UFO enthusiasts on Twitter and Reddit are concerned that a vast conspiracy manipulates Wikipedia articles to make UFO enthusiasts look ridiculous. Across three episodes of The Good Trouble Show, host Matt Ford and independent researcher Rob Heatherly laid out the alleged cabal and supposed evidence. According to Heatherly, at or near the top are intelligence agencies. One step below is the nonprofit Center for Skeptical Inquiry and its fellows like science writer Mick West and Bill Nye (the science guy). It is unclear why, but the conspiracy imagines the CSI as CIA-funded. Finally, the CSI is ..read more

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 1, Issue 6, from 1987. This issue, as promised, we will explore the methods used by mediums to produce spirit manifestations. However, before we get down to the nuts and bolts of the various phenomena, I believe it is important to examine the mental set of the sitters and the setting they are in. This is the key to understanding how and why the generally crude methods of the medium pass muster in the séance room. First of all, the sitter is in a highly receptive and suggestive state. Their belief systems have them primed to see and experi ..read more

Mrs S was recently looking through the various media platforms we seem to be paying for, trying to find a Saturday night movie we could both enjoy. Getting past the regular sequels, remakes, and reboots, she came across a film on Amazon Prime that she reckoned would appeal very much to my skeptical sensibilities. The movie had the whimsical title of Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose. Official trailer for Nandor Fodor the Talking Mongoose on YouTube, thumbnail featuring Simon Pegg. The film starred the ever-funny Simon Pegg as the titular Nandor Fodor, a real 1930’s parapsychologist, and t ..read more

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 1, Issue 4, from 1987. As almost every newspaper reported, Doris Stokes died during the weekend of May 8/9 (coinciding (with no significance, we’re sure) with Mark Plummer’s visit to London. Psychic News caused a stir in a few places by running a large headline on the front page of their issue of May 9, “Doris Is On the Mend”. Since then , there have been numerous press articles: the Mirror ran a series, “Doris Stokes – Trick or Truth?”; the Lewisham & Catford Mercury reported that her adopted son Terry claimed to have received a mess ..read more

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 1, Issue 4, from 1987. According to information published by the Spanish newspaper El Pais on 14 June 1987, a committee of Spanish Air Force investigators has come to the conclusion that the two UFOs seen by thousands of people on the Canarian archipelago on the evening of 5 March 1979 were really two intercontinental missiles fired by a Soviet nuclear submarine from the Canary Islands to the Siberian desert. The firing took place 200 miles off the southwest of the archipelago, and from the first the Spanish Air Force suspected that the U ..read more

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 1, Issue 3, from 1987. In 1933 the world learned of the belief that ‘a fearsome-looking monster’ had ‘for generations’ inhabited Loch Ness. In fact nearly every Highland lake (sic) was believed to be inhabited by a ‘water kelpie’, an evil spirit which lured travellers to their death by drowning. But now the spirit was incarnated in what the local water bailiff likened to a plesiosaur! Furthermore it had been seen cruising at the surface making a huge wash. Surely this was the zoological find of the century, or any century? It is curious t ..read more

In August of 1955, a group of family and friends in a rural Kentucky farmhouse had a battle with what they believed to be aliens from a flying saucer (see part one for the full story). In the years since the harrowing events of that night, UFO enthusiasts have elevated the significance of this case far beyond its humble origins. The Kelly-Hopkinsville case has been featured on numerous UFO documentaries, highlighted in mystery shows, inspired fictional work such as the sci-film Critters, and been dramatically re-created in shows like Project Blue Book, and the goblins have even been immortalis ..read more

The story of the “Kentucky Goblins” has grown from a curious newspaper report into something much larger. In 2019 the independently produced paranormal investigation series Hellier begins with the idea that the creatures allegedly seen in Kelly, Kentucky in 1955 might still be here, using caves as a concealed network to travel throughout the state. In 2020 the TV series Project Blue Book used the case as the basis for episode four of their second season. The story has inspired creators of video games, movies, art, and of course hours and hours of podcasts. In the more than half-century since t ..read more

I always keep an eye on the news for any topical stories that I can include in public lectures to illustrate points I want to make. So you can imagine how delighted I was with the story of a cute little mouse in the Welsh market town of Builth Wells that had been videoed tidying up 75-year-old Rodney Holbrook’s workbench every night. Or maybe you can’t? It may not be immediately obvious what relevance this story has to my research interests but in fact it has relevance to two topics that fascinate me. You can read the full story from the BBC, who even provided a video of the “Welsh Tidy Mouse ..read more

While we can’t know what 2024 has in store, there’s one group for whom the new year isn’t a time for extended hangovers, dry January, or counting the pennies after a festive splurge: it’s time for psychics to predict the future. We’ve all heard of Nostradamus, whose predictions are wheeled out every year to fill space and attract eyeballs and clicks, alongside a slew of other psychics, tarot card readers, numerologists and astrologers, whose predictions tend to be more miss than hit at the end of the year, if only anyone was counting. Nostradamus isn’t the only long-dead soothsayer in town. Ma ..read more