London Fortean Society

£20 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Saturday 1 April 2017 10am – 5.30pm (Registration from 9.30am) Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions  Orion: The Man Who Would be King From hoax hip-hop stars and haunted houses to military deception, fake news, cancer myths and a joke that may have started World War III join the London Fortean Society and Conway Hall Ethical Society for an April Fools Day of hoaxing, deceit and unreal things. Some may be charming, others are terrifying. 1st April is the traditional day for hoaxing and japes but deception and deceit riddle everyday news and communication.   Fake News discussion with Padraig Reidy, James Ball and Peter Pomerantsev Ghostwatch: The scariest TV show ever made? Stephen Volk and Lesley Manning Orion: The Man Who Would Be King & The Great Hip Hop Hoax. Jeanie Finlay The Hoaxes of Crass. Penny Rimbaud Fake Cancer Cures and Anti-Vaccination Myths . Dr David Rober...

7.45pm Thursday 27 April 2017 This event has now sold out, sorry. All being well we shall run this event again in the autumn. The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page    Haunted Hotel Room by Chris Combe licensed for reuse   How does it feel to live in a ‘haunted home’? How do you negotiate living in a home which might be ‘co-habited’ by the strangest form of stranger?   Geographer Dr Caron Lipman decided to find out through a series of interviews with inhabitants of ‘haunted homes’ in England and Wales – all of whom had experienced some form of ‘uncanny’ event. Caron will offer some examples and insights from her case studies, describing how such experiences are interpreted, how far the experience of uncanny events challenges existing beliefs (or non-beliefs) in ghosts, and what these events reveal about the domestic interior.   7.45pm Thursday 27 April 2017 This ...

7.45pm Thursday 30 March 2017 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page Think that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light? That Darwin was the first to put forward a theory of evolution, or that Watson and Crick discovered DNA? Former scientist and editor-at-large of Londonist Matt Brown picks apart some of the best known 'facts' about science, drawing on his book Everything You Know About Science is Wrong . Find out why your kettle never boils at 100 degrees, how no astronaut has ever experienced zero gravity, and several reasons why you may not be who you think you are. 7.45pm Thursday 30 March 2017 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page

7.45pm Monday 27 February 2017 This event has now sold out. We are sorry if you did not get a ticket. The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page Without writing, indigenous elders memorised a vast amount of factual information on which survival depended both physically and culturally: knowledge of thousands of animals and plants, astronomical charts, vast navigation networks, genealogies, geography and geology … the list goes on and on. How did they remember so much? And why does this explain the purpose of ancient monuments including Stonehenge, Easter Island and the Nasca Lines? Can we use these memory methods in contemporary life? This talk will focus on the transmission of scientific and practical knowledge among small-scale oral cultures across the world, drawing on Australian Aboriginal, Native American, African and Pacific cultures. Dr Lynne Kelly, author of The Memory Code , will expl...

7.45pm Thursday 23 February 2017 £4 / £2 concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook page Knife-wielding clown chased terrified schoolgirl through south London park Trinity School pupils warned of possible 'killer clown' attacks at Michaelmas Fair 'TRY NOT TO GET STABBED' Chilling ‘killer clown’ threat to school pupils leads to kids being shut inside at lunchtime This clown may kill you, we're not sure. In October 2016 the UK was terrorised and fascinated by the Killer Clown craze. Fear of them not only dominated newspapers but crept in to the public consciousness with rumours and stories being shared on social media and in school playgrounds. Scott Wood, host of the London Fortean Society and author of London Urban Legends: The Corpse on the Tube attempts to dissect these clowns to see what they and their myths are made of. He will look at t...