Blog - Paranormal Magazine

“I’m gonna haunt forever!”

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

This month we launch our issue with accounts of ghosts of the stars; actors and actresses long dead but whose celebrated images are still to be seen in places other than the silver screen.

Why are there so many ghosts of the famous? That is a question that has been asked many times before. In Britain these celebrity ghosts tend to be defunct nobility: Lord This, Lady That, various kings and queens. Three different historic buildings claim to be the haunt of Anne Boleyn.

In addition we can boast the shades of a smattering of military heroes, such as Lawrence of Arabia; literary figures, such as George Bernard Shaw and the Bronte sisters; and stars of stage and screen, from Dan Leno to Sid James. John Stoker, who introduces us to Hollywood haunts this month, will be turning his attention to homegrown theatrical ghosts next month. There are even some celebrity pets – Dick Whittington’s cat, for example (see my Phantom Felines article).

Perhaps the strong personalities of such celebrated figures predispose them to some sort of ghostly survival. The dramatic, intense lives of the likes of Anne Boleyn might also be a factor in such survival.

Nevertheless, except in the cases of very distinctive, recognisable figures like Bernard Shaw or Marilyn Monroe, I think it’s more likely that most ‘famous’ ghosts are misidentifications of less prominent personages from the past.

A lady in Tudor costume glimpsed at Blickling Hall in Norfolk, for example, might be any upper crust lady from the 16th century, but because Boleyn was brought up there, it is presumed to be her.

The cult of celebrity – which seems to have reached fever pitch in the UK in recent years – is nothing new. Anyway, it’s an instinctive and forgivable tendency to add interest to a story, and a celebrated figure does add interest. Anne Boleyn is more interesting than ‘Lady X’.

The suggestion that dramatic, emotive incidents can generate ghosts is one that is now ingrained in the paranormal literature. Sightings of such arresting apparitions as screaming women, galloping horses and soldiers locked in combat certainly support such a hypothesis. But since there are so many more reports of ghostly figures quietly going about their business (whatever that is), it’s open to question.

After all, peaceful, pottering monks and nuns are just about the commonest apparitions on record. An acquaintance of mine is convinced that she saw the ghost of former Prime Minister W E Gladstone – quietly reading a book. Some years ago I received a letter from a chap who saw the ghost of what appeared to be an old farmer, in smock and floppy hat, nodding and dozing on an equally ghostly cart going slowly up a country lane.

Famous or unknown – what impetus can there be to create such peaceable spooks? What possible factor can lead to a play-back of such tranquil, commonplace incidents from the past?

Perhaps the law of averages dictates that some ghosts must be of famous people. But we have no other law to explain what causes ghosts nor why.
It’s still all a delightful mystery.

Richard Holland, Editor

Tell the editor about your own experience with the paranormal. Email: editor@paranormalmagazine.co.uk or write to Richard Holland, The Editor Paranormal Magazine, Jazz Publishing, The Old School, Higher Kinnerton, Chester CH4 9AJ. Or submit your story through the EXPERIENCES section on our website by clicking HERE

Ride a black swan

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

by Mark Greener

In 1636, the Dutch sailor Antonie Caen probably became the first European to see an Australian black swan (Cygnus atratus). Biologists in Europe dismissed his claims: everyone ‘knew’ swans were white. But 61 years later another Dutch explorer, Willem de Vlamingh, brought three C atratus back to Batavia (now Jakarta), proving that not all swans are white. Indeed, two of the seven species of swan are not pure white. The South American Cygnus melanocoryphus has a black neck and head. C atratus is, beak aside, totally black.

The black swan is the official state emblem of Western Australia – and I think it should be paranormalists’ totem animal. To understand why means delving into the philosophy of science.

Science usually advances slowly and steadily, as researchers build cautiously and gradually on previous findings. In many areas, basic science progresses with all the speed of a particularly lethargic snail after a heavy night out. The dramatic paradigm shifts that transform our understanding of nature almost overnight – such as Copernicus’ discovery that the Earth orbits the sun, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and quantum mechanics – are all too rare.

