A LIFE IN PRINT, PART TWO
PART TWO – THE NINETIES
PAUL SIEVEKING looks back at another decade of newsgathering on Fortean Times, and presents some of his highlights from the 1990s – including a talking cat, bees paying their last respects and milk-drinking Hindu idols.
Having retired as FT’s longtime ‘newsman’, co-founding editor PAUL SIEVEKING looks back at another decade of service on Fortean Times, and presents some of his highlights from the 1990s – including a talking cat, bees paying their last respects and milk-drinking Hindu idols.
…As I was saying [FT390:43], in 1991 Bob Rickard and I made a deal with John Brown to publish Fortean Times for the news trade. Circulation rocketed from 2,100 for the last “home-grown” issue (FT57, April 1991) to 18,600 (FT58, July 1991).
The first issue in the current A4 format was FT63 (June 1992), featuring a cover photo of T Lobsang Rampa, “the Plumber from Plympton who became the Lama from Lhasa”. At first, the magazine was bi-monthly, but changed to monthly after FT85 in February 1996, when the circulation briefly (and unsustainably) topped 60,000, boosted by the massive popularity of The X-Files on television. That was when Etienne Gilfillan became our art director, and there was now full colour throughout the magazine. David Sutton joined the Gang of Fort as picture researcher with FT128 in November 1999.
In December 1992, I started Sidelines [FT66:9], to accommodate strange news stories that could be told in 90 words or less (a sort of proto-tweet). By the time I retired as FT newsman last year, I had written more than 6,500 of these. Here are some of the first examples:
“Zucchini and eggplants are both stuffed with rice,” said an Egyptian fundamentalist leader recently, “and the stuffing process, which is usually done by women, leads to arousal. It is better to prohibit the sale of these vegetables to avoid a greater danger.” Newsweek, 27 June 1992.
A doctor has told Kenyans who wash their genitals with battery acid after sex as a preventative to AIDS that the end result could be “even more disastrous”. [AFP] 2 Oct 1992.
A suspicious-looking cardboard box was found outside a Territorial Army centre in Bristol. The TA called the police, who called the Army bomb disposal unit, which blew the box up – to find it full of leaflets on how to deal with suspicious-looking packages. Independent, 20 Jan 1993.
A naked man running across New York’s Brooklyn Bridge singing “On what a beautiful morning!” was run over by a car and killed. D.Mirror, 18 May 1993.
In February 1991, through the good offices of Mat Coward (then ‘London Spy’ on Midweek magazine), I began a weekly column in the New Statesman entitled ‘Forteana’. In 1996, after writing 249 columns, I was poached by Dominic Lawson for the Sunday Telegraph, where my next 322 columns were called ‘Strange But True’, and were illustrated with drawings by Steven Appleby. For a decade I turned out 650 words every week, never missing a deadline (although my column following the terror attacks of 9/11 was spiked). One column in 1997 was hand-written in a London hospital kitchen, following a stroke I suffered in Paris. Editor Lawson spiked my column permanently in 2002, and three years later he was spiked in turn by the Barclay twins, the Telegraph Group’s new owners. In my final column I mused: “Over the last six years I have brought you talking trees and weeping icons, inept crooks and prodigious gluttons, ghostly smells and mystery
FT in the 1990s – The first A4 issue (FT63); the first appearance of Sidelines (FT66); Etienne Gilfillan delivers the first all-colour issue (FT85); David Sutton joins the Gang of Fort (FT128).
hums, explorers’ phantom companions, testifying parrots and drunken elephants, flying manhole covers, timeslips and midday panics, vampire kangaroos and underground fires, alien big cats and lake monsters.”
Here are a few news stories I wrote up for Strange Days during the last decade of the second millennium AD.
