JOHN KEEL, 1930 - 2009

We hear with great sadness that John Keel, probably the most important figure in the development of ufology and Forteanism in the 1970s and 1980s, died at a nursing home in New York on 3rd July.

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SOUTH SHIELDS: THE VIEW FROM THE MINEFIELD

In May, Peter Rogerson reviewed The South Shields Poltergeist, by Michael Hallowell and Darrel Ritson: read his review HERE. In this response Michael Hallowell takes issue with some of Peter’s comments.
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HOLD THE FRONT PAGE (AGAIN)!

Your genial bloghost hasn't quite managed to push MPs' expenses claims off the front page of the Daily Telegraph, but has managed to get quoted a second time by that paper. (The first time was a couple of weeks ago when I suggested Tesco managers could be 'waterboarded' using a tea-towel and a couple of bottles of diet cream-soda, but that's a different story).
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A GRAND DAY OUT!

I want to thank everyone who was responsible for the excellent ‘London Lore’ conference held on Saturday 25th at the Bishopsgate Institute in London. Brilliantly organised by Scott Wood, from the South East London Folklore Society (SELFS), it presented a packed schedule of talks on London lore and legend, rumour and ritual. I’m sorry that I neglected to promote the event here, but as the venue was packed, I doubt Magonia’s intervention would have made much of a difference.
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"OUR WORK HERE IS DONE..."

Well, that's it then. The last issue of Magonia, printed, posted, done and dusted. How do I feel about it? A strange sense of release perhaps, which may - or may not - at some point in the future morph into an aching void somewhere deep in my being. But not just yet.

I look at the cupboard next to my desk, with its piles of old Magonias, all carefully preserved for the expected rush of orders for back issues now that the magazine has gently faded away - or alternatively carefully packed to make it easier to take them over to the recycling centre - and wonder just what has been achieved by all the effort they represent.

Well, most obviously, and most importantly, many people with lots of valuable and interesting things to say have had the opportunity to put their ideas in print and present them to an interested group of readers. It's a source of pride that Magonia over the years has carried articles by most of the influential figures in ufology in this country, Europe and the USA. It's particularly gratifying that one or two of them became influential as a result of being published in Magonia.

I have to say that I find it amazing that a magazine which has never had a circulation of more than - how can I put this tactfully? - the low hundreds, became so influential in the field. Even now, 'Magonian' is used as a term of abuse on some American websites!

I've said before that the main reason I decided to close the magazine was because I felt that ufology was just recycling the same material again and again, and the thought of embarking on a second hundred with pretty much the same old stuff, was just too much. Although ufology has some first-rate historians - and here I namecheck Jerome Clark and David Clarke - the subject as a whole has very little sense of history. Each new generation of ufologists seems to have to re-discover the subject for itself, presenting as new ideas topics which were discussed ten, twenty, thirty years ago.

Of course, some things have changed very radically, one being the status of UFO magazines. When I look back at the very early, slowly fossilizing layers of the Magonia files, I find a few crumbling copies of the 'Merseyside UFO Research Group Bulletin', the near-legendary ur-Magonia, just a few pages of stencil duplicated foolscap. On the back page of one of them is a list of exchange magazines: Allen Greenfield's UFO Sighter; Probe, the Controversial Phenomena Magazine; CFSIB Newsletter; UFOLOG, from the Isle of Wight; René Fouéré's Phénomena Spatiaux; GESAG Bulletin from Belgium; the American magazines from APRO and NICAP, and dozens of magazines from small local groups around Britain. To say nothing of BUFORA Bulletin and Flying Saucer Review.

Obviously a great deal of what used to be in such publications now surfaces in cyberspace, so I shouldn't be too nostalgic about them, but it's depressing that over the past few years some people have lost considerable amounts of money launching overambitious news-stand publications. But this still demonstrates the lure of the 'proper' print magazine.

