London Fortean Society

£5 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Tuesday 6 June 2017 7.30pm Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page On the eve of his 165th birthday (“I was born June 7th 1852, near Delhi, India…”), the London Fortean Society present for your delectation the strange story of Gef the Talking Mongoose. In the early 1930s and for several years thereafter, an isolated farm in the rural south west of the Isle of Man became the focus of international media attention. Psychic investigators, spiritualists, psychoanalysts and reporters were all drawn to the lonely farm of Doarlish Cashen, whose inhabitants, the Irving family, steadfastly maintained that they were being ‘haunted’ by a super-intelligent weasel or mongoose by the name of Gef. This mysterious entity was allegedly able to speak English and other languages, sing popular songs and hymns of the period, and would engage the family in nightly conversations about religion, the superna

7.45pm Thursday 25 May 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 Our short talks on fortean London returns with speakers discussing the ghosts and legends of Camlet Moat and the Crouch End Spriggan. Camlet Moat: Ghosts, Legends and Witchcraft  Camlet Moat Enfield (Wikicommons) Nobody knows much about Camlet Moat in Trent Park, Enfield. Little wonder then that it should have become the focus of legends, ghost stories and modern-day witchcraft. My talk will take us on a journey from fact to fiction and folklore. Jason Hollis is the author of Haunted Enfield (History Press 2013) and is currently writing a follow-up book concerning ghosts and haunted places within the London Borough of Barnet. The Crouch End Spriggan A trip down an abandoned rail line brings us face to face with a strange creature emerging from the brickwork of an old station ar

£5 plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Tuesday 16 May 2017 (Please note the new date!) 7.30pm Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page Image by John Clark One summer in the 12th century harvesters in the fields of the Suffolk village of Woolpit were amazed when two children suddenly appeared, as if out of the ground. Their skin was green, and they spoke an unintelligible language. Later, when they had learnt enough English to communicate, they said they came from a land called St Martin’s Land, where the sun never shone. The ‘Green Children of Woolpit’ have inspired short stories, novels, plays, poems, pop songs, a teaching resource in drama on the theme of ‘Community cohesion and the prevention of violent extremism’, and an opera. They have been identified as fairy-folk, as extraterrestrials, as strays from a family of Flemish weavers, or as descendants of humans once abducted by aliens, returned to earth via a matter t