STORIES FROM THE NINETIES
• In 1990, Adrian Brown from Winton in Dorset was working for a security firm, driving round to check on various sites. He ran to a strict timetable, but one night, on his way to a gravel pit, he was delayed by 20 minutes. At a roundabout near Holton Heath (not far from Wareham), lit up in the headlights of a lorry, he saw a white van identical to his, with the same black lettering on the side. The driver turned towards him and he saw that it was himself. Stunned and frightened, he drove on, checked the site and went home. It occurred to him that his double was at the exact spot he would have been – and had been every night for five months – if he hadn’t been late. Dorset Advertiser, 3 Nov 1994. [FT79:14]
• On 5 June 1990, Charlie Osborne of Anthon, Iowa, stopped hiccupping, after doing so continuously for 68 years. His cure came following three days of “fierce praying” by his daughter. The hiccupping had begun in 1922 when Charlie was trying to attach a dead hog to a tree branch. Omaha WorldHerald, 17 Mar 1991. [FT59:35]
• During the filming of Suicide Commando, Turkish actor Sönmez Yikilmaz slept in a tent with the film crew. One night, a black snake crawled into the tent and into Mr Yikilmaz through his open mouth. An X-ray showed that the snake was alive in his stomach. He was hung upside down from a tree with a pot
of steaming milk below him on the ground. The smell of the hot milk lured the snake out. Bugün (Turkey), 29 July 1991. [FT70:16]
• A hazard unique to Venezuelan highways last century was a slippery goo called La Mancha Negra (the black stain), which was actually more of a sludge with the consistency of chewing gum. Although the government spent millions of dollars in research, no one discovered what the goo was, where it came from, or how to get rid of it. It first appeared in 1987 on the road from Caracas to the airport, covering 150ft (46m), and spread inexorably every year. By 1992, it was a major road hazard all around the capital and 1,800 motorists had reportedly died after losing control. Our last news about this was 20 years ago, so we don’t know if the phenomenon has ceased. Providence Sunday Journal (Rhode Island), 9 Aug 1992; [R] 3 April 2001. [FT67:16, 149:28]
• The lead story of Turkish television news on 20 March 1993 was a talking cat called Cingene (Gypsy), living in Izmir. The twoyear-old feline was heard to say Ver (give), Nalan (a girl’s name), Derya (another girl’s name), Demem (I don’t say), Naynay (baby talk for music), Nine (colloquial word for grandmother) and Babaanne (formal word for grandmother). FT correspondent Izzet Goksu told us these words were clearly audible. Another talking Turkish cat called Pala was reported back in 1968. Pala could say Anne (mother), Baba (father), Abla (elder sister) and Kamile (the name of the owner’s wife). As I commented: “Perhaps cats all over the world are talking Turkish, and we just don’t notice.” Harriyet, Bugün (Turkey), 27 Mar 1993. [FT72:16]
• In April 1992, someone broke into two stone coffins in a chapel in Wotton, Surrey, cut open the lead linings, decapitated the famous diarist John Evelyn (died 1706) and his wife Mary (died 1709), and made off with their heads. The bodies were quite well preserved. To date, the heads have not been recovered. News of the World, 5 April 1992. [FT66:17]
• At 1,000ft (300m) and preparing for a routine landing over Bouloc in south-west France, parachutist Didier Dahran, 27, was swept upwards by a freak cyclone. His wrist altimeter soared to 25,000ft (7,620m) before jamming. Soaked by rain and struggling to breathe in the thinning air, his face and hands froze in temperatures of minus 30˚C (minus 22˚F). Two hours after the jump, at the kind of altitude usually reached only by jet airliners, his parachute collapsed, sending him plummeting. He launched his emergency chute and passed out, landing heavily in twilight 30 miles (48km) from where he had jumped. He suffered no broken bones, but was hospitalised with severe frostbite and shock. Mail on Sunday, 23 May 1993. [FT76:11]
ABOVE: A devotee offers milk to Hindu god Ganesh 23 September 1995 in Dhaka after the phenomenon of “milk-drinking” idols spread to Bangladesh from India. BELOW: Gloria Ramirez, the ’toxic woman’ whose death was a major mystery in 1994. BOTTOM: A leaflet promoting the millennial ‘White Brotherhood’ cult.
