Medieval Monsters

 

A few years ago I discovered (by reading about it in a book, I'm sorry to say, rather than actually noticing it with my own eyes) that several of the village churches around where I live have strange demonic or cryptozoological-looking creatures crawling over their upper reaches. Colloquially you could refer to these as "gargoyles", although strictly speaking that word only refers to fancifully decorated waterspouts. The proper term for the non-functional ornaments I'm referring to is "grotesques" (which can be used as a noun as well as an adjective).

The main purpose of this post is to show off some of the photographs I took after my attention was drawn to these bizarre medieval carvings (a good excuse to give my 75 - 300 mm zoom lens an airing). Before that, however, it's interesting to speculate as to their purpose, since no one seems to know just why they were produced in the first place. Explanations I've seen include heraldic symbols relating to the local gentry, and depictions of local folklore - which here in Somerset would mostly mean dragons (as discussed in a previous post). But while some of the carved figures may well conform to one or other of those theories, they don't explain all of them - particularly the more demonic-looking ones.

By "demonic" I don't necessarily mean overtly so, in the sense of having horns and pointed ears or whatever, but just generally malevolent-looking - like the ape-headed, cloven-hoofed figure shown at the top of this post. This, and many of the other examples I've seen, are basically "chimeras" - fanciful combinations of two or more unrelated species. These were common in the mythology of ancient Greece and Egypt, but by the Middle Ages they'd become firmly associated with Hell (Dante's depiction of it, which I talked about last week, includes several chimera-like demons).

The decorations in and around medieval churches were, almost invariably, a form of communication with the congregation, who could understand imagery even if they were unable to read. So my own personal theory is that these demonic - or otherwise "ungodly" - creatures were depicted on the exterior of the church simply to emphasize that they weren't inside it. In other words, if you came into church you were safe from such monsters, but if you stayed outside you were at their mercy.

All the pictures in this post were taken on the same day in August 2019, at three different churches - Langport, Long Sutton and Huish Episcopi - the carvings on which date from circa 1450, 1490 and 1500 respectively. The ape-demon shown above, for example, is clinging to the tower of Long Sutton church - as you can see more clearly in the following wider-angle view, which also includes a vaguely pig-like face looking straight at you:

Here's another figure from Long Sutton, which reminds me a bit of a Chinese lion-dog statue:

Now two examples from Huish Episcopi. I've no idea what the first one is meant to be, partly because it's so badly weathered, but I'd say it's definitely in the demonic category. As for the much better preserved second one, it clearly depicts a chimera with a human face and four-legged body:

 Turning to Langport church, this one is absolutely covered in inter-species hybrids! Here are a couple of striking ones:

 ... and a few more:

 Langport also has a human head, but it doesn't look at all happy - possibly a soul tormented in Hell? Though it's difficult to make out from this angle, it's actually depicted wearing a crown, suggesting that maybe it's some recently deceased (and presumably unpopular) king. I mentioned last week that Dante used his description of Hell as a vehicle for political satire - perhaps that's what's going on here too! (incidentally, what looks like a bad case of chromatic aberration around the upper part of the head is actually a lead cover that's been added to protect it from the elements).

Superheroes, Funny Animals and Sequential Art (circa 1600)

Montacute House near Yeovil in Somerset was built around 1600, at the height of the English Renaissance (Shakespeare’s Hamlet dates from around the same time). While the renaissance influence can be seen in the style and grandeur of the architecture, many of the sculptures adorning the interior and exterior of the house retain a mediaeval quaintness that is distinctly cartoony in places. I wrote about some of these a few years ago on the Montacute House blog, but since that blog seems to have disappeared from the internet I thought I’d dig out the relevant info and pictures and repost them here.

The Skimmington Frieze

This large plaster frieze (pictured at the top of this post) is one of the most distinctive features of the Great Hall at Montacute House. At first glance it looks like a single panel, but actually it’s an early example of “sequential art”, telling an amusing rustic story in two scenes. In the left half, you can see a wife hitting her hapless husband over the head with a shoe (she must have brought this along specially for the purpose, since she already has shoes on both feet!). It seems she caught him drunk in charge of the baby – which he’s still holding onto, despite all those kegs of beer he’s been working his way through. The scene is witnessed by the man’s neighbour, who proceeds to rat on him to the rest of the village. The second scene, on the right, shows the unfortunate husband being paraded through the streets in a form of ritual humiliation known as a Skimmington ride (for the background to this obscure bit of West Country folklore, see the Dark Dorset website).

Two Left Hands

The picture above shows another plaster carving at Montacute House, this one an overmantel in one of the bedrooms. Like the Skimmington Frieze, this dates from the time the house was built – but it shows a more “mainstream” subject in the form of a Biblical scene (the praying figure is meant to be King David). Nevertheless, it’s still very naïve in its execution. The cherub on the left clearly has two right hands, while the one on the right (though it’s not quite as obvious) has two left hands! As Kid Robson has pointed out (here and here and here), the “two left hands” syndrome is one that occasionally afflicted Marvel Comics artist Jack Kirby.

Hunky Punks

Moving to the exterior of Montacute House, and looking up at the parapet running around the roof, you can see a lot of strange little animals sitting on it (a couple of examples can be seen in the following photograph). The technical term for these is “hunky punks”, which according to Wikipedia is a local dialect word for a grotesque stone carving. Hunky punks are most often seen on churches, but Montacute has them as well. Montacute’s hunky punks take the form of rather cute-looking animals – either chimeras (combinations of different animals) or completely imaginary species. Presumably they were the 17th century equivalent of funny cartoon animals!

The Nine Worthies

High up on the East Front of Montacute House, you can see the statues of nine figures in armour (see images below). These represent the Nine Worthies – great military leaders of history and legend, including three from classical Greece and Rome (Hector, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar), three from Hebrew tradition (Joshua, King David and Judas Maccabeus) and three from European Christendom (King Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon). The Nine Worthies were popular throughout Europe (see their Wikipedia article) and can be thought of as a kind of crusading super-team – a bit like a mediaeval version of the Avengers!

Tales of the Damned

Pictured above is Tales of the Damned: An Anthology of Fortean Horror – the latest title from the Fortean Fiction imprint of CFZ Publishing (with a specially painted cover by Anthony Wallis). Edited by the CFZ’s zoological director Richard Freeman, the book contains 25 stories all of which, in their distinctive and original ways, are variations on the theme of “fortean horror”. The book has been years in the making – I only became involved in the very late stages when I was offered the roles of copy editor and type setter. These are long and laborious tasks that should be avoided unless they’re well remunerated ... or the book is so good it’s a privilege to be involved with it. In this instance it was definitely the latter!

