London Fortean Society

Celebrate the ghosts and urban legends of the London Bridge, Borough and Bermondsey area as the London Fortean Society arrives for a series of talks at The Miller pub.  The Wheatsheaf on flickr by Dun.Can Tuesday 4 September 2018 8pm (doors 7.45pm) £5 / £2 concessions ( advance tickets ) The Miller , 96 Snowsfields, London Bridge, London SE1 3SS Tube & Rail: London Bridge Tube: Borough Event Facebook page Travis Elborough - London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing  In 1968 the world’s largest antique went to America. But how do you transport a 130-year-old bridge 3,000 miles? And why did Robert P. McCulloch, a multimillionaire oil baron and chainsaw-manufacturing king, buy it? Why did he ship it to a waterless patch of the Arizonan desert? Did he even get the right bridge?  Join author Travis Elborough for the story of the man who bought London Bridge.  Ghosts of South London.  Poltergeists, shapeshifters...

O'Donnell 7.45pm Thursday 30 August 2018 This event has completely sold out! We're really sorry if you did not get a ticket and we shall attempt to run this popular talk again.  The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.  Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East In 1934 Elliott O'Donnell, the world-famed prince of ghost hunters published Strange Cults and Secret Societies of Modern London. It tells strange stories behind many covert organisations including the Thirteen society, the Black Brothers, Chinese secret societies and black magic, the Mafia, the Tree cults, the Suicide Society, the Cult of Cruelty, The Goats and Sophienism.  Fr Alan Walker revisits O’Donnell’s classic book in the light of modern thinking about religious cults, moral panics and enthusiasm for the esoteric. Is his work fiction masquerading as fact, or should it be read more critically as a picture of contemporary fears and social experiments? 7.45pm Thursday ...

7.45pm Thursday 26 July 2018 £4 / £2 concessions We've taken the tickets off sale so we can print the guest list but we also have tickets on the door. We hope to see you later.   The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.  Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East The world of fungi is a world of the weird and wonderful. From microscopic organisms to the largest living thing ever, the fungal kingdom has it all. Folklore beyond belief – bizarre tales of the devil, poisonings, witchcraft, enchantment and Santa Claus – is only matched by reality.  Author, frequent contributor to Fortean Times and founder of the our older cousin  Edinburgh Fortean Society , Gordon Rutter reveals some of the ways in which the world of the fortean has been enriched by fungi. 7.45pm Thursday 26 July 2018 £4 / £2 concessions  We've taken the tickets off sale so we can print the guest list but we also have tickets on the door. We hope to see you ...

7.15pm Thursday 19 July 2018 £5 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page Awesome portrait of Cathi Unsworh by Etienne Gilfillan Cathi Unsworth is the author of six pop-cultural crime novels based on real-life unsolved or controversial cases. Her latest, 'That Old Black Magic' (Serpent’s Tail), interweaves the true stories of the Hagley Woods mystery of 1943 and the trial of Helen Duncan, the last woman to be prosecuted for witchcraft in the UK, in 1944. Real life characters mingle with the imagined in a secret history of spiritualists, stage magicians and spooks of all persuasions under the blackout of Britain’s bleakest hours. 7.15pm Thursday 19 July 2018 £5 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page

7.45pm Thursday 28 June 2018 We're really sorry, this event has been cancelled. We shall endevour to host this talk again later this year. Sorry again.   The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.  Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Crowd Of Faces by Dawn Hudson (Public Domain) The use of police super-recognisers in London has vastly increased suspect identification rates from CCTV in recent years. They perform exceptionally highly at familiar and unfamiliar face recognition, simultaneous face matching and spotting target faces in videos of large crowds. Non-police super-recognisers are also superior to most people at long-term face recognition, even when faces are heavily disguised.  Psychologist Dr Josh P Davis of the University of Greenwich explores his research on these very rare individuals and his work with the police and courts 7.45pm Thursday 28 June 2018 £4 / £2  We're really sorry, this event has been cancell...

7.15pm Tuesday 26 June 2018 £5 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page Did positive thinking and mental science help put Donald Trump in the White House? And are there any other hidden powers of the mind and thought at work in today's world politics? In Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump , historian and cultural critic Gary Lachman takes a close look at the various magical and esoteric ideas that are impacting political events across the globe. From New Thought and Chaos Magick to the far-right esotericism of Julius Evola and the Traditionalists, Lachman follows a trail of mystic clues that involve, among others, Norman Vincent Peale, domineering gurus and demagogues, Ayn Rand, Pepe the Frog, Rene Schwaller de Lubicz, synarchy, the Alt-Right, meme magic, and Vladimir Putin and his postmodern Rasputin. Come take a drop down the rabbit hole of occult politic...