London Fortean Society

8pm Thursday 30 January 2014 £3 / £2 concessions The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train & Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East B Bram Stoker injected religion into the modern vampire myth; his vampire hunters fought the evil Dracula with crosses, holy water and Eucharistic wafers. Do such Christian tools still work in our secularised and multi-religious world? Prof J Gordon Melton , Distinguished Professor of American Religious History at Baylor University, Waco, Texas, explores religion's continuing relevance in today’s vampire novels and films. He’s the real-life Dr. Van Helsing Matt Cardin All are welcome. Each LFS evening begins with the Fortmanteau : our monthly summary of strange news stories 8pm Thursday 30 January 2014 £3/£2 concessions London Fortean Society meets upstairs at the fantastic Bell pub, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train & Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East.

 8pm Thursday 28 November 2013 £3 / £2 concessions The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train & Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East (two of which are quite near plague pits.) Urban Legends of the London Underground   Just as fairy tales warn of the dangers of going in to the woods alone London’s urban legends are often horror stories about going alone down in to the London underground. Plague pits seethe beneath your feet in the most unlikely places, corpses ride on the tube and news of enemy bomb attacks are never further than a trip to the shops away. Some of these urban legends are older than they appear; others are new stories posing as history. Scott will tell these contemporary folk-stories, map them across London and then take them pieces of apart to show you what they’re really made of. Scott is the author of London Urban Legends: The Corpse on the Tube , the author of the (occasional) Fortean London column for Londonist and co...

Wednesday 30 October 2013 6.30pm £5 Book online (50p admin fee per ticket) Meet outside Farringdon station on Cowcross Street, EC1   The Smithfield Ghost (may not actually be a ghost.) Why should people who believe in ghosts have all the fun? Come walk the atmospheric and ancient streets of Smithfield and Farringdon hearing of the stories of screaming Anne, ghosts of inconveniently alive judges, carpet lifting pub ghosts, wizards reincarnated as slavering black dogs and the ghost of Scratching Fanny on Cock Lane (to name but a few). This walk will be funny, irreverent, and informative and will wonder what ghosts are what ghost stories say about who we are and how we think about the world.  No ghosts were harmed in the making of this walk; This is a walk for anyone interested in ghost stories and London be they sceptical or otherwise. All are welcome. Your guide is London Fortean Society host Scott Wood. Scott is the irregular writer of Fortean L...

Monday 28 October 2013 6.30pm £5 Book online (50p admin fee per ticket) Meet your walk guide, Scott, at the Queens Walk gate, by Green Park tube station, Piccadilly.  Ghost Lucy by Sarah Sparks This will be a dark trek past ghost-ridden palaces, haunted trees, headless phantoms and plague legends of Green Park and St James Park. Gaze upon St James Palace, Clarence House and Buckingham Palace while hearing of their ghosts. Linger not near the cursed trees, hear of the staked body buried at the cross-roads, the witch that lived where Buckingham Palace is now and do not blink while gazing upon the s tatue that is said to move. This Halloween walk is through Green Park and St. James Park and to the dark side of some of its most famous buildings is a 1 hour- 1 hour 15 minute tour which ends on Queen Anne Street near St James Park tube (and a pub).  Your guide is London Fortean Society host Scott Wood. Scott is the irregular writer of Fortean London for Londonis...

Saturday 26 October 2013 6.30pm start £5 Book online  (50p admin fee per ticket) Meet outside Farringdon station on Cowcross Street, EC1 Clerkenwell and Smithfield EC1 are steeped in history, soaked in blood and crawling with  The Smithfield Ghost ghosts. Meet at Farringdon station for a walk that includes a gut-wrenching phantom black dog, haunted plague pits, hungry ghosts, poltergeists, haunted pubs, subterranean folklore and the devilish secret of Bleeding Heart Yard. This Halloween walk is almost circular and covers legends and monsters of Smithfield Market, Cock Lane, Newgate Prison, St Bartholomew’s church and hospital and much more. This almost circular guided walk will take around 1 hour – 1 ¼ and ends near a number of pubs for those wishing to continue the discussion. Your guide is London Fortean Society host Scott Wood. Scott is the irregular writer of Fortean London for Londonist and the author of the forthcoming London Urban Legends: The...