The book’s unique selling point is that a significant proportion of the stories are written by authors who specialize in Fortean non-fiction rather than fiction – including Richard himself, Corinna Downes, Rebecca Lang, Lars Thomas, Neil Arnold, Andy Roberts and Dr Karl Shuker. But there are plenty of established fiction writers too, including Nick Walters, Mark Clapham, Kate Kelly, Chris Lambert and Hannah Kate. No fewer than four of the contributors (two in each category) are important enough to have their own Wikipedia entries: Richard Freeman. Karl Shuker, Nick Walters and Mark Clapham.

I really can’t overstate how good this collection is. The general standard of the fiction is much higher than I’d expected, and at least a couple of the stories are potential award winners. Unfortunately, since I just told you I was involved in the book’s production, the cynics among you may think “well, he’s bound to say it’s good, isn’t he?” So all I can suggest is that you buy the book and read it from cover to cover ... and if you find a story that’s badly written, or unoriginal, or sloppily researched, or with a plot that doesn’t hang together or an ending that’s unsatisfying – then you’ll have to tell me, because I must have missed it.

You can see the contents list on the back cover of the book, reproduced below (yes, there’s a story by me in it – but don’t let that put you off). If you’re on Facebook, please consider liking the Tales of the Damned page – you can read a number of short excerpts from the book there, and more will be added in future.

Finally, here are a couple of links to find the book on Amazon:

• Tales of the Damned on Amazon UK
• Tales of the Damned on Amazon USA

The Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition

The Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition in Drumnadrochit was much better than I’d expected it to be. As the most hyped-up cryptozoological tourist attraction in Britain, I’d assumed the visitor centre would dutifully tell people what they wanted to hear, with dumbed-down science and lots of far-fetched speculation. But it’s nothing like that at all. It features a series of sober and intelligent audio-visual presentations, together with museum displays of research equipment, newspaper cuttings and relics recovered from various wrecks. As for dumbing down – visitors (even the ten-year-old ones) are expected to take words like “bathymetry”, “pelagic”, “thermocline” and “refraction” in their stride.

In a way the Loch Ness Centre is another example of the Scottish skepticism I was talking about last week. This is particularly noticeable in the case of the best-known theory of the Loch Ness Monster, that it is a long-necked marine reptile such as a plesiosaur which has somehow managed to survive since Jurassic times. Admittedly the Loch Ness Centre features this image in their logo (which you can see in the photo above), and in innumerable toys and other souvenirs for sale in the gift shop. But inside the exhibition they stamp on this theory right at the very start. Any creature that managed to emerge unscathed from the Mesozoic would have been definitively killed off during the ice age, when the whole of Scotland was covered by a kilometre-thick block of ice for tens of thousands of years. Anything in the loch today that is larger than a single-celled micro-organism must have arrived after the ice melted. And why plesiosaurs anyway? They were pushed out of their ecological niche by whales and dolphins, which are found in plentiful numbers in the waters around Scotland.

The seemingly deep-rooted idea that a long-necked monster inhabits Loch Ness only dates from about a hundred years ago. Prior to that, mysterious sightings in the loch always referred to a “huge fish” or a “strange fish”. The word “monster”, prior to the early 20th century, only cropped up in the context of St Columba – the 6th century monk who brought Christianity to Scotland from Ireland. According to legend, Columba “drove away a water monster” in the River Ness near Inverness. It’s important to note, however, that this is a legend relating to a specific event – a miracle associated with a saint – and not recurring monster sightings by ordinary people.

A later development in Scottish folklore were the “water-horses” that were said to inhabit various lochs, including Loch Ness. Called kelpies, these creatures would drag unsuspecting travellers into the water and devour them. A pair of kelpies are the subject of a huge modern sculpture near Falkirk, about a hundred miles south of Loch Ness. At 30 metres (100 feet) in height, this is currently the largest statue in Britain. I only glimpsed it a few times from the M9 motorway, but my cousin, who stayed in Scotland longer than I did, sent me the following photo that she took after I left (she sent it via Facebook, which has the annoying habit of converting good quality, high resolution pictures into small, low resolution ones):

The general conclusion at the Loch Ness centre – again essentially a skeptical one – is that historical accounts of “water horses” and “huge fish” most likely refer to sightings of Atlantic sturgeon. These can grow to several metres in length, and do indeed have a vaguely horse-shaped head. The biggest problem with any large animal living in the Loch is the lack of sufficient food, but that doesn’t apply to sturgeon which are essentially sea creatures that would only be occasional visitors to the loch. While sturgeon have been spotted in and around Scotland in past centuries, they are virtually unknown there now (except for the definitely-not-monstrous First Minister, of course).

As for modern sightings of long-necked or serpentine creatures – most, if not all, of these can be explained as misidentifications (together with a few deliberate hoaxes). The visitor centre gives plenty of examples of floating logs, swimming deer, waterbirds and boat wakes all looking like convincing Loch Ness Monsters. I only spent a few minutes looking at the Loch, but even in that time I took the two pictures below which give an idea how misidentifications might arise. The one on the left contains a few dark specks which, if you zoom in on them, you can see are birds in flight. A couple of them have distinctly arc-like shapes which could be mistaken for “monster humps” under different viewing conditions. The second picture shows a boat trailing a wake, with another long wave that has been churned up by the boat in the foreground. Again, under different conditions (e.g. in foggier weather) the latter could be mistaken for a long, serpentine creature just below the surface.

Out-of-place Pterodactyl

With the Farnborough airshow coming up next week, I thought it would be a good opportunity to dig out this little curiosity. It’s the coat-of-arms of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, which occupied the Farnborough airfield site for more than 70 years. Where you might expect an eagle to be sitting on top of it, instead there’s an extinct flying reptile from the Jurassic period – a pterodactyl!

I’ve always wondered about the reasoning behind the pterodactyl symbolism. As far as I can tell it really is a pterodactyl, not the later and much more impressive pteranodon of the Cretaceous period. A pteranodon was a gigantic creature, almost the size of a small aircraft, and might indeed make a good mascot for an aeronautical research establishment. But a pterodactyl was only about the size of a seagull, which isn’t going to impress anyone (except for Peter Harriman, of course).

The Latin inscription at the bottom reads ALIS APTA SCIENTIA, which according to Google Translate means “wings suitable for science”. So maybe a pterodactyl was seen as somehow “more scientific” than an eagle? That makes sense, I suppose, since everything we know about pterodactyls comes from the science of palaeontology.

A Google search didn’t shed any more light on the subject, although I did find an auction item with the following description: “A large armorial crest formerly on the South Gate at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, circa 1930s – 1950s, of heavy cast aluminium with intaglio relief design incorporating a pterodactyl surmounting a helmet and shield motif with foliate border and motto inscribed Alis Apta Scientia”.

