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39 Articles

A FEAST OF FOLKLORE AND FORTEANA As you’ ll see, a folkloric theme runs through this issue. In our cover story, artist Ben Edge gives us a glimpse into his studio and shares one of the stories from his new book, Folklore Rising, which chronicles in words, paintings and photographs his travels around Britain to record the wealth of folk customs and curious traditions kept alive and celebrated each year by local communities up and down the land. For Ben, it was a life-changing journey, and we are delighted to be able to present some of his wonderful work and to enjoy a chat about the transformative powers of folk customs in the modern world. Ben Gazur, meanwhile, turns his attention to the many curious beliefs and traditions around British…

PECULIAR PERSECUTIONS

THE LONGEST STALK In 1964, 15-year-old Kenneth Furnival, from Runcorn in Cheshire, had his bus ticket checked by conductor John Ray, then aged 18. This encounter triggered a lifelong obsession in Furnival, who came to believe that Ray was really the 1950s pop star Johnnie Ray, whom he slightly resembled. It started with Furnival tracking down Ray’s home address and sending him notes on multicoloured paper, calling him “Johnnie Ray”, complimenting him on his “blonde hair and blue eyes”, and asking for signed pictures of him dressed in a blue pullover. Ray never responded in any way, but this did not deter Furnival. His obsession continued as they grew older, leading to him follow Ray, secretly, taking pictures of him and his family, even following them on trips to the…

PECULIAR PERSECUTIONS

BRICKING IT Tired of near misses with drivers on pedestrian crossings, road safety advocates Vision Zero Vancouver (VZV) created the “Pedestrian Brick Crossing System”. This was two baskets of rubber bricks on opposite sides of the busy Granville Island crossing, with users invited to take one to bran-dish at cars as they crossed. VZV say that when people carry bricks, drivers “suddenly have no problem seeing them and stopping!” dailyhive.com/Vancouver, 1 Apr 2024. GASSY GRIEF For some reason, a UK gambling website decided to investigate the number of people seeking online help for farting problems. They discovered that two million British people seek ways of controlling un-wanted flatulence in public places each year, while a further 100,000 are looking for ways to rein in their partner’s farting. “Our research shows…

NOSTRADAMNED Dubbed “The New Nostradamus”, Indian astrologer Kushal Kumar has been busy predicting the beginning of World War III using a Vedic astrology chart (see FT447:20). He first proposed 10 June, which passed without trouble, so bounced back with a new date; “NOW, Tuesday, 18 June 2024 has the strongest planetary stimulus to trigger WW3,” said Kumar on 14 June. He cited a number of signs that this was coming, including the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, a terror attack that killed nine Hindu pilgrims in the Himalayas, a Russian nuclear submarine visiting Cuba, and the escalation of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militias becoming involved. “Watch the developing war scenario in hotspots across the globe as days pass by,” he said. He…

After being on the loose for 104 years, a copy of Famous Composers Vol. II by Nathan Haskell Dole found its way back to the St Paul Public Library in Minnesota. It had been discovered by a resident of Hennepin County sorting through their mother’s belongings. They spotted that it was a library book that had been due to be returned in 1919, so sent it back. The St Paul digital library coordinator, John Larson, investigated the book and discovered that it had been acquired by the library in 1914, and a year later had survived a fire at the city’s Old Market Hall, where the library was then based. Although the blaze destroyed 160,000 books, a third of the collection, including Famous Composers, had been on loan at the…

Inchcolm Island, a tiny uninhabited rocky outcrop in the Firth of Forth in Scotland, is home to an ever-increasing population of garden gnomes. They first appeared in 2010, and according to tourist boat skipper Scott Aston, “Nobody knows how they got there or why they are there – but they seem to multiply every winter,” adding that they have proved very amusing to his clients. Another local said “It is a bit of fun and some people say they got there after escaping from a garden centre in Edinburgh. Metro, 23 Apr 2024.…

THE CONSPIRASPHERE

THE GHOSTS OF J6 The upcoming US election will, as observers have pointed out, include a number of firsts: the first candidate who is technically a convicted felon; the first black woman (and simultaneously the first woman of Indian heritage); and the first descendant of the doomed Kennedy generation. It will be unprecedented in another way too; all the candidates carry conspiratorial baggage. Robert Kennedy Junior, assuming he makes it that far (that’s obviously not meant as an ominous Nostradamus-esque stage whisper) will bring the legacy of two famous – and famously disputed – assassinations to the voting booths. At the very least, that’s a carrot to dangle before the more assiduous – or asinine – members of the lone nut gun club. Donald Trump recently survived an assassination attempt,…

