And today one of the most interesting stories from the book has been previewed in an article by Jasper Copping published in The Sunday Telegraph.

A full account of RAF pilot Roland Hughes’s close encounter with a flying saucer high above West Germany in 1952 also appears in my series on Britain’s X-Files in the current issue of Fortean Times (FT 289, June 2012).

‘Saucer Sam’ – Sgt Roland Hughes stands beside his Vampire jet fighter with its UFO nose art (Copyright: Brian Hughes)

The Sunday Telegraph piece explains how I first discovered a reference to Hughes’s story in Lord Duncan Sandys’s papers held by the Churchill Archive at Cambridge three years ago.  Sandys’s interest in UFOs was mentioned in the first edition of my book, published in 2009. This was read by Brian Hughes whose father’s story of his sighting and subsequent meeting with a government minister had become a family legend.

Jasper Copping’s article continues from here:

Now news reaches me of two new studies to be published later this year and a  short documentary on Spring-heeled Jack posted on YouTube. The six minute documentary, directed by Michael Doyle, examines the urban mythology from which Jack emerged in Queen Victoria’s London of 1837-38 and nicely sets the scene for a feature length film on this enduring mystery.

October 2012 sees the publication of Karl Bell’s new book The Legend of Spring-heeled Jack: Victorian Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures (Boydell & Brewer, details here). Bell is a lecturer in history at the University of Portsmouth and author of The Magical Imagination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England, 1780-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2012), reviewed by Peter Rogerson of Magonia here. So we can expect a thoroughly researched academic study that ‘draws upon a rich variety of source material including folklorist accounts, street ballads, several series of “penny dreadful” stories, journals, magazines, newspapers, comics, theatrical posters, court accounts, autobiographies and published reminiscences.’

Autumn will also see the appearance of a long-awaited edited collection by author and expert Mike Dash, that contains the fruits of decades of research in newspaper archives. Containing almost half a million words, Spring-heeled Jack: sources and interpretation contains contributions from a range of authors, including two chapters of my own. My contributions cover the folklore of Jack and a detail account of his appearances in Victorian Sheffield in 1873-74, assembled from folk memory and primary sources.

I will post more news on these exciting projects in due course but for the moment I will leave you with the blurb for Mike’s book:

“….the first detailed, fully–referenced study of perhaps the strangest and most enduring of contemporary legends. Spring–heeled Jack — a leaping, fire–breathing bogeyman who terrorised Victorian Britain — emerged from a welter of wild rumour in January 1838 and has never quite gone away. This new study, edited by Mike Dash with contributions from an international line-up of scholars, is firmly based on a comprehensive survey of in excess of 200,000 words of primary source material. It includes brand–new research examining how the Spring–heeled Jack legend originated in the years 1804–1837 and how and why the nineteenth century media reported the story. The book discusses Jack’s impact on the popular culture of the Victorian era, and analyses the spread of his legend around the world, from pre-revolutionary Russia to modern Somalia via Newfoundland, New Zealand and Argentina.”

The idea that Friday 13^th is unlucky or a day to be dreaded, both in terms of being generally inauspicious in terms of luck and in terms of breakdowns, accidents or even death, is widespread in folklore. But coincidence plays a major part in this perception, with the ‘bad luck’ attributed to Friday 13^th arising from the prior assumption that the date carries evil in its wake.

Credit: howstuffworks.com

The British Library Newspaper Archive has published a handy round-up of stories on its blog that reveal the collective angst of the nation, from ships delaying their sailing time until one minute past midnight to deserted marriage and registry offices. There is even a word, triskaidekaphobia, to describe those who live in fear of the date.

One example concerns the notorious Stocksbridge bypass (A616) road, near my home in Sheffield, Yorkshire. Since opening on Friday, 13 May 1988 there have been many dozens of serious accidents on the road, a number of which have been fatal. Accident investigators have attributed these to careless and dangerous driving. This has not ended speculation that the road has a jinx, for the area already had a tradition of hauntings before the bypass was built (see my paper on ‘Road Ghosts’).

The idea of evil or supernatural associations with the date has been enhanced by newspaper stories and horror film genre which play upon the theme, such as Friday the 13^th (Sean Cunningham, 1980) and its sequels. The British Library traces this back further, noting: ‘it’s… interesting to see how popular culture tunes in to our superstitions, which brings us to the newspaper review of the early 1930s Hollywood horror-ish movie, ‘Friday the 13th’. With a thunderstorm raging all around, a group of bus passengers endure all manner of Friday the 13th-type of malarkey, before the film finally ends.’