During the First World War, the government-owned Royal Aircraft Factory designed and built a number of aircraft types – the best known being the SE5a fighter. However, private companies complained it was unfair to make them compete for government contracts against the government itself, so in 1918 the Royal Aircraft Factory became the Royal Aircraft Establishment – and refocused its attention on research rather than production. Nevertheless, it still played an important role in the development of the jet engine, the Concorde supersonic airliner and Britain’s one and only space launcher, Black Arrow. In 1988 it briefly and rather pointlessly changed its name to the Royal Aerospace Establishment, before merging into the Defence Research Agency three years later.

A little box of Bigfoot relics

Pictured above is a rather unusual Bigfoot-related item I happened to spot on an episode of Baggage Battles on the Travel Channel last weekend. It appears to be some kind of sideshow gimmick or stage prop (it’s too deliberately phony to call it a “hoax”). There are a couple more pictures below, but first I’ll explain the context.

I hardly ever watch TV these days, and when I do it’s often low-budget “factual” programmes on high-numbered channels that most people never bother with. Baggage Battles is a case in point. It features a group of people who attend auctions around America (and sometimes elsewhere) buying up the oddest items they can find, and then getting them independently valued. There used to be a similar show on British TV, and it was rubbish. The antique dealers were real antique dealers, the auctions were real auctions, and the end-customers were real end-customers. Boring, boring, boring. If I wanted real-life, I wouldn’t switch on the TV, would I? Baggage Battles is fake from beginning to end, but it’s really good escapist entertainment – which is exactly what TV should be.

This particular episode (season 5 episode 5, called “Burial Expenses”) was set in Providence, Rhode Island – and was even more “fake” than usual. All the auction lots were horror-related novelties, from sideshow items to movie props. The weirdest item was a small framed object that appeared to be a tattooed human nipple. You can see it on YouTube if you want to (and I bet you do): just click here.

At the start of that clip, you can just see one of the buyers, Valérie-Jeanne Mathieu, winning a lot at $275 (actually that figure is meaningless, since the under-bidder was fellow cast member Billy Leroy trying to give her a hard time, rather than a genuine bidder). Although you can’t see it in the video clip, that particular item is the “Bigfoot kit”. At the end of the show Valérie gets it appraised by a local Bigfoot expert, Dina Palazini, who puts its value around $400 – although she doesn’t explain what it is (other than confirming the obvious fact that it’s not real).

The label inside the lid has a still from the Patterson-Gimlin film, together with an inscription saying “Cryptozoologist Roger M. Allen, Chief Investigator, has found long sought after evidence that a so-called Bigfoot (Gigantopithecus) does in fact exist. New DNA, a small finger digit and hair samples conclude positive results.” There is also a date, 1999. Inside the box there are two small glass jars, one labelled “hair sample – human/animal hybrid” and the other, containing what appears to be a finger, labelled “unknown being – possible human hybrid”.

I deciphered those inscriptions from a set of HD screenshots that Paul Jackson was kind enough to send me. One of them was shown above, and here are two more. First, a clearer view inside the box:

… and a close-up of the “finger”, when Billy was inspecting it earlier in the show:

Some old X-Files

I don’t usually hoard old magazines (except Fortean Times), but I kept these three issues of Cinefantastique because between them they contain complete episode guides to the first four seasons of The X-Files. I was prompted to dig them out last week – not because of the “reboot” currently showing on Channel 5, or from any general sense of nostalgia, but because I needed to do some research for a new book I’m working on. In looking through them, I was struck by how highbrow some of the X-Files episode titles were. Here are a few of the more Fortean examples – two from each of those first four seasons (just focusing on the titles, not the storylines).

The Jersey Devil (Season 1, Episode 5). One of America’s lesser known cryptids, this one dates back to those pre-Darwin days when mysterious creatures weren’t required to conform to the logic of evolutionary genetics. According to Wikipedia it’s “a kangaroo-like creature with the head of a goat, leathery bat-like wings, horns, small arms with clawed hands, cloven hooves and a forked tail”. Wings AND arms AND hooves… they don’t make them like that any more.

Ghost in the Machine (Season 1, Episode 7). This cool-sounding phrase was coined by the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle in 1949, as a disparaging description of the dualistic theory of human nature (i.e. a spiritual soul inhabiting a material body).

Little Green Men (Season 2, Episode 1). A facetious term for extraterrestrials, which was already well established when Mack Reynolds wrote The Case of the Little Green Men in 1951 – a Fortean-themed detective novel I wrote about in a blog post last year.

Fearful Symmetry (Season 2, Episode 18). This phrase comes from William Blake’s famous poem “Tiger, Tiger, burning bright”. The poem isn’t very Fortean, but its author was – as I explained in A 19th Century Contactee. One of the strangest spiritual creatures Blake claimed to have encountered was “The Ghost of a Flea” – his painting of which I happened to see in the Tate Gallery last year (see photo at the bottom of this post).

Paper Clip (Season 3, Episode 2). This is a reference to Operation Paperclip, a real world “conspiracy” that brought hundreds of German scientists – many of them war criminals – to the United States in the aftermath of WW2, giving them clean new records and salaried positions working for the U.S. government. It may be no coincidence that “Nasa” sounds a bit like “Nazi”.

Talitha Cumi (Season 3, Episode 24). This is one of several X-Files titles derived from a foreign language. In this case it’s Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. It’s a quote from the New Testament, which of course is full of Jesus quotes, but most of them only appear in translation. This example (from Mark 5:41) is one of only about a dozen that are given in the original Aramaic first (I’d be interested to know why they were singled out in this way). From the King James version: “And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.”

Tunguska (Season 4, Episode 8). This, of course, was the site of a mysterious explosion that flattened two thousand square kilometres of Siberian forest in 1908. It was probably caused by a meteor impact, although several odd things about it have led to various alternative explanations (e.g. an exploding UFO). As mentioned in my post about Ian Watson last year, his novel Chekhov’s Journey offers a particularly weird interpretation of the Tunguska event.

Terma (Season 4, Episode 9). This has to be one of the most obscure X-Files titles of all. It’s a technical term from Tantric Buddhism, referring to secret teachings carefully handed down among the inner circle of adepts. Such as, for example, that Tantric classic “Sex Secrets of the Ancient Masters” (which I really must get round to writing one of these days).

Dragon Slayers

I didn’t specifically set out to take pictures of dragon slayers last Wednesday, but by the end of the day I realized I had five of them. Together with another four photos I already had, I decided that was enough for a blog post!

There are plenty of dragon-slaying legends, many of them symbolizing the triumph of good over evil. In this sense the ultimate dragon-slayer must be St Michael – the Biblical archangel who defeats “the great dragon, the primeval Serpent, known as the devil or Satan” (Revelation 12:9). Three versions of this story are depicted above. The one in the middle is a picture I took in the Louvre in Paris two years ago, which featured previously in my post Monsters, Mystery and a Monkey. It’s an early work by Raphael, dating from around 1504.