THE CONSPIRASPHERE

PAUL DEVEREUX rounds up the latest news from Stonehenge, Orkney and Italy ALTAR STONE IMPLICATIONS This column must report on the current big archæological news, described by researchers as “shocking” and “jaw-dropping”–namely, concerning the provenance of the once standing central stone of Stonehenge, the Altar Stone, now buried beneath a tumble of stones from a fallen trilithon. The large sarsen stones (the famous lintel-topped uprights) are local, Wiltshire, the smaller bluestones, broadly speaking, are from Preseli, in the part of the British Isles that came to be known as Wales, and while it was always recognised that the 6-tonne (6,000kg) Altar Stone was a different rock, it was simply assumed it came from another Welsh source. Over the past two decades, though, there has been increased questioning about the provenance…

CLASSICAL CORNER

301: IDES AND SEEK “Assassination is the extreme form of censorship” – Bernard Shaw When news of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump broke, I immediately had two thoughts: First, how many people would have secretly wished the gunman had been a better shot? Second, whilst being an unsocial media virgin, I felt sure there’d be conspiracy theories that Trump had arranged the whole thing to win public sympathy – and I gather such notions promptly surfaced. No shortage, of course, of high-profile assassinations in the Græco-Roman-Byzantine worlds. For a full discussion of Greek cases, see Cinzia Bearnot, ‘Political Murder in Classical Greece,’ Ancient Society 37 (2007), 37-61. Biggest sensation in Athens was the murder in 461 BC of the democratic leader and precursor of Pericles, Ephialtes. Writing somewhat later…

CLASSICAL CORNER

Secret punches and sudden death

It has long been whispered that certain martial arts masters can kill with a secret punch without leaving a bruise. FT reader Mark Pearson recently alluded to this in a letter (FT446:61) about Alexei Navalny (alleged victim of such a blow), suggesting that a particular punch was banned in bare-knuckle boxing due to its deadliness. Incredible as it may seem, there is a real and deadly science behind such stories. Italian physician Giovanni Lancisi documented the first case in his 1707 book De Subitaneis Mortibus (“On Sudden Death”). Lancisi, an expert on heart conditions and doctor to three popes, wrote: “I once saw the knot of life instantly undone when a man received a powerful blow from a fist under the xiphoid cartilage.” The xiphoid process is at the base…

Secret punches and sudden death

For 1250 years, allegedly, the village of Rocamadour in the south of France has had Durandal, the sword of the legendary hero Roland, embedded in a cliff 32ft (10m) off the ground in the centre of the village. No longer, though; sometime during the night of 21 June, it was stolen, with police being baffled as to how someone could make off with a sword firmly secured in such a position without being seen, particularly as it was chained down. Durandal, often described as “The French Excalibur”, has a fabled history. It is supposed to have been given to the Emperor Charlemagne by an angel and wielded in battle by his nephew Roland. Legend tells that the sword could not be broken and was the sharpest blade ever created, able…

Scotland’s Spiritualist art

Hanging in the offices of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre in Edinburgh is a striking painting entitled ‘The Dawn of Peace’. It was the work of Jane Stewart Smith (1839-1925), a gifted and imaginative artist depicting her vision of the afterlife according to Spiritualist doctrines. The 21st century has seen a growing interest in Spiritualist art, with major exhibitions held at the Courtauld Institute in 2016, the Guggenheim in New York in 2018 and at Tate Modern in 2023. Given the prominence of this painting in a working Spiritualist centre today, it was appropriate that earlier this year art historian Michelle Foot chose the Centre as the venue for the launch of her illuminating book Modern Spiritualism and Scottish Art: Scots, Spirits and Seances 1860-1940. This first in-depth study…

Scotland’s Spiritualist art

KARL SHUKER says hello to a super-sized snake and an eye-catching big cat MEGA-SNAKE IS MEGA-FIND! It’s not every day that a newly discovered species of living snake also turns out to be the world’s largest known species of living snake – but that is what happened earlier this year. And to make its discovery even more amazing, this mega-snake had actually been hiding in plain sight all along! In 2022, while filming in the Amazon rainforest an episode of the TV show Pole To Pole, in which Hollywood actor Will Smith explores in each episode a different biome (a large biological community whose wildlife is adapted to a specific climate, e.g. rainforest), a team of scientists working with the show took samples from green anacondas in the region’s northern…

