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The League of Western Fortean Intermediatists presents...
August 2010
INTERESTING TIMES:
The Strange Case of Eric Frank Russell
“For centuries the Chinese used an ancient curse:
‘May you live in interesting times!’”
by Steve Dandois
We’ve all encountered that supposedly ancient aphorism and understood its implications: times of safety, of plenty and peace are inevitably dull. Interesting times are times of change, when old ways conflict with the new, when previously undefined territories get new borders drawn around them.
Interesting point: that ancient curse might not be so ancient.
Apparently the earliest citation comes from a 1950 science fiction story called “U-Turn” by one Duncan H. Munro -- a pen name of Eric Frank Russell. In fact, Russell may have coined it.
And with typical contrarian wit, he immediately reversed it.
“It isn’t a curse any more,” he wrote. “It’s a blessing.”
Curses and blessings; the factual and fictional. It’s as these crossroads of reversals where the enigmatic Mr. Russell seemed to be most comfortable working. 
Continue reading Steve’s article.
June 2010
Ambrose Bierce and Strange Disappearances
by Brad Steiger
I was honored when not long ago Bob Rickard at Fortean Times noted that “author Brad Steiger’s influence on forteana equals John Keel’s on ufology.” I have also been pleased with Skylaire’s mention of my being in the lineage of Charles Fort in a number of her articles. However, before I discovered Fort in the early 1960s, I had another hero of the weird, strange, and unknown --Ambrose Bierce.
In the San Francisco of 1876, Ambrose Bierce reigned as unchallenged literary king, the best known writer west of the Rockies. Some of the contemporaries who nourished their lights in Bierce’s shadow are much better known today. Bret Harte, Jack London, and Joaquin Miller not only rate larger space in the textbooks, but their works remain easily available. Of Bierce’s voluminous writings, only a collection of short stories, In the Midst of Life, and fragments of The Devil’s Dictionary are easily obtainable. But if Bierce’s literary endeavors have not stood the test of time as well as those of certain of his contemporaries, he still enjoys a last laugh, because the mystery of his strange disappearance is better known than the entire life histories of Harte, London, and Miller.
Continue reading Brad’s article.
May 2010
The Aliens Within
Why do humans create the aliens we create? A look at the evolution of aliens in popular culture, from an astrological standpoint.
by Anthony Douglas Perkins
This article is an introduction to a theory that I started researching and developing in 1997. It is about the presentation of aliens in popular film and television and how they appear to correspond to the astrological phenomenon of the movement of the planet Neptune through a particular astrological sign in the Western zodiac.
The aliens are “archetypes,” the kind that have been famously presented by people like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, in that they are products of a “mass unconscious” that expresses itself through art. The difference in this case is that my perspective adds the element of time, that is, that these particular things are not only created universally, but that these creations change, and that they vary, according to certain cycles of (what humans at least perceive as) time. In this case the cycles represented are the archetypes that are represented by the astrological signs in the Western zodiac.
Continue reading Anthony’s article.
April 2010
THE LIFE, WORK, AND INFLUENCE OF CHARLES FORT
by Skylaire Alfvegren
"Every science is a mutilated octopus. If its tentacles were not clipped to stumps, it would feel its way into disturbing contacts." -- Charles Fort
There is a man, largely undiscovered by the modern world, whom I, and many others, believe made one of the most significant contributions to the world of science. Had it not been that he vehemently opposed modern scientists and their methods, his work might be enjoying a greater popularity than it does. Had this man decided to write about completely different topics, he would be hailed as a fabulous literary character. Here was a peculiar fellow. Charles Fort devoted 26 years of his life to compiling documented reports of scientific anomalies from journals and newspapers from all around the world. He lived in dire poverty so that truth could prevail. His life’s work may one day be of great scientific worth, should the established scientific community ever muster the courage to approach it.
Continue reading Skylaire’s article.
February 2010
Contactees and the Absurdities of Ufology
By Nick Redfern
“You can write about anything you like, just as long as it has some kind of western US angle,” said Skylaire Alfvegren recently, when she invited me to pen a guest editorial for the League of Western Fortean Intermediatists. Well, given the nature of Skylaire’s invitation, it wasn’t difficult to come up with a subject-matter.
After all, as some of you may know, just a couple of months ago New Page Books published my most recent title: Contactees – A History of Alien-Human Interaction. And as just about anyone and everyone who has ever dared immerse themselves in the strange and twilight realm of all things of a long, blond-haired and space-brotherly nature will know, the West-Coast – and specifically California - is where most of the other-worldly action occurred.
Continue reading Nick’s article...
September 2009
Bigfoot in Texas?
by Craig Woolheater
co-founder and chairman of the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy
A common misconception among the general public is that the Bigfoot phenomenon is limited strictly to the Pacific Northwest. Many people think of Texas terrