UnCon 2002 was a huge success and here, to torment you with what you missed and to tantalise you into coming next year, is our own convention report, compiled by our man behind the scenes.
Charles Fort, a man who dedicated his life to amassing records of wonders, would still have been amazed, I think, both at the magazine which bears his name, and at the congregation of massed forteans who gathered at London's Commonwealth Institute to enjoy the Fortean Times UnConvention 2002. In the forecourt of the Institute, the Commonwealth flags, a strange reminder of Britain's imperial past, were at half-mast in respect of the death of a very old, extremely rich lady - the last British empress, described by one infamous grand conspiracy enthusiast as a wicked alien reptile, and Europe's Chief Toad. Behind the flags looms the Institute itself, an imposingly weird construction like a grounded Mothership. And so, my thoughts already turning to alien invasion scenarios and global conspiracy, it's through the vestibule, into the chambers of wonders.
After a two year hiatus, this year's promised "bigger and better" UnCon must have been the most eagerly awaited in the event's eight-year history. Editor Bob Rickard, arriving late and with very few minutes to go, managed to bilocate and open both simultaneous strands of talks on time, a paranormal feat of which he is justly proud. Auditorium 1 buzzed with anticipation, filled to capacity for celebrity guest, journalist and filmmaker, Jon Ronson, whose Channel 4 series Secret Rulers of the World, and book Them have brought global conspiracy extremism into mainstream consciousness.
With much charm and wit, Ronson gave us insight into his five year journey into the dark underbelly of paranoia and credulity, and the mixture of terror and hilarity he experienced therein. To my mind, one of his most laudable achievements lies in getting Bilderberg founder Lord Healey to tell him to "Fuck off" on camera, with minimum provocation. Sadly, Channel 4 showed unusual prudery in bleeping the offending word for broadcast despite Ronson's protestations.
Shadowed by Bilderberg security through Portugal, a panicked Ronson tried to explain himself to staff at the British Embassy: "I'm a humorous journalist out of my depth. I'm a bit like Louis Theroux" - adding for our benefit that he and Theroux are like "conjoined twins. In order for one of us to grow stronger, the other must die."
Questioned by audience members, Ronson admitted that he believes conspiracies do occur, but that the flow of money rules the world and cannot be controlled by individuals. He finds the chaos of the world frightening, but more appealing than the idea that those who think they are in control actually are in control. In the end, it's a question familiar to experienced forteans, one of semantics and perception: what many see as undemocratic and disturbing, and still others as an evil global conspiracy, Dennis Healey sees as simply "the way things are done" by the globalizing international capitalist elite in major Western "democracies". Political networking or global luciferic conspiracy? Whilst it's mooted that the Manhattan Project and sanctions against Argentina both had their genesis at Bohemian Grove, what excitable Americans see as a satanic ritual there, Ronson saw as a chillingly immature and weirdly misogynistic pantomime for holidaying CEOs and politicos. Governments and businesses do not operate democratically. In illustration of this, Ronson also revealed his own membership of an elite media cabal which fixes media contracts (and therefore the content of TV and radio) in the private interiors of Soho House and the Groucho Club.
"I could so easily become David Icke," concluded Ronson, who after his escapades assumed his car was bugged. "The irony is, my paranoia comes from being a Jew, some of their's from hating Jews."
After veteran UFOlogical heretic Jim Moseley's exposition of the scandalous background to American UFOlogy, came the second high profile speaker of the day. It's 46 years since the first publication of Colin Wilson's The Outsider, his seminal account of alienation which still resonates with relevance today. In the erudite company of Gary Lachman, Wilson (both above) gave us an illuminating account of his progress from working-class dreamer to celebrity author, via factory, chemistry lab, civil service, RAF, bohemianism and trampery. After a close encounter with a bottle of cyanide, Wilson realised outsiders need not be stuck with disillusionment and frustration. Via Graham Greene's experiments with Russian roulette, and Abraham Maslow's discovery of the Peak Experience route to happiness, Wilson discovered that he could induce said Peak Experiences by staring at a biro. Once the biro has occupied the whole of your attention and produced pain behind the eyes, continue the operation until you Peak. It's that simple, folks.
