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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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Today is the birthday of John Keel, the author of Jadoo, The Mothman Prophecies, and many other books close to the heart of the Ullage Group.  For those of you who are counting, he’s now 79.  Anthony Matt and I visited him Sunday: we took him out to lunch, helped him shop for groceries, and […]

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[It’s the Darwin bicentennial; it’s time to party like primates.  I’ll tip my bit into the punchbowl by serializing, sip by sip, a talk I gave at the 2006 “Fortean Times” UnCon and the 2007 INFO (International Fortean Organization) FortFest.  It’s mostly about the confused interbreeding of evolution and American culture.  I’ll update it a bit as I post it; […]

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It was, perhaps, near the end of August, 1743, that Casanova encountered, of all things, a spooklight.  I say “perhaps” because scholars on the Casanova beat have found some hiccups in his chronology.  At any rate, he left this intriguing description in his memoirs (Volume 1, Chapter 8).  These odd lights — earth lights, will […]

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(I delivered something like the following at an event called “Bigfoot Night,” curated by Kevin Maher and Meg Sweeney Lawless, at the Sci Fi Screening Room in NYC, 11/17/08.)

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Like many, I was disappointed by the quick fizzle of the Bigfoot Body hoax in Georgia.  I suppose I should wax explicit, and carefully explain that no, it’s not because I think Bigfoot is a real flesh-and-blood beastie, or because I was expecting, or even wanting, evidence.  The stories are real enough; and have their […]

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