the West, it has to be said)...

...which they will use as a pretext for invasion because, as everybody knows, the Russians really want to start World War III...

Arguments about the reality or otherwise of rumoured false flag operations, the first statement appears to me to have been a load of bobbins in the first place, and the second has somehow entirely lost the sense of irony that I assume was being aimed for.

My copy arrived the same day Russia invaded Ukraine (which was, admittedly, a whole three days before Putin started talking about the nuclear stuff).
 
Last edited:
Yes! I was going to say it's not the first time the Conspirasphere column has been, shall we say, overtaken by events. Quite apart from anything, Putin is likely to have come to power by organising a false flag terrorist attack which gave him the excuses he needed to become supreme ruler.
 
I feel like a lot of the regular columns like The Conspirasphere and Classical Corner etc are getting a bit tired..need a bit of a revamp to freshen things up. I'm struggling not to just skip some parts of the magazine which isn't good for them.
 
The Vanishing Restaurant story in "It Happened to Me" reads rather like the opening of Robert Aickman's "The Hospice".
 
I got my copy earlier today. As others have noted, Noel Rooney's piece which, when it wasn't disappearing up its own arse, belittled the notion that The Russians Really Are Up To Something, was more than a bit unfortunate.

If "Mystic Noel" can maintain this standard I'll start reading his stuff more often.
 
I know being anti-establishment is part and parcel of being a Fortean, but so is analysing the matters in hand to find a fresh angle, not disagreeing with the facts because people you don't like agree with them.
 
Agree. It is perfectly valid to challenge the establishment view, "explore the angles" (but beware the Hounds of Tindalos:)) and reach new (but always tentative) conclusions.

The difficulty with Rooney's tentative conclusion - dismissal of a geopolitical threat from Russia as a hysterical Western conspiracy theory - is that recent events have proved it to be horribly, tragically, sickeningly wrong.

To provide a bit of context, I read his article with rolling news on in the background, showing a rocket attack on Kharkiv, and the full horror of modern warfare. If that's all Fake News then it's bloody convincing.

As a result, I have reached my own tentative conclusion about Noel Rooney, which I won't divulge here.
 
to lighten the mood.... the Haunted Lincolnshire article that discussed strange events connected to the death of Tom Otter also published the relevant section of the 1828 OS map. It shows the location of the gibbet from which Otter's body was hung, possibly abut a hundred yards up from a crossroads. You expect that - the classic location for a public execution. But not actually at the crossroads, but a little distance away? Unless the surveyors got this wrong, of course, and were inserting a snippet of local folklore in the "here be dragons" tradition; maybe they got the position a little bit out if not much remained to be seen there.
 
Just reading my copy on Kindle, and as I usually do, I skipped to the IHTM section to read that first... I've not read it all yet, but the Portsmouth mental hospital one reads like fiction.
 
Message from the mag about 416:

"There seems to have been a problem with some subscribers in certain areas getting their copies of FT this month. If you haven't received yours, please email our publisher at [email protected] or call +44 (0) 208 752 8195 for some help."
 
UPDATE! The problem with late delivery of subscription copies of the new issue seems to be a Royal Mail problem largely affecting Yorkshire and the Midlands. We are advised that you should hang on while they try and sort it out rather than emailing the publisher at this point.
 
Just finished my copy of 416 last night.
Anyone else heard faint Fortean bells ringing regarding the IHTM account from a few decades ago of a family finding a strange restaurant off the beaten track, paying a ridiculously small amount for a fine meal served in now unusual silver-service style, but when they wanted to revisit the place a few years later only found overgrown foundations of a long-since demolished building.
To me that sounded suspiciously like the Avignon time-slip, as discussed extensively in the bespoke thread above.
 
Not arrived on Kindle yet, but looking forward to it.
 
Just finished my copy of 416 last night.
Anyone else heard faint Fortean bells ringing regarding the IHTM account from a few decades ago of a family finding a strange restaurant off the beaten track, paying a ridiculously small amount for a fine meal served in now unusual silver-service style, but when they wanted to revisit the place a few years later only found overgrown foundations of a long-since demolished building.
To me that sounded suspiciously like the Avignon time-slip, as discussed extensively in the bespoke thread above.
it's also very like "The Vanishing Tchae Khana" account in Mike Dash's "Borderlands" (an excellent roadside restaurant in a remote part of Iran which wasn't there when the customer drove back that way the following week).
"Borderlands" includes several other "vanishing building / possible time slip" cases that I don't think have been mentioned in the time slip thread.
 
Back
Top