Before his biro epiphany, and on Aldous Huxley's recommendation, Wilson took mescaline. During the 24 hour trip, he experienced a peculiar sense of relaxation, a total connection, and psychism. "It was a feeling of total happiness and benevolence," said Wilson. "I loathed it." Wilson's final revelation was that he achieves a similar state by consuming radishes. Enquiries as to the particular variety have thus far proved fruitless.
Without the aid of radishes, Mike Jay cantered through the extraordinary life of 18th century tea merchant James Tilly Matthews. Usually consigned to a footnote in the annals of madness, Matthews' account of his persecution by a fiendish gang of invisible pneumatic chemists, as recorded by his Bedlam psychiatrist, is full of details of the kinds of mental tortures he endured: Lobster Cracking, Brain Lengthening, and Apoplexy Working with the Nutmeg Grater (to name but a few) effected remotely by an Air Loom fuelled by all manner of noxious gunk. Matthews' case is the first recorded example of the schizophreniform Influencing Machine delusion, a subject with much relevance in today's world of alleged mind control conspiracies. This is a rich seam of fortean material, and Jay's book on the subject is eagerly awaited.
Doug Skinner was aided by a ventriloquial talking frog in his exploration of his friendship with John Keel and that cluster of High Weirdness that is the Mothman Phenomenon. But things got decidedly weirder on the ventriloquial front with a typically hilarious and mind-expanding performance by Fort enthusiast Ken Campbell.
Quoting from Lo!, Campbell began with his customary invocation of our very own poet of the peculiar:
"A naked man in a city street - the track of a horse in volcanic mud - the mystery of reindeer's ears, a huge black form like a whale, in the sky, and it drips red drops as if attacked by celestial swordfishes - an appalling cherub appears in the sea -
"Confusions.
"Showers of frogs and blizzards of snails - gushes of periwinkles down from the sky - The preposterous, the grotesque, the incredible - and why, if I am going to tell of hundreds of these, is the quite ordinary so regarded?"
No stranger to the world of Pneumatic Chemistry himself, Campbell invited Judd Charlton, Mark Lockyer, Neil Edmonds, Josh Darcy and Davina Hemlall, all members of the Nina Plashwit Academy of Gastromancy and the Allied Arts, to suck rogue spirits into their stomachs via the loon-pipe and encourage them to talk. Campbell concluded by inviting experienced libidinist Mouse on stage to bare her bumboe, cakes, binkie and all, and demonstrate the much-fabled effluvial fountain, a well kept secret of seasoned exorcists. Mike Jay waited in the wings with a bucket to collect fuel for his reconstruction of the Matthews Air Loom. As Campbell drew aside his jacket from Mouse's rear like a gnomish toreador, there were gasps of mingled disbelief and incipient hysteria in the audience. Mouse bunched tight her bamsie strings and shot forth an arc of ectoplasmic effluvia, showering the Sci-Fi Channel TV crew, and one gentleman in the audience who, judging by his beatific expression, seemed to think his luck was in. The video of this will certainly be a fortean collector's item.
Day Two began with a brief tour of the stalls. ASSAP (Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena) were on hand to test punters' mental mettle in a series of ten paranormal experiments, from water divining to computerized Zener cards. Chairman Phil Walton (no relation to abductee Travis) tells me that some forteans again produced astonishingly negative psi effects by scoring less than chance would suggest: one Zener card guesser managed to score zero. Remote spoon-bending also proved impossible, although one attendee gave herself a fright by remotely moving a set of scales, and managing to make the glass dish on the scales crash into the glass case in which they were contained. Full results on the ASSAP website.
Elsewhere, the Libra Centre had set up a little shop of auras, and their photograph revealed the plethora of helpful sprites who dance in attendance about my head. Then on to a chat with Tarona, former telephonic psychic to Princess Diana, who gave me an excellent forecast for the year ahead - though I shall be steering clear of Parisian underpasses all the same. The best UnCon weirdness always happens near the bar: one stall holder encountered a punter who claimed to be half-alien, whilst another was alleged to have briefly shape-shifted.
My paranormal abilities fully charged, I managed to bilocate and attend both strands of talks. Whilst Doug Skinner (minus frog) demonstrated that scientists tend to disagree according to social patterns, attempt to find definitive answers via the pretence of scientific method, and themselves believe less than 20% of data contained in their own peer-reviewed journals, Lionel Fanthorpe speeded towards the triumphant conclusion that the World's most Fortean Object is the human brain - not just his own, but everyone's. The motorbiking reverend rounded things off with a vocal eulogy accompanied by the impressive presence of cryptozoologist Jon Downes.
Peter Brookesmith, scourge of the UFOlogically credulous, gave a masterful review of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction, revealing the Hills to be both highly hypnotizable and possibly inspired by an episode of the TV show Outer Limits. The origin of hypnotic treatments, opined Brookesmith, was in finding material to fill in mental lacunae in a meaningful and therapeutic way, not as attempts to discover the 'truth.'
The day's most anticipated talk was surely that of Graham Hancock (right), who arrived hot foot from India. Fuelled by his exasperation at the stolid conservatism of mainstream European archaeologists, and battling against a recalcitrant slide projector, Hancock gave us a compelling account of his latest attempts to discover the Lost Civilization which disappeared under the waves after the last ice age. This is truly cutting-edge stuff, transforming our ideas about the origins of human civilisation and demonstrating that mythological data should not be damned: it can lead to exciting discoveries.
Paul Devereux offered a typically level-headed account of our disappearing spectral landscape, whilst a stunningly vampish Gail-Nina Anderson explored the cultural evolution of the vampire mythos demonstrating the ways in which fiction (Dracula) impels us to distort and reinvent history (Vlad Tepes) in wish-fulfilling ways. Filip Coppens gave an over-view of the latest developments in the apparently interminable X-Files franchise, whilst Gary Lachman, somewhat the worse for an evening with Colin Wilson and several bottles of wine, delved into the occult roots of both classical and rock music as set-forth in his recent tome Turn Off Your Mind.
This year's UnCon ended with a panel of UFOlogists attempting to discuss the putative death of UFOlogy. At one point, until referee Mark Pilkington (still looking for his small coffin) intervened, it looked as though a punch-up might ensue between an increasingly beleaguered Colin Bennett and the rest of the panel. This disappointment was eclipsed by an emerging consensus - although there were expressions of disquiet that the panel was biased towards scepticism. The rest of the panel (r-l above: John Rimmer, Judith Jafaar, Jim Moseley, Andy Roberts, David Clarke, Paul Devereux and Peter Brookesmith) appeared to agree that the ETH has deprived people from exercising their intellects in a more meaningful way, that the phenomenon will endure even if we don't discover an alien toothbrush, that there have been no uncontaminated case since 1947, and that even if we called UFOlogy 'Elsie' it would still be hijacked by the mythologizing ETH lobby. Most tellingly, UFOlogy was seen as inseparable from the study of religion. Not dead, but smelling increasingly funny.
And so closed the fortean event of the year. If one criticism were to be levelled, it is that there's just too much to see and do, what with the demands of the body and the desire to network. My apologies to all those I didn't get to see this time. My ability to bilocate is temperamental- at one point I found myselves both in the bar and the green room, when I could have experienced Richard Freeman (Dragons of the Mekong Delta), Doc Shiels (HEADcase), Phil Walton (Paranormal Olympics), Jan Bondeson (Buried Alive!), Steve Jones (Hooded Entities), Colin Bennett (Scepticism as Mystique), Robin Simmons (Noah's Ark), Andy Roberts and David Clarke (UFOs and the MOD), Adam Davies (Sumatran Yeti) and all the other riches the weekend produced. But roll on UnCon 2003 and FT's 30th Anniversary, and see for yourself what a treasure trove the event has become.
Charles Fort, a man who dedicated his life to amassing records of wonders, would still have been amazed, I think, both at the magazine which bears his name, and at the congregation of massed forteans who gathered at London's Commonwealth Institute to enjoy the Fortean Times UnConvention 2002. In the forecourt of the Institute, the Commonwealth flags, a strange reminder of Britain's imperial past, were at half-mast in respect of the death of a very old, extremely rich lady - the last British empress, described by one infamous grand conspiracy enthusiast as a wicked alien reptile, and Europe's Chief Toad. Behind the flags looms the Institute itself, an imposingly weird construction like a grounded Mothership. And so, my thoughts already turning to alien invasion scenarios and global conspiracy, it's through the vestibule, into the chambers of wonders.
After a two year hiatus, this year's promised "bigger and better" UnCon must have been the most eagerly awaited in the event's eight-year history. Editor Bob Rickard, arriving late and with very few minutes to go, managed to bilocate and open both simultaneous strands of talks on time, a paranormal feat of which he is justly proud. Auditorium 1 buzzed with anticipation, filled to capacity for celebrity guest, journalist and filmmaker, Jon Ronson, whose Channel 4 series Secret Rulers of the World, and book Them have brought global conspiracy extremism into mainstream consciousness.
With much charm and wit, Ronson gave us insight into his five year journey into the dark underbelly of paranoia and credulity, and the mixture of terror and hilarity he experienced therein. To my mind, one of his most laudable achievements lies in getting Bilderberg founder Lord Healey to tell him to "Fuck off" on camera, with minimum provocation. Sadly, Channel 4 showed unusual prudery in bleeping the offending word for broadcast despite Ronson's protestations.
Shadowed by Bilderberg security through Portugal, a panicked Ronson tried to explain himself to staff at the British Embassy: "I'm a humorous journalist out of my depth. I'm a bit like Louis Theroux" - adding for our benefit that he and Theroux are like "conjoined twins. In order for one of us to grow stronger, the other must die."
Questioned by audience members, Ronson admitted that he believes conspiracies do occur, but that the flow of money rules the world and cannot be controlled by individuals. He finds the chaos of the world frightening, but more appealing than the idea that those who think they are in control actually are in control. In the end, it's a question familiar to experienced forteans, one of semantics and perception: what many see as undemocratic and disturbing, and still others as an evil global conspiracy, Dennis Healey sees as simply "the way things are done" by the globalizing international capitalist elite in major Western "democracies". Political networking or global luciferic conspiracy? Whilst it's mooted that the Manhattan Project and sanctions against Argentina both had their genesis at Bohemian Grove, what excitable Americans see as a satanic ritual there, Ronson saw as a chillingly immature and weirdly misogynistic pantomime for holidaying CEOs and politicos. Governments and businesses do not operate democratically. In illustration of this, Ronson also revealed his own membership of an elite media cabal which fixes media contracts (and therefore the content of TV and radio) in the private interiors of Soho House and the Groucho Club.
"I could so easily become David Icke," concluded Ronson, who after his escapades assumed his car was bugged. "The irony is, my paranoia comes from being a Jew, some of their's from hating Jews."
After veteran UFOlogical heretic Jim Moseley's exposition of the scandalous background to American UFOlogy, came the second high profile speaker of the day. It's 46 years since the first publication of Colin Wilson's The Outsider, his seminal account of alienation which still resonates with relevance today. In the erudite company of Gary Lachman, Wilson (both above) gave us an illuminating account of his progress from working-class dreamer to celebrity author, via factory, chemistry lab, civil service, RAF, bohemianism and trampery. After a close encounter with a bottle of cyanide, Wilson realised outsiders need not be stuck with disillusionment and frustration. Via Graham Greene's experiments with Russian roulette, and Abraham Maslow's discovery of the Peak Experience route to happiness, Wilson discovered that he could induce said Peak Experiences by staring at a biro. Once the biro has occupied the whole of your attention and produced pain behind the eyes, continue the operation until you Peak. It's that simple, folks.