DEMON HAUNTED WORLD In November 2020, Victor Sharrah, 59, of Clarksville, Tennessee, realised something had gone very wrong with his world; suddenly, everyone around him looked demonic. Their ears, noses and mouths were stretched back, and there were deep grooves in their foreheads, cheeks and chins. “My first thought was I woke up in a demon world,” said Sharrah. “You can’t imagine how scary it was”. Tipped off by a friend who taught visually impaired people and suspected he was suffering from prosopometamorphopsia (PMO), Sharrah consulted neurologists, who, after tests, confirmed the diagnosis. This is an extremely rare neurological perception disorder that causes faces to appear distorted in shape, size, texture or colour and usually lasts for a few days or weeks, although on rare occasions can persist for years.…

FORTEAN FOLLOW-UPS

TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT [FT448:4-5, 42-45] Inevitably, aliens have now become involved in the frenzy of rumour, conspiracy and mythologising surrounding the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on 13 July. With multiple people subjecting public footage of the event to intense amateur scrutiny, several have claimed to see UFOs in the sky over the rally. Allegedly a disc-like object can be seen whizzing past the American flag on the stage just before the gunshots, while another UFO manifests as an orb above the scene as the Secret Service rush the stage. Trump fans on social media have gone on to proclaim that these were “guardian angels” deflecting bullets from the former President, with a post on X (Twitter) claiming “UFO’s [sic] are always at Trumps…

FORTEAN FOLLOW-UPS

MYTHCONCEPTIONS

283: SUBMERGED CAR The myth If you’re in a car that’s sinking, don’t panic – just wait until the vehicle fills with water, so that the pressure inside is the same as the pressure outside. You’ll then be able to open the doors. The “truth” All safety authorities agree that this myth, presumably derived from adventure novels and TV thrillers, is dangerous. By the time the interior contains enough water to allow the door to open, there will be little or no air left. You’d need to be capable of agility and clear thinking while holding your breath for a prolonged period, and of acting very quickly. In some parts of the world drowning in a car is a surprisingly frequent cause of death, so it’s probably worth noting the…

MYTHCONCEPTIONS

TONY ‘DOC’ SHIELS The artist-magician Tony ‘Doc’ Shiels has died at the age of 84. A regular in the pages of Fortean Times, especially in the early days, he was a true original, his life and work brewed from a heady mix of daring showmanship, Gothic surrealism, Celtic storytelling, blues piano, art, laughter and Guinness. He was born Anthony Nicol Shiels in 1938. Brought up in Blackpool, he adopted the title ‘Doc’ in 1970 while working in Cornwall as a stage magician. Here he spent several years performing elaborate – and at times gory – magic shows with trusted friends and family. The stage name became an alter-ego with which he had a somewhat love-hate relationship. Friends tended to call him Tony, but to the public, and particularly to readers…

FAIRIES, FOLKLORE AND FORTEANA

EAT YOUR BEANS I have just had great news. John Clark’s book The Green Children of Woolpit (Exeter University Press) is out. It’s not only a superlative study of one of Britain’s first fortean mysteries, but also a bit of FT history. The author first read about the Green Children three decades ago in this very magazine (FT57:39, 41). The Green Children were two infants that turned up in East Anglia in the 12th century and were considered to be fairies by locals. They allegedly had green skin, though the green faded. The children’s arrival in Woolpit was recorded by two different writers, within a half century of the kids unaccountably appearing. We have all kinds of theories about who the Green Children were (a range of ethnicities, fairies and…

FAIRIES, FOLKLORE AND FORTEANA

Fragments of reality

STAGED Disclosure advocate Dr Steven Greer put the cat among the pigeons when in a podcast he stated: “The Betty and Barney Hill abduction was a staged, man-made abduction, having nothing to do with aliens.” Kathleen Marden, the niece of Betty Hill, responded with these questions: 1. What technology did the USAF have in 1961, that could hover silently, rotate, and bounce back and forth like a ‘yoyo’? 2. How do you explain more than a dozen eye witnesses to the craft? 3. What did they lower from the craft’s underside as it hovered only 100 feet above Barney, as reported in the earliest documents and sketched by Barney on 20 September 1961? 4. What technology had they developed that produced buzzing tones on the trunk of their car and…

Fragments of reality

Back when I used to travel the world to appear at conferences I had a particularly interesting time in the desert in Phoenix, Arizona. I met some fascinating people, including a key witness to the Rendlesham Forest incident who refocused my view on that extraordinary affair. However, that is not what I want to talk about. It was here that I first discovered the concept of ‘Star Children’. I had not come across the term before, but realised that I had met a few of these kindred spirits back in the UK, without appreciating this was a global phenomenon. Star Children are not just close encounter witnesses or abductees. They go one step beyond. Some actually believed they had not just met aliens, but had actually once been aliens living…

FOLKLORE RISING

Turning the Devil’s Stone, Shebbear, Devon, 5 November I’d arranged to meet the vicar at the Devil’s Stone it-self, and wandered over the wet grass to where the huge rock squatted beneath an ancient oak on the village green. Nearby, a tall figure was hovering, wrapped up in a scarf, gloves and coat: the vicar, a softly spoken man named Martin Warren who had kindly offered to speak to me about the origins of the strange tradition. He shared the story he had been told on becoming the vicar of Shebbear over 20 years ago. “We don’t do bonfires here, Guy Fawkes and all the rest of it,” he explained. “Instead, we turn the Stone on the fifth of November. The bell-ringers of St Michael’s ring the bells beforehand to…

FOLKLORE RISING

ON THE RITUAL TRAIL

What started you on your quest to document and make artworks recording Britain’s folkloric traditions and seasonal customs? Leading up to the project, I was going through a transitional period in my life and suffering from depression. After losing my job as a labourer on New Year’s Day – the last of a long string of jobs in which I felt stuck – I had a moment of clarity and decided that things couldn’t get any worse and it was time to go for it; that it was down to me to take back control of my life, and despite not knowing how the hell I was going to do it, I made the decision that I would make a living as an artist from here on out, no matter…

ON THE RITUAL TRAIL

A FEAST OF FOLKLORE

The other day I spilled some salt while cooking. Almost unconsciously I took a pinch and threw it over my left shoulder. Doubtless many of us would have done the same and not given it too much thought. Folklore can have a power that is hard to understand until we examine it. Where did the idea that spilled salt should be thrown over the shoulder come from? It was pondering questions like this that led to me writing this book. It turns out that there is not a singular answer. Some point to salt being given to visitors as a symbol of the host/guest relationship that was formed by dining together; to spill it was a sign that trouble would come between the two and so a little was sacrificed…

A FEAST OF FOLKLORE

I’m fascinated by the folklore of hares,” says Andrew Michael Hurley. “There are lots of stories about witches transforming into hares to escape farmers – including one local to me. In a place called Woodplumpton, just outside Preston, there’s a witch called Meg Shelton buried in unconsecrated ground beneath an enormous granite boulder. The story goes that, after she’d first been buried, she climbed out of the plot and was seen wandering around the village, so they buried again head down and put a huge rock on top of the grave. “There are numerous stories about her destroying livestock and spoiling the milk, then escaping from the farmers by shapeshifting into a hare and darting off across the fields. So I think that story was probably in my mind when…

FORTEAN TV REVISITED

Welcome back! Or if you missed last month, please sneak in quietly and don’t disturb your fellow forteans. We are currently halfway through our watch party, reappraising the first classic series of Fortean TV. Despite the show covering some familiar ground – including subjects covered by Arthur C Clarke in his Mysterious World (FT410:32-39, 411:42-47, 412:44-49) and Strange Powers (FT432:32-39, 433:42-49, 434:42-49) series – we’ve been most impressed by the unusual approach of our host, the motorcycle mad Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe. Unlike the presenter of many a po-faced paranormal programme, Fanthorpe never seeks to convince us of a particular explanation or to overexplain. If he has any Christian agenda, it is only to wonder – in the most inclusive sense – at the many mysteries of God’s creation. The rich…

FORTEAN TV REVISITED

Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon

MATT SALUSBURY asks if one of palæontology’s most sensational finds was originally named after a lethal cryptid from a 1749 edition of The Gentlemen’s Magazine… Among the great stories from the history of palæontology is that of how Mary Anning, then aged 12, together with her brother, discovered the first identified prehistoric marine reptile. Mary’s brother Joseph found the skull of what became known as Ichthyosaurus in the cliffs between their native Lyme Regis and Charmouth in 1811. From the time of Joseph’s discovery of the skull, the name “sea dragon” attached itself to the find – apparently because of its many sharp teeth and its big eye sockets. After the Annings’ discovery of the skull, Mary found the neck and partial torso of the same animal the following year.…

Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon

Are the best ufologists… ufologists?

