Letters to Fortean Times

Over the years I have written a number of letters to Fortean Times, not all of which have been published, and some of those which have were edited.  I have collected here all the ones I can find, in the form in which they were sent, in chronological order.  There are probably other I’ve missed; founding editor Bob Rickard is leading an indexing project which may throw up other letters when it is available; I certainly remember one I can no longer locate about the improbable sighting by a viewer of a Buddhist in Triumph of the Will, which I identified as a bald man.  I have provided references where I have them.

The Guyra poltergeist

The panel on the Guyra poltergeist of 1921 accompanying the article on the Humpty Doo case in FT 116 was interesting, but did not mention the film made the same year, The Guyra Ghost Mystery, in which the Bowen family played themselves in a reconstruction, albeit with ‘comedy relief’.  Does this film still exist?  If so, it would certainly make a valuable addition to a Fortean archive.  Either way, I would appreciate a description of its contents if anybody is able to help.

The references in the Guyra section cite the Bord’s Modern Mysteries of the World, but I could find no mention of the case there.  What is the correct reference?

Submitted 21 October 1998, not used.

 

Book billing scam

Mr Hierophant mentions “an entirely new scam,” viz. billing relatives of the deceased for unordered books.  Far from being new, this was the modus operandi of the Depression-era con artists played by Ryan and Tatum O’Neal in the 1973 film Paper Moon.  In that case, the volume in question was The Bible.

Submitted 9 May 1999, not used.

 

Intelligent Design

I was disturbed at the tone of Vicki Ecker’s article in F.T. 154 on Intelligent Design (ID).  This disingenuous piece tries to give the impression that a new label on an old idea makes it radical and modern, whereas it is actually a warmed-over version of William Paley’s Argument from Design.

The writer vainly tries to distance ID from Creationism, clearly realising the intellectual bankruptcy of that mish-mash.  But apparent even-handedness, by including criticisms from what are termed “mainstream scientists”, is undermined by the effort to portray these faceless Darwinists as the implacable Establishment against whose “ideology” plucky pro-IDers are fighting for a fair hearing - after all, the article suggests, these are scientists too, and therefore without an axe to grind.  It is ironic that it is evolution which is under attack in the United States, particularly in the South, where right-wing fundamentalist religion is at its strongest, with pressure on state school boards to characterise evolution as controversial and give equal time to Creationism or some synonym.

What concerns proponents of evolution about Creationism is not so much its attempt to provide an alternative explanation for the natural world, but rather its intellectual dishonesty, the vacuous attitude to science it embodies, and the unsavoury political agenda which underpins it.  A disinclination to teach Creationism is not the expression of an arbitrary wish to exclude dissenting opinion from some prevailing orthodoxy, but a desire to keep religion out of science teaching.  The recommended reading which concludes the article consists entirely of pro-Creationist material, with no contrary opinions, which sums up the Creationist approach to teaching science.

The joy of F.T. is its iconoclastic approach, and from that point of view evolution is not immune from scrutiny, but it should be within a scientific framework, not as part of a covert anti-scientific attempt to bend evidence to pre-formed and rigid religious dogma.

A heavily abbreviated version was published alongside a number of letters on the topic in FT156, March 2002, p. 56.

 

Ghost Hunters

While it is always pleasant to see the early history of the Society for Psychical Research rehearsed (Deborah Blum’s The Ghost Hunters, FT219) it is even more pleasant when the facts presented are correct.

For a start, Catherine Crowe was not a Scottish writer: she was born at Borough Green in Kent, and although she moved to Edinburgh at some point between 1828 and 1838, from 1852 she divided her time between London and the Continent, moving to Folkestone in 1871.  Her most famous book, The Night Side of Nature, was published in 1848, which I make nearly 160 years ago rather than the 150 that Blum mentions.

More seriously, Blum says that no research “with any serious intent” was done for “almost 40 years” after the publication of Crowe’s book, until “the mid-1880s” with the formation of the SPR (actually 34 years and 1882 respectively, this vagueness does not fill one with confidence).  On the contrary there was a great deal of activity, largely stimulated by the growth of Spiritualism, which hit Britain in 1852.

