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Whatever Was The Brentford Griffin?

A

Anonymous

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Anyone heard any more about the so-called Brentford Griffin as mentioned in Graham McEwans excellent book MYSTERY ANIMALS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND, and also mentioned in a pamphlet devoted soley to it ? Are these creatures supernatural odd-bodies ? I.E. Bray Road beast, Washington Goatman, Mothman etc. Do people still encounter these weird forms ? has anyone out there in readerland encountered a weird beast ?
 
Can you give us a fuller description, Neil?

Carole
 
From memory...

Didn't a certain young Robert Rankin have a skeletal claw in that?

8¬)

And tell Mr O'Malley, mine's a pint of large at The Flying Swan
 
http://www.google.com/search?q="brentford+griffin"++"robert+rankin"

http://www.arthurchappell.clara.net/robert.rankin.htm
Rankin’s humorous style occasionally spills over into reality. He started the Brentford Griffin hoax of 1985 by spreading rumours that a Griffin, not unlike the logo of the Midland Bank, had been seen flying around Brentford. Rankin leaked the story to the press and primed some chums to give their exclusive story of the sightings they had ‘witnessed’. To his surprise, the media hacks interviewed ordinary locals instead, and each of them swore to have seen the magical beastie. Rankin really knew the gag was out of hand when popular ‘hypnotist’, Andrew Collins wrote a book claiming the Griffin was real. Rankin owned up to starting the hoax in Fortean Times. (Issue 80; May 95).


http://www.geocities.com/laxaria/eyrie1c.html
Yet the Brentford Griffin was not entirely a joke. Andrew Collins, in a letter to the Fortean Times, writes: "The information and data used in the text was obtained directly from the people concerned and everything was carefully checked before publication" Also: "Rankin had no problems with The Brentford Griffin at the time, so his flippant, dismissive attitude 10 years later is difficult to understand." [3] Even Rankin admits: "We set up a Griffin Hot Line and people started ringing in; they'd seen it, their parents had seen it, someone had seen it at the end of the War rising like a phoenix. I thought: 'Hang on a minute, even if this thing had no reality at first, it has now.'"
 
"...To his surprise, the media hacks interviewed ordinary locals instead, and each of them swore to have seen the magical beastie."
Click to expand...

Curious situation, huh? Does this mean the rumours created a thought form type thing (if that is, of course, possible,) or are these creatures commonly seen everywhere and all of the time but only reported when the witness's confidence to do so is built up by hearing that others have apparently seen them too?

I did a bit more searching via Google, I found:

*The pamphlet:
COLLINS, Andrew, The Brentford Griffin: The Truth Behind the Tales (Earthquest: Wickford, 1985).
-------------------------

http://www.walkingspace.freeuk.com/mysite/acnestis/may97.htm
"Talking of Rankin: one Sunday morning recently, GLR had a phone-in discussion about the Brentford Griffin. The DJ was recounting how he had, many years ago (it would have been 1985) been sent down to Brentford to report on mysterious sightings of a winged reptilian creature identified as a griffin. He wasn't sure he hadn't dreamed the whole thing up, but callers were able to tell him that no, they remembered the rumours too. What nobody said was that (i) the Griffin is the symbol of Fullers Brewery, based in Chiswick which is nearby; (ii) The Brentford Watermans Arts Centre has a Fullers bar; (iii) Robert Rankin was Writer In Residence at the Brentford Watermans Arts Centre at the time; and possibly (iv) our intrepid DJ was Gary Crowley, which suggests he was picked for the Griffin reporting job on the basis of his surname... As far as I know Robert Rankin has admitted it's a hoax (though that itself could be a legend)."
-------------------------------
*Also, Brentford Football Club's ground is called Griffin Park.

*Here a couple of scanned newspaper articles from the time (1985):
http://website.lineone.net/~fourpints2/griffin at large.jpg
http://website.lineone.net/~fourpints2/griffin spotters.jpg

*Apparently Robert Rankin has since written a play called 'The Golden Griffin.'

Poster sketch:
http://website.lineone.net/~fourpints2/brentford griffin.jpg

-J
 
IMHO...