The philosopher Karl Popper argued, somewhat controversially, that science advances when anomalies falsify previous theories. So, he suggested, rather than trying to confirm their theories, scientists should aim to find evidence that contradicts previous findings. Importantly, just one compelling anomaly is enough to derail a theory. A single C atratus falsified the idea that all swans are white, no matter how many times biologists find white swans in different locations.

Critically, the new theory needs to make specific predictions that scientists can test – such as that all swans are either black or white. A species of naturally green swan would falsify that theory. Astrologers and other ‘soothsayers’, Popper argued, make vague interpretations and prophesies. This vagueness means they could explain away events that might refute their theory.

Popper’s concept of falsification is, I suspect, one reason why many scientists dislike the paranormal. It’s a real threat to their worldview. One verified case of reincarnation would falsify the idea that life can’t survive death. One verified crashed UFO would falsify the idea that we’re not being visited by ETs. One genetically verified corpse would prove the existence of unknown large hominids in North America, Siberia or the Himalayas.

Popper’s concept of testability is, I suspect, one reason why many paranormalists dislike hard science. To bridge the gap with science, paranormalists need to formulate testable theories. In some cases it’s easy: DNA analysis should determine whether a cryptid corpse is new to science. It’s harder for astrologers or crystal healers.

In his classic book A New Science of Life (just published in a third edition), biologist Rupert Sheldrake proposes a ‘hypothesis of formative causation’. It’s a radical theory that borders, for many scientists, on the paranormal. According to Sheldrake, memory is ‘inherent in nature’. He argues that ‘Animals and plants draw upon and contribute to a collective memory of their species’. Crystals, molecules, even cosmic evolution, ‘follow the habits of their kind’. Critically, Sheldrake suggests several experiments that could help test his hypothesis.

I can’t help feeling there are several black swans in the pages of Paranormal: anomalies that could bring fundamental new insights to our understanding of reality. But anyone interested in the paranormal needs to formulate ways to test the anomalies – scientists won’t do it for them. It’s only by testing paranormal anomalies that we’ll determine which are C atratus, which are slightly mucky white swans, and which are just dirty ducks.

Mark Greener is an award-winning freelance journalist, specialising in health and bioscience. Mark is a former research scientist who has written widely on his life long passion: cryptobiology. He’s the author of nine books and his features have appeared in magazines worldwide. He lives between Cambridge and Ely and keeps a sharp watch for the fen tiger but has sadly never seen even a footprint…

Is the world ready for Spookology?

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

One of the interesting things I’ve noticed when researching ghost-lore is the way in which ghost stories of the past differ to what we might call ‘the modern ghost experience’.

Once upon a time, particularly in the Celtic fringes of the islands of Britain, ghosts, goblins and monsters tended to be lumped together into one terrifying package. In Wales, my home country, a White Lady, a Black Dog, or a half-human-half-animal Thingummy would all have been called by the same name: a bwgan (or a spook, in English).

Ghosts didn’t follow the rules we expect them to follow today. Although there were many stories told of spirits (ie personalities surviving physical death) who came back from beyond to bother mortals, it didn’t follow in old ghost-lore that a ghost was necessarily a spirit. Take the following example from The Folk-Lore of West and Mid Wales, published in 1911 by J C Davies. At a lonely moor, Mr Davies informs us, ‘a poor old woman had been murdered, which was supposed to account for the spot being haunted’. But the moor wasn’t haunted by the spirit or apparition of the murdered woman, as one might expect. Instead it was haunted by ‘a ghost which appeared sometimes in the shape of a cat, at other times as a man on horseback’.

Now, how does that belief tally with the ghosts we are introduced to in TV programmes today, all of which seem to be ‘trapped’ or ‘grounded’ spirits?

Even before the boom in paranormal telly programmes, we had become used to thinking in terms of ‘the ghost of Lady So-and-so’, the ‘apparition of Bad Lord Wotsit’ and the like. But ghost-lore was not so clear-cut in centuries past.

This is why I consider entities like Black Dogs or the Owlman as ‘spooks’ rather than strictly ‘ghosts’ or even ‘zooforms’ (a handy term for anything animal-like but supernatural). Surely, once the cryptozoologist has determined that such an entity is unlikely to be a real, flesh-and-blood animal, he or she should move on. Owlman might just have been a big owl which frightened two young people not used to seeing an owl close to, and its appearance loomed larger and more alarming in their imaginations subsequently. But if we take Owlman descriptions literally, as a man-sized, red-eyed thing wearing little trousers and emanating evil, it cannot be perceived as a natural creature. It is a spook.