For example, Blum fails to mention the two-year inquiry of the London Dialectical Society, which issued its report in 1871.  Cromwell Varley, who introduced Crookes to Spiritualism, was active in this period, as was Edward Cox’s Psychological Society, and the individuals who would found the SPR were also making enquiries.  There may have been flaws in these endeavours, but they were all serious.

This is not of course to diminish the impact of the SPR – as Alan Gauld says in his classic account The Founders of Psychical research, “To pass from even the ablest of previous works to Phantasms of the Living is like passing from a mediaeval bestiary or herbal to Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae.”  But the SPR did not pop out of a vacuum, and Blum’s sketchy narrative distorts the development of psychical research in Britain.

An abbreviated version was published in FT221, April 2007, pp.70-71.

 

Bindelof group

Rosemarie Pilkington’s reply [FT226:74] to the comment that she could have subjected the phenomena produced by the Bindelof group to greater scrutiny, in my review of her book The Spirit of Dr Bindelof [FT222:63], is that she knew Gil Roller, who participated in the group, for thirty years; she interviewed many others who had been involved; and that Montague Ullman, also a group member, kept “impeccable records” (though these were not included in her book).

That does not constitute a scrutiny of the phenomena.  The first seventy pages of the book are a description of the group’s activities, ostensibly by Roller but ghost-written by Dr Pilkington, produced at some unspecified time after 1973, when the two first met (the phenomena ceased in 1934).  The rest is a basic overview of physical phenomena of various kinds, but not an analysis of the Bindelof group’s output.

Dr Pilkington thinks that “the majority of historians would consider me fair in my evaluation of [Richard] Hodgson”, which was that he was an “egomaniac” and “an incompetent researcher more interested in enhancing his prestige as an exposer of frauds than searching for scientific truth.”  On the contrary there are many commentators, during his lifetime and after, who have rated him highly as a researcher and as a person.

This might simply be a difference of opinion, and the character of someone who died in 1905 not be important, but it matters because if he was as bad as Dr Pilkington asserts, it does not say much for the judgement of the colleagues in the Society for Psychical Research and its American counterpart who valued his talents (Edmund Gurney to William James on Hodgson in 1887: “His qualities are absolutely invaluable; & psychical research ought to insure his life for about a million pounds.  His intellectual honesty is quite complete…”).

Also, Dr Pilkington indicates that I wrongly criticised her for failing to include Leonora Piper in the book, because Mrs Piper was a mental medium, not a physical one, and the book focused on physical phenomena.  The impression is left that I did not realise that, whereas I noted that Mrs Piper was a mental medium in my review, but I mentioned her because she caused Hodgson to move from general scepticism to belief in her phenomena.  Referring to Mrs Piper would have obliged Dr Pilkington to provide a more rounded picture of Hodgson.

I’m glad the book has found favour with both “neophytes” and “cognoscenti”, though perhaps not with ex-husband Nick, because as I said in my review, it has rescued the project from undeserved obscurity.  I simply felt that more could have been made of it with an examination of Roller’s and Ullman’s claims.  It seemed an opportunity lost.

Published in FT229, November 2007, pp. 74-75.

 

Harry Price

Richard Morris [FT231:72] unfairly takes me to task for accepting Harry Price’s Search for Truth at face value when discussing Price’s role in organising the Exhibition of Objects of Psychic Interest at London’s Caxton Hall in May 1925 [FT229:38-41].  However, I’m fully aware that Price could be unreliable and self-serving, and clearly took this into consideration when assessing his claims.

For example, Morris indicates that Price was capable of writing versions at different times that varied in tone, implying I had failed to realise this.  Yet I had specifically noted such variations between the report he submitted to the American Society for Psychical Research’s Journal shortly after the event, and the chapter devoted to the exhibition in the much later Search for Truth, which tended to be condescending, particularly when participants – including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – were safely dead.  It was because of these inconsistencies that I checked contemporary accounts in Light, which covered the exhibition extensively.

The exhibition was held in conjunction with the London Spiritualist Alliance’s fund-raising grand bazaar and fête.  Morris suggests that Price did not need to curry favour with the LSA in order to house his National Laboratory of Psychical Research in their new building because he ‘had raised the possibility’ of sharing with the LSA as early as 1922.