But the idea of Friday 13^th being unlucky actually stems from quite a recent combination of two older superstitions: a fear of Friday that dates back to the Middle Ages, and a more recent dislike of the number 13. It is a surprising fact that the two ideas were not combined as one superstition in their own right until the beginning of the 20^th century.

Today it is claimed that the superstition is so widespread in hotels in the USA there is almost never a floor containing the number 13. On the other hand, in Italy 13 is considered lucky to the extent that a charm containing the number is given to infants to ensure good luck and prosperity.

Chaucer wrote “…on a Friday fell all this mischance.” This was possibly a reference to a Catholic tradition that Friday was a day for penance. By the 18^th century the belief had spread to the extent that many people felt Friday was an unlucky day to be born, to get married or to begin any business or journey. In more recent years, Friday is associated with road accidents or break-downs (hence the question ‘was it made on a Friday?’)

On the one hand Dickens in David Copperfield (chapter 1) says that children born at midnight on Friday are fated to be unlucky, and have the ability to see ghosts. On the other, dreams that were had on Friday night were to be trusted, as in the rhyme:

Friday’s dream on Saturday told

Is bound to come true, be it never so old.

In medieval England 13 was not seen as an unlucky number. In fact it was often associated with an extra item added to the customary dozen produce (‘the baker’s dozen.’)

However, by the 17^th century a belief arose that if thirteen people sat down to eat a meal together, one of them would die within the year. The source of this belief  is that, during the Last Supper, Judas Iscariot was the first to leave the table and committed suicide shortly afterwards. Other more recent explanations offered are that 13 has evil or pagan connotations because of there being 13 witches in a coven, or that the ‘death card’ is the 13^th Tarot trump.

Curiously, in games of chance such as bingo the number 13 is seen as ‘lucky for some.’

RAF Typhoon (credit: Sky News)

But the aerial bang that mystified dozens of people across a swathe of the English Midlands at 6.10 pm on 12 April was a sonic boom created by a Typhoon fighter that was scrambled in response to a false alarm.  The Ministry of Defence have confirmed the QRA aircraft was authorised to go supersonic after a civilian helicopter put out a distress call on ‘the wrong frequency’ by mistake. (Note: A detailed account of the incident has been added to the MoD website. This says an investigation is underway by the Department of Transport.)

The result was flood of calls to the police and fire services in Warwickshire, Somerset, Oxfordshire and the West Midlands. Some reported buildings shaking, windows rattling and a sound ‘like sitting on a hard shoulder and big lorry going past.’ Accounts from some of those who raised the alarm can be found on the BBC News website here.

Social media played a role in spreading rumours about the incident before the facts were confirmed by the MoD. Sky News reported that ‘theories abounded on Twitter, ranging from bomb blasts to giant earthquakes….’

Mystery booms and ‘phantom aircrashes’ are nothing new. They have become so common since the Cold War that they have become a new type of rumour legend. The BBC reported that in January this year, MoD confirmed that a loud noise heard by people in the north of England was caused by a RAF fighter jet breaking the sound barrier.

Back in March 1997 I reported on a classic incident of this kind whilst working for the Sheffield Star (see my webpage on ‘The Howden Moor incident’ here). On that occasion people in the west of the city, on the edge of the Peak District National Park, called 999 after seeing a low flying aircraft, followed by an enormous aerial explosion. Naturally they feared an aircraft had crashed into the Peakland hills. Police, fire services and mountain rescue teams scoured the Howden Moors for 18 hours and were joined by a RAF Sea King search and rescue helicopter, but found no trace of a crash. But the aerial explosions were so loud they were recorded by the British Geological Survey who confirmed they were most likely to have been caused by an aircraft breaking the sound barrier.

As today, rumours spread rapidly: were the RAF chasing UFOs over the Peak district? had a secret military aircraft crashed and been covered up? In fact, no aircraft crashed because the pilot responsible landed safely at a RAF airbase long before the police and mountain rescue teams even left their beds.

A year later I persuaded my MP Helen Jackson to ask questions in Parliament about the incident and she obtained an admission that RAF were involved in a low-flying exercise that night over the Peak. It was impossible, they said, to confirm they were responsible for the bang so long after the event, but the conclusion was obvious. I later obtained a copy of a report produced by the RAF police that confirmed my suspicions but cleverly avoided attaching blame to anyone (the cost of the pointless search and rescue operation to the taxpayer was estimated at £50,000).

