London Fortean Society

8pm (doors 7.30pm) Thursday 28 May 2015 £3 / £2 concessions. Advanced tickets available (10% admin fee) The Vaults Bar, Dirty Dicks , 202 Bishopsgate, City of London EC2M 4NR Bus / train / tube: Liverpool Street Facebook event page .  What’s the easiest way to tell species apart? Check their genitals. Researching private parts was long considered taboo, but scientists are now beginning to understand that the wild diversity of sex organs across species can tell us a lot about evolution.  Menno Schilthuize invites the audience to join him as he uncovers the ways the shapes and functions of genitalia have been molded by complex Darwinian struggles: penises that have lost their spines but evolved appendages to displace sperm; female orgasms that select or reject semen from males, in turn subtly modifying the females’ genital shape.  We learn why spiders masturbate into miniature webs, discover she-dungflies that store sperm from attractive m...

London Fortean Society in association with Conway Hall presents The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day David J Hand This event has now sold out.   Tuesday 19 May 2015 7.30pm Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn / Directions .  The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day   event Facebook page. Coincidences happen, incredibly unlikely things occur, and the apparently miraculous comes about. The improbability principle says that such extraordinarily improbable events are commonplace. It shows that this is not a contradiction, but that we should expect identical lottery numbers to come up more than once, lightning to strike twice, and financial crashes to occur. Professor David J. Hand is Senior Research Investigator and Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Imperial College, London. His applications interests include psychology, physics,...

The Derbyshire Mummified Fairy 8pm (doors 7.30pm) Thursday 30 April 2015 £3 / £2 concessions. Advanced tickets (10% booking fee) The Vaults Bar, Dirty Dicks , 202 Bishopsgate, City of London EC2M 4NR Bus / train / tube: Liverpool Street Facebook event page .  Up there with The Fiji Mermaid, the Area 51 Alien Autopsy film and The Cottingley Fairies, the Derbyshire Mummified Fairy is considered to be one of the greatest hoaxes of modern times. Still 'going viral' and stirring people's imaginations globally, the hoax creator Dan Baines gives a full account of what he did, why he did it and the strange repercussions that followed.  Those expecting a talk on the non-existence of fairies and how he fooled millions of believers think again. Dan's cautionary tale presents a modern account on what can happen when one unexpectedly opens a door to a long forgotten world and the secrets it can uncover. Each events begins with our fortmanteau of topical fortean sto...

8pm (doors 7.30pm) Thursday 26 March 2015 £3 / £2 concessions. Sold out! Please contact us for door tickets.   The Vaults Bar, Dirty Dicks , 202 Bishopsgate, City of London EC2M 4NR Bus / train / tube: Liverpool Street Join us for a night of shrines and magic in London with three expert City explorers and magical practitioners. Caroline Wise: The Lost Goddess of London In the City there was once a great goddess. She resurfaces at various times. Who is she? Why is she here? Where can we find her and what Fortean phenomena has she generated? Peter Watts: London's Secret Shrine Exploring London's secret shrines, from spoons to skateboards and how the city commemorates the dead. Peter Watts is a writer and London nerd who has written about architecture, beer, buses, drugs, music, tunnels, boats, zoos and pretty much everything else in between. John Constable: Goose and Crow at Crossbones Graveyard John Constable aka John Crow is the author of The Southwark Myste...

6.30pm Saturday 14 February: tickets off sale but still some places! Please come along.  £5 per person Meeting Bleeding Heart Yard , off Greville Street, EC1. Nearest rail: Farringdon Nearest tube: Farringdon & Chancery Lane. Forget St. Valentine and join London Urban Legends: The Corpse on the Tube author Scott Wood for a walk across London’s strangest and scariest sites. Join us for the heart-wrenchingly gory legends of Bleeding Heart Yard, the divorced statue, wife sales, husband bothering from beyond the grave, scratching fanny, phantom black dogs, cat-fighting ghosts, tacky love tokens, the rat love queen, a  magical duel with an undead baker and  the shrine of the prostitutes graveyard and more.  This 2 hour walk, hosted by the London Fortean Society and Haunt London begins in Bleeding Heart Yard EC1 and crosses the City to finish at Red Cross Way SE1. 7pm Friday 13 February- booking closed, still some places! Come this evening 6.30pm Saturday ...

We are repeating this event on Tuesday 19 May in partenrship with Conway Hall. Details and tickets are available from the following link:   The Improbability Principle 19 May 2015 . 8pm (doors 7.30pm) Thursday 26 February 2015 This event has now sold out. Sorry if you did not get a ticket. We will hopefully be booking it again this year. Please watch this space! The Vaults Bar, Dirty Dicks, 202 Bishopsgate, City of London EC2M 4NR Bus / train / tube: Liverpool Street Coincidences happen, incredibly unlikely things occur, and the apparently miraculous comes about. The improbability principle says that such extraordinarily improbable events are commonplace. It shows that this is not a contradiction, but that we should expect identical lottery numbers to come up more than once, lightning to strike twice, and financial crashes to occur. Professor David J. Hand is Senior Research Investigator and Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Imperial College, London. His applications...

We are repeating this event on Tuesday 30 June in partnership with Conway Hall. Details and tickets are available from the following link:   The Terror of London: Spring-heeled Jack and the Victorian Metropolitan Press .  8pm (doors 7.30pm) Thursday 29 January 2015 £3 / £2 concessions. This event has now sold out. Sorry if you did not get a ticket. We will hopefully be booking it again this year. Please watch this space! The Vaults Bar, Dirty Dicks, 202 Bishopsgate, City of London EC2M 4NR Bus / train / tube: Liverpool Street One of London's greatest monsters, Spring-heeled Jack has held the city's imagination in his claws since he first appeared as "a ghost, a bear, and a devil" right up to contemporary comics and internet radio dramas  featuring the leaping horror of legend . This talk explores Spring-heeled Jack’s appearances in and relationship to Victorian London. It considers his origins in the capital, and the way the metropolitan press gave life ...