I like spooks. For me, spooks are at the very core of the paranormal: really, really weird, inexplicable, scary things. They might keep me up at night, but they keep me up at night reading books – and magazines. In the Moslem faith, such spooks might fall within the realm of the Jinn, a race of spirits touched on in a fascinating article which begins on page 12. The modern sorcerers whose beliefs are investigated by Jimmy Lee-Shreeve and Jason Karl on pp 16-27 also encounter spooks, but they might think of them as demons. Spooks have a heritage. And they are still with us.

So, let us not be too keen to categorise our paranormal visitors. Some may be spirits, if a spirit world exists. Some may be unexplained glitches in time, others misidentifications of exotic beasts. Many others, of course, may simply be mistakes or even hallucinations on the part of the witness. But beyond such limitations, there still survive the spooks.

Since Parapsychology and Cryptozoology are established terms and considered worthy pursuits to follow, why should we not also have Spookology? Spookology seems no less worthy – and a lot of fun, too. Henceforth, I shall consider myself a Spookologist. I wonder if I can get a grant?

Richard Holland, Editor

This lack of support is truly monstrous

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

by John Downes

The cryptozoological community, as well as attracting some of the finest people I have ever known, also – sadly – attracts some of the most inane, superficial and irritating.

Let me tell you the story of Jordan Warner…

A few months ago, I was contacted by an American lad called Jordan. He was, or so he said, making a webTV series on cryptozoology. I made polite noises, but was convinced that I would never hear from him again. However, I was proved wrong. A month or so later he posted a trailer for his new show, called Cryptid Hunt, and at Samhein, he posted the first instalment.Well, I have to say that I was really impressed. To produce an hour-long show is no mean achievement, but to post an hour-long show when you are 15 and presumably still at school is undeniably impressive. I was even more impressed that Jordan had produced a show on a low budget and with relatively primitive equipment but which still succeeded in achieving production values considerably better than films I was making well into my forties, let alone anything I could have conceived at the age of 15.

So why, I have to ask, has this talented young lad been treated so badly by certain members of the cryptozoological community? One very well-known cryptozoologist, who shall remain nameless but who should feel jolly well ashamed of himself, greeted Jordan’s requests for help with sarcasm and derision.
Then an article on Jordan’s series somebody had written for Wikipedia was deleted by someone else called ‘Thehelpfulone’ because ‘it didn’t assert the importance or significance of its subject’.

Well, ‘helpfulone’, whoever the hell you are, congratulations. You have just sent out the message to a young man of relatively tender years that to make a multi-part webTV show at the age of 15 is not as notable an achievement as running a specialist pornography website: look it up if you don’t believe me, but you’ll find a whole series of articles on this most morally dubious of subjects.

I am very proud of what we have achieved with the CFZ over the past two decades, because as well as continuing to push back the boundaries of human knowledge, we do something which I think is even more important: we enthuse a whole new generation of young people whose schools teach them how to pass exams and not a lot else, that knowledge for knowledge’s sake is a wonderful thing.

Zoology is the study of the animals which share this planet with us. For 100 years from the mid 19th century, Natural History was the most widespread hobby of people of all ages in the western world. Now it is almost forgotten in favour of television, video games and fast food. We aim to redress this.

Forteanism, although Fort himself hated the term, is a mindset which encourages people to test the intellectual boundaries which constrict us all: to dare to stand up and say ‘I don’t believe that’, and in an increasingly constricted and bureaucratic world that HAS to be a good thing.

In our own little way we are trying to change the world, and help forge a society where boys like Jordan are lauded and appreciated for their efforts, rather than bullied and ignored. Youngsters like Jordan are the future, and without them the future looks very bleak indeed.

Jordan’s Cryptid Hunt can be viewed at: www.cryptid.zoomshare.com

Why toddle when you can fly?

