Strange December Fair: UFOs, Ghosts, Mysteries and Black Magic

Presented by: London Fortean Society

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0	LONDON: Backyard Comedy Club
P	Saturday 1st December, 2018
N	12:00pm

Event information

Couldn't Christmas be stranger? Join London Fortean Society for an afternoon of talks, book sales, stalls pizza and beer to mark the darkening days before Christmas.

Full details to be confirmed. Speakers include:

Cathi Unsworth - Who Put Bella in the Witch Elm?
David Clarke - In the Eye of the Beholder: UFO Artwork
Susan Owens - The Appearance of Ghosts
John Cussans - Bond's Black Ops: Graham Green, Papa Doc and Loa OS 22
Christopher Josiffe - Rollo Ahmed & Eric Dingwall
Thomas Morris - The Case of the Exploding Teeth

Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?
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.

In the Eye of the Beholder: UFO Artwork

Dr David Clarke from Sheffield Hallam University's Centre for Contemporary Legend will talk about his book UFO Drawings at The National Archives. He will look at the myriad ways in which people have depicted strange phenomena in the sky, from the earliest times to the drawings, paintings and other artwork that was submitted to the former Ministry of Defence UFO desk that closed in 2009.

Dr. Susan Owens - The Appearance of Ghosts: shrouds, sheets or see-through?

The idea that the dead can return to haunt the living is deeply rooted in the British imagination, and ghosts are central to countless plays and paintings, stories and ballads, photographs and films. But why has the appearance and behaviour of ghosts in art and literature altered over time? When did they stop wearing shrouds and put on white sheets or become see-through? And what do these changes reveal about them – and us?

Dr. Susan Owens, former Curator of Paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum, is the author of The Ghost: A Cultural History (Tate Publishing, 2017).

Bond's Black Ops: Graham Green, Papa Doc and Loa OS 22

John Cussans, author of 'Undead Uprising: Haiti, Horror and the Zombie Complex' examines the story of Papa Doc, François Duvalier: President of Haiti from 1957 to 1971, emulated the Vodou loa of the dead Baron Samedi, a tale first promoted by Graham Greene that finds an uncanny precedent in Ian Flemming's 1954 novel Live and Let Die.

Thomas Morris - Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine
Writer and medical historian Thomas Morris reveals some of the strange cases from his book 'The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine'