137. the gef pilgrimage

The SAS (Special Air Service) make routine use of sleep-deprivation exercises in their selection process, and these often feature in later training. Hallucinations during such exercises are very commo

Reading Laura Mauro’s “Japanese Toilet Ghosts” [FT459:30-35], reminded me of a less well known fear in the Western world, which –according to the modern rabbinical Internet resource site TheTorah.com

The weekend of 5-7 September marked the inaugural Strange Days Festival of Forteana. Organiser Matt Page’s promise of ‘The most extraordinary weekend of your life’ was spot-on. Strange Days took place

It’s a relief after the horrors of Fortean TV Uncut (FT464:46-51) to find that Lionel Fanthorpe was given one last hurrah by Channel 4 – an “X-mas Files” seasonal special punning off the then wildly p

While the original National Folklore Survey from the 1960s was unscientific and open ended, simply asking random people “what do you know to be true?”, its 21st century successor is a very different b

It was a hot day in one of the hottest and most uncomfortable summers of recent years. I was standing in a small upstairs bedroom of a house on the outskirts of a modern estate in the borough of South