NEIL NIXON argues that many of the most significant contributions to ufology have come from outside the field itself. Discuss. Back in April I offered a “polemical” webinar arguing that “some of the most meaningful contributions to ufology were by people who never set out to be ufologists.”1 I’m not condemning any of FT’s UFO investigators here; without the likes of Jenny Randles, David Clarke and Andy Roberts my life would have been poorer. I’m saying any definition of “best” ufologists should include those who have demonstrably contributed to progress in the field, added to our understanding and moved investigations on for others to build on. Wikipedia notes that “ufology is generally regarded by skeptics and science educators as an example of pseudoscience,”2 an opinion expressed in an award-winning…

Are the best ufologists… ufologists?

THE WORLD OF STRANGE PHENOMENA ForteanTimes

For anyone with a sense of adventure, an enquiring mind and a love of the weird and wonderful… Every month, ForteanTimes takes you on an incredible journey into the unknown where you’ll encounter some of the most fantastic phenomena on Earth… and sometimes beyond. CHOOSE YOUR FORTEAN TIMES PRINT SUBSCRIPTION… THEN CHOOSE YOUR FREE GIFT! 6 MONTHS - GET A FREE ISSUE OR 12 MONTHS - GET FREE FT EARBUDS GREAT REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE ◼ A free issue of Fortean Times with a 6-month subscription*◼ Free earbuds on a 1-year subscription*◼ Free delivery of every issue◼ Save on the cover price◼ Every issue delivered before its available to buy in shops ORDER TODAY! QUOTING THE OFFER CODE FT449P shop.forteantimes.com/ft449p hello@metropolis.co.uk 020 8752 8195 * The offers are applicable to either…

THE WORLD OF STRANGE PHENOMENA ForteanTimes

Witch hunts and moral panics

Satanic Panic A Modern Myth Rosie Waterhouse Independently published (Amazon) 2023 Pb, 190pp, £6.99, ISBN 9798870691497 The longest and most expensive criminal trial in American legal history was not some sensational prosecution for murder. It was a mostly-forgotten 1980s case from California that lasted for seven years, cost $15m, secured zero convictions – and has a great deal to teach forteans about the topics that interest us. Indeed, looking back from the vantage point of 40 years, it’s possible to argue that the McMartin Preschool trial is foundational to any attempt to explore the intersections between claims and reality, belief and evidence. McMartin was Ground Zero for the great “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and early 1990s – a whole series of cases that occurred across the English-speaking world, from…

Witch hunts and moral panics

A decadent delight

Cabarets of Death Death, Dance and Dining in Early 20th Century Paris Mel Gordon & Joanna Ebenstein Strange Attractor Press 2024 Pb, £25, 175pp, ISBN 9781907222269 In London and other British cities, the Dungeon chain of attractions has, for many years, cheerfully satisfied the public’s appetite for immersive horror, torture, gore and questionable taste. An obvious precursor is Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, but from the late 19th century, another ancestor thrived in Paris – the Cabarets of Death. While today the popular image of fin de siècle Paris is all sunny impressionist languor and Moulin Rouge jolliness, at the time, symbolist gloom and absinthe-fuelled decadence were at least as high profile. One manifestation was these cabarets. Situated across the street from each other in Montmartre and entered through flamboyantly…

A decadent delight

Deals with the Devil

Devil’s Contract The History of the Faustian Bargain Ed Simon Melville House UK 2024 Hb, 272pp, £25, ISBN 9781685891046 At the heart of Ed Simon’s book is a sad truth; we are a desultory species and one quite prepared to trade our humanity for profit and self-extinction. His investigation into this very human desire follows a historical, literary, and artistic trajectory and explores the cultural universalism of dealing with the Devil. Starting with Simon Magus, a legendary character known only through sparse scriptural references and the Gnostic text, the Testimony of Truth, Simon identifies the primary source of later Faustian narratives. The archetypal magician, Simon Magus, in his quest to conquer nature entered into contractual agreement with supernatural agencies in full knowledge that the cost of his vanity might well…