Well, I actually did say that Price had used the LSA’s rooms when it was based in Queen Square, and that he saw the LSA’s proposed move to bigger premises as advantageous for his own organisation.  He did not occupy part of the LSA’s new headquarters until the end of 1925, so the success of the exhibition in May of that year, and his prominent involvement in it, would have stood him in good stead in his negotiations for space there.

Morris further says that Conan Doyle and the LSA’s General Secretary devised bazaar and fête.  This sounds like a rebuttal to a point not made, as I never claimed that Price devised, or indeed organised, them.  What I did say was that the exhibition was hitched to the already scheduled bazaar as a last-minute addition, inspired by Prices’ visit to Copenhagen to open J. S. Jensen’s exhibition, which subsequently formed the central portion of the Caxton Hall display.  The inclusion of the Jensen material, plus the presence of Jensen’s son during the London exhibition, are key pieces of evidence for Price’s role in its organisation.

Also, it is surely significant that it was Price who signed the foreword to the exhibition catalogue, and not Conan Doyle (LSA President at the time), who was never shy about writing in pursuit of spiritualistic aims, and whose name would have carried more cachet than Price’s.  I agree with Morris that Price was not consistent, but he was energetic, and it seems churlish to dismiss, as part of a wider effort to denigrate him, his major contribution to the clear success of the exhibition.

Finally, a sub-editor struck out the reference at the beginning of my article to the Fortean Times exhibition at Croydon in 1995, Of Monsters and Miracles, which I thought was similar in spirit to the 1925 affair.  It would be nice if the magazine could consider mounting another such exhibition, society bazaar optional.

Published in FT236, June 2008, p. 73.

 

Order of the Knights of St Edmund

I read Alan Murdie's piece in his Ghostwatch column on the cursing, by the 'Order of the Knights of St Edmund', of the new development on the site of Bury St Edmunds' cattle market (FT242:20-21) with interest, because what Alan fails to mention is that he has a vested interest in promoting this story, being a Knight himself.  A number of articles, including one in the Daily Telegraph in 2005, have featured him, as a spokesperson for the Order, telling journalists that unless the developers withdraw forthwith, the Knights would summon the curse of St Edmund to smite them and all others involved.

The results for which the group takes credit are listed in his FT article, including various aspects of the economic downturn and the death of a local councillor.  Whatever one feels about the validity of the Order's activities, Alan should have stated that he is involved personally in the campaign to which he devotes so much space.

Submitted 20 October 2008, don’t think it was used.

 

Radclyffe Hall

I was surprised to see Louise Marriott claim (FT245:72) that Radclyffe Hall was interred upright in her Highgate Cemetery tomb, her coffin facing that of her late partner Mabel Batten (Ladye).  It seems most unlikely that the cemetery authorities would approve such an act, but more to the point, Sally Cline’s excellent 1997 biography Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John is quite specific about the arrangements: Ladye, who had died in 1916, had been placed on the bench at the right of the tomb, and Radclyffe Hall’s coffin was placed horizontally facing the entrance.  Neither coffin was upright.  Also, Louise Marriott says that the tomb is at the end of the Egyptian Avenue but it is actually round the corner in the Circle of Lebanon.   If Radclyffe Hall should find herself in a vertical position, perhaps the Highgate Vampire is back at work.

Published in FT247, April 2009, p. 71.

 

Fairy photo

The 'fairy' shape in the photograph taken by Phyllis Bacon in her New Addington back garden (FT261:12) reminded me of an almost identical one in a picture taken at Fiddler’s Ferry Marina in Cheshire and sent to a paranormal research group called Para-Projects.

When the group visited the marina they found it swarming with mosquitoes, and test photographs confirmed that the fairy effect was caused by flash bouncing off an insect close to the lens. There were other illuminated insects in shot, as can also be seen in Mrs Bacon’s example. The report can be found on Para-Projects’ website: http://www.para-projects.com/Fiddlers_angel.html.

While New Addington is unlikely to harbour mosquitoes, it is highly probable that Phyllis Bacon’s photograph shows an insect of some kind, fairy rings in her garden notwithstanding.  However, a swarm of male gnats is called a ghost, so perhaps she has truly captured a ghost with her camera.