The other two pictures I took in the National Gallery in London last week. The one on the left is by another Italian painter, Piero della Francesca, and dates from 1469. It’s less dramatic than Raphael’s version, and the dragon looks... well, unimpressive to say the least. The picture on the right was painted the previous year, 1468, by the Spanish artist Bartolomé Bermejo. His dragon is the weirdest-looking of the three – the caption describes it as “a monstrous creature, part-reptile, part-bat”.

The other saintly dragon slayer that everyone has heard of is St George (who is the patron saint of England, despite having no historical or legendary connection with the country). The story of George and the Dragon is essentially a Christianized version of the archetypal dragon-slaying legend (cf. my earlier post on Dragons and Dinosaurs), in which a community regularly appeases their local dragon by feeding it young female virgins. Then they suddenly realize the next in line is the King’s daughter, so it’s time to find themselves a dragon-slayer.

Here are three pictorial versions of St George and the Dragon, all by Italian artists:

The one at top left is by Raphael again – it’s a companion piece to his picture of St Michael and hangs next to it in the Louvre. To its right is a later version (circa 1555) by Tintoretto, which I saw in the National Gallery last week. Interestingly this reverses Raphael’s perspective – it has the fleeing princess in the foreground while St George, on horseback, fights the dragon in the background. I think Tintoretto’s version is much more dramatic – a kind of High Renaissance version of a “damsel in distress” pulp magazine cover!

The third picture is also in the National Gallery. It’s by Uccello, dating from around 1470, and has a more cartoony look than the other pictures. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is the strange (and rather Fortean-looking) atmospheric phenomenon looming in the background behind St George.

A less well known dragon-slaying legend is that of Apollo and Python. The latter was a giant serpent-like dragon in Greek mythology (after which the snake genus was named), which according to legend was slain by the god Apollo. I have to admit I’d never heard of this legend until I saw Turner’s painting of it in the Tate Gallery last week (I’ve been rude about Turner in the past, but he’s started to grow on me since I saw the film Mr Turner).

At first sight Turner’s “dragon” looks very snake-like, although if you look closely there is a huge claw-like hand visible. Basically it’s difficult to work out exactly what’s going on, which is a generic problem I have with most of Turner’s work (he painted two other “horror” pictures, one of Death on a Pale Horse and one of Sea Monsters, which are even more confusing).

Finally, here are a couple of mediaeval dragon-slayers from Somerset. The one on the left can be seen on the wall of the church in Stoke-sub-Hamdon, and was featured previously in my post on Dragon Symbolism. As I said in that post, it may be intended to represent St Michael, due to its proximity to a hill called St Michael’s Hill.

I saw the dragon-slayer on the right a few weeks ago in Wells Cathedral, on the wall of the staircase leading to the Chapter House. I don’t think he’s meant to be anyone famous – I’ve seen him described variously as a “peasant”, a “priest” or a “pilgrim”. With his right hand he’s holding one of the pillars which support the roof, while casually using his left hand to slay a small dragon with his walking stick!

More Fortean Fiction from CFZ Books

Pictured above are three recent releases from the CFZ Publishing Group’s “Fortean Fiction” imprint. Although only one of the books has my name on the cover, I had a small hand in the other two as well. The one on the right is Hyakumonogatari by Richard Freeman – a really excellent collection of 25 Japanese-themed horror stories, which is a kind of a fictional spin-off of his Great Yokai Encyclopaedia. The newest book, shown in the middle, is an equally excellent collection of short stories by Kate Kelly called The Scribbling Sea Serpent.

I worked for the same employer as Kate Kelly for almost 20 years, although mostly at different sites so we never really crossed paths. It was only after I went back there a couple of years ago as a part-time contractor that I discovered she is also an aspiring writer. Her first book, a young adult novel called Red Rock, was published in 2013. It’s marketed as “cli-fi” (a new sub-genre of science fiction dealing with climate change), but with a distinctly Fortean twist – the melting icecap reveals evidence of an ancient high-tech civilization that may or may not have known the secret of limitless free energy.

As I mentioned before (in The World’s Weirdest Publishing Group), it was only after CFZ brought out my own short story collection, The Museum of the Future, that I realized how short-staffed they were. I offered to help out in various ways, and one of the first jobs Jon Downes pushed my way was the reissue of Hyakumonogatari. This was originally published in 2012, but had since been re-edited.

My task here was pretty straightforward – simply insert the newly edited text into the existing page template. But for a couple of reasons I ended up redoing the page layouts completely. Partly this was in response to constructive feedback on The Museum of the Future from Brian Clegg, but also because I just didn’t get on with Jon’s choice of software – I found it easier to start from scratch with a program I was more familiar with!

When I told Kate about my work on Hyakumonogatari, she wondered if Jon would also be interested in publishing a collection of her own stories. To cut a long story short he was, and The Scribbling Sea Serpent is the result. The title comes from Kate’s blog, and the book contains a mixture of previously published stories and brand new ones – 22 in total. In terms of genre the stories are a mix of science fiction and weird fiction – all written in a reassuringly traditional style that wouldn’t have been out of place in Weird Tales or Astounding Science Fiction 60 years ago... but often with a modern twist to the subject matter (Kate has a peculiar enthusiasm for global ecological disasters). The book lives up to the “Fortean Fiction” label, too, with ancient mysteries lurking in the rural English landscape, interdimensional portals opened up by shamanic rituals, archaeologists digging up alien artifacts, restless ghosts... and, as the title suggests, sea monsters!

Because it was a new book and not a reissue, I had more to do on The Scribbling Sea Serpent than on Hyakumonogatari. As well as editing the stories for publication and fitting them into the page template, I also had to design the front and back covers (with assistance from Kate and Jon... not to mention public domain clip-art). It was a lot more work than I’d expected – I always thought producing books was easy, but I’ll know better in future! Fortunately it’s a really first-rate book, so I’m happy to have been involved with it (the same is true of Hyakumonogatari).

At this point you’re probably thinking “No matter how good The Scribbling Sea Serpent is, if Andrew May had a hand in it there’s bound to be at least a minor cock-up.” I’m not sure I completely follow your reasoning, but as it happens you’re right. There’s a small error that crept in at the very final stage of production, which is fairly obvious once it’s pointed out to you. On the other hand, I don’t believe anyone will spot the error unless it’s pointed out to them. To prove me wrong you’ll have to buy the book! Here are the links:

• Buy The Scribbling Sea Serpent from Amazon.com
• Buy The Scribbling Sea Serpent from Amazon UK

(Kindle versions will be available in a few weeks).