Even today the story is regarded as a ‘unsolved mystery’ and frequently turns up in compendiums of UFO legends and local folklore (most recently in Jonathen Skew’s Sheffield: A Pocket Miscellany, 2011). But the truth has always been out there.

The Flying Dutchman (Credit: occultopedia.com)

“….Reports that a 150ft squid-fishing boat ripped from its moorings in the Japanese port of Hachinohe  by last year’s tsunami has been spotted drifting, rusty and abandoned, off the west coast of Canada – more than 4,700 miles away – saw news media around the world reach unhesitantly for the words ‘Mary Celeste’.

“In fact, the Flying Dutchman is the original ghost ship, doomed never to make port and sail the seas forever. But despite being celebrated in verse and prose since the 1700s, as well as inspiring a Wagner opera and the Pirates of the Caribbean, she was only ever  a legend.

“The brigantine Mary Celeste really was found abandoned, heading for the straight of Gibraltar in 1872. She was missing her crew but otherwise intact, carrying six months of supplies and still, remarkably, under sail. The last entry in the ship’s log was written 11 days prior to her discovery.

“More recently, in 2006, coastguards investigating the case of the schooner Bel Amica, discovered drifting off the coast of Sardinia, found half-eaten Egyptian meals, French maps of North African seas and a flag of Luxembourg – but not a living soul on board.

“And four years ago when the Taiwanese fishing boat Tai Ching 21 was found drifting near Kiribati, a search of 21,000 sq miles of the Pacific Ocean found no trace of its captain or 28-strong crew.”

One of the best known sightings of the legendary ‘Flying Dutchman’, referred to in Henley’s article, was made by a very credible witness: Prince George, who was later to become King George V, the grandfather of the present Queen.

King George V (credit: Wikipedia)

His experience occurred on 11 July 1881 when the prince was training alongside his brother as a young naval cadet on HMS Inconstant. The British fleet was in Hobson Bay off the south coast of Australia, en route from Melbourne to Sydney. Prince George recorded the incident in his personal diary or, in another version, in the ship’s log that Peter Haining, in his book Ghosts (1974) said ‘was preserved by the Admiralty in London.’   According to Haining’s version, the Prince recorded how at 4 A.M. that morning ‘….the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows…A strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the masts, spars and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief as she came up. The lookout man on the forecastle reported her as close to the port bow, where also the officer of the watch from the bridge clearly saw her… Thirteen persons altogether saw her. The Tourmaline and Cleopatra, who were sailing on our starboard bow, flashed to ask whether we had seen the strange red light… At 10.45 A.M. the ordinary seaman who had this morning reported the Flying Dutchman fell from the foretopmast crosstrees on to the topgallant forecastle and was smashed to atoms...’

I looked for confirmation of this story in the primary sources. The best contemporary evidence is provided by John Dalton’s The Cruise of Her Majesty’s Ship The Bacchante 1879-1882 (Macmillan & Co, 1886). This contains a passage that reads:

“July 11th (1881). — At 4 A.M. the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows. A strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the masts, spars, and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief as she came up on the port bow. The look-out man on the forecastle reported her as close on the port bow, where also the officer of the watch from the bridge clearly saw her, as did also the quarterdeck midshipman, who was sent forward at once to the forecastle ; but on arriving there no vestige nor any sign whatever of any material ship was to be seen either near or right away to the horizon, the night being clear and the sea calm. Thirteen persons altogether saw her, but whether it was Van Diemen or the Flying Dutchman or who else must remain unknown. The Tourmaline and Cleopatra, who were sailing on our starboard bow, flashed to ask whether we had seen the strange red light. At 6.15 A.M. observed land (Mount Diana) to the north-east. At 10.45 A.M. the ordinary seaman who had this morning reported the Flying Dutchman fell from the fore topmast crosstrees on to the topgallant forecastle and was smashed to atoms. At 4.15 P.M. after quarters we hove to with the headyards aback, and he was buried in the sea. He was a smart royal yardman, and one of the most promising young hands in the ship, and every one feels quite sad at his loss. (At the next port we came to the Admiral also was smitten down).’

So Dalton’s account appears to confirm the essential details in Haining’s story. Just to be absolutely sure, on a recent visit to The National Archives, I ordered up the original logbooks for HMS Bacchante and HMS Inconstant (ADM 53/11664). As I leafed through the dusty pages the tension that always precedes a discovery grew as I neared the section covering July 1881. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was no mention of the ‘Flying Dutchman’ under the relevant dates. But then my eye was attracted to a note scribbled in the margin  for the date 11 July 1881. It reads:

’10.45…Henry Youle, [ordinary seaman] 20 years, killed by a fall from the mast aloft. Buried at sea.’