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

Last month I owned up to the peculiar extraterrestrial fantasies of my childhood. A new article has now stirred up another half-forgotten early memory.

New writer to Paranormal, Mark Salmon, got in touch with several ideas for features, one of which really hit home with me. Mark told me he had discovered that large numbers of people shared a similar, inexplicable memory: of having floated down the stairs when they were children. And he’s one of them: he can recall drifting down stairs that had been secured by a child-gate when he was an infant barely able to stand up.

My younger brother shared this talent. I remember seeing him float down stairs when he was a toddler, his little pink feet never touching a single step. I guess I would have been five or six at the time. Reminding Stuart of this extraordinary incident, he surprised me by saying he was sure it was no isolated occurrence; indeed he went further.

‘I don’t think I needed to actually walk down the stairs until I was about five or six,’ he said. Ulp!

So, is this a new phenomenon Mark has uncovered? Are there many more people who can recall being able to defy gravity as infants? Can anyone recall floating upstairs – surely that bit more difficult? (What am I saying? This job is giving me a really skewed perspective on things!) Anyway, if any reader can shed more light on this remarkable subject, do please get in touch.

Flight is something of a theme this issue. ‘Eye-opener’ showcases photographs of levitating people and objects. Ten pages are devoted to horrible half-human winged things, thanks to Jon Downes and Janet Bord. Dr Karl Shuker discusses the intriguing idea that UFOs might be luminous creatures floating in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

Back down to earth – kind of – Nick Redfern completes his two-part article on ‘shape-shifters’ by focussing on were-cats and spirits which take on animal form after death. And don’t miss Jerry Glover’s informative article on Spontaneous Human Combustion, in which he successfully argues that the cause of this most gruesome of phenomena is far from solved.

My own contribution is a short one on a scarce category of spook, the ghost bird. In this I mention the fact that certain birds were once seen as bad omens: for example, it was considered very unlucky if a crow came down your chimney. Which brings me to another anecdote (sorry).

When I lived in a rustic cottage a few miles from the Paranormal offices some years ago, I heard quite a lot of scraping and scratching coming down my chimney, but I assumed it was just soot. The chimney ended in a metal pipe which connected to a closed, pot-bellied wood-burning stove. Several hours after the ‘soot’ had ceased to fall, I opened the flap on the stove and gave it a good prod inside with a poker, assuming that it was full of rubbish. But nope, it seemed completely clean. I rattled the poker around inside just to make sure, then removed it.

Seconds later, a dusty jackdaw emerged from the darkness. It squeezed through the aperture and perched blinking on the rim. How I missed it with the poker I do not know but the bird’s sudden appearance was so uncanny that I dropped it on my foot in surprise. Fortunately, the crow didn’t croak out ‘Nevermore’, or I might not be here today to tell you the story. In fact, the only ‘unlucky’ result of the adventure was getting loads of sooty claw marks all over my walls while attempting to shoo it outside.

Richard Holland, Editor

Tell the editor about your own experience with the paranormal. Email editor@paranormalmagazine.co.uk or write to Richard Holland, The Editor Paranormal Magazine, Jazz Publishing, The Old School, Higher Kinnerton, Chester CH4 9AJ. Or submit your story through the EXPERIENCES section on our website: www.paranormalmagazone.co.uk

Something to think about

Saturday, January 10th, 2009

Are ghosts, UFOs, sea serpents, fairies etcetera etcetera all created by the human mind?

Well, of course they are, say the sceptics. They’re hallucinations, products of over-fertile imaginations. They are – they say – all in the mind.

There is, however, another view that paranormal entities are not ‘all in the mind’ but out of it. That they are indeed the products of the fertile human imagination, but of millions upon millions of people across the world and throughout history (and indeed prehistory): archetypes formed in the human subconscious and projected outwards to take on a kind of half-life of their own.

This is the concept of the ‘thought-form’, a hypothesis finding solid ground among paranormal researchers and one ably explained in two companion articles this month by Nick Redfern and Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe.

The idea is this: if early settlers feared what might lurk in the unexplored forests a few yards from their cottage door, might the hairy wild men their imaginations conjured up be actually brought into being? If our primitive ancestors dreaded being pursued and eaten be monstrous predators, might those fears be transformed into the unearthly Black Dogs still occasionally known to follow night-bound travellers today? And might those Black Dogs become Big Black Cats if enough people believe they can exist in the rather less wild places of the 21^st century?