Bigfoot on Parson's Creek

Here is a retro-Fortean novel with a difference. It wasn’t written in the 1960s, and it isn’t a pastiche of the 60s style. But it’s set in the 60s, and it takes the reader back to a time when the subject of Bigfoot was a lot newer and fresher than it is today. On Parson’s Creek, written by Richard Sutton last year, is told from the present-day perspective of a grandfather recalling events that took place when he was a teenager in 1967. The book probably isn’t as well known among cryptozoologists as it ought to be, because it’s marketed as a Young Adult novel – aimed at readers the same age as the protagonist was when the events occurred. But I found the book equally gripping, even though I was closer to that age in 1967 than I am today!

On Parson’s Creek is a very clever story, and a refreshing change from all the usual clichés of Bigfoot fiction. The basic concept of the novel sets two major challenges for the author, which he then proceeds to solve in a surprisingly effortless way (it surprised me, anyhow).

The first big challenge is the 1960s setting. Of course, that does simplify things in some ways, because there was far less cultural baggage associated with Bigfoot then than there is today – no childishly bickering squatchers versus skeptics, no endless cycle of student hoaxes on YouTube, no urban legends, no internet memes. “Reality TV” is mentioned in the initial framing scene, while the main story refers to Ivan Sanderson’s book on the Yeti and the Patterson-Gimlin film (which was brand new at the time)... but that’s it. Aside from that, the protagonist has a clean slate to work with, free from socio-cultural preconceptions.

So why do I say the 60s setting is a challenge for the writer? It’s obvious if you think about it. Despite all the reality shows and YouTube videos, Bigfoot is just as much a mystery today as it was then. So we know, from our present-day perspective, that the story can’t end with the public outing of Bigfoot as a giant bipedal hominid (which would be the standard ending for a story set in the present or near-future). So how does On Parson’s Creek end? With my limited imagination, I could only think of two rather disappointing outcomes: either the supposed Bigfoot sightings would turn out to be a Scooby-Doo style hoax, designed to keep inquisitive teenagers from discovering criminal activity of some form or another, or the whole thing would end with a vague, open question: Was it Bigfoot or wasn’t it? I’m pleased to say, though, that Richard Sutton manages to come up with a more satisfying resolution than either of those!

The other challenge becomes apparent in the first pages of the novel. This is a hyper-realistic narrative, not a work of escapist fiction. To be honest, this put me off a bit at first. As regular readers will be aware, I have very little patience with anything except escapist fiction! But again, the author makes it work, and it’s the avoidance of all the usual escapist tropes that gives the novel its impressively fresh feel. The protagonist doesn’t just plunge straight into a search for Bigfoot, which then occupies him single-mindedly for a few days before reaching a dramatic climax. Yes, he investigates local Bigfoot rumours – not just by physical exploration but by talking to people and reading books – but it’s something he does on and off, over a period of months, in between other more mundane activities. There are other local mysteries, too – such as forgotten industrial relics and decades-old tragedies no-one wants to talk about – which may or may not have a connection with Bigfoot. Perhaps the most “realistic” aspect (for anyone who can remember being a frustrated teenager) is the way all the adults tell conflicting accounts of the same events – all with equal apparent sincerity!

There are a number of subplots running through the novel, including one relating to the protagonist’s fascination with Newtonian physics. This sits rather awkwardly with the broader narrative, but it really appealed to me because I too was a big fan of Isaac Newton as a teenager. And I still am... my book Pocket GIANTS: Isaac Newton is out tomorrow!

The World's Weirdest Publishing Group

When I came to plug my new book The Museum of the Future on this blog last month, I had two fairly obvious questions for the publisher:

• “Can you let me have the link to the ebook version on Amazon, please?”
• “Can you let me have the link to the book’s page on your own website, please?”

It was at this point I discovered just how unconventional the CFZ Publishing Group is. There wasn’t an ebook version, just a paperback, and while the CFZ (Centre for Fortean Zoology) does have a long-running website and blog, it didn’t have a dedicated online “storefront” like every other publisher on the planet.

There were good reasons for these deficiencies. The “CFZ Publishing Group” consists of Jon and Corinna Downes, both of whom do many other things besides running a publishing company. They are highly reliant on the help of volunteers to get things done, and setting up a marketing website and an ebook production line were two of the things that always seemed to fall between the cracks.

This struck me as a real tragedy, because it meant awareness of my book (and the hundred-plus other titles published by CFZ) simply wasn't reaching a large section of the potential audience. There is a well-established online community of CFZ “insiders” which Jon puts vast amounts of effort into nurturing, but if you look beyond that then the CFZ brand has a very low profile indeed.

Electronic media open up new opportunities for publishers. A reader who buys one book, and enjoys it, might be motivated to search out other titles from the same imprint... if the information is there to be found. Another reader who perhaps can’t afford $15 for a paperback might be happy to spend $5 on an ebook... but only if the option is there!

Although I was particularly motivated by the thought of my own book languishing unsold, exactly the same principles apply to the whole catalogue. It was only when I looked into it that I realized just how varied and impressive the CFZ catalogue is – covering not just cryptozoology but the whole spectrum of weirdness from UFOs and the paranormal to mythology and urban legends. My book is part of the Fortean Fiction imprint, which – from all you could discover about it online – included four other titles, all issued back in 2011. But actually there are a dozen titles in the series, with more on the way!

So to cut a long story short, I volunteered to help out both with producing ebooks and setting up a website. On the ebook side, we decided to focus exclusively on Kindle to start with, because their tools for producing ebooks are so much more streamlined than other formats. Between Jon and myself we’ve produced 12 Kindle titles so far – all conversions of existing paperbacks.

As for the website, you can check it out here:

http://www.cfzpublishing.co.uk

It’s got pages about the three main imprints (CFZ Press, Fortean Words and Fortean Fiction), information on some of the best-known authors (including Nick Redfern, Karl Shuker and Andy Roberts) and a blog for new releases and other announcements. And best of all, there’s are a couple of shops (one based in the UK and one in the USA) where you can browse the entire catalogue and buy anything that takes your fancy!

More Bigfoot Sleaze

As you can see from the photo, I’ve been reading Bigfoot porn again. Or for the first time, actually, since my only previous encounter with Bigfoot porn was an art-house movie called The Geek. There is a novel called The Geek, which is equally arty, but that’s chicken porn, not Bigfoot porn (go back and re-read Two Geeks, a Chicken and Bigfoot if you’re confused).

The book I was just reading is Cum For Bigfoot by Virginia Wade. This was originally released in instalments as self-published ebooks, and the author reportedly earns $30,000 per month from the series. That was the reason (the only reason, honestly) why I bought the book – I wanted to see if I could work out what her secret is. All my self-published ebooks added together struggle to make $3 per month, and some of them haven’t sold a single copy.

If Ms. Wade does have a secret, then I reckon it’s KISS. I don’t mean “kiss” as in lovey-dovey romance (of which the book has mercifully little), but the too-often-ignored principle of “Keep It Simple, Stupid”. If you keep things simple, you don’t make mistakes... and mistakes are what readers notice. Who wants complexity in a porn novel, anyway? By avoiding complexity, and avoiding mistakes, Cum for Bigfoot comes pretty close to perfection (I only spotted 4 typos in 217 pages). Of course it’s a very simplistic, unambitious perfection – but I guess that’s what readers want, and it explains why the series has become such a bestseller.