Strange things do happen at sea, folks….

The 'Solway Spaceman' photo (Credit: Jim Templeton)

The photo depicts a strange white-suited ‘spaceman’ standing, or floating, at an odd angle behind his five-year-old daughter Elizabeth, who is posing with a bunch of flowers in the foreground. It was taken using an SLR camera loaded with Kodacolor film which was processed by Kodak. Despite numerous attempts to explain the photograph it continues to remain one of the most puzzling anomalous images ever taken. It was, apparently, examined by the CID branch at Carlisle police station and by RAF experts at the Air Ministry.

But new facts have recently come to light that put a new twist on Jim’s story about a subsequent visit from two mysterious ‘Men In Black’ who he believed had been sent by the British government.

In a letter published by the Daily Mail on 13 December 2002, Jim wrote: ‘The picture is certainly not a fake and I am as bemused as anyone else as to how this image appeared in the background. Over the four decades the photo has been in the public domain, I have had many thousands of letters from people all over the world with various ideas or possibilities – most of which made little sense to me.’

Read the full story of the Solway Spaceman mystery in a new Case Files page here, co-authored with Andy Roberts, that first appeared in the April 2012 edition of Fortean Times.

So it was inevitable that social media, now a major part of all our lives, would provide a new medium for contact with the other world.  Smartphones are rapidly replacing older technology as our means of communication with each other, so we should not be surprised to find stories in circulation about emails from the dead.

A BBC News Magazine story tells how soon after the death of a young man in Pennsylvania last summer, three of his friends began receiving emails from his account. Rather than providing proof of life after death, this narrative may tell us more about the needs of the living. It is certainly folklore in the making.

As reporter Matt Danzico observes:

“The messages referenced private conversations and personal details, but after an initial search, the friends have decided that it’s not important to identify the sender…while his loved ones understand that these emails aren’t really messages from the beyond, the brief notes still provide an unexpected connection with their late friend, and have helped with the grieving process.”

Still from footage showing the fireball (Credit: YouTube/Daily Mail)

Police forces reported being inundated with calls reporting sightings from a zone stretching from Peterborough to the north of Scotland.

Of interest was the interpretation initially placed on the sightings by some observers, who called police fearing that a plane had crashed.  Adam Hepworth, from Argyll, told the BBC he was leaving work when he saw a bright light moving across the sky.

“At first I thought it was a sky lantern but then I realised it couldn’t have been due to the speed that it was moving. I then thought perhaps it is a plane that had caught fire.”

Perceptive readers will recognise this description from accounts of numerous UFO ‘scares’, such as the Rendlesham incident and the Cosford sightings, which were sparked by fireballs and space junk respectively.  Last night’s fireball was visible for more than 30 seconds, which in the past has often people to believe they are seeing an aircraft in flames, a distress flare or, in other cases, a flying saucer.

The Doomsday prophecies surrounding 2012 also featured in the reactions of some who witnessed the meteor. The Guardian reported how the director of the Kielder Observatory, Gary Fildes, was with a group of 30-40 skygazers who were overcome with excitement and wanted to know if it was “going to end life on Earth”.

“We got an incredible view. It was phenomenal,” he said. “I was getting questions about what it is and is it going to end life on Earth? It was massively exciting.”

So far the ‘UFO’ interpretation has not been mentioned, possibly because the footage clearly depicts a classic fireball meteor. The fireball was also seen by a number of astronomers including Adrian West, of Meteorwatch, who believes it may have gone down in the English Channel or the Bay of Biscay.

The sheer number of witnesses is another likely indicator of the meteoric origin of the fireball. But in other cases the re-entry into earth’s atmosphere of space debris, such as rocket bodies and satellites, have led people to believe they were seeing UFOs. Possibly the best known example from the UK happened on New Year’s Eve 1978, as this extract from my book The UFO Files explains:

“….The night of 31 December 1978 was cold and clear, and across the British Isles people were out of doors bringing in the New Year. A few minutes after 7.00 pm many hundreds were amazed to see a bright light with a long trail behind it streaking across the heavens on a northwest to southeast path. In the space of just a couple of hours the MoD received a total of 120 separate sighting reports and civilian UFO groups received hundreds more. The source of this spectacular flap was quickly identified by the RAF’s early warning base at Fylingdales in North Yorkshire as the re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere of a booster rocket that had launched a Russian satellite, Cosmos 1068, into orbit on Boxing Day. The rocket burned up over northern Europe, with pieces falling to the ground in Germany.