Our rustic ancestors swapped tales of people being abducted by Fairies. Today we hear of people being abducted by Aliens. As Janet Bord explains in a fascinating article this issue, Fairies and Aliens share many characteristics. Are they the same beings – thought-forms perhaps? – which have adapted over the centuries to meet our expectations?

If all this wasn’t mind-boggling enough, there’s plenty more to intrigue you in Paranormal 30. Dr Karl Shuker takes us down the savage garden path with some wild accounts of carnivorous trees, while newcomer to Paranormal, Emma McNiel, introduces the bizarre concept of Reverse Speech, in which we allegedly give away our true thoughts with a kind of unconscious double talk. In addition, the Fortean Picture Library presents ten more startling pictures, this time of religious phenomena.

One article that particularly got me thinking is ‘All The Best Tunes’, in which another new name in the magazine, Jimmy Lee Shreeve, explores the background to the legends of blues guitarists selling their souls to the Devil. The deal was always done at a crossroads, as dictated by a magical tradition that originated in Africa. And yet, as I discuss in an accompanying piece, crossroads were considered just as eerie in Britain. The more I looked into it, the more apparent it became that this superstition – if it is a superstition – is worldwide and of great antiquity.

What is the origin of such a common belief, what is its cause? Is it an artefact of the belief system of some ancient ancestral race? Does it represent some archetypal belief shared by all humanity as a quirk of evolution, due to the way our brains are wired? Or is it universal simply because it’s true – that crossroads really are gateways to the Unknown?

As usual, there are too many questions and not enough answers. But of course that’s the reason paranormal research remains endlessly interesting.

Richard Holland, Editor

Believe what you really see

Friday, January 9th, 2009

by John Stoker

In 1975 I was working for a radio station in the North-East which decided to broadcast a live Hallowe’en show. Jim, a local psychic investigator, was recommended to me so I rang him up and asked him to appear in the programme with me.

When I met Jim, he turned out to be a rather pleasant middle-aged headmaster from a nearby school. The idea was to take him to a wood just outside Newcastle which was reputed to be haunted. Jim was all for it but said that we had to regard this as a serious investigation, which was exactly what we wanted.

On the night, we set out for the wood in the radio van with an engineer. It was cold and damp as Jim and I walked slowly down an avenue of trees with only a microphone for company. We did our first insert into the studio programme and explained what we were up to and assured the radio audience that they would join us if we encountered anything strange.

After about 50 minutes Jim grabbed my arm and pointed towards a clump of trees.

‘There’s something materialising over there,’ he said. Our engineer dropped his flask of tea and told the studio what was happening and they took us on air. Jim was beside himself with excitement and gave an absolutely hair-raising commentary. The shape was forming and he could see it moving towards us. But most fearful of all was the sense of evil he described. Jim’s description became even more graphic until finally the entity retreated.

It was wonderful radio – and thank God it was radio, because the engineer and I couldn’t see a damn thing. As we drove back Jim told me he’d had a very exciting night.

‘It’s nights like this that make it all worthwhile,’ he told me. The next week large groups of ghost hunters tramped through the woods in the hope of seeing the spectre. I doubt whether they saw anything, but then they didn’t have Jim with them.

Twenty years later I filmed a documentary at Glastonbury Abbey and when we came to view the tapes back in the editing suite, one member of our team said he could see the outline of a monk in one of the shots. He was so convinced that he rang the press office while we examined the tape. On a small monitor it did look like a monk but on a larger one it turned out to be merely a shadow. Then I got a call from a very excited press officer asking for a picture from the tape. I told him the truth, but the truth didn’t provide a story.

‘If it looks like a monk it is a monk,’ he said. I told him to drop it. ‘You don’t make my job any easier,’ were his last words.

I fear that that some of us are so desperate to see a supernatural event that we inadvertently create our own phantoms. In so doing, our objectivity, and therefore our credibility, vanishes. My grandmother, a devoted spiritualist, used to say that it wasn’t the dead you should fear, it was the living. In the world of paranormal investigation that phrase is more than apt. Trust your own experience – not what people tell you you’re experiencing.