There are a lot of things you might expect to see in a book of this length which simply aren’t there. The plot is completely linear and uncomplicated – there’s no foreshadowing, no twists, no forks, no flashbacks. There is no technobabble – you might expect a know-it-all character to act as the author’s mouthpiece, recounting little-known facts about Bigfoot at every opportunity... but there isn’t anyone like that. There aren’t any eccentric characters at all – no goths or emos or punks or hippies, or half-crazed Bigfoot hunters, or money-grabbing sideshow entrepreneurs. No-one turns out to be anything other than what they appear to be on first appearance.

That last paragraph may sound negative, but it isn’t really. Those are the kind of things I’d try to squeeze into the story... but I wouldn’t do them very well, so the book would just sit there not getting bought. Even if a really good writer tackled the book that way, then I bet most of the people who’ve been buying Cum for Bigfoot wouldn’t like the result. All those things force the reader to slow down and think – which isn’t what someone who buys this sort of book wants.

I’ve repeatedly described the book as “porn”, not erotica, because that’s what it is. The sex scenes are long and detailed, while the linking narrative is simple and easy-to-follow. The characters are pretty generic, so most female readers (who I guess are the book’s target audience) will be able to identify with them. The description of Bigfoot society, and how they manage to remain undetected, is credible but minimalistic, with no gratuitous detail or attempts at pseudo-erudition.

So why is the book such a success? As far as I can see, it all comes down to the fact that Ms. Wade knows her audience... and knows how to give them exactly what they want.

Retro-Fortean Answers

Here are the answers to last week’s Retro-Fortean Crossword. Wherever possible the clues were based on previous blog posts – in which case I’ve included a link to the relevant post.

ACROSS

1. AMBROSE Bierce, who vanished without a trace in December 1913 (See The Ambrose Collector)

5. Generic term for a mystery animal: CRYPTID (As in the Cryptid Casebook series – see The Science of Bigfoot for my contribution to the series)

9. Nickname of Raymond A. Palmer, pulp magazine editor who popularized the Shaver Mystery: RAP (My copy of the special “Shaver Mystery” issue of Amazing Stories, dated June 1947, can be seen in the photograph above)

10. “The EERIEST Ruined Dawn World”, short story by Fritz Leiber

11. Secretive organization that Edward Snowden used to work for: NSA (As featured in Satire and the Internet)

12. Fictional country which is the source of Doc Savage’s wealth: HIDALGO (The Doc Savage trade paperback pictured above includes a comic-book adaptation of Doc’s origin story, set in Hidalgo)

13. “POST HOC ergo propter hoc”, a logical fallacy popular with some conspiracy theorists

14. A short 16 mm film clip from 1967 purportedly showing Bigfoot: PATTERSON-GIMLIN (See Patterson-Gimlin Film Fake or Fact)

19. Village in the South of France reputedly associated with a great mystical secret: RENNES-LE-CHATEAU (See The Devil of Rennes-le-Chateau)

21. Ankh, cross and pentagram, for example: SYMBOLS

24. A Runic alphabet: FUTHARK

27. LEN Wein, creator of Wolverine and Swamp Thing (My copy of Wolverine’s first appearance was featured in The Marvel Age of Comics)

28. Hard to pin down, like many Fortean phenomena: ELUSIVE

29. Like a UFO, but not unidentified: IFO

30. An unexplained event: ANOMALY

31. SHANNON McMahon, X-Files super-soldier played by Lucy Lawless

DOWN

1. Early type of UFO widely reported across America during the 1890s: AIRSHIP

2. Bigfoot, for example: BIPED

3. Denny O’NEIL, author of The Shadow 1941: Hitler’s Astrologer (See Hitler’s Astrologer)

4. If the Gunpowder Plot was a False Flag operation, this person may have engineered it: EARL OF SALISBURY (As described in my Conspiracy History book)

5. A famous Fortean mystery from Barbados: CREEPING COFFINS (See Creeping Coffins)

6. Himalayan giant apes (real or imaginary): YETIS

7. Enigmatic alien creature in Philip K. Dick’s novel A Maze of Death: TENCH (My copy, which I originally read in 1980, is pictured above)

8. A type of scientific analysis applied to Bigfoot and Richard III: DNA SCAN (See Bigfoot, Richard III and Outsider Science)

15. The TEN Lost Tribes of Israel

16. The Third EYE, by T. Lobsang Rampa

17. IRA Levin, author of Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives

18. First name of JFK’s alleged assassin: LEE

19. A water nymph in Slavic mythology RUSALKA (As mentioned in my novelette The Mechanical Gorilla)

20. Pulp magazine which featured Eric Frank Russell’s Sinister Barrier in its first issue: UNKNOWN (See Sinister Barrier: the first Fortean novel and Pulp Forteana)

22. Planet ruled by Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon’s universe: MONGO

23. The Magic Flute or The Flying Dutchman, for example: OPERA (See Fortean Opera)

25. Huge volcanic eruption which may have been responsible for the Atlantis legend: THERA

26. Entity from another planet: ALIEN

Retro-Fortean Crossword

I thought I’d do another crossword puzzle this Christmas, since last year’s seemed to go down well. I assume it went down well, anyway, because it got an above-average number of page-views... but then the annotated list of answers the following week got below-average views, so maybe people just took one look at the puzzle and decided not to bother with it!

As before it’s an old-fashioned non-interactive crossword, so you’ll have to print it out or do it in your head. I originally wanted all the clues to refer to something I’ve written about on this blog in the last 12 months, but once I started filling letters in I realized that wasn’t going to be possible. Still, I’ve tried to stay on-topic as far as possible. I’ll print the answers (together with an explanation of the Retro-Fortean connections) next week.

