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Showing posts from April, 2014

Mark Pilkington: Magic, Deception and the Abuses of Enchantment

8pm (doors 7.30pm) Thursday 29 May 2014 £3 / £2 concessions The Vaults Bar, Dirty Dicks , 202 Bishopsgate, City of London EC2M 4NR Cyber-Mage Mark Pilkington looks at two formerly secret documents, published six decades apart, that reveal the methodologies of psychological manipulation and deception practised by American and British intelligence services. “The Art of Deception, Training for a New Generation of Online Covert Operations”, an internal presentation for the UK’s GCHQ, was leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden earlier this year, while “The Exploitation of Superstitions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare” was published by USAF’s RAND Corporation in 1950.  The similarities between the two papers demonstrate that while the world we live in has changed dramatically in the intervening years, the human mind, and the techniques for manipulating it, have remained very much the same; both papers discuss the exploitation of belief systems and fortean phe

The Poltergeist Prince of London

8pm (doors 7.30pm) Thursday 24 April 2014 £3 / £2 concessions New bigger venue:  The Vaults Basement Bar, Dirty Dicks , 202 Bishopsgate, City of London EC2M 4NR Battersea, 1956: A poltergeist outbreak is fantastical enough, but a poltergeist that learns to communicate details of an apparent previous life? And a life that begins to sound like that of the Lost Dauphin of Revolutionary France? Studying the poltergeist’s claims researcher Harold Chibbett was forced to wonder: coul d ‘Donald’ really be the spirit of the Louis-Charles, tragic son of Marie Antoinette? Shirley Hitchings, the centre of these events and co-author of ‘ The Poltergeist Prince of London ’ with James Clark , discusses her experiences with Alan Murdie, Chairman of the Ghost Club and regular Fortean Times contributor on ghosts. 8pm Thursday 24 April 2014 £3 / £2 concessions The Vaults Basement Bar,  Dirty Dicks , 202 Bishopsgate, City of London EC2M 4NR Nearest stati