• In the summer of 1993, a millennial cult called Belye Bratya (‘White Brotherhood’) – led by Marina Tsvygun, 33, calling herself Maria Devi Christos, Final Incarnation of God on Earth – declared that the world would end on 24 November 1993 (subsequently brought forward to 14 November). Devotees were forbidden money, television, computers, jobs and education, regarding bar codes as the Mark of the
Beast. Thousands of posters of Tsvygun were plastered over the walls of St Petersburg, and on 10 November she was jailed in Kiev, Ukraine, with her second husband, Yuri Krivonogov, after followers had sprayed foam on icons in the 11th century St Sophia’s cathedral, the Orthodox Slav world’s holiest church, while chanting “Cursed is the Beast”; 570 followers were arrested, but a further 300 gathered in front of St Sophia’s cathedral on 14 November, when the world was to end. Tsvygun was released from prison in 1997, while Krivonogov remained incarcerated. St Petersburg Press, 24-30 Aug; many papers, 1115 Nov 1993; Western Morning News, 21 Aug 1997. [FT72:10, 73:6, 107:16]
• On 19 February 1994, cervical cancer sufferer Gloria Ramirez, 31, was rushed to Riverside General Hospital in California with chest pains, breathing difficulties and vomiting. An odd oily film was noted on her body, a blood sample appeared to contain white particles and there was an ammonia-like smell. Dr Julie Gorchynski and four nurses passed out. Ramirez died soon afterwards. Following the initial faintings, 23 people complained of at least one symptom – most commonly headache, dizziness and nausea. This was initially blamed on “mass sociogenic illness” – but Gorchynski and a nurse were in intensive care for over a week with breathing problems, sleep apnea and muscular spasms. Gorchynski’s blood was found to contain white particles similar to those in the Ramirez blood sample. Months later, she was still very ill and had undergone three operations to try and save her knees because of bone necrosis.
Two autopsies on Ramirez failed to pinpoint the cause of the miasma and she was buried on 20 April. The official cause of death was kidney failure; the white particles and fumes remain unexplained. A laboratory report in November speculated that Ramirez
had used the black market analgesic DMSO (dimethyl sulphoxide) to facilitate ingestion of PCP (‘angel dust’) through her skin, which by a rare chain reaction in her body had created dimythyl sulphone, and then dimythyl sulphate, a chemical warfare agent – but an attempt to replicate this chain reaction failed, so the mystery remains. [AP] 21-26 Feb, 6+31 Mar, 3 April, 9 Aug; Austin (TX) American Statesman 20 Nov 1994; Channel 4 ‘Equinox’, 26 Nov 1995. [FT75:42-43, 79:47, 89:17, 93:15]
• Margaret Bell, who kept bees in Leintwardine about seven miles from her home in Ludlow, Shropshire, died in June 1994. Soon after her funeral, mourners were astonished to see hundreds of bees settle on the corner of the street opposite the house where Mrs Bell had lived for 26 years. The bees stayed for about an hour before buzzing off over the rooftops. The South Shropshire Journal (24 June 1994) ran a photograph of the bees, hanging on the wall in a cluster. According to country lore, you should always tell the bees when someone has died so that they can pay their last respects. [FT78:10]
• A study of infrared satellite pictures of the otherwise featureless Nullarbor Plain in south central Australia showed a group of five parallel lines, 400km (248 miles) long, up to 15km (nine miles) wide and between 80km and 100km (49 and 62 miles) apart. They appear to be about two degrees Celsius cooler than the surrounding plain during daytime. The origin and nature of this planetary bar code were unknown. New Scientist, 3 Sept 1994. [FT78:49]
• A noise a bit like amplifier feedback had been heard for three years coming from the right ear of a five-year-old Welsh pony called Misty, according to the Veterinary Record (April 1995). It could be heard from 3ft (90cm) away, and varied in intensity, but stayed at a constant pitch of 7 kilohertz. Hearing a buzzing in one’s ears is called subjective tinnitus; very much rarer is when other people can hear the noise, a condition called objective tinnitus, the cause of which is a matter of debate. [FT83:10]
• On 21 September 1995, Delhi and much of northern India ran short of milk after rumours that idols of Hindu gods – in particular Shiva, Ganesh and Parvati – were drinking it. The Indian stock exchanges closed down and riot police beat back the crowds. The craze was allegedly started by saddhus in Haridwar the day before to protect the notorious “greaseball guru” Chandraswami, who had been arrested for harbouring a homicidal gangster. The next day, the milk phenomenon had spread to Calcutta, Madras, Singapore, Hong Kong and right round the world from Kenya to Toronto, Bangkok to Brisbane, Dubai to Jersey City, and across England from Southall to Birmingham. Two days later, the idols seemed to have had their fill of milk, but the appetite allegedly spread to statues of the Virgin Mary in Runcorn and Kuala Lumpur. Many papers, 21-27 Sept 1995; Times, 7 May 1996. [FT84:1617, 91:15]
• Reports of a red-eyed monster called Chupacabras (goatsucker), that ripped the organs from livestock, were rife in Puerto Rico in late 1995. The daily tabloid El Vocaro reported that Chupacabras “sucked dead” five goats and 20 parakeets on Hallowe’en. Similar reports had surfaced in Puerto Rico since the 1970s, and Chupacabras scarelore spread across the southern US states after 1995. NY Daily News, 22 Nov 1995. [FT85:9]
• Vicky Wilmore, 10, from Gorton, Greater Manchester, started mirror writing – with letters and numbers upside down and back-to-front – on 12 October 1994 after complaining of a headache. Only she could read what she wrote, and soon her writing degenerated into squiggles. On 27 September 1995, while watching Manchester United on television, she jumped up and fell backwards, banging her head on a table. The next day, she could read and write normally again. Times, D.Telegraph, 7 Dec 1995. [FT86:6]
• At 6.30pm on 17 May 1996, Ruth Harnett of Hatfield in Hertfordshire heard a loud thump
In June 1994, a swarm of bees appeared to settle on a house in Ludlow to pay their last respects to beekeeper Margaret Bell.
