Fortean Times (WorldMags) - July 2013, Tygodniki, prasa, magazyny, Tygodniki, prasa, magazyny
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MAO’S
MANGOMANIA
communist china’s
cult of fruitiness
into the uncanny valley
bad robots and creepy sex dolls
dr phene’s house of mystery
the secret of the chelsea hermit
legends come to life
ferrets on steroids and sewer gators
THE WORLD’S
WEIRDEST
NEWS STORIES
pope’s impromptu exorcism • smoking rock • whistling ghost • rubble rescues
ThE WORld OF
STRANgE phENOMENA
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essex, 1944: an english
village is at war with
the powers of darkness
insidethe
vrilsociety
from free energy
technology to
nazi ufos
mythical
monsters
the wizardry of
ray harryhausen
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Fortean Times 303
strange days
contents
Rubble rescues; Pope’s impromptu exorcism; Mao’s mango
mania; folk with four kidneys; legends come to life; the
whistling ghost; uFO disclosure and much more.
14 SCIENCE
17 ALIEN ZOO
18 GHOSTWATCH
21 CLASSICAL CORNER
23 MyTHCONCEPTIONS
24 NECROLOG
25 STRANGE DEATHS
26 THE uFO FILES
the world of strange phenomena
features
COVER STORY
30 THE WITCH OF SCRAPFAGGOT
GREEN
ROBERT HALLIDAY investigates a curious wartime haunting
in an Essex village, involving poltergeist activity, missing
geese and a vengeful witch back from beyond the grave.
But were the phenomena real, imagined or invented?
36 THE UNCANNY VALLEY
From fairies and the Men in Black to Japanese robots and
hyper-real sex dolls, we are surrounded by human-like
simulacra. IAN SIMMONS explains why the science of
robotics has provided a new model of how the not-quite-
human creeps us out so much, and why that might be...
56 HARRYHAUSEN’S MYTHOLOGICAL MONSTERS
The special effects pioneer who deined ancient myth for the modern age
42 THE VRIL SEEKERS
How did a ictional force invented by a 19th-century
English writer inspire a body of myth that takes in Nazi
occultists, lying saucers, secret societies and free energy
– and continues to lourish online in the 21st century?
THEO PAIJMANS reveals the truth about the Vril Society.
48 DR PHENE’S HOUSE OF MYSTERY
Who was the mysterious Dr Phene and what secrets
lurked behind the shuttered windows of his House of
Mystery? JAN BONDESON tells the strange story of one of
London’s forgotten eccentrics.
reports
36 THE UNCANNY VALLEY
Robots, sex dolls and vampire babies
4 AMAZING RUBBLE RESCUES
Cases of survival against the odds
28
BLASTS FROM THE PAST
No. 45. Altered state: teleporting in Michigan
76
FORTEAN TRAVELLER
No. 87. Ettal: the Grail Church of Bavaria
forum
55
Of Madness and Melancholy
by SD Tucker
56
Harryhausen’s mythical monsters
by MJ Pérez Cuervo
regulars
74 IT HAPPENED TO ME
78 READER INFO
80 TALES FROM THE VAuLT
02 EDITORIAL
59 REVIEWS
71 LETTERS
6 CRYPTIDS IN THE MUSEUM
Creatures feature in new exhibition
22 CHAIRMAN MAO’S MANGO MANIA
When the Cultural Revolution went fruity
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COVER IMAGE: WITCH CREATED By DAVID FOxLEy / PHOTOGRAPHy By ETIENNE GILFILLAN
1
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As above, so below
CELEBRATING JOHN MICHELL
The late John Michell was a great friend,col-
league and contributor to
FT
and we have watched
with interest as – since his death inApril 2009
– his legacy is assessed and celebrated.Nowhere
was this more evident than at the recent John
Michell symposium organised by his friend and
collaborator Christine Rhone for theTemenos
Academy and held in the quaintArtWorkers’
Guild building in London’s Bloomsbury. This event
was the second of its kind (the irst took place in
2010; see
FT267:56-57
) and took the title‘Dancing
with Plato & Fort: Crop Cir-
cles,Cosmology &Ancient
Metrology’.
TheTemenosAcademy,
of which JM was a Fellow,
is a teaching organisation
based upon‘the perennial
philosophy’ as exempliied
in the works and principles
of the world’s great mysti-
cal philosophies.JM shared
with them a deep apprecia-
tion of Plato, the Platon-
ist writers and the more
modern Neo-Platonists,to
whom number and geom-
etry were regarded as a
divine language linking the
mundane world to the airy
Ideal.JM also recognised
the Hermetic principle
of“as above, so below”in
Charles Fort’s idea of the
‘continuity’ which,in Fort’s
terms,connected the‘local’
to the‘universal’.
Christine Rhone opened
the day with a trot through JM’s writings and
philosophy, taking in sacred geometry, ancient
metrology, leys and astro-archæology, forteana,
simulacra,UFOs and the Shakespeare authorship
controversy – as well as giving a welcome account
of the world’s only crop-circle making competition
organised in 1992 by JM and Rupert Sheldrake.
Next,John Nicholson,author, pamphleteer
and one of JM’s oldest friends and colleagues,
presented a challenging view of JM as a trickster,
visionary and fashion icon,whose views shaped
the Glastonbury music festival as much as ley-
hunting moots and fortean conventions.Apart
from his many books and articles,and even a
stint as a columnist for the
Daily Mail
, JM was
perhaps“our last great correspondent”( as many
in the room could personally attest).Nicholson
explained JM’s ‘Flying SaucerVision’ as an appre-
ciation of symbols that lead to greater spiritual
and mystical understandings,and asked a star-
tling question:“What path would John have taken
if he had followed Isaac Newton instead ofWil-
liam Blake?”It wasn’t a preposterous question,
said Nicholson,because JM shared many of the
interests and characteristics of Newton,includ-
ing mathematics,geometry and the all-important
appreciation of ancient doctrines combining natu-
ral sciences with Hermetic philosophy...not to
mention the ability to work non-stop and into the
night.Try as he might,Nicholson said he couldn’t
dissuade JM of his neglect of Newton,portrayed
by Blake as a man whose“single vision”lay at the
root of scientiic materialism.
John Neal’s talk emphasised the undying
triumph of‘the great geometer’ in both harmonis-
ing many of the ancient systems of measurement
and in the unprecedented identiication of the
primary unit of measurement upon which nearly
all ancient architecture and monuments are
based – the“English Foot”.
(“I wish it had been some-
thing more exotic,” said
Neal.) Later, a 10-minute
video on ancient metrol-
ogy –
Best Foot Forward
by JonathanAdams – was
premiered.
Another video presenta-
tion was a prime example
of the creativity inspired
by JM’s work. John Mar-
tineau’s
What is the Uni-
verse Up To?
begins with
the geometry employed
by crop-circle makers,
and explores Hermetic
art and science,from the
symbolism of the City of
Revelation to star patterns
and life forms.And to
remind us of JM’s trickster
side,the Dutch ilmmaker
Michiel Brongers showed
his 10-minute clip of the
American veteran of the
underground press Bill Levy
reminiscing about his encounters with JM.
As JM,like Fort,was amused that his greatest
fans were cranks and crackpots and abhorred
any suggestion that he should become the object
of a cult,we think he would have been quietly
pleased by these offerings.Poet andTemenos
founder Kathleen Raine once described JM as
“one of the most brilliant men in England”– but
this symposium reminded us that his message
had the brilliance of ancient wisdom behind it.
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