Before his biro epiphany, and on Aldous Huxley's recommendation, Wilson took mescaline. During the 24 hour trip, he experienced a peculiar sense of relaxation, a total connection, and psychism. "It was a feeling of total happiness and benevolence," said Wilson. "I loathed it." Wilson's final revelation was that he achieves a similar state by consuming radishes. Enquiries as to the particular variety have thus far proved fruitless.
Without the aid of radishes, Mike Jay cantered through the extraordinary life of 18th century tea merchant James Tilly Matthews. Usually consigned to a footnote in the annals of madness, Matthews' account of his persecution by a fiendish gang of invisible pneumatic chemists, as recorded by his Bedlam psychiatrist, is full of details of the kinds of mental tortures he endured: Lobster Cracking, Brain Lengthening, and Apoplexy Working with the Nutmeg Grater (to name but a few) effected remotely by an Air Loom fuelled by all manner of noxious gunk. Matthews' case is the first recorded example of the schizophreniform Influencing Machine delusion, a subject with much relevance in today's world of alleged mind control conspiracies. This is a rich seam of fortean material, and Jay's book on the subject is eagerly awaited.
Doug Skinner was aided by a ventriloquial talking frog in his exploration of his friendship with John Keel and that cluster of High Weirdness that is the Mothman Phenomenon. But things got decidedly weirder on the ventriloquial front with a typically hilarious and mind-expanding performance by Fort enthusiast Ken Campbell.
Quoting from Lo!, Campbell began with his customary invocation of our very own poet of the peculiar:
"A naked man in a city street - the track of a horse in volcanic mud - the mystery of reindeer's ears, a huge black form like a whale, in the sky, and it drips red drops as if attacked by celestial swordfishes - an appalling cherub appears in the sea -
"Confusions.
"Showers of frogs and blizzards of snails - gushes of periwinkles down from the sky - The preposterous, the grotesque, the incredible - and why, if I am going to tell of hundreds of these, is the quite ordinary so regarded?"
No stranger to the world of Pneumatic Chemistry himself, Campbell invited Judd Charlton, Mark Lockyer, Neil Edmonds, Josh Darcy and Davina Hemlall, all members of the Nina Plashwit Academy of Gastromancy and the Allied Arts, to suck rogue spirits into their stomachs via the loon-pipe and encourage them to talk. Campbell concluded by inviting experienced libidinist Mouse on stage to bare her bumboe, cakes, binkie and all, and demonstrate the much-fabled effluvial fountain, a well kept secret of seasoned exorcists. Mike Jay waited in the wings with a bucket to collect fuel for his reconstruction of the Matthews Air Loom. As Campbell drew aside his jacket from Mouse's rear like a gnomish toreador, there were gasps of mingled disbelief and incipient hysteria in the audience. Mouse bunched tight her bamsie strings and shot forth an arc of ectoplasmic effluvia, showering the Sci-Fi Channel TV crew, and one gentleman in the audience who, judging by his beatific expression, seemed to think his luck was in. The video of this will certainly be a fortean collector's item.
Day Two began with a brief tour of the stalls. ASSAP (Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena) were on hand to test punters' mental mettle in a series of ten paranormal experiments, from water divining to computerized Zener cards. Chairman Phil Walton (no relation to abductee Travis) tells me that some forteans again produced astonishingly negative psi effects by scoring less than chance would suggest: one Zener card guesser managed to score zero. Remote spoon-bending also proved impossible, although one attendee gave herself a fright by remotely moving a set of scales, and managing to make the glass dish on the scales crash into the glass case in which they were contained. Full results on the ASSAP website.
Elsewhere, the Libra Centre had set up a little shop of auras, and their photograph revealed the plethora of helpful sprites who dance in attendance about my head. Then on to a chat with Tarona, former telephonic psychic to Princess Diana, who gave me an excellent forecast for the year ahead - though I shall be steering clear of Parisian underpasses all the same. The best UnCon weirdness always happens near the bar: one stall holder encountered a punter who claimed to be half-alien, whilst another was alleged to have briefly shape-shifted.
