There are many reports of Alien Big Cats (ABC’s, as their devotees like to call them) in the fortean database.  This one, which I found in the French daily Libération (July 25, 1994), and passed along to the INFO Journal at the time, seems to have been overlooked.  I was unable to find a follow-up, […]

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A holiday weekend marred by beautiful autumn weather and massive transit disruptions didn’t keep the curious from turning out for the Ullage Group’s presentation, “Straight Talk About Hoaxes.” Anthony Matt’s multimedia exegesis of the 1969 “Paul is Dead” hoax was a rousing success. Original tapes of radio shows and phone calls, furnished by the DJ […]

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We would like to alert you to the fact that the September issue of Fortean Times contains a substantial tribute to John Keel, including memoirs by Phyllis Benjamin and myself, as well as a number of previously unpublished photos.
Anthony Matt and I have also started a tribute site to Keel, at www.johnkeel.com.  There you can find […]

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I think my high school offered one basic course in psychology, which I did not take. Surely it dealt in stripped-down basics - the classification of emotions, some de-sexualized Freudian theory, and maybe a little Jung thrown in for the artsy kids. I’d like to think, if I’d had the opportunity to take a class […]

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Many people have asked me about a memorial service for John.  We’ll keep you posted.
Meanwhile, here’s a brief poem John wrote when he was sixteen.  It’s called “My Last Wish.”
the thing I would like most to do
is look upon my friends
and hear what they say about me
after my funeral ends.
We’ll give you an earful, John.
(Posted by […]

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John A. Keel died a few days ago, on Friday, July 3, 2009.
As some of you may know, I knew him for many years.  Larry Sloman and I were his medical proxies for the past couple of years, and did our best to help him with his legal and medical problems.
He was in and out […]

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Forteana and family life don’t always mix.  The sketch above is taken from Thackerayana, an 1875 compilation of the graphic work of William Makepeace Thackeray: cartoons, illustrations, travel sketches, marginal sketches.  He made this one in the margin of “The Mirror,” a Scottish magazine from 1779.  And here’s the passage that inspired it:
A wife is writing to […]

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[The flurry of activity that went into our event, “Medi-Vaudeville,” delayed the last installment of this talk on Darwinism.  Please do read the earlier parts; it’s all connected.]
If “BC” could introduce the Bible into the caveman cartoon, then, obviously, the next step is to introduce the caveman cartoon into the Bible.
So, busy theologians have been […]

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One of the grand old men of British forteana, John Michell, died on April 24.  I only met him a few times; he was always kind and gracious.  The last time I saw him, we discussed our common fascination with the number 5040 (Plato’s ideal population for the Republic, among other things).  He was a fine writer […]

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Ben Hecht was the first “Fortean”: he coined the word, and staked his claim.  Like the other founders of the first Fortean Society, back in 1931, he had no particular interest in scientific anomalies; he just enjoyed the exuberant and provocative books Charles Fort wove from them.
I plan to paste in snippets from those founders, […]

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