London Fortean Society

7.45pm Thursday 26 January 2017 This event is now sold out. Sorry if you did not get a ticket, we hope to run it another time. The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page   Cross Bones Garden of Remembrance by Garry Knight (Creative Commons) Every month, an iconoclastic group of Londoners gather at a site in Southwark known as Crossbones Graveyard to commemorate the souls of mediaeval prostitutes believed to be buried there – the “Winchester Geese”. This is a pilgrimage site for self-identified misfits, nonconformists and contemporary sex workers who leave memorials to the outcast dead. The ritual interpretation of the history of the site has struck a chord with many who feel alienated in present-day London. Oxford anthropologist Professor Sondra L Hausner looks at the historical practices of sex work, the relation of the Church to these professions, and their representation in the prese...

Witch! £5 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Monday 23 January 2017 7.30pm Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page Gary Parsons will be discussing the documentaries made at the height of the British witchcraft revival in the early 70’s looking at how these films came into being within a cultural context and the reason for their sudden decline. The talk will be illustrated with clips from the films discussed. Gary Parsons is a MA Graduate in film from Goldsmiths College London and an independent filmmaker. £5 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Monday 23 January 2017 7.30pm Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page

7.45pm Thursday24 November 2016 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page Nathalie Cohen works for the Thames Discovery Programme at MOLA, Museum of London Archaeology. Tonight she explores aspects of interaction with the River Thames over time, from prehistory through to the present day, by examining evidence recovered during archaeological investigations on the foreshore by the Thames Discovery Programme and others. 7.45pm Thursday24 November 2016 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page

£20 / £16 concessions plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Saturday 19 November 2016 10am - 5.30pm Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page Book stall by Newham Bookshop  and Strange Attractor . As the days darken the London Fortean Society explores the folklore, ghosts and curses of the British Isles with the one-day symposium The Haunted Landscape. Authors, experts and researchers discuss ghosts, strange beasts and magic. From a talking mongoose to soul birds, moving megaliths in the landscape to witch marks in old buildings; to fairy lore and ghosts. Join us at Conway Hall to learn that the green and pleasant land we abide in has a dark, strange and chilling other side. Whatever Happened to the Headless Ghost? Once the headless or Acephalous Ghost was a staple of stately home haunts, and now is never seen. Where might the idea have originated in British folklore? And why do we no longer need to se...

This is not actually the Peckham Ghost Sunday 30 October 2.30-5pm This event has sold out. We are very sorry and we hope to re-host it at a later date. Meet at Honor Oak Station , 82 Honor Oak Park, Honor Oak Park SE23 1EB Follow in the footsteps of the Peckham Ghost, a mysterious masked figure intent on terrifying Victorian south London in strange and unusual ways. On the way from Honor Oak hear of the ghosts and legends of Peckham, One Tree Hill, Nunhead Green reservoirs and the undead bank clerk of Nunhead Cemetery. Meet your guide at Honor Oak Station  at 2.30pm, this Halloween walk ends at Nunhead Green at approximately 5pm. Your guide is London Fortean Society host Scott Wood. Scott is the host of the London Fortean Society, a regular writer for Londonist and the author of London Urban Legends: The Corpse of the Tube . This walk is just over 2 hours long with regular breaks, some steep climbs and some stony ground.

The (sort of cute) Black Dog of Newgate Saturday 29 October 2016 6.30pm - 8pm(-ish) This event has sold out. We are very sorry and we hope to re-host it at a later date. Meet at Farringdon Station, Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6BY Clerkenwell and Smithfield EC1 are steeped in history, soaked in blood and crawling with 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 1⁄2 hours 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 an...