“Although most observers gave a sound description of the New Year’s Eve UFO a few provided wildly inaccurate details, particularly of its size and altitude. Exact estimation of the height of an object in the dark sky is extremely difficult, if not impossible. For example, some observers believed the object was as low as 1,000 ft, when in reality it was many miles above the Earth. Others gave a time for their sighting that was one hour or more in error.

“Several described what they had seen in imaginative terms, for example ‘cigar-shaped, very bright, with lighted windows’ (Manchester), ‘similar to a German V-2 rocket’ (Bradford) and ‘train-shaped, 120 ft long tapering at the front with 40 plus bright lights all along the side’ (Newmarket). A few refused to believe the UFO was a Russian rocket at all. One, who served five years in the RAF, said he was familiar ‘with meteors and re-entry of space debris [and] found it difficult to accept the [MoD’s] explanation for this occurrence.’

The Sun, 29 February 2012 Credit: News International

The red-top tabloids are a rich source of modern folklore and urban legends – and today’s front page splash in The Sun is a case in point.

“Girl Eats 4,000 washing-up sponges” tells the bizarre story of dental nurse Kerry Trebilcock who suffers from a rare medical complaint that causes victims to crave objects that are not food. As a result, the 21-year-old has also chomped her way through 100 bars of soap. Evidently this was a slow news day at the Currant Bun, but this a story with legs as well as history.

A few days earlier the Scottish Sun, told of a pregnant woman who cannot stop herself swallowing copies of her local newspaper, The Dundee Evening Telegraph. She even keeps shredded pages of the daily in her handbag in case she feels the need to snack.

The tabloid obsession with people eating bizarre and unusual objects is nothing new. It’s a tabloid tradition that dates back to the days of Kelvin McKenzie’s editorship during the 1980s when the Sun was competing neck-to-neck with the Mirror for circulation. McKenzie was responsible for the legendary ‘Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster’ which became one of the classic tabloid headlines of all time.

A tabloid classic - 13 March 1986 (credit: Wikipedia)

The splash, published on 13 March 1986, claimed the comedian had swallowed the animal after a late night appearance at a Manchester nightclub. The story was a complete fabrication but did no harm to the entertainer’s career. Just for clarification, Starr wrote in his 2001 autobiography: “”I have never eaten or even nibbled a live hamster, gerbil, guinea pig, mouse, shrew, vole or any other small mammal.”

The silly season may have arrived early this year or this may be a sign of a change in tabloid news values. Given News International’s current legal problems we may be seeing a shift away from celebrity exposes and sleazy exlusives. Maybe we can expect a trip back in time to the news values of the 1980s when urban legends such as the ‘curse of the crying boy’ were the bread and butter of the biggest selling newspaper in the English speaking world?

On the night of Saturday 21 January residents in north Kent were startled by the sight and sound of low-level fighter jets streaking across the sky in pursuit of what appeared to be a UFO. A  couple from Gravesend posted an account of what they saw: ‘…a reddy orange shaped object (which was very low in the sky) and was an oval shape but quite large’ moving in ‘a tight abrupt circle before shooting off in such a fast fashion that the two jets that appeared were too late to catch up with it.’ Many others heard the boom and whoosh as the jets headed towards central London.

The flap prompted a FOI request (posted on What Do They Know?) that asked ‘whether the RAF [had] scrambled, investigated, chased or attempted to intercept unknown radar targets or visual sightings over the counties of Kent and Surrey.’

True to form the Ministry denied UFOs were the target and said the flap was actually caused by two Typhoons that were out at night practising landing at RAF Northolt where they will stationed as part of the military defence of the capital during the Games.

The ministry said the jets circled London and carried out ‘system checks’ over the Olympic stadium before returning to their base in Lincolnshire. But pixienix, posting on the Gravesend Messenger website, was unconvinced: ‘My brother works for the RAF on fighter jets and there is no reason why they would be performing training exercises for the olympics at that time of night,’ he wrote. ‘I’m not saying it was a UFO but it definetly  [sic] was not so called “training exercises”’.

Last summer the UFO industry predicted the aliens would use the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton to reveal their presence on Earth. After their April Fool’s Day exclusive The Sun published some unimpressive footage of a plastic bag caught in the wind over Big Ben as evidence for extraterrestrial interest in the Royal nuptials.

Here’s my prediction: expect more silly-season stories of this kind as the Olympics approaches and batten down the hatches in August when the discus-throwing begins….