Published in FT263, June 2010, p. 70.

 

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre

I read the obituary of F Gwynplaine MacIntyre with interest, though it seemed strangely reminiscent of the article published by the New York Times on 10 September [2010].  There is one thing I would take issue with: that his review of Metropolis indicated he was saying goodbye.  The quote has been taken out of context to give it an elegiac feel, whereas actually it is matter of fact and gives no hint of what was to come.

If you read the review, he actually says at the beginning: "'Metropolis' is my all-time favourite movie, so I've saved this for the last review that I plan to write for this wonderful website IMDb. I've enjoyed sharing my experiences of the movies I've seen, but now I'm moving on to other passions."

He's not saying this is his last review ever, just for IMDb, as he has other interests to pursue.  And at the end, putting the quote in FT (and the NYT) in context, the whole paragraph reads: "Nitrate film stock doesn't last forever, and all good things come to a happy ending. This is my last review here. I'll keep watching movies, but other passions are important to me as well. Thank you, IMDb, and thank you to everyone who has read my reviews. I will happily rate 'Metropolis' a full 10 out of 10."

That doesn't sound like someone saying goodbye because he is about to kill himself.  Of course, this could all have been a bluff, which is not unlikely, but lifting a sentence from the review has distorted what he was saying.  In any case setting your apartment on fire hardly seems a happy ending by anyone's standards.  It's a shame the obituary didn't mention his controversial IMDb reviews of films that are probably lost but which he said he had seen in private collections, when he most likely cobbled together the pieces from contemporary trade periodicals he read in the New York public library.

An abbreviated version was published in FT270, January 2011, p.71.

 

Ramon Llull

David Hambling's article on Ramon Llull (FT339:14) describes Llull’s idea for an ars combinatoria, a 'portable encyclopaedia' that would allow access to all knowledge by means of the permutation of a field’s underlying principles.  He mentions Jonathan Swift's satirical description in Gulliver's Travels of a similar device used on Laputa (not Laputia) which produces random combinations of words, though sadly little sense.

Another, more successful, dystopian content generator that could have been included is the kaleidoscope in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.  It employs much the same technique to manufacture prolefeed, mindless entertainment churned out by rearranging existing approved materials without the need for any imagination or originality on the part of the operator.  Alas, Llull’s concept for creating knowledge has become the method by which programmers construct Saturday-night television entertainment.

Published in FT341, June 2016, p. 71.

 

The Hilton sisters

The 'Joined at the Hip' report (FT369:9) asserts that the Hilton sisters “earned $4,000 (£3,000) a week, about three times the average American salary.”  That would make the annual average salary in 1927 getting on for $69,000.

According to the website visualizingeconomics.com, the average annual salary was about $15k.  I think the report has compared their weekly earnings with the average monthly salary.

Published in FT371, October 2018, p. 75.

 

Romanian poltergeist case

Strange Continent in issue FT375, p. 22, has an item on the poltergeist case at Sohatu, Romania ('Stone-throwing polt').  Paul Cropper carried this story on his The Fortean blog in August as 'A Romanian Poltergeist'.  He has added a note dated December, so too late to have been seen by Ulrich Magin and Theo Paijmans, which indicates, based on information from a Bucharest-based group, that the most likely explanation was kids throwing stones (of course the investigators may be wrong).

Submitted 31 December 2018, not used.

 

Coordinating ufology

Jenny Randles highlights the lack of coordination of UK-based UFO investigation which instead, she argues, constitutes “random pockets of Internet activity” (FT417:31).  Surely the answer to this fragmentation was serendipitously staring at her on the opposite page, in Nigel Watson’s column.  It quotes Robert Moore, Vice-Chair of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena, stating his laudable ambition to broaden ASSAP’s UFO/UAP coverage.

Jenny had proposed the deployment of high-spec video cameras trained on the sky, particularly in areas known to be hot spots, but found no takers, hence her downbeat assessment of the state of UK ufology.  Now ASSAP has stepped up to fill the vacuum she identified.  This is a welcome development and promises significant advances in our understanding of the phenomena.