ACROSS

1. ------- Bierce, who vanished without a trace in December 1913 [7]
5. Generic term for a mystery animal [7]
9. Nickname of Raymond A. Palmer, pulp magazine editor who popularized the Shaver Mystery [3]
10. “The ------- Ruined Dawn World”, short story by Fritz Leiber [7]
11. Secretive organization that Edward Snowden used to work for [3]
12. Fictional country which is the source of Doc Savage’s wealth [7]
13. “---- --- ergo propter hoc”, a logical fallacy popular with some conspiracy theorists [4, 3]
14. A short 16 mm film clip from 1967 purportedly showing Bigfoot [9-6]
19. Village in the South of France reputedly associated with a great mystical secret [6-2-7]
21. Ankh, cross and pentagram, for example [7]
24. A Runic alphabet [7]
27. --- Wein, creator of Wolverine and Swamp Thing [3]
28. Hard to pin down, like many Fortean phenomena [7]
29. Like a UFO, but not unidentified [3]
30. An unexplained event [7]
31. ------- McMahon, X-Files super-soldier played by Lucy Lawless [7]

DOWN

1. Early type of UFO widely reported across America during the 1890s [7]
2. Bigfoot, for example [5]
3. Denny -----, author of The Shadow 1941: Hitler’s Astrologer [5]
4. If the Gunpowder Plot was a False Flag operation, this person may have engineered it [4, 2, 9]
5. A famous Fortean mystery from Barbados [8, 7]
6. Himalayan giant apes (real or imaginary) [5]
7. Enigmatic alien creature in Philip K. Dick’s novel A Maze of Death [5]
8. A type of scientific analysis applied to Bigfoot and Richard III [3, 4]
15. The --- Lost Tribes of Israel [3]
16. The Third ---, by T. Lobsang Rampa [3]
17. --- Levin, author of Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives [3]
18. First name of JFK’s alleged assassin [3]
19. A water nymph in Slavic mythology [7]
20. Pulp magazine which featured Eric Frank Russell’s Sinister Barrier in its first issue [7]
22. Planet ruled by Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon’s universe [5]
23. The Magic Flute or The Flying Dutchman, for example [5]
25. Huge volcanic eruption which may have been responsible for the Atlantis legend [5]
26. Entity from another planet [5]

Mad Scientists, Zombies and the Loch Ness Monster

Earlier this year Nick Redfern wrote a piece for Mysterious Universe entitled The Convenient Monster, about an intriguing-sounding episode of the 1960s TV series, The Saint, based around the legend of the Loch Ness Monster. I discovered later that “The Convenient Monster” started life as a short story by the Saint’s creator, Leslie Charteris, so I started to look round for a printed version of it. I eventually managed to get hold of the book pictured here – The Fantastic Saint, containing “The Convenient Monster” along with five other Saint stories having a horror and/or science fiction element to them.

Leslie Charteris wrote his first Saint story in 1928, when he was just 21 – while the Saint, alias Simon Templar, was portrayed as being not much older. His last Saint stories were written early in the 1960s, by which time the TV series starring Roger Moore was already underway, and Charteris (and presumably the Saint too) was the wrong side of 50. Charteris had retired from writing by the time The Fantastic Saint was published in 1982, although he did produce an afterword for it.

The six stories in the collection span virtually the entire career of the Saint, from the early 1930s to the early sixties. In his afterword, Charteris says he wanted “to avoid the perpetual repetition of a recognizable formula”. That’s just the sort of thing you’d expect the creator of a long-running series character to say... but in Charteris’s case it’s absolutely true. The six stories are all completely different from each other – and at least a few of them are really outstanding.

The earliest story in the book, “The Gold Standard” from 1932, is also the longest of them – and probably the weakest, too. It’s essentially a Mad Scientist story, about a modern-day alchemist – but it can’t really be called science fiction, because Charteris makes no attempt at a technical (or even pseudo-technical) explanation for the gold-making process. That’s only a minor quibble, but it’s worth mentioning because the other five stories are all particularly strong on technical background. In this story, however, the “technical details” border on tongue-in-cheek metafiction – the scientist’s lair is likened to “one of those nightmare laboratories of the future which appear in every magazine of pseudo-scientific fiction”!

I’m glad I read the stories in chronological order, because “The Gold Standard” is the only one that goes into much detail about the background of the characters. At this point in his career the Saint was a kind of English version of the pulp hero the Spider, who made his debut the following year – an independently wealthy, upper-class playboy who fights against evil while being viewed as a dangerously anti-social psychopath by the blunderingly ineffective police force. As the stories progress, the Saint slowly inches his way toward acceptance by the establishment.

The villain of the second story – “The Newdick Helicopter”, from 1933 – is not so much a Mad Scientist as an inventor-turned-conman. It’s a highly amusing tale, but I was puzzled at first as to just what the “fantastic” element was supposed to be. Then I realized that the first true helicopter, capable of vertical take-off and landing, didn’t come on the market until several years after the story was written!

The third piece, called “The Man Who Liked Ants” and dating from 1937, is about as archetypal a Mad Scientist story as they come. As far as the plot goes, it would have been right at home in a B-movie theatre or pulp science fiction magazine of the time. However it’s lifted up somewhat by the fact that, as Charteris says in his afterword: “Before writing ‘The Man Who Liked Ants’, I read three or four serious books about them. Which doesn’t make me an entomologist, but at least gives the story some scientific support.”

Keeping to chronological order (which is not quite the order the stories are printed in the book), the next one is “The Darker Drink” from 1949. Just as “The Man Who Liked Ants” was typical of the naively simplistic science fiction of the 1930s, this one is closer to the sophisticated mind-benders the masters of the genre was turning out just a decade later. “The Darker Drink” reminded me particularly of Fredric Brown, whose novel What Mad Universe?, also from 1949, has a similar tone – as do several of his short stories. But hardly anyone has heard of Frederic Brown today – so a less obscure (if slightly less accurate) comparison would be with the early work of Philip K. Dick a few years later.

I can’t think how to describe “The Darker Drink” without spoiling it, so I’ll just quote the introduction by Martin H. Greenberg: “Simon Templar’s hideout in the High Sierras is invaded by a man called Big Bill Holbrook who claims to be the dream-world creation of a sleeping bank clerk in Glendale, California. It is perhaps the Saint’s strangest adventure, beginning as a screwball send-up of The Maltese Falcon and ending as a nightmare.”

Personally I’d rate “The Darker Drink” as the second best story in the book, after the one that comes next in chronological order: “The Questing Tycoon” from 1954. This is a zombie story – but it’s not THAT kind of zombie story. It’s as thoughtful and well-researched a zombie story as I’ve ever come across, with a discussion of Voodoo in terms of comparative religion which must have seemed quite radical in the 1950s. Again quoting from Leslie Charteris’s afterword: “‘The Questing Tycoon’ was inspired by a visit to Haiti, where I was fortunate enough to be able to witness a couple of genuine voodoo ceremonies – not the kind that are laid on for the tourists. I was also lucky enough to meet a local resident, a lifelong student of the cult and the author of important monographs on the subject: thanks to him, I can vouch that the details and the actual incantation and the song quoted are literally exact.”

This brings us to “The Convenient Monster”, the last of the stories to be published – in 1962, only four years before the TV adaptation described in Nick Redfern’s article. I hardly need to say anything about this one, because Nick’s (spoiler-free) account of the small-screen adaptation is pretty close to the printed version. The order of events at the start of the story is slightly different, and a few scenes and at least one character seem to have been added to the TV version, but otherwise it sounds like a pretty faithful adaptation. I’ll have to look out for it in the schedules now!

