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  • Luck, Shysters and Jack O’Lantern February 8, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Luck, Shysters and Jack O'Lantern

    As this year’s epiphany gift Beach put up the only two numbers of a Fortean magazine from the 1940s entitled New Frontiers: we couldn’t host this on the website because of an upload limit, and we had to trust some external site which proved unreliable. Thanks to our webmaster, Raoul, the magazine though has now […]

    Italy’s Weird Languages February 4, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite, Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
    Italy's Weird Languages

    Italy is chaotic not just in day-to-day but also in geographical terms. The Apennines that come down from the Alps dominate most of the country and separate out the peninsula into two hundred semi-independent shangrilas. The result is that Italy has always been doomed to social, cultural and linguistic division. Italian itself, the ‘dialect’ of […]

    Hitler’s Bizarre Sex Life? February 3, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Hitler's Bizarre Sex Life?

    Hitler’s sex life has spawned thousands of pages of discussion and speculation. Indeed, there are whole books given over to the subject, many chapters and countless paragraphs. Hell, there are even schools of thought: Hitler the copromaniac, Hitler the homosexual, Hitler the heterosexual… All compete to give an insight into Hitler’s anger and his surreal […]

    Mysterious Death on Iona, 1929 January 31, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Mysterious Death on Iona, 1929

    17 November 1929 a woman died in mysterious circumstances on the island of Iona in Scotland. She was named Marie Emily Fornario though she more normally went by the name Netta Fornario or simply Mac. Netta, as we’ll call her here, was involved in the occult movements of the day including the Alpha et Omega […]

    Review: Running with the Fairies January 28, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite, Contemporary
    Review: Running with the Fairies

    Scholarly fairy books are rare indeed: they average at about one every four years. Not many at all when you think that a score of volumes on Vietnam are published each month. This infrequency means that it is always extremely exciting when a new member of the fairy family shuffles onto the stage. So, with […]

    Wanted Balkan King! January 26, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Wanted Balkan King!

    A question. What modern European country asked a cricketer, the son of a Sultan, a German prince, a circus acrobat and a Gaelic-speaking Scot to be their monarch within ten short years? The answer is, of course, Albania. A tiny Adriatic power to the north of Greece, Albania has a history that you wouldn’t wish […]

    I’ve Been In This House Before… January 25, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
    I've Been In This House Before...

    There is a rare subsection of Forteana where a sensitive woman (at least in all the examples we know) visits a mystery house in dreams and then, after a long period of nightly wandering, finds herself, amazed, at the front door of her dream house on a random visit to the countryside: again the examples […]

    Wiccans and Fairy Shamans: Priority? January 23, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
    Wiccans and Fairy Shamans: Priority?

    In the last thirty years there have been growing numbers of men and women who have expressed a belief in fairies: for a minority of these communion with fairies has come to take on the outlines of a of religious system. We even read of ‘fairy shamanism’ and special ‘congresses’ where believers experiment with contact […]

    Forgotten Kingdom: The Bird-Shit Island January 20, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
    Forgotten Kingdom: The Bird-Shit Island

    Nauru is a small island (about eight square miles) half way between Hawaii and New Zealand made largely of bird droppings. If that does not sound particularly promising consider two further points. First, that its European discoverer named it Pleasant Island in 1798: it was once extraordinarily beautiful. And second that the bird droppings can […]

    Burning Libraries: Episode Four of the Lost Planet January 19, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Burning Libraries: Episode Four of the Lost Planet

    Dr Who, which began being aired in 1963, was Britain’s attempt to join the science fiction race. Though less famous than Star Trek, which it preceded by three years, a comparison tells you a lot about the differences between the two countries in the 1960s: the gung ho US and demoralised post-war Britain. Star Trek […]

    Image: Old New Meets New Old January 17, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Image: Old New Meets New Old

    ***Flu day*** Queen Elizabeth is fifty-seven years older than she was when the photograph above was taken (4 April 1955): Churchill, meanwhile, has been in the grave for forty seven years. However, this image has an energy that altogether belies its age. After all, here, in a single snap, are the two most important Britons […]

    Edwin Drood and Spirit Resolution January 16, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
    Edwin Drood and Spirit Resolution

    The Mystery of Edwin Drood is Dickens’ unfinished novel. Half way written when the author died in 1870, it has long offered an opportunity to pot boilers to finish off the novel for themselves – it is essentially a murder mystery – something many have tried, impossible as it is to judge Dickens’ plans for […]

    Into the Lion’s Mouth January 15, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
    Into the Lion's Mouth

    What do Lorenzo the Magnificent (obit 1492), Henry III of Navarre (obit 1610) and Rudolph Hess (obit 1987) have in common? Well, they were men, they were all born in Continental Europe and they also went defenceless to their enemies and somehow survived to tell the tale, hence the lion’s mouth of the title. First, […]

    The Loss of the Douglas C-54-D in 1950 January 11, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    The Loss of the Douglas C-54-D in 1950

    Scores of planes have permanently gone missing since the beginnings of aviation a century ago, but almost all of these have one thing in common. They were flying over deep water or they were close to deep water when they disappeared from the radar. It makes sense: it is very difficult for a large plane […]

    Irish-speaking Argentinean Indians!! January 8, 2013

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
    Irish-speaking Argentinean Indians!!

    One of the weaker proofs of Pre-Columbian contacts with Europe is the legend of the ‘white Indian’. Typically, a pioneer in the sixteenth or seventeenth or eighteenth or even the nineteenth century comes upon an Indian who by his appearance or his actions shows that he is really of European descent. Prior to today Beach […]