on her van’s roof and found a medium-sized fish. Looking up, she saw another coming towards her, which hit the van’s bonnet. It was not raining, but the temperature had suddenly dropped. Three more fish landed in her garden and one hit her in the face. Local children came running up, and witnessed about 20 more fish falling. Up to 5in (13cm) long, they were thought to be young roach, rud or dab and weighed about 4lb (1.8kg) in total. Mrs Harnett told FT they seemed fresh and warm to the touch. [FT89:7]
• In July 1996, Peter Doden was walking his dog in Wakerley Woods, Northamptonshire, when he came upon an elderly gentleman sitting up a tree, who asked: “Have you a spare sandwich or anything?” Doden threw him a chocolate bar, which he ate, wrapper and all, before revealing he had been up the tree for a fortnight. “I set out to join those tree sitters in Sussex protesting about a new road,” he said, “but when I reached Wakerley Woods, I felt rather tired and decided to lodge my protest in this tree instead.” Doden pointed out that Sussex was 150 miles (240km) to the south, and that in any case the tree protesters were long gone. “Damn it all,” exclaimed the eco-warrior, “They might have told me!” Weekend Telegraph, 3 Aug 1996. [FT98:10]
• A menhir on Exmoor exploded in October 1996. The 6ft (1.8m), three-ton megalith was thought to have been struck by lightning. Sizable pieces of stone were thrown more than 60ft (18m) by the explosion. It was suggested the stone or surrounding bedrock might have contained particular minerals that made it a ‘magnet’ for the lightning. This is the first recorded case of its kind. Archaeologist Simon Timms noted: “It is most odd – particularly when there is a 60ft [18m] tree standing only 20 yards [18m] away, which should have been an obvious target for the lightning.” Western Daily Press, 27 Dec 1996, North Devon Journal, 2 Jan 1997. [FT103:10]
• A supermarket checkout worker was left with a 3in (7cm) scar on her bottom after her knickers spontaneously combusted. Melanie Thompson, 25, said the Marks & Spencer knickers caught fire while she was at the till of the Co-op hypermarket in Hindley, Lancashire. She rushed to the loo, peeled off the smouldering underwear and doused it with water. M&S tested the £6.50 polyamide, polyester and Lycra garment, but said that no fault was found. Thompson was not smoking, nor were there any naked flames nearby. “I thought I had been stung by a bee,” she said. A fire expert discounted the most obvious theory: that the knickers caught fire because friction caused a build-up of static. D.Mail, 15 Aug 1997. [FT104:7]
You should always tell the bees when someone has died so they can pay their last respects
• On 24 September 1997, the manager of the Grand Hotel in Torquay, Devon, entered Room 131 to find the naked body of a man on the bed, surrounded by hundreds of pounds in cash. The dead man was of south Indian or Sri Lankan apperance, in his 30s, with a heavily pockmarked face and two transverse surgical scars on each shoulder. He had checked in the previous day as “Mr Patel” of “Beaston Flats, Green Lanes, north London”, an address that proved to be imaginary. There was nothing to identify him. Four months later, the police announced that he had died of cyanide poisoning. Alongside a coffee cup with cyanide-contaminated dregs was a note reading: “I’m very sorry for what I have done here, but this is the place I had to carry out the deed.” Curiously, the body was found a few feet from where Agatha Christie (one of whose books was called Sparkling Cyanide) spent her wedding night on Christmas Eve 1914.