8pm Thursday 31 October 2013 £3 / £2 concessions The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train & Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East. Our October meeting falls on Halloween so we’ve put a haunting night together: GHost artist Sarah Sparkes speaks on Poltergeists as hecklers Folklore expert Paul Cowdell discusses and sings ghostly folk songs Storyteller Olivia Armstrong tells haunted tales Mario Lautier Vella: Like Home Paul Cowdell: Ghost Songs Traditional songs are full of folklore about ghosts. They tell you why people become ghosts, what ghosts look like, what the living have to do to allow the dead to rest in peace. Paul, a folklore expert on ghosts and a fine singer, will be talking about ghostlore in and around traditional songs, and singing some of them. Expect tragedy, revenge, violence, romance and a woman mistaken for a bird. 'Domestic' by Mario Lautier Vella Mario Lautier Vella – Like Home In 2009, artist Mario Lautie...

Sarah Sparkes: Ghost Stories and Spirit of Place Saturday 14 September 1pm-2pm The Senate Room, Senate House  Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU.  A short talk on ghost history, London ghosts and the ghosts of Senate House by GHost artist and London Fortean Society speaker Sarah Sparkes , with some assistance from LFS host Scott Wood.  Why does London, and England, have so many ghosts, what are their stories and how many are we sharing the building with during the talk?  This is a free event is hosted by the GHost and the London Fortean Society. It is part of a documentary on ghosts by a film crew and filming will be taking place during the talk. The talk will take place in the Senate Room, Senate House  Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU. 

8pm Thursday 26 September 2013 £3 / £2 concessions The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Four speakers present weird and wonderful aspects of Fortean London, then take part in a lively Q&A:  Do anything you wanna wilt Graveyard expert Rob Stephenson on London’s Lost Labyrinths   Fantasy writer Kate Griffin on London and Magic and Inspiration   Journalist Peter Watts on A Curse on Eddie and the Hot Rods! Author Gareth E Rees on Haunted by Time: Atemporal Hallucinations in East London’s Marshes We will have the Fortmanteau: our monthly summary of strange news stories Kate Griffin: London Magic & Inspiration Kate, author of ' Stray Souls ' and 'The Glass God' , will talk about London and how it inspires her and all the things in it that Ishe regards as as ‘magic’. How ‘magic’ in the city is changing and evolving and we’re updating the mythology of it all and the evolution of urban fantasy. Rob Stephenson: London's Lost La...

The Demons of Cornhill Thursday 29 August 2013 7.30pm It’s the summer holiday: let’s go outside! Join London Fortean Society host Scott Wood on a walk from the Royal Exchange to our home at The Bell, Middlesex Street that takes in London lore, ghosts, revenants,  witchcraft, urban folklore and psycho-geography. We will explore London legends from the London Stone to the Demons of Cornhill and the ghost story of our own pub home: The Bell .   Scott is the host of the London Fortean Society, writes the monthly fortmanteu and it the author of Urban Legends of London: The Corpse on the Tube and Other Stories which is out November 2013. This is a walk and not a talk! Meet at 7.30pm by the Duke of Wellington statue outside the Royal Exchange at the start of Threadneedle Street and Cornhill . Nearest station is Bank . £3/£2 concessions.

Sadly Will Storr cannot make the 25 July as he is interviewing Carrie Fisher (and Mark Hamill) about Star Wars. Can't say we blame him.... Another day for Will and Neil but instead we are very excited to have the following talk: Professor Roger Luckhurst: The Telepathic WT Stead 25 July 2013 8pm-10pm £3 / £2 concessions The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX.  WT Stead and adoring friend William T Stead was a towering figure in late Victorian and Edwardian England, a journalist and proprietor who invented the campaigning tabloid expose at the Pall Mall Gazette and then set up the world famous Review of the Reviews in 1890. He was an ardent imperialist, a Liberal radical, a feminist, dissenting Christian, and bugbear of every Prime Minister from 1875 to his death on the Titanic in 1912. He was also obsessed with every aspect of the occult, from Spiritualism and Theosophy to the new-fangled science of psychical research. He claimed to have powers of telepathic co...

27 June 2013 - What we really talk about when we talk about UFOs 7.45pm for 8pm start. £3/£2 concessions It will be 66 years and three days since the first 'flying saucer' sighting. We have gathered a panel of UFO investigators and experts and asked them their ideas of the reality, meaning and significance of the UFO phenomena. Each will give a short presentation of their view of UFOs and then, after a trip to the bar, we open up the floor for a discussion on this perennially contentious issue. The panel will include: •Robert Moore: UFO co-ordinator for the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena •John Rimmer of Magonia Magazine and blog and author of The Evidence for Alien Abduction •Matt Lyons: Chairman of the British UFO Research Association All are welcome. come and listen in or join the debate about UFOs ideas.  Each LFS evening begins with the Fortmanteau, our monthly summary of strange news stories 7.30pm for 8pm start. £3/£2...

