London Fortean Society

7.45pm Wednesday 27 November 2019 £5 / £2 Concessions  Advanced tickets are not off sale - we will still have tickets on the door The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook Page Get on board the fortean buses (and tubes, trains and barges). Join writer and tour guide Chris Roberts for an exploration of strange tales from London transport featuring both new and more established stories of ghosts, odd phenomena, folklore and urban legends associated with different means of getting about, or to, the city. Everything from the Peckham Terminator via headless commuters to feral albino swine. “Transport for(tean) London,” you might say. Chris Roberts’ latest book Bus Travel in South London – stories from the city over the water will be available. 7.45pm Wednesday 27 November 2019 £5 / £2 Concessions  Advanced tickets are not off sale - we will still have tickets on the door The Bell , 50 Middle

Live streaming / video:  We are live streaming The Haunted Landscape (I didn't know we were going to do this!) https://youtu.be/lwzg-D0x6A0 The year  grows darker. The London Fortean Society and friends return to the Haunted Landscape, our one-day symposium on the folklore, magic and monsters of the British Isles and beyond. Authors and researchers discuss the undead, fairies, witchcraft, witches and their familiars and the magic of the common folk. £22 / £16 concessions plus booking fee ( Advance tickets ) Saturday 23 November 2019 10am - 5pm Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions and access Facebook event page Just added: Blanc Sceol - Roar 9 am onwards Registration (we're pretty sure there will be coffee on sale. If not at Conway Hall then in Red Lion Square and surrounds.) 10.10 am-10.50 am The Rites of Autumn - Doc Rowe 10.50 am-11 pm Break 11.00 am-11.30 am Hollow Places: The Dragon S

7.45 Tuesday 19 November 2019 £5 / £2 Concessions  Pre-booked tickets are now closed - please get tickets on the door tonight. Thank you. The Miller , 96 Snowsfields, London Bridge, London SE1 3SS Tube and Rail: London Bridge Facebook Page Speak to any British fortean, ghost hunter or folklorist of a certain age about the Usborne World of the Unknown: All About Ghosts children’s book and you will get a teary eye, vivid reminiscences and a very specific sense of nostalgia for this illustrated work. The London Fortean Society are excited, tiny spooky twelve-year-olds again to have author Christopher Maynard and publisher Anna Howorth, plus, hopefully, a guest of two, First published in 1977, this cult classic has been reissued for a new generation of ghost-hunters. This book is for anyone who has shivered at shadowy figures in the dark, heard strange sounds in the night, or felt the presence of a mysterious ‘something’ from the unknown. Ghost stories are as old as recorded

7.45pm Wednesday 30 October 2019 £4 / £2 Concessions  Advanced tickets are not closed but tickets are available on the door.   The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook Page In just two years, an elusive figure, posting cryptic messages, has gone from obscurity to being the most talked-about conspiracy theorist in the USA. Who and what is Q, or QAnon? A government insider telling truth to power? A figment of the fake news industry? A deluded alt-right apologist for Donald Trump? A clever hoax? Fortean Times Conspirasphere writer Noel Rooney takes us down the rabbit hole to try to get at the truth of this bizarre viral phenomenon. 7.45pm Wednesday 30 October 2019 £4 / £2 Concessions  Advanced tickets are not closed but tickets are available on the door. The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook Page

7.15pm Wednesday 11 September 2019 Sold out 7.15pm Wednesday 23 October 2019 £6 ( Advance tickets ) Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page This is the definitive history of how evil magic has survived into the present day from the largely rural world of Georgian Britain and the time of the British Empire to the multicultural present. In our age of technology and information, it is easy to imagine that black magic in Britain is dead. On the contrary, over recent centuries it has persisted, changed and returned. Spanning across the largely rural world of Georgian Britain and the time of the British Empire to the multicultural present, and drawing on an unprecedented range of sources, including, diaries, folklore reports and oral interviews, Thomas Waters explores the enduring power of ancient fears and desires. Through fascinating individual stories, he shows in his book how witchcraft is as diverse as modern Brita

7.45pm Wednesday 28 August 2019 Sold Out 7.45 Tuesday 15 October 2019 £5 / £2 Concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Miller, 96 Snowsfields, London Bridge, London SE1 3SS Tube and Rail: London Bridge Facebook Page Most 20th and 21st-century researchers who consider that poltergeist activity has a paranormal cause have attributed manifestations to instances of psychokinesis emanating from the minds of living people. Only a minority of researchers have thought that poltergeist activity is caused by ghosts or other entities. In three British poltergeist cases (the Battersea poltergeist 1956-68, the Enfield poltergeist 1977-79 and the South Shields poltergeist 2006) researchers were driven to the conclusion that external entities or forces were involved, capable of possessing the minds and bodies of the living.  Claims of possession in Western society have a long history and today are generally ascribed to psychiatric causes or the impact of wider societal beliefs. Alan Murdie ,

7.45pm Wednesday 25 September 2019 £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 Lee Jackson , author of Palaces of Pleasure , recounts the history of London’s 19th-century pleasure gardens, from the faltering last days of Vauxhall to Chelsea’s infamous Cremorne Gardens, Highbury Barn and the Eagle Tavern (of “Pop Goes the Weasel” fame). The rise and fall of the Victorian pleasure garden tells us a good deal about the growth of commercial mass entertainment in the industrial age. It’s a story packed with dramatic spectacle, from fake icebergs to burning men, tightrope walkers and human frogs, prostitution and the Polka, parachuting monkeys, and the power of money. 7.45pm Wednesday 25 September 2019 £4 / £2 Concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell,  50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgat

7.15pm Monday 9 September 2019 £6 ( Advance tickets ) Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page Veteran film curators William Fowler and Vic Pratt crack open the caskets of forgotten or neglected British films and telly to serve up a feast of curiosities to tempt the palate of even the most jaded cinephile. Their unflinching, all-embracing investigative gaze is as likely to reassess an established classic as it is to focus on cobweb-covered delights like pioneering 1930s female film director Mary Field’s beautifully bizarre The Mystery of Marriage , the much- maligned Doctor Who epic ‘The Trial of a Time Lord’, underground offerings like Anna Ambrose’s experimental art piece Phoelix and Andy Milligan’s bawdy bloodbath The Body Beneath . All is grist to this monstrous mill, as the authors tamper with outmoded video formats and meddle with magenta-bias safety film in their mission to finger-paint an entirely unexpected,

7.45pm Wednesday 31 July 2019 £4 / £2 Concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.  Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook Page no idea Join science-writer and BBC zoology correspondent Jules Howard , author of Sex on Earth and Death on Earth, in a whirlwind tour of nature’s finest and most spectacular genitalia. As well as taking in phenomenal phalluses such as those of dolphins, barnacles and bed-bugs, Jules will take us through some fascinating recent revolutions in female genitalia science, culminating in a 3D tour of a duck’s vagina.  Optional Virtual Reality headsets will be made available for brave attendees. 7.45pm Wednesday 31 July 2019 £4 / £2 Concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.  Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook Page

7.15pm Thursday 11 July 2019 This event is now sold out. Thank you to everyone who has booked, we shall endeavour to re-book Andy for a later date. Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page Andy Burnham presents a highly illustrated talk based around many of the themes, new discoveries and mysteries highlighted in the book The Old Stones, the most comprehensive and thought-provoking field guide ever published to the iconic standing stones and prehistoric places of Britain and Ireland. He will look at lesser known but interesting sites in the London and surrounding area. Andy is the lead author of The Old Stones book alongside contributors to the vast Megalithic Portal web resource which he founded in 2001. The Old Stones was awarded Current Archaeology Book of the Year 2019 and is the most comprehensive and thought-provoking field guide ever published to the iconic standing stones and prehistoric places of Britain and I

7.45pm Wednesday 26 June 2019 £4 / £2 Concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.  Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook Page Thousands of stories of miraculous healing at shrines survive from the middle ages. The most striking tales involve a sick person who was cured in a dream by a saint’s touch. Dreams were considered a space where dead holy figures could interact with the living: saints could manipulate the sleeper’s body, including performing invasive surgery.  Dr Bill MacLehose , historian of medieval medicine and religion at UCL, explores the different ways in which saints were thought to heal, purify or even punish people through dreams. What made sleep and dreams so important to healing rituals in mediaeval culture? And how important were sacred spaces, such as shrines and other pilgrimage sites, to these dream cures? 7.45pm Wednesday 26 June 2019 £4 / £2 Concessions ( Advance tickets ) The B

What do we see when we watch a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat or read a person’s mind? We are captivated by an illusion; we applaud the fact that we have been fooled. Why do we enjoy experiencing what seems clearly impossible, or at least beyond our powers of explanation?  7.15pm Monday 10 June 2019 £5 ( Advance tickets ) Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page In this talk Dr Gustav Kuhn examines the psychological processes that underpin our experience of magic. Kuhn, a psychologist and a magician, reveals the intriguing—and often unsettling—insights into the human mind that the scientific study of magic provides. Gustav will perform magic and then discuss how magician and magic creates a cognitive conflict between what we believe to be true (for example, a rabbit could not be in that hat) and what we experience (a rabbit has just come out of that hat!).  Drawing on the latest psychological, neurological, and p

7.45pm Wednesday 29 May 2019 £4 / £2 Concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.  Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook Page John Michell’s seminal works from the late 1960s allowed a whole generation to find a unique engagement with the English landscape. His books lyrically describe his rediscovery of leys, earth energies and traditional ways of thinking. He saw sites like stone circles and holy wells not only interconnected by a web of straight lines, but infused with an energy emanating from the earth.  London folklorist Rob Stephenson shows how Michell postulated a delightful piece of ancient technology that, through the study of ancient measure and other arcane subjects, could unlock a code that brings enlightenment. 7.45pm Wednesday 29 May 2019 £4 / £2 Concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell,  50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.  Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East

7.15pm Wednesday 22 May 2019 £6 This event has now sold out! Thank you to all who have booked. We shall endeavour to book Kirsty and Syd again!  Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions Facebook event page Harmful practices due to belief in witchcraft have seen a huge increase in the past six years both globally and in the UK and Kirsty Brimelow QC and author and campaigner Syd Moore have joined forces to expose this phenomenon. They will contextualise the current climate, Syd will present dark chapters of the grim past of Essex witch hunts that have inspired her writing. They will move on to witchcraft belief in the present and the techniques used to 'discover' witches in use today. Kirsty will talk about the contemporary landscape of witchcraft belief and abuse, the legal perspective on this and some of the cases she has been involved with. Raising awareness about these issues is something that both Kirsty and Syd are committed