If you look at 'The Blair Witch', several of the interviews are with real locals, who are discussing the witch like its an established legend (specifically the woman with the small child). Sort of an illustration that, if you stick someone in front of a camera and a recorder and ask the right question, they will spout any b*llocks that springs to mind.

The Giffin may be a thought form, but could equally well be complete nonsense, even though the witnesses, after the event, believe what they said they saw...

Vox populi, vox veritas. Indeed?!? More 'there's nowt so queer as folk' to my mind

8¬)
 
It's an interesting thread this... I wonder if there's any more cases of hoaxes spawning their own Fortean phenomena.

It reminds me of what I said on another thread earlier, about ABCs. Is there a disproportionate number of black ABCs, because that's what people expect to see?

I also used the example of stigmata there... people believe Christ was hung by his hands, and that's where stigmatic wounds occur. But historians know people being crucified were hung by their wrists.

I suppose you could say another example is Chupacabras, which didn't only launch loads of sightings in its specific location, but also in Spanish-speaking countries across the world.

And taking it to extremes, if the theory that the first UFO sightings were just pelicans is right (yes, I know this is not a hugely valid theory, but I'll use it to illustrate my point!), then maybe the whole UFO phenomena was created by people's "knowledge" of a misidentification, given substance through media reports.

It may be interesting to have a dig around in Piltdown, see what we can find...
 
Wasn't there an article in FT recently (or did I read it somewhere else?) about a deliberately invented ghost story to test people's reactions? It was amazing how many people asserted that they experienced something strange . . .

Carole
 
after a couple of pints of rough, perhaps with whiskey chasers, sometimes wonder if a lot of reality is down to a consensus opinion. A sort of very strong anthropic principle (defined here) And that in practise we are constantly amending what we regard as reality.

then i fall over :cross eye
 
Lyall Watson refers to consensual reality at some length in Supernature, as sort of a critical mass thing.

'If 99 monkeys believe some thing to be true, it doesn't mean it is. What happens when the hundreth monkey believes?'

8¬)
 
aaahg! syncronicity!

Yesterday I decided to dig out old issue 80 and read Rankin's interview... my friend has just started reading his books, thought I would lend it to him. Now I find this thread!

Rankin does not explicitly own up to creating the Griffin. He says "I didn't think for a minute that there was a griffin on the island in Brentford, but I thought it was a fine idea and did y best to help it along". He also said that he had no idea how it really started (in this interview anyway), but that Andy Collins' pamphlet was completely wrong about many details.
 
creating hoaxes...

I think exotic cats in the countryside cannot be ignored or situated alongside Brentford Griffin's and the like. I certainly don't think people expect to see big cats in the wild...however, it is down to the researchers to siphon out the crap and the dubious. I wouldn't thoroughly and methodically investigate cat sightings if I thought they were almost hoaxes. People have to realise what they are seeing and researchers have to know what they are researching. If something is fiction, just say like the Brentford Griffin, then it should be portayed that way...it is interesting though that if fiction is portrayed as fact, that some people do start seeing things. That's how al ot of urban legends alter.
 
RE: Griffin

I remember reading that booklet on the Griffin, when I lived in Chiswick, looking out of my flat window at the Thames searching intently for that winged creature.

Forgive me if I am wrong but wasn't his hoax based on the legend already being in place and he picking up on it. So therefore he never started it but added to it, or rather confused the issue even more.

Mark
 
I had forgotten that I had started to write this. Oh well, better late than never.:

I agree that exotic cats in the countryside cannot be ignored but I think that many reported sightings could also be situated alongside Brentford Griffin's and the like. I certainly do think people expect to see big (black) cats in the wild, they are now the most commonly reported type of forteana outnumbering, in my experience as a FT clipster, ghosts and UFOs combined. There really does seem to be a big cultural factor involved here and the proper fortean position seems to be that the social sciences have at least as much a role to play in these subjects as the physical and biological ones.

Perhaps it's a more rational, modern day reason to fear going into the woods. Perhaps ABC's are a less imaginative British version of the chupacabras, whatever that may mean. I suppose it depends on one's own point of view what is crap and the dubious, and what has value. If I thought ABCs were all merely the decendants of released pets, etc., I would pay even less attention to them than I do now. Having said that, I am in no way an active and expert investigator, I just like pondering this type of stuff.

The Brentford Griffin doesn't seem to be pure fiction but who was being truthful and who wasn't? If Rankin didn't start it then who did? Where did the idea come from? Were the people who phoned into the hotline all lying, including the one who "had seen it at the end of the War rising like a phoenix"? If various locals really had seen things that were unusal -to them, at least-, whether these events took place before or after they had heard about the 'Brentford Griffin', at what point did that label get applied? It seems that this apparently fictional idea influenced not just some new experiences, but also new reports of new interpretations of old memories of past events too.
 
There were people who swore blind they saw the 'angels of Mons' when, from all appearances it seems to be a retelling as fact the short story 'The Bowmen' by Arthur Machen.

The problem is, the truth is an odd looking beast, in that it looks different to everyman. Who is to say that the people who rang the hotline didn't believe they had seen the Griffin? Just because its not 'true' doesn't mean its not real...

8¬)
 
I've always had a soft spot for the dear old BG. I mean. it's just so improbable! Obviously, very few Forteans would go so far as to claim that there really, truly was an actual flesh-and-blood heraldic beast flying around London in 1985. What next, the Barking Basilisk?

However, leaving aside certain very real concerns regarding its authenticity, which I'm sure will be raised on this thread soon enough, it seems to me that London could do with a good monster or two. At the moment, it's really a toss-up between Spring-Heeled Jack, who must surely be retired by now - at his age, Jack Who Shuffles Fairly Quickly With a Zimmer is nearer the mark - and the Highgate Vampire, who...

Well, let's just say that 99% of all the material ever written or posted about that particular entity derives from one incredibly prolific cyberbully who seems to be not altogether well, but is so good at what he does that I'm probably not allowed to mention his name on this forum, along with the various other forums he has bludgeoned into submission. Which ruins the entertainment value of a perfectly good totally fake bogeyman.

Now, I forget the name of the village - I probably read this ages ago in one of Christina Hole's books - but in this place, which I think is in Yorkshire, every year they had, and possibly still have (I certainly hope so!) a festival to commemorate several alleged sightings a very long time ago of a curiously tiny and rather cute dragon which caused no harm to anyone and then went away again. The festivities, which may or may not still occur (if anybody knows what I'm talking about, please answer this question ASAP because I'm sure some of us would love to go) centered around the consumption of large quantities of a traditional drink called "snakebite", which was basically industrial strength local cider plus a few other things. Clearly a good time was had by all.

Well, why shouldn't Brentford do something similar? I've just had a look at their community website, and it seems they don't need too much of an excuse to party - they even had a May Fayre with morris dancers and everything! Should there not be some sort of attempt to encourage a Brentford Griffin Festival to occur annually? Even once would be good.

And look how well Point Pleasant has exploited Mothman - they've even got a statue! By the way, Mothman was an oversized humanoid with massive wings, whereas the Brentford Griffin was the size of a large dog - a very modest statue would do it full justice - and surely Greater London has more cash to spare than Point Pleasant, West Virginia? I think some kind of gentle pressure should be exerted on the good burghers of Brentford in this matter.

It's true that a distant echo of the ongoing, totally unresolvable, and incredibly boring feud over that Highgate business exists in the shape of a disagreement between (alleged) Brentford Griffin Hoax instigator Robert Rankin and surprisingly enthusiast bandwagon-jumper Andrew Collins, but the difference is that the former has a sense of humour and no apparent mental illnesses, and the latter would probably be delighted to forget all about the whole thing if only people would let him, so that need not cast a cloud over proceedings. Though if such an event were to actually occur, clearly one of those two is more likely to agree to be the guest of honour than the other (though both at the same time might be interesting).

By the way, I recently read an interview in which Brentford resident and multi-talented hardcore Fortean Rat Scabies claimed to have possibly caught a glimpse of the legendary Griffin, so I dare say you could get him as well, along with whatever band he currently plays in (assuming he still does that sort of thing). There are possibilities here for a totally off-the-wall Fortean event which just happens to be in the middle of the largest city in the UK - somewhat more convenient for most of us than a Gef the Talking Mongoose Festival at Cashen's Gap, no?