Saturday 29 October 2016 2pm - 4.30pm(-ish) This event has sold out. We are very sorry and we hope to re-host it at a later date. Meet at Temple Tube Station , Victoria Embankment, London WC2R 2PH Join the London Fortean Society on a trek through the haunted secret passageways and spaces of Temple, Holborn and Bloomsbury. Go where the stories of damned souls, gentleman ghosts, martyrs, medical experiments and awfully modern apparitions still dwell. This two-and-a-half-hour ghost walk you will hear of haunted pubs and tube stations, Oliver Cromwell’s undead walk, the ghosts of Senate House, an angry table, a malevolent Egyptian mummy, a doppelganger in Lincolns Inn, the curse of the forty steps in Bloomsbury and much more. Your guide is London Fortean Society host Scott Wood. Scott is the host of the London Fortean Society, a regular writer for Londonist and the author of 'London Urban Legends: The Corpse of the Tube'. Saturday 29 October 2016 2pm - 4.30pm(-ish) Th...

Friday 28 October 2016 6.30pm - 8pm(-ish) £5 ( Advance tickets ) Meet at Farringdon Station , Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6BY  'tis the season to be spooky fa-la-la-la-laaARGH! 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, the horrible secret of Bleeding Heart Yard and the ghost of Scratching Fanny on Cock Lane (to name but a few). This circular-ish 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 for Londonist and the author o...

7.45pm Thursday 27 October 2016 This event has sold out. We are very sorry and we hope to re-host it at a later date. The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page Learn all about the world of modern paranormal research and why things aren't always what it seems when it comes to things that go bump in the night. Do people really fake ghosts to get a new council house? Is belief in ghosts rising? What's the deal with all this ghost hunting technology? Learn all of this and more. Described as ' ... the Scully end of the Mulder-Scully X Files spectrum' by The Times, Hayley Stevens is a paranormal researcher who uses rational inquiry to investigate strange phenomena. She has been investigating ghost cases for over a decade - since her teens. Her writing can be found on her award-willing blog, Hayley Is A Ghost, as well as in Skeptical Inquirer, Skeptic Magazine , Paranormal Magazine and more...

£5 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Monday 24 October 2016 7.30pm Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page In 1786 Richard Payne Knight - collector, arbiter of taste, and gentleman scholar published "A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus" - the first book to propose that all mythology and religion (including Christianity) is derived from primitive fertility cults. In such cults, he asserted, the male and female genitalia symbolise procreative power, and the primal life force is worshipped through this seemingly obscene imagery. "Priapus" caused scandal in the eighteenth century, but cast an influence that is still with us today - from psychoanalysis to contemporary paganism.  (This is not Phil Hine.) In this talk, Phil Hine examines the life of Richard Payne Knight. the key themes of "A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus" and its republication in the nineteenth century as both er...

7.45pm Thursday 29 September 2016 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page "Professional troublemaker hassles psychics to unlock death's mysteries." The Death of Gregory Akerman sees the eponymous Gregory explore his obsession with death along with the importance of deadlines in his life. If Gregory can work out when he'll die, perhaps this information will spur him on to actually achieving something. Gregory enjoys learning, befriending fringe groups (Heaven's Gate [how?], the Swedenborg Society, Vatican etc) and having adventures. A professional trouble maker, Gregory wants to share his stories with you. 7.45pm Thursday 29 September 2016 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page

£5 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Wednesday 14 September 2016 7.30pm Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page Nicholas Hawksmoor (1662–1736) is considered one of Britain’s greatest architects. He was involved in the grandest architectural projects of his age and today is best known for his London churches – six idiosyncratic edifices of white Portland stone that remain standing today, proud and tall in the otherwise radically changed cityscape. After centuries of neglect Hawksmoor began to return to prominence during the 1960s and 1970s. At the same time, a mythology began to develop around him and his work. Iain Sinclair posited a magical "system of energies, or unit of connection, within the city," in Hawksmoor’s churches in Lud Heat (1975), while Peter Ackroyd popularised the association of Hawksmoor’s work with the occult in his novel Hawksmoor (1985). Latterly, psycho-geographers, Alan Moore and othe...