The UFO website and the blog now represent what one of my colleagues memorably described as the 'gutter-roots' of ufology. It is here where the first rough scrapings of reports and research appear. In a couple of pieces in Magonia Peter Rogerson has described the way that the raw story, with all its untidiness, craziness and internal contradiction, is smoothed and edited into the received narrative, which forms the framework of the paperback bestseller and the lecture circuit, and feeds back into the way the whole phenomenon is structured. Perhaps the internet is going to make this process more difficult in future, and the uncomfortable 'gutter-roots' will sneak into the mainstream. This process is well advanced in politics, as anyone who's been taking notice of events in the UK over the past few weeks will know.

The Internet has hastened (but not caused) the collapse of the structure of UFO groups and the UFO magazine, but has done nothing but good for serious UFO research. MUFOB and Magonia's aim, from its earliest days, was the destruction of the system of local and national groups. This has happened, and we acknowledge the kind assistance of Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

I conclude this piece with the last sentences from my last editorial notes in Magonia 99:

"... with the demise of the membership organisation, which must always pander to the lowest common denominator, [British ufology] has become what MUFOB/Magonia has been seeking for forty years: a group of individual researchers with expertise in a range of subject, who co-operate informally and voluntarily without the need of a bureaucratic 'National UFO Group'.

"Our work here is done!"

THE EGO HAS LANDED: FREUD AND THE UFOLOGISTS

For ufologists of a certain age the name Clement Freud means several things: grumpy doyen of radio and TV panel shows; grumpy Liberal MP for the Isle of Ely, grumpy celebrity chef and food critic, grumpy star of dog food adverts partnering an equally grumpy-looking dog, and grumpy newspaper journalist and columnist.
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stop abductions dot com

Does anyone know anything about this? Apparently the guy running it was annoyed because Nigel Watson didn't consult him when Nigel was writing his book on abductions. Is it kosher or a piss-take? http://www.stopabductions.com/

TWO COUNTRIES DIVIDED BY A COMMON LANGUAGE

There's a (not very) interesting little spat going on over at UFO UpDates, which I'm ashamed to say I started. A posting by the very vocal Alfred Lehmberg referred to the alleged UFO crash at 'Shag Harbor', in Nova Scotia. I pointed out that in fact the town, being in Canada, is correctly referred to as 'Shag Harbour' (no tittering at the back, there), the Canadians, like all members of the Commonwealth, know how to spell correctly (apart from the Australian Labor Party, of course).

For some reason this mild interjection roused Mr Lehmberg's ire (in fact almost anything I ever write on UpDates arouses Mr Lehmberg's ire), calling it a 'derisive commentary' and saying the spelling was taken from the cover of the major book about the case, Don Ledger and Chris Styles' 'Dark Object'

At this point Don Ledger himself steps up and tells us that: "It's Harbor on the front of the book because Anne Strieber - the editor - changed it because she said having the 'U' in there would confuse Americans - seriously, that's what she said."

He makes the point: "Doesn't matter how the word is spelled in the US, Shag Habour is a place name. They changed the name of the place where the incident happened. It would be like us adding an 'R' to Chicago and spelling it Chicargo because it's confusing to spell it the way it 'doesn't' sound."

This does seem to suggest that Anne Strieber holds a rather low opinion of the intelligence of the average American, or at the very least the American readers of UFO books.

AMAZIN' AMAZON!

Checking my Amazon customer's page I noticed they'd put in the suggestions a book called 'Sacrifice', by S. J Bolton. The synopsis read:

"Set on the remote Shetland Islands, Sacrifice begins with the discovery of a woman’s mutilated body. A gaping hole appears where her heart has been cut out; runic symbols have been carved into her flesh and her uterus has barely recovered from childbirth."

It didn't sound like my usual bedtime reading and I wondered why they'd suggested it. I clicked on "Why is this recommended for you?". Their answer: "Because you purchased... Delia's How to Cheat at Cooking".

Blimey. This throws a whole new light on the nation's favourite Norwich City fan!

For those who'd like to work out the link:

DEATH OF A CONTACTEE

One of the colourful characters of the early contactee era has recently died. UFO writer and blogger Greg Bishop reports:
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