What does everybody think? I see no reason why this should be treated as anything other than a perfectly serious suggestion. Who knows? We might even get a movie in which Robert Rankin is plated by Richard Gere. Or possibly Jeff Bridges. I'm not sure about Andrew Collins - Steve Buscemi, perhaps? Though we definitely need a cameo from Andy Serkis as the Griffin.
 
I once had a go at writing something about the Brentford Gryphon, from what little material there was:

THE BRENTFORD GRYPHON

Gryphons are handsome, powerful, and lordly, but they suffer the handicap of being mythical. In these modern times no one believes such creatures exist -- right?

In the London district of Brentford (northwest of Wimbledon) one can find the Griffin public house. The Griffin Brewery, with its griffin trademark, is located in nearby Chiswick. The Brentford Football Club plays at Griffin Park, and the coat of arms for Brentford and Chiswick consists of two griffins holding a shield. Is it any wonder, then, that the mysterious flying beast seen in Brentford in the 1980s was called a griffin? (I will use the "griffin" spelling throughout this article to hold down the confusion.)

In mid-1984, while walking along Braemar Road, one Kevin Chippendale spotted a creature flying near the roof of the Green Dragon [!] apartment building. "He described it as resembling a dog with wings, having a long muzzle [beak?] and four legs with what looked like paws." He saw the thing again in February 1985, on the same street, and he realized it resembled the griffin painted on the sign over the Griffin pub. "Mr. Chippendale then described his sightings to his colleagues, one of whom, Angela Keyhoe, said that she had seen, from a bus, a big, black, bird-like creature, perched on the top of the gasometer next to the Watermans Arts Centre. Other passengers also saw the creature." [1] The griffin was even seen by a psychologist, John Olssen, one morning while he was jogging beside the Thames. By March the griffin was mentioned frequently in the press and featured on London Weekend Television's The Six O'Clock Show.

Writer Andrew Collins, initially skeptical, interviewed Kevin Chippendale and came to believe in some of the reports. He ended up writing a pamphlet entitled The Brentford Griffin: The Truth Behind the Tales (Wickford: Earthquest Books, 1985).

There were a few tales containing little truth, however. Novelist Robert Rankin, who "spins weird yarns with tongue placed firmly in cheek," attached himself to the Brentford Griffin and its attendant publicity. In an interview ten years later Rankin said: "Nearly every sentence in his pamphlet is totally inaccurate -- people, locations, times all wrong. I didn't think for a minute that there was a griffin on the island in Brentford, but I thought it was a fine idea and did my best to help it along." According to Rankin, "When the TV crew came down, they brought people with them who didn't live in Brentford. They stood there and talked about the griffin they'd seen. It was priceless!" The locals, too, came up with griffin sightings -- when the cameras were pointed their way. [2]

Yet the Brentford Griffin was not entirely a joke. Andrew Collins, in a letter to the Fortean Times, writes: "The information and data used in the text was obtained directly from the people concerned and everything was carefully checked before publication" Also: "Rankin had no problems with The Brentford Griffin at the time, so his flippant, dismissive attitude 10 years later is difficult to understand." [3] Even Rankin admits: "We set up a Griffin Hot Line and people started ringing in; they'd seen it, their parents had seen it, someone had seen it at the end of the War rising like a phoenix. I thought: 'Hang on a minute, even if this thing had no reality at first, it has now.'"

Andrew Collins' explanation for it all? "I invoked a 'cosmic joker' turning myth into reality" which [or who] had "simply re-activated an archetype that had been in Brentford's popular consciousness (such as Fuller's Griffin brewery, the Griffin pub and the Griffin football ground) for centuries."

[1] McEwan, Graham J. Mystery Animals of Britain and Ireland. (London: Robert Hale, 1986), pp. 153-154.

[2] Coolie, Stuart. "To Brentford and Back." Fortean Times #80 (Apr.-May 1995), p. 28.

