YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS...

Our theme in this issue is memory, an aspect of human experience that we know can play a major part in fortean subject areas: just think of topics such as witness reliability, false memories, supposedly ‘recovered’ memories that emerge under hypnosis or the memories people have of what appear to be past lives.

A relatively new memory-related phenomenon that has emerged in recent years has come to be called ‘The Mandela Effect’: the widespread misremembering of often trivial elements of popular culture (Was the KitKat previously the Kit-Kat?) or recent history (didn’t Nelson Mandela die in prison in the 1980s?)

What could be behind these widely shared (especially in the Internet age) false memories? Suggestions include incursions from the multiverse, interfering time travellers and the efforts of CERN to find the ‘God particle’. Brian J Robb explores all this and more in his cover feature (p.32). Mark Greener (p.40), approaches the subject from a somewhat different perspective, and suggests that many such anomalies – from false memories to false confessions – can stem from the normal (if not always reliable) functions of human memory; what’s more, the potential glitches in its evidently mutable workings can potentially be exploited, for good or ill: mind control, or at least memory control, is chillingly possible.

Paul Sieveking, meanwhile, exercises his own prodigious powers of recall to take us back to the 1990s, offering a nostalgic selection of classic FT news stories from the decade: so, you can relive the joys of milkdrinking Hindu statues, the bees who paid their last respects to a beekeeper and the unsolved mystery of a dead Tamil Tiger in a Torquay hotel – turn to p.46.

LOCKDOWN COMFORTS, BELGIAN STYLE We were pleased to hear, via Facebook, from Belgian FT reader Stijn Meuris Privé, who shared with us an article he had written for the Flemish national newspaper De Morgen (pictured above) as part of a series about people seeking cultural comforts while living under coronavirus lockdown. The article is in Dutch (our own Theo Paijmans would be the ideal translator), but Stijn tells us that in English, the title would be: “Every month the holy grail for 15,000 nerds”. Perhaps now the assembled nerds (or is that geeks?) of Belgium will realise what they’ve been missing all these years.

GETTING COPIES OF FT

We know that it hasn’t been easy getting hold of FT as a result of lockdown restrictions on travel and shopping. Taking out a subscription is the best way to guarantee your regular FT fix, and if you are able to support us in this way, then turn to p.60 for the latest offers. This month, with the re-opening of non-essential shops, including many branches of WH Smith, it should become easier to buy FT from your usual stockist. If you are still experiencing difficulties, or cannot leave the house, then copies for home delivery, including recent issues you might have missed, can be ordered here: https://magsdirect.co.uk/ magazine-category/entertainment/fortean/. Digital subscriptions and single issues are also available from zinio.com.

ERRATA

FT389:45: Marinus van der Sluijs of Vancouver noted that in ‘Building a Fortean Library’, “a line of latitude” should have been “a line of longitude”.

FT391:7: Mark Greener noted that an ichthyosaur was described as a “sea mammal”: it was actually a reptile.