John Stoker has spent 40 years working in radio and television, for such companies as the BBC, Thames, Central and NBC. At Anglia Television he helped to launch Tales of the Unexpected for Oscar-winning producer Sir John Woolf. He became a freelance writer and director and his output includes Flesh and Blood (the story of Hammer Films), The Templar Legacy and Michael Bentine Asks Is There Anybody There? He is the author of The Illustrated Frankenstein and has contributed to magazines as diverse as Little Shoppe of Horrors and The Oldie.

God gave us the spirit of inquiry

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

lionelfanthorpe By Lionel Fanthorpe

Many religious people – especially those who describe themselves as conservative traditionalists and fundamentalists – seem to be very nervous when anything paranormal or supernatural comes along. They suspect that anything appertaining to ghosts, poltergeists, UFOs and the like is somehow connected with Satan, demons, evil spirits or imps. Consequently, they feel they must have nothing to do with it.

Unfortunately, this irrational prejudice against paranormal phenomena prevents them from taking part in the kind of open-minded, objective research which is both fascinating to carry out and informative to conclude.

I’m an ordained Anglican Priest, and a liberal, modernist theologian. The God I believe in is the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving ruler of as many universes as exist. I also believe in the unique mission of Jesus of Nazareth, and in another life that follows this one, where we shall be happily reunited forever with those who have gone ahead of us.

I deplore the ecclesiastical rules, regulations, church hierarchies, creeds, liturgies and rituals that ruin spiritual life. Love, kindness and generosity are the best forms of worship.

However strange certain paranormal phenomena may seem to us, however far outside the limits of our 21^st century natural sciences they may go, they are all well within such a God’s control.

The many gifts that God has bestowed upon us include freedom of choice and curiosity – the very healthy intellectual desire to find out as much as we can about the cosmos in which we live. Exploring and researching are among the most enjoyable things we can do, and God has given us a marvellous environment to explore. From the credible reports of many reliable and sensible witnesses, our cosmos seems to include ghosts, poltergeists, werebeasts, cryptozoological specimens, UFOs, extra-terrestrials – and a great many more inexplicable phenomena. Investigating them is just as religiously acceptable as analysing chemical compounds in a laboratory, studying the stars in an observatory, or writing exciting new programs for a computer.

Religion should be based on rational thought and logical deduction – and so should all worthwhile science. The scientific method starts with observation of the data; it then goes on to categorise what’s been observed. Next, it puts forward an explanation and tests it repeatedly. If the hypothesis stands up to every test the scientist can think of, it gets promoted to the rank of a scientific law – but that doesn’t make it immune from subsequent re-testing. Religion should use a similar process to reach spiritual conclusions.

This suggests that we would be wise to be on our guard against any religion that forbids us to explore the unknown. The unknown is there to be explored, and the more vigorously and fearlessly we explore it, the greater the sum-total of human knowledge will become. Knowledge is power, and wisdom is a very valuable treasure. Religious taboos and prohibitions do humanity a grave disservice. God gave us our minds – and the right to use them to think and explore all the wonders that surround us: including the paranormal wonders.

The Rev Lionel Fanthorpe is a man of many parts. Following an early career as a writer of sci-fi and supernatural novels, he has also been a management consultant and a head teacher at a comprehensive school, as well as an Anglican priest. He is a well-known lecturer, writer and broadcaster who, together with his wife Patricia, specialises in investigating unsolved mysteries. Lionel is president of both ASSAP (The Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena) and the British UFO Association.

Right place, right time, right gadget

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

As most of you probably know, the Bigfoot-in-the-Freezer story we highlighted last month turned out to be the hoax we feared it might be. For a few short days, as we went to press, I believed it might be genuine – after all, what was said to be on offer was a whole corpse and DNA analysis. You couldn’t get away with faking that, could you? In the event, the perpetrators didn’t even try and it’s hard to see what they could have gained from such a lame stunt.