ASSAP is ideally placed to carry out the work suggested by Jenny.  It has the interest in the subject, the motivation, as indicated by Robert, and a national network of accredited researchers, many of whom will be interested in UFOs, already in place.  Also, the Association has stated that it is recognised by the government as the ‘professional body’ for paranormal investigators, so it has the official credentials to make the endeavour a success.

Robert sees ASSAP as a body that enables “cross-anomalies studies,” so following Jenny’s suggestion should provide an excellent testing ground for assessing possible explanations.  Such an undertaking will not be cheap, and will require a great deal of organisation, but I cannot think of a group better-placed to institute a campaign to secure funding and conduct this valuable project.

Published in FT420, July 2022, p. 68.

 

Ghostwatch

Stu Neville’s article commemorating the 30th anniversary of Ghostwatch (FT424) inevitably touches on the influence of the Enfield poltergeist case. In an interview with Neville, writer Stephen Volk downplays the connection, maintaining “the setting was about as far as it went.” Enfield investigator Guy Lyon Playfair would have disagreed with this statement, as he noted a strong resemblance.

In an article in the SPR’s Paranormal Review, ‘The Enfield Saga: From This House is Haunted (1980) to The Enfield Haunting (2015)’ (issue 75, Summer 2015, pp. 26-7), Playfair says that an account of the Enfield poltergeist’s journey from page to screen would fill a book, and he sketches its contents. A chapter would be devoted to Ghostwatch.

He describes the consequences of the transmission in gleeful terms: “Chapter 3. The BBC shows Ghostwatch, a hoax ‘documentary’ rather obviously (in my opinion) based on my book [This House is Haunted] and infringing my copyright. Legal action is taken; I get an out-of-court settlement and a well-earned free holiday.” I’m surprised Neville didn’t think to challenge Volk on his claim.

Published in FT427, January 2023, p. 60.

 

Lajos Pap

I was envious of Ian Simmons’ trip to Paris to see the exhibition Phenomena: The Unexplained in the Face of Science (FT427:14-15), and it would be wonderful if something similar could be held in the UK. One comment I would take issue with though is the claim, presumably derived from a caption, that the Hungarian physical medium Lajos Pap produced séance room phenomena “even under the most stringent conditions.”

Certainly the principal investigator Ian names, Elemér Chengery Pap, was convinced by the performances, which were wide-ranging and yielded enough apports (objects supposedly transported into the séance room by paranormal means) to literally fill a museum. There were, however, others who reached different conclusions concerning Lajos Pap’s honesty. Their accounts indicate that conditions, far from being stringent, were often turbulent and enabled fraud to occur.

Theodore Besterman sat with Lajos Pap in Budapest during a four-month tour of the Continent in 1928, which he described in the SPR’s Proceedings. He became suspicious that the medium was generating phenomena by normal means, confirmed when he witnessed Lajos Pap holding the leg of a supposedly levitating table after a light was inadvertently switched on.

Then in 1935 Nandor Fodor brought Lajos Pap and Chengery Pap to London for a series of ten séances at the International Institute for Psychical Research, recounted in an entertaining report Fodor wrote for the IIPR, The Lajos Pap Experiments. Again, there was overwhelming evidence that Lajos Pap cheated and Chengery Pap, acting in good faith, had been hoodwinked. Fodor concluded that ‘none of the phenomena produced in London can be considered supernormal; some of them were definitely fraudulent, others highly suspicious.’

In a similar vein, more recently Michael Nahm concluded in his lengthy analysis ‘Out of Thin Air? Apport Studies Performed between 1928 and 1938 by Elemér Chengery Pap’ that his “research approach contained remarkable loopholes.” Any statement suggesting that Lajos Pap could not have cheated must be treated with scepticism as, contrary to the impression given in the Paris exhibition, his behaviour precluded strict controls being imposed.

Published in FT430, April 2023, p. 65.

 

Memories of Fortean Times

I clearly remember the first time I saw FT: at the Society for Psychical Research, when it was based in Adam & Eve Mews, Kensington.  It was 1987 and I had recently joined.  I read the magazine in the library before becoming a subscriber with issue 51 (Winter 1988/9).  Gradually I obtained the reprint collections covering the first 50.  I quickly began sending in clippings (which I still do), and from issue 69 (June/July 1993) to my pleasant surprise I was listed as a special correspondent.  Later I contributed the occasional article and review.  FT has been part of my life for a long time now.