The naïve and the pedantic and the bizarre and the grotesque and the sincere and the insincere, the profound and the puerile. Charles Fort - The Book of the Damned   A gathering to celebrate the 142nd birthday of Charles Fort, the american writer who inspired the idea of being fortean. (Also the fifth birthday of the London Fortean Society but that's not so important.)   Beginning at 7pm on Wednesday 6 August outside 39A Marchmont Street London WC1N 1AP, Fort’s home in London, with a reading and toast (ale and cheese optional). This will be followed by a drink in his honour at the nearby Marquis Cornwallis on Marchmont Street, a Bloomsbury pub of grandiose proportions .   All forteans and friends welcome.     I am a collector of notes upon subjects that have diversity—such as deviations from concentricity in the lunar crater Copernicus, and a sudden appearance of purple Englishmen—stationary meteor-radiants, and a reported growth of hair on th...

£5 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Tuesday 26 July 2016 7.30pm Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn. Directions Facebook event page The end of life has never meant the extinction of hope. Throughout history people have yearned for, and often been terrified by, continuance beyond the horizon of mortality. In his unique new book, Philip C. Almond examines the history of ideas surrounding life after death. Ranging from the banks of the river Styx to the legendary Isles of the Blessed and from Dante’s Inferno to the fusion of Heavenly and Hellish worlds in the fantasy creations of twentieth century literature, this talk will provide an illuminating journey of the hereafter as imagined in literature, philosophy and religion throughout the centuries. Philip C. Almond is Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences (Research) and Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of European Discourses at The University of Queensla...

7.45pm Thursday 30 June 2016 £4 / £2 concessions Please pay on the door Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page In 1762 the ghost of a murder victim appeared to be haunting a little girl in Smithfield; Scratching Fanny of Cock Lane attracted mobs of curious onlookers outside the house, a visit from the heir to the throne, an investigation by Dr Johnson and finally a lawsuit. The Cock Lane ghost was the world’s first example of a media circus, and it arose from a spirit of anarchy and disruptiveness quite specific to this ancient area of London. Was the Cock Lane Ghost simply a pub joke that went wrong? Some new research may shed light on this famous ghost story. Roger Clarke's book A Natural History of Ghosts  has most recently been published in Spain. Japanese publication is this July, and the mass-market paperback in the USA over Halloween after a rave review in The New York Times. 7.45pm Thursday 30 June 2016 £4 / £2 concess...

7.45pm Thursday 23 June 2016 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page Historian Dr John Callow FRSA tells of alchemy in Middle Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries,and of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, a great patron of the arts and promoter of the occults arts and learning – the forerunner of modern science. 7.45pm Thursday 23 June 2016 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advance tickets ) he Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page

Sold out (sorry) Monday 13 June 2016 7.30pm Change of Venue:  The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook event page What is the London Stone, the dusty piece of stone in a derelict office block on Cannon Street? The remains of a Stone Circle? A druid alter stone? A Roman mile-stone?Part of a Ley Line? The Palladium of Troy?   John Clark, for many years curator of the medieval collections at the Museum of London and now ‘Curator Emeritus’, has long been interested in the interplay between history, archaeology and legend in the story of London, from the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth to the burial of Boadicea under King’s Cross station.  In this talk he investigates the ‘real’ story of London Stone, in Cannon Street, and the way in which myths have developed around it . Doors 7pm. A small cash bar will be available for alcoholic drinks on the night. Sold out (sorry) Monday 13 June 20...

7.45pm Thursday 26 May 2016 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a proliferation of advertised medicines and health devices - some harmless, some strange and some downright fraudulent.  Caroline Rance of the popular history of medicine website, The Quack Doctor , explores how patent medicine vendors attracted and retained customers, and how the medical establishment attempted to put a stop to their lucrative activities. 7.45pm Thursday 26 May 2016 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page

£5 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Wednesday 11 May 2016 7.30pm Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn / Directions . Facebook event page John Dee’s central lie about his life is still uncritically accepted: that under Queen Mary, like other Protestants, he had been persecuted. This talk will outline the true story, which shows how Dee’s angelic magic affected not only his own life but those of the most prominent Elizabethans who shared much of his ‘occult philosophy’. Professor Glyn Parry is the author of The Arch-Conjuror of England: John Dee (Yale University Press, 2011) £5 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Wednesday 11 May 2016 7.30pm Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn / Directions . Facebook event page