Underpinning my hope, I guess, was the belief that one day such a scenario really will happen. If a Bigfoot, or a lake monster, or a big cat is finally proved to exist, it will most likely be in this way: somebody somewhere will stumble upon a body, lying in a wood or on the shore of a lake or beside a road.

Meanwhile, in the realm of the ghost hunter, more and more gizmos are being toyed with to try and capture one on film – or rather, the modern equivalent of film. Maybe the right combination of light-wave filters will suddenly reveal to us a spirit world all around us. Such a result might be terrifying – or worse still, become instantly mundane and boring!

I know that hi-tech cameras have been set up around a jungle in Indonesia in the hope of photographing the orang pendek, probably (unlike Hallowe’en costumes in fridges) the man-beast most likely to be a genuine undiscovered species – and the subject of an in-depth feature by Dr Karl Shuker this month.

We also have the treat this issue of ten of the best ghost photos from the Fortean Picture Library to mull over. Most of these were taken on old-fashioned film, and some on plates, but they never fail to intrigue even after all these years.

Today it’s quite possible that the device most likely to record something paranormal for posterity will be the humble camera-phone. Who would have imagined 15 years ago that we’d all be walking around with Star Trek-style communicators, doubling up as video cameras?

Websites like YouTube are full of videos of weird apparitions. They are usually so indistinct that they are easily dismissed; nevertheless one cannot get around the fact that almost everyone out of doors – children included – is armed with a handy camera-cum-phone, which means the potential for capturing an anomalous event is now far higher than ever before. Not only can you take a quick snap or vid of the thing you’ve witnessed, you can phone up your friends to come and witness it, too.

It may be a UFO, or a ghost, a strange animal, or a fairy – yes, they are still being seen, as Janet Bord’s interesting article convincingly testifies – or any one of the bizarre menagerie Neil Arnold introduces us to in his article on ‘zooforms’.

And if you’re lucky enough to be the person who grabs the groundbreaking photo or video – you know where to send it to!

Richard Holland, Editor

The sound of ancient silence

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

by Tim Prevett

Megalithic sites are addictive. Megaraks (prehistoric anoraks) will tell you that without much encouragement.

It’s not just the stones’ age, geology, or situation. It’s not just the weather, company, or your mood during a visit. Astronomical, solar, lunar and landscape alignments certainly contribute. The stories of a given place can add further depth: giants, witches, devils and fairies roam the mists of time that hang over some ancient sites.

Something unseen affects some visitors to ancient sites. There is a primeval stillness to the stones which touches those who visit; those who have ears to hear will know they have encountered a special place.

Our environment affects our life and speaks into both our conscious and subconscious, most of the time without our realising it. Any location can affect us in unseen ways; indeed one could argue many paranormal experiences could be down to subtle influences between humanity and surroundings. Megaliths seem peculiarly powerful locations.

Over a decade ago, a personal experience at Down Tor stone row and circle on Dartmoor put these special locations firmly within my psyche as places of fascination and renewal. I believed I could learn from their stillness.

These stones are often removed from modern settings and give a sense of entrance into a space set aside for a specific use – a sacred space, where something ‘other’ meets our usual life. Somewhere people come to invest their thought, time, feeling, and to remember. Given the right time, a place where we hear the quiet noises we so easily miss.

We need to grasp the sense of place, and the relation of the stone with its environment. Recognise that the ancient site is within the context of nature. Those who built it placed it at that location for a reason, relating it to other features – such as other stones and burial monuments, hilltops near and far, or astronomical events. The whole landscape, and even the heavens, become interconnected, invested with ancient meaning. You may feel terribly small, but suddenly you feel a part of it all: participating in something local but plugged in to the universe.

Some people feel called to these ancient sites. I certainly do. When you get to one, and if the moment is right, be still and allow the feel of the place into your being. Remember it at the right time. The stillness of the stones speaks volumes; they may enrich your life and change your way of seeing the world. Try listening and see what you hear.

Tim Prevett is a lifelong lover of the paranormal. He is a founding contributor of The Megalithic Portal website (www.megalithic.info); he runs Crewe and Nantwich Ghost Walks (www.crewetours.com), and his first book, Roads and Trackways of North Wales is published by Landmark later in 2008. Tim is pictured crawling into the Cuween chambered tomb in Orkney.