In addition to the pleasure the magazine has given me, I have fond memories of the UnConventions, and the Of Monsters and Miracles exhibition held at Croydon Clocktower in 1995.  What I particularly like about FT is that it is never predictable, and those who read the magazine from cover to cover are exposed to the broadest range of strange phenomena.  Working through it is a highlight of the month, so here’s to the next 50 years.

Published in FT438, December 2023, p. 63. (Readers were invited to write in to celebrate the 50th anniversary.)

 

The Penyffordd Polt

Stu Neville’s television column discussing the BBC’s Paranormal: The Girl, the Ghost and the Gravestone, about the Penyffordd Farm/Brother Doli case (FT437:61), includes presenter Sian Eleri’s observation that Rose-Mary and David Gower were not Welsh speakers.  This implied they could not have been responsible for the appearance of Welsh words in the house.

However, Michael Daniels, the psychologist responsible for investigating the case, states in his lengthy report, published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, that they owned a Collins Gem Welsh Dictionary, so the manufacture of Welsh words was not beyond them.  Daniels also points out that words appeared in isolation, not in sentences which would be harder for a non-Welsh speaker to achieve convincingly.

He adds that spelling errors found in the wall writings would be unlikely to be made by a Welsh-speaker but were consistent with a non-Welsh speaker possessing poorish eyesight misreading the dictionary’s small font.  He does not say so in the article but it can be seen from the programme that Rose-Mary Gower was a spectacle wearer.

Sian Eleri knew all this because she had access to Dr Daniels’ records including his article in JSPR, a copy of which she can be seen holding in one shot (though any reference to the SPR is conspicuously absent in the programme).  Yet she omitted to mention the possession of a Welsh dictionary, an important piece of evidence in assessing the wall writings.

In fact, there was much information missing necessary to reach a balanced conclusion, not least that David and Rose-Mary Gower had been SPR members and would therefore have had some knowledge of hauntings and poltergeists, useful to someone contemplating a hoax.  Despite being structured as such, the programme was not a serious reinvestigation, and Penyffordd Farm, billed in the publicity as ‘the most haunted house in Britain,’ did not live up to the hype.

Published in FT441, February 2024, p. 67.

 

Kenneth Cope

Reading Andrew T Smith's excellent examination of Granada Television's lost 1967 Coronation Street spin-off Turn Out the Lights (FT454), I was interested to see that Kenneth Cope co-wrote the first and third episodes.  He had recently finished his stint on Corrie as Jed Stone, and not long afterwards he appeared in what probably remains his best-known role as Marty Hopkirk, the dead half of the detective duo in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).

He had acting credits in other films and television programmes with a science fiction/fantasy aspect – X the Unknown, an episode of One Step Beyond, Night of the Big Heat, and a couple of episodes of The Avengers – but Turn Out the Lights was his only such credit as a writer.

Submitted 18 February 2025, not used.

 

Steve’s ghost photograph

When I read Rob Gandy's ‘Bridges, Bridges and Spacemen’ article (FT389) back in 2020, I thought the ghost photo taken by 'Steve' of a figure he called Emily looked very much like a standard ghost app composite.  These used to plague researchers but are less common now because the style is so familiar, and therefore unconvincing, so I was surprised to see the same photo pop up again in Rob's recent article on Shugborough Hall (FT457:38).

I checked the gallery on the very useful Facebook page 'Ghost photo app database debunking library' and quickly found this image.  It shows the same figure, as indicated by the shape of the hair and headdress, the left sleeve, and the decoration on the front of the dress which in Steve’s version looks like a continuation of the ivy, enhancing the impression of transparency.  It can be concluded that the account given by Steve to his friend Karen and passed on to Rob is a fabrication.

Submitted 26 April 2025, not used.

 

The photograph at the top is not me bashing out another letter to Fortean Times on my trusty Imperial typewriter, but sitting in the room at Bletchley Park which had been occupied by Alan Turing.