My paranormal abilities fully charged, I managed to bilocate and attend both strands of talks. Whilst Doug Skinner (minus frog) demonstrated that scientists tend to disagree according to social patterns, attempt to find definitive answers via the pretence of scientific method, and themselves believe less than 20% of data contained in their own peer-reviewed journals, Lionel Fanthorpe speeded towards the triumphant conclusion that the World's most Fortean Object is the human brain - not just his own, but everyone's. The motorbiking reverend rounded things off with a vocal eulogy accompanied by the impressive presence of cryptozoologist Jon Downes.
Peter Brookesmith, scourge of the UFOlogically credulous, gave a masterful review of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction, revealing the Hills to be both highly hypnotizable and possibly inspired by an episode of the TV show Outer Limits. The origin of hypnotic treatments, opined Brookesmith, was in finding material to fill in mental lacunae in a meaningful and therapeutic way, not as attempts to discover the 'truth.'
The day's most anticipated talk was surely that of Graham Hancock (right), who arrived hot foot from India. Fuelled by his exasperation at the stolid conservatism of mainstream European archaeologists, and battling against a recalcitrant slide projector, Hancock gave us a compelling account of his latest attempts to discover the Lost Civilization which disappeared under the waves after the last ice age. This is truly cutting-edge stuff, transforming our ideas about the origins of human civilisation and demonstrating that mythological data should not be damned: it can lead to exciting discoveries.
Paul Devereux offered a typically level-headed account of our disappearing spectral landscape, whilst a stunningly vampish Gail-Nina Anderson explored the cultural evolution of the vampire mythos demonstrating the ways in which fiction (Dracula) impels us to distort and reinvent history (Vlad Tepes) in wish-fulfilling ways. Filip Coppens gave an over-view of the latest developments in the apparently interminable X-Files franchise, whilst Gary Lachman, somewhat the worse for an evening with Colin Wilson and several bottles of wine, delved into the occult roots of both classical and rock music as set-forth in his recent tome Turn Off Your Mind.
This year's UnCon ended with a panel of UFOlogists attempting to discuss the putative death of UFOlogy. At one point, until referee Mark Pilkington (still looking for his small coffin) intervened, it looked as though a punch-up might ensue between an increasingly beleaguered Colin Bennett and the rest of the panel. This disappointment was eclipsed by an emerging consensus - although there were expressions of disquiet that the panel was biased towards scepticism. The rest of the panel (r-l above: John Rimmer, Judith Jafaar, Jim Moseley, Andy Roberts, David Clarke, Paul Devereux and Peter Brookesmith) appeared to agree that the ETH has deprived people from exercising their intellects in a more meaningful way, that the phenomenon will endure even if we don't discover an alien toothbrush, that there have been no uncontaminated case since 1947, and that even if we called UFOlogy 'Elsie' it would still be hijacked by the mythologizing ETH lobby. Most tellingly, UFOlogy was seen as inseparable from the study of religion. Not dead, but smelling increasingly funny.
And so closed the fortean event of the year. If one criticism were to be levelled, it is that there's just too much to see and do, what with the demands of the body and the desire to network. My apologies to all those I didn't get to see this time. My ability to bilocate is temperamental- at one point I found myselves both in the bar and the green room, when I could have experienced Richard Freeman (Dragons of the Mekong Delta), Doc Shiels (HEADcase), Phil Walton (Paranormal Olympics), Jan Bondeson (Buried Alive!), Steve Jones (Hooded Entities), Colin Bennett (Scepticism as Mystique), Robin Simmons (Noah's Ark), Andy Roberts and David Clarke (UFOs and the MOD), Adam Davies (Sumatran Yeti) and all the other riches the weekend produced. But roll on UnCon 2003 and FT's 30th Anniversary, and see for yourself what a treasure trove the event has become.
hans-wolfgang - am Freitag, 27. August 2004, 02:57