The inquest in October 1998 was told that worldwide enquiries had failed to identify the man, but a Home Office pathologist from Sri Lanka said that the shoulder scars were tribal marks indicating he was a Tamil Tiger. “They always carry a cyanide pill around with them,” he said. “You will never find out who he is.” (Or why he came to Torquay to top himself.) Eve. Standard, 13 Nov 1997, Sunday Telegraph, 25 Jan 1998, Times, 22 Oct 1998. [FT110:16, 118:25]
• While on holiday, a woman, referred to in the British Medical Journal #315 (Dec 1997) as AB, heard two voices in her head, telling her to return home immediately. Back in London, the voices gave her an address that turned out to be a hospital’s brain scan department. They told her to ask for a scan as she had a brain tumour and her brain stem was inflamed. Though she had no symptoms, Ikechukwu Azuonyea, a psychiatrist from Lambeth Healthcare NHS Trust, reluctantly agreed to a scan – and she did indeed have a tumour. After an operation in May 1984, AB heard the voices again. “We are pleased to have helped you,” they said.
“Goodbye.” AB made a full recovery and never heard the voices again. [FT108:6]
• Albert and Betty Cheetham, dining in the Tourkhalf Hotel in Sousse, Tunisia, found themselves sitting next to Albert and Betty Rivers. It turned out that both couples had been married at 2pm on 15 August 1942. Each had two sons born in 1943 and 1945, and five grandchildren. Mr Cheetham, 77, had worked in the railway couch-building industry in Derby; Mr Rivers, 76, was in the same industry in Swindon, Wiltshire. Their wives had both worked for the Post Office; both had lost their engagement rings and were wearing identical 1930 watch bracelets that had been broken and repaired at the same point. Both couples had booked their holidays in Sousse at the same time and had flown there on the same day. D.Telegraph, 4 Feb 1998. [FT111:19]
• The “cricket bat” fashioned from a fossil elephant bone and found near Piltdown man’s remains was a hoax [FT62:24-30]; however, an oak ‘bat’ found in Thames mud at Chelsea, just below the usual low-water mark near some ancient fishing stakes, was a genuine antiquity. Carbon-dated to between 3,540 BC and 3,360 BC, the 30in (76cm) bat has a rounded handle with a baseball battype knob at the end. Surrounding it were stone axes and the remains of a prehistoric forest. Guardian, 4 July 1998. [FT115:23]
• While holidaying near Blewsbury, Berkshire, in 1978, Alec Martin of Bolton, Lancashire, looked down from a small hill on a field of cows. The herd dispersed to the edge and started trotting round the perimeter in single file, first clockwise, then anti-clockwise. Then the cows at the corners of the field trotted in a straight line to the diagonally opposite corner. Finally, several cows paired up to circle each other in different corners, the whole effect appearing symmetrical. They seemed to be doing a barn dance. D.Mail, 25 June 1998. [FT116:21]
• While fishing with friends off Cairns on the north-east coast of Australia in 1992, backpacker Nigel Shepherd wrote “Bestow good luck to whoever finds this note from Pommie Shep” on a piece of paper. He pushed the note into a Dogbolter beer bottle, sealed it with a cork from a wine bottle, and threw it in the sea. Six years later, Nigel, 36, was walking along the beach at Hayling Island in Hampshire, a few miles from his home, when he came upon a Dogbolter bottle lying in the sand. It had his note inside – so he had “bestowed good luck” on himself. Could the bottle have bobbed 12,000 miles (19,300km) from Down Under? Times, 18 April; Sunday Mirror, 22 May 1998. [FT118:8]
• In July 1996, an off-duty policeman named Frank went shopping with his wife Carol in Liverpool city centre. Carol went to Dillon’s bookshop in Bold Street and Frank went to get a CD in Ranelagh Street. About 20 minutes later, he walked to Bold Street to meet his wife, and as he strolled up the incline from Central Station he noticed an unusual quietness. The road was cobbled and people were wearing clothes from the 1950s. He was startled by a loud horn, and a box van with the name Caplan’s on its side sped past, narrowly missing him. Crossing the road, he saw that in place of Dillon’s was a large store with the name Cripps over its two entrances, with a window display of women’s handbags and shoes. He noticed a young woman dressed in the clothes of the mid-Nineties – hipsters and a sleeveless top – carrying a bag from Miss Selfridge. She entered Cripps looking baffled, and suddenly the whole street scene reverted to 1996. Frank asked her if she too had seen the same things he had seen; she said she had, and seemed frightened. It turned out that a store called Cripps had indeed stood on the site of Dillon’s in the 1950s. Journalist Tom Slemen told this story on local radio, prompting several listeners to ring in to say they too had experienced time slips in that part of Bold Street. Merseymart, 10 June 1999. [FT126:9]