Although I’ve known the name Leslie Charteris since childhood – my grandfather had a couple of Saint paperbacks on his bookshelf in the sixties – The Fantastic Saint is the first book I’ve ever read by him. I’ll certainly be looking out for more now – and I’ll have to catch some Saint reruns on TV, too. I used to watch it regularly as a child, and I really liked the Simon Templar character as portrayed by Roger Moore. Probably for that reason, I’m the only person I know (and possibly the only person in the world) who thinks that Roger Moore was far and away the best actor ever to play James Bond!

The Science of Bigfoot

In an earlier post this year, Patterson-Gimlin Film: Fake or Fact?, I reviewed one of the ebooks in the Cryptid Casebook series from Bretwalda Books. Most of the titles in this series are written by Larry Jaffer, and – as the name suggests – consist of specific case studies. A couple of months ago, however, Bretwalda editor Rupert Matthews asked me if I would like to write something on “aspects of Bigfoot other than sightings”. I thought this was a great idea, and The Science of Bigfoot was the result.

Here is the book’s blurb:

For many Bigfoot enthusiasts, science has becomes synonymous with knee-jerk debunking. But to ignore science altogether is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If Bigfoot is a real flesh-and-blood creature, and not some kind of paranormal apparition, there is ultimately no alternative to approaching the subject in a scientific way. The aim of this ebook is to explain what that means in simple everyday terms. From anatomy and adaptation, through ecology and evolution, to DNA analysis and the laws of physics – here in one small package is everything you need to know about the science of Bigfoot!

I’m a scientist, and I would really like Bigfoot to exist. I have to admit it’s not very likely, based on the lack of hard, unambiguous evidence. But I get annoyed when skeptics say things like “Bigfoot is a scientific impossibility” – I simply don’t believe that’s true. I don’t think there are any ecological, evolutionary or physiological reasons why a large, bipedal hominid couldn’t exist in the world today.

At the other extreme, it’s not really true to say, as many Bigfoot believers do, that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. The more you look for something and fail to find it, the less likely it is that it’s there to be found. But ultimately you can never prove a negative – absence of evidence is not PROOF of absence.

The screaming headline “DNA Study Proves Bigfoot Never Existed” in Time Magazine a few months ago was simply wrong – an ignorant misunderstanding of the scientific method. Proving that a selection of hair samples came from known species merely proves that those specific samples didn’t come from Bigfoot. That’s a far cry from disproving the existence of Bigfoot.

If Bigfoot does exist, why is physical evidence so hard to come by? One possible explanation is that the species has evolved a kind of “prime directive” to stay out of sight of homo sapiens. As a member of the hominid family, Bigfoot is likely to be of comparable intelligence and resourcefulness to humans – possibly even superior in some ways – so who knows what they might be capable of?

As I said earlier, I would like Bigfoot to exist, although I don’t think it’s likely. It’s a subject everyone will have their own views on. But whether you’re a skeptic or a believer, you’re bound to find food for thought in The Science of Bigfoot. It’s available in Kindle format for just $2.99 from Amazon.com, or for corresponding prices from other national branches of Amazon (currently £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk, for example).

Fortean Trends

Since I renamed this blog Retro-Forteana, I thought it would be interesting to look at changing trends in Fortean topics over the years. At one time, Fortean Times used to produce an annual Weirdness Index based on the number of press reports in different subgenres of Forteana. This strikes me as being in the true spirit of Charles Fort, and it’s a pity they don’t seem to do it any more.

In lieu of that, I decided to turn to Google’s N-gram viewer. I’ve already mentioned this addictive online utility once, in my post about Spooky Action at a Distance. Basically it allows you to see how the popularity of a specified word or phrase has changed over time. After searching through millions of digitized books it returns, for each year in a specified range, the percentage of all the books published in that year that include the given word or phrase.

You can waste hours playing with the N-gram viewer, but here are a few charts I thought were particularly interesting (you may need to click to enlarge them in order to see what is going on).

Chart 1: Fortean specialisms

This chart plots three words that are only ever going to appear in Fortean specialist literature. “Fortean” itself first makes an appearance in the 1930s, around the time of Fort’s death. It rises steadily until the 1950s, at which point it suddenly shoots up. I’m not sure why this is, or why it drops back down again equally suddenly in the early sixties, After that it starts to climb steadily again, reaching a peak around 1999 (remember pre-millennial tension?). It plummets down in the 21st century almost as fast as it was rising at the end of the 20th century.

The word “ufology” seems to emerge circa 1960, after which it follows a similar pattern to “fortean”. The post-millennial dip – which appears to confirm the widespread view that ufology is in decline – is almost certainly real, and not just a statistical artifact (you might think, for example, that it just means there are fewer books from recent years in Google’s database – but remember that what’s shown is not the number of books containing the word ufology but the percentage).

“Cryptozoology” is a newer word than either Fortean or ufology, only dating from circa 1970 – but it’s in a healthier state, displaying a steady increase which continues to the present day.

Chart 2: Sasquatch versus the Loch Ness Monster

In a head-to-head between the world’s two best known cryptids, the Loch Ness Monster got off to an early start in the early 1930s, then received a boost during the 1970s – but apart from that shows no strong trends either upwards or downwards. In contrast, Sasquatch got off to a slow start in the 1950s, before suddenly shooting up (and overtaking its Scottish rival) between the mid-60s and mid 70s. Then after a fairly static period, Sasquatch received another huge boost in the 90s.

Neither Sasquatch nor the Loch Ness Monster appear to suffer from the post-millennial let-down that UFO-related subjects do (more on which later).

Chart 3: Paranormal versus Parapsychology

I stumbled across this one more or less by accident, but I thought it was very interesting. The two “para” subjects make their appearance around the same time in the 1940s, and follow virtually the same pattern until 1980. But at that point there is a sudden divergence – “parapsychology” goes into a steady decline, while “paranormal” continues its upward trend.

Chart 4: UFO versus flying saucer

Not surprisingly, “flying saucer” makes its first appearance in the late 40s (following the Kenneth Arnold sighting) and rises through the early 50s. After that it’s more or less constant right up to the present day.

“UFO” starts a few years after “flying saucer”, but overtakes it by the early 60s. It then climbs at an impressive rate for two decades, remains more or less static through the eighties, and then shoots up again in the 90s. Then it hits that millennium barrier and starts to plummet back down again. There’s no getting away from it – UFOs just aren’t as popular as they used to be.

Chart 5: UFO topics

For this last chart, I typed in a few two-word phrases that are only going to appear in specialist UFO literature. As you can see, they all appear to suffer from that post-millennium crash. In the case of “Zeta Reticuli” and “Roswell incident”, the peak of interest is pretty much bang on the year 2000. With “Area 51” it’s a couple of years later. And with “crop circle” (maybe not strictly a UFO topic, but closely related) it’s 2005. But the decline after that point is unmistakable, even though Google’s database stops at 2008.