[3] Collins, Andrew. "The Brentford Griffin [letter]." Fortean Times #81 (June-July 1995), p. 57.

Maybe you can't see the Brentford Griffin, but perhaps someday you can travel to Brentford, England and Visit the Griffin Pub

(If you visit long enough, maybe you will see the Griffin, after all, nudge, nudge.)
____________
My link to the Griffin Pub no longer works. Maybe it closed down. :(
 
I was born near Brentford, and lived in Hounslow until about 1953, but I never heard of a Brentwood Griffin in those postwar years.

But back then you couldn't say the area was "in the middle of the largest city in the UK" - it was in the County of Middlesex, which only a generation or so before that had been largely farmland and market gardens!
 
rynner2 said:
I was born near Brentford, and lived in Hounslow until about 1953, but I never heard of a Brentwood Griffin in those postwar years.
Click to expand...
No, I'm sure there wasn't a Brentwood Griffin, I lived near there years ago, I'm sure I would have noticed. ;)
 
Oh, come now, people! I don't think even the most diehard Fortean on Earth (or anywhere else) honestly believes that one or more griffins have ever been flapping around in the skies over Brentford. And it did not escape my notice that no hint of the allegedly quite old myth surfaced in print until the mid-nineties. But why let such details ruin a jolly good story? This is a classic piece of Forteana which nobody ever really believed in (except possibly Andrew Collins for about 10 minutes), but that doesn't matter! It doesn't have any paranoid nonsense about the Royal Family secretly being cannibal space reptiles attached to it - there's no agenda at all! It's just a bit of fun! And I don't think many of you will disagree with me when I say that this world we live in can use all the harmless fun available.

So why not promote a story which we all know to be total BS, but which is at the same time completely harmless and very entertaining? Alas, the supposed nesting site of the griffin, the gasometer next to the Waterman Arts Centre, has long since been demolished. However, its other alleged habitat is a tiny island in the Thames called Brentford Eyot. As you can see from the satellite view, there might very well be something bizarre living on that little patch of woodland, and the whole place is too small to be in any way useful, so what's to stop it being declared the world's only official griffin sanctuary?

And if you're in search of stronger meat, consider this. The mythical griffin was supposedly an animal big enough to prey on fully-grown horses. Going by Kevin Chippendale's description, the Brentford specimen must be either an infant or a dwarf. However, if you're familiar with the Lesser Key of Solomon, it's a dead ringer for the demon Glasyalabolas.

The ball is in your court. Feel free to play with it.
 
MistyMisterWisty said:
And it did not escape my notice that no hint of the allegedly quite old myth surfaced in print until the mid-nineties.
Click to expand...

Actually about ten years before that - I remember reading about it in the eighties, and sure enough I just dug out my trusty old copy of "Mystery Animals of Britain and Ireland" by Graham J. McEwan (printed in 1986) and pages 153-154 summarise the Brentford Griffin.
 
In fact I now see Amarok2005 posted above, referencing the same source.
 
amarok2005 said:
Even Rankin admits: "We set up a Griffin Hot Line and people started ringing in; they'd seen it, their parents had seen it, someone had seen it at the end of the War rising like a phoenix. I thought: 'Hang on a minute, even if this thing had no reality at first, it has now.'"

Andrew Collins' explanation for it all? "I invoked a 'cosmic joker' turning myth into reality" which [or who] had "simply re-activated an archetype that had been in Brentford's popular consciousness (such as Fuller's Griffin brewery, the Griffin pub and the Griffin football ground) for centuries."
Click to expand...

The first and possibly the second parts here get to the crux of the matter, in my opinion. People are always going to 'see things' (really 'experience things') of an outré kind, but precisely what form they take depends on what is in their heads at the time--lurking at the back.

Have searched for a copy of the book cited, alas, the only trace online is but a photograph:

91k48FdM2OL.jpg
 
yeah its one of AC's self published pamphlets

incidentally his conference is coming up soon including prolific authors Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince on The Stargate Conspiracy 2017 - if you've got any heretical scrolls you want autographed

http://www.andrewcollins.com/

2017-origins-con-v5_low.jpg
 
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