30 May 2013 - The World’s Strangest Deaths  'Death and the Lady' from the excellent Gode Cookery  Hear how the mighty and the humble have suffered the most bizarre, embarrassing and amusing deaths at the hands of fickle fate. Historian and esoteric London expert Robert Stephenson takes us on a dance macabre for Corpus Christi . Each LFS evening begins with the Fortmanteau, our monthly summary of strange news stories 7.30pm for 8pm start. £3/£2 concessions London Fortean Society meets at The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train & Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East

25th April 2013 – The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Inquiry This event has now SOLD OUT! Please contact us  to join the waiting list for returns.   A Morphogenetic Field yesterday The science delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality, in principle, leaving only the details to be filled in. But recent research has revealed unexpected problems at the heart of physics, cosmology, biology, medicine and psychology. Rupert Sheldrake turns the ten fundamental dogmas of science into questions, opening up startling new possibilities. Dr Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of The Science Delusion. Each LFS evening begins with the Fortmanteau, our monthly summary of strange news stories. 25 April 2013 The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX £3/£2 concessions 8pm - 10.30pm (talk 8-9pm) Tubes and trains: Liverpool Street, Aldgate, Aldgate East. Many buses.

Art that interprets fortean phenomena is something we’ve always been fascinated in. Perhaps because it may be the nearest us humble forteans get to actually experiencing something paranormal. Artists often engage with the unseen and inexplicable in alluring and thought-provoking ways so we’re very pleased to see a number of art exhibitions in London that cover a variety of fortean themes. We’ve not had a chance to see any of these yet so below are the blurbs for each and most cost nothing but time and travel. Channels Susan Hillier’s Channels at Matt’s Gallery in Mile End (Wed-Sun until 14 April) is a “a vast audio-sculptural installation in which disembodied voices report on 'near-death' experiences." "Hiller uses audio accounts in many languages from people who believe they have experienced death as the raw materials for her new work. Vivid stories of those who believe they have died and returned to tell the tale constitute a remarkable contemporary archiv...

28th March 2013 – The Lord was at Glastonbury: Somerset and the Jesus Voyage Story At The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX £3/£2 concessions 8pm - 10.30pm (talk 8-9pm) Anthropologist and archaeologist Paul Ashdown wrote the first comprehensive and scholarly account of the young Jesus visiting Britain. In this Good Friday Eve talk we shall meet a cast of characters including the first Grand Bard of Cornwall, the conqueror of Tibet and those eccentric clergymen who sought to prove the tale was actually true – and we look at the medieval background to the story and at Blake’s own mystical vision Each LFS evening begins with the Fortmanteau, our monthly summary of strange news stories. 28 March 2013  The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX £3/£2 concessions 8pm - 10.30pm (talk 8-9pm) Tubes and trains: Liverpool Street, Aldgate, Aldgate East. Many buses.

28 February 2013 –8pm - 10.30pm (inc. Q&A, talk ends approx. 9pm) £3 / £2 concs  The Whitechapel Murderer has become for many the archetypal “lurker in the shadows” – bogeyman and arch supervillain, folklore filmstar and mainstay of the modern Halloween. Ripper author and researcher John Bennett examines how a very real killer became a universal icon of fear, via mass hysteria, urban legend, psychogeography and conspiracy. John is the author of Jack the Ripper: The Making of the Myth . Each LFS evening begins with the Fortmanteau, our monthly summary of strange news stories, this month our Fortmanteu is from special guest Jude Monteque Cowan .         We meet the last Thursday of each month (usually) upstairs at fantastic pub  The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX.   Tubes: Liverpool Street, Aldgate, Aldgate East.

31 January 2013 –8pm - 10.30pm (inc. Q&A, talk ends approx. 9pm) £3 / £2 concs "Who wants my club?" Why are people afraid of monsters? Easy: big teeth and claws. Why are people afraid of the past. Ah, now, that’s more difficult. But dragons haunt barrows and crumbling fortresses… giants step from old tombs to strike horror into their puny descendants… media culture has its monsters resurrected from Arctic ice… and even pop science is obsessed with ideas of ancient origins for the terrors of the imagination. Old = scary in meta-narrative, and has done so for three thousand years. Award winning folklorist and Unconvention speaker Jeremy Harte ponders why. Each LFS evening begins with the Fortmanteau, our monthly summary of strange news stories.   We meet the last Thursday of each month (usually) upstairs at The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Tubes: Liverpool Street, Aldgate, Aldgate East.