7.45pm Thursday 28 April 2016 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page   Hypnotism has fascinated people since the mid-1800s, when entertainers and medical professionals enthusiastically took up this Far Eastern practice. It inspires many questions, mostly of a personal nature such as: “Can I be hypnotised?” and “Will I lose control?” Christopher Green tackles the (relatively) reputable aspects of the subject - brain imaging, clinical trials and hypnotherapy - alongside the smoke and mirrors of stage hypnosis. He has uncovered intriguing stories about the larger-than-life characters that inhabit the world of hypnosis. From Professors of Mesmerism to Princes of Necromancy, this book explores the different guises of hypnotism as portrayed by pseudo-scientists and showmen alike. Christopher, who is trained in both hypnotherapy and stage hypnosis, examines ...

London Fortean Society in partnership with Conway Hall present Cathy Ross:  Designing Utopia: John Hargrave and the Kibbo Kift £5 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Wednesday 13 April 2016 7.30pm Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn / Directions.  Facebook event page Cathy Ross, Honorary Research Fellow at Museum of London, has collaborated on the first detailed account of the remarkable British writer and artist John Hargrave and his three creations The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, The Green Shirt Movement for Social Credit and The Social Credit Party of Great Britain. Combining art, politics and design to visually stunning effect, Hargarve and his followers created a maverick but uniquely English form of modernism. Emerging from the turbulence of the twentieth century, this colourful Utopian youth movement has strong resonances with the twenty-first-century world. Cathy Ross will discuss this fascinating organisation with us. £...

London Fortean Society in partnership with Conway Hall present Subterranea: Myths, Mysteries and Magic of the Underground World £8 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Saturday 9 April 2016 2.30-5.30pm Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn / Directions .  Facebook event page We are all lying in the gutter but some of us are gazing at the sewers.   Beneath our feet echoes another world of folklore, magic and the dead. Join the London Fortean Society for three talks on terra incognita : the world of tunnels, caves, caverns and underground labyrinths from English folklore to occult secrets to urban legends of the London Underground. Urban Legends of the London Underground: Scott Wood 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 o...

7.45pm Thursday 31st March 2016 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advanced tickets ) The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page This event has sold out. We are very sorry and we hope to re-host it at a later date. 

London Fortean Society in partnership with Conway Hall present Joe Mellen: Bore Hole: “ How I came to drill a hole in my head to get permanently high ” £5 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Monday 29 February 2016 7.30pm Change of Venue:  The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook event page Travelling to Morocco and Ibiza, then back to the first spring of swinging London, Joe Mellen  discovers the pleasures of hashish, is captivated by the visionary intensity of LSD and, after meeting the Dutch psychedelic guru Bart Huges, attempts the ultimate head trip, the bore hole. Strange Attractor press have released a heavily expanded edition of Joe Mellen’s auto-trepanation memoir: Bore Hole which takes us deep into the dawning of the UK’s psychedelic counter culture, and into a mind breaking free from the confines of a traditional English upbringing. Joe discusses this memoir with us t...

7.45pm Thursday 25 February 2016 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advanced tickets ) Please note new venue:  The Pipeline , 94 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EZ. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page This event has sold out, please come and see us at The Pipeline for returns.  The 500-year-old Voynich Manuscript is renowned as “the world’s most mysterious manuscript” and “the Everest of historical code-breaking”. Over 200 pages of unfathomable text, strange diagrams and numerous drawings of impossible plants and tiny naked women, some find it beguiling; others think it totally mad.  The harder we seek for explanations for its countless oddities it seems the less we know. Is it insanely brilliant, or brilliantly insane? The only category it truly fits is Charles Fort’s “Damned Data” – phenomena for which science cannot comfortably account.  A plethora of Voynich theories ranges across a reassuringly Fortean panorama from conspir...