Deals with the Devil

Starve Acre Dir Daniel Kokotajlo, UK 2024 On general release As the horror genre continues to thrive, so does the subgenre of folk horror, one that the British Isles and Ireland are particularly adept at producing. In Daniel Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre, based on the novel by Andrew Michael Hurley, we are transported back to the 1970s and introduced to young couple Richard and Juliette and their son Owen. Moving from Leeds to the Richard’s old family farm in rural Yorkshire, they find that increasingly strange, and inevitably terrible, things begin to happen, resulting in Richard and Juliette gradually losing their grasp on reality as they wrestle with the aftermath of a tragedy. As their relationship with one another, as well as with family and colleagues, begins to deteriorate due to…

THE REVEREND’S REVIEW

There’s a scene in Sting (on digital platforms) where a mutant spider paralyses a woman, climbs into her mouth, burrows down her throat, and then cuts its way out of her stomach… all while she’s fully conscious. I cheered at this point. If you’re similarly deranged, you’ll enjoy this throwback monster movie about a young girl secretly raising an extraterrestrial arachnid. The spider starts small and almost cute, but with every cockroach meal, it grows to the size of a corner couch. Turns out that I find a spider that takes up your entire dining room table somehow more distressing than a giant spider stomping down buildings. Since the action correlates with the size of the spider, the first half drags a bit; but once the outsized arachnid starts snatching…

Not to worry – yet SD Tucker’s piece on Moloch and the future of AI [FT447:38] was immensely entertaining, but I do think fears of an artificial intelligence (AI) driven apocalypse are (at least at the moment) somewhat exaggerated. When I am not looking after the FT news pages I work for a tech startup that has some involvement with AI, and I find that while the current AI systems are impressive in what they do, what they do is mostly smoke and mirrors and a long way from becoming an intelligence that could bring us all to ruin. Current AI does not think, and it is difficult to see how it could ever develop into something that does. It is essentially a very sophisticated version of the function in…

It Happened to Me…

The man on the landing In 1959, when I was four, my family moved from Preston, Lancashire, a few miles south to Leyland. Our new home was a three-bedroom terrace house a couple of hundred yards from the West Coast mainline railway. Coming in through the front door, there was a hallway with the downstairs front room and back room off from this, and a staircase leading to a landing. If you carried on straight, you had the toilet on the right and then my sister’s room at the back of the house, with a window facing the backyard, and a sloping roof over the coal shed. On the right at the top of the stairs was a landing with my (and my older brother’s) bedroom immediately and, further along,…

It Happened to Me…

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FORTEAN TIMES is a monthly magazine of news, reviews and research on strange phenomena and experiences, curiosities, prodigies and portents. It was founded by Bob Rickard in 1973 to continue the work of Charles Fort (1874–1932). Born of Dutch stock in Albany, New York, Fort spent many years researching scientific literature in the New York Public Library and the British Museum Library. He marshalled his evidence and set forth his philosophy in The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents (1932). He was sceptical of dogmatic scientific explanations, observing that some scientists tended to argue according to their personal beliefs rather than the rules of evidence and that inconvenient data were ignored, suppressed, discredited or explained away. He criticised modern science for its reductionism,…

PECULIAR POSTCARDS

46. SERENE NORD, THE DIVING VENUS Siri Stiegler was a young Swedish lass, who showed great aquatic prowess at an early age. She started swimming at the age of five, and turned to diving two years later, being coached by her brother. In 1902, at the age of just 14, she turned up in Los Angeles with a diving show, having been invited by the Swedish professional swimmer Oscar Norin, who had made a career of jumping from tall platforms, 120 feet [37m] over a shallow tank of water. Serene Nord, as Siri called herself in her professional career, became very successful, and was the world’s champion female diver, with a jump of 97 feet [30m]. As she grew up, she became quite beautiful, with luxuriant fair hair, being called…

PECULIAR POSTCARDS

After a farming couple in their 80s living in Waitakere, near Auckland, New Zealand, had not contacted relatives for several days, their son went to investigate. He found the couple dead in a sheep paddock, apparently having been killed by one of the animals. Police believe a ram was responsible for their deaths as when they attempted to retrieve the bodies it reportedly “confronted” them and they were forced to shoot the animal to be able to gain access to the field. It is thought the man had gone to the paddock to check on the animals and had been attacked and killed by the ram, and that his wife met with a similar fate when she went to look for him. Animal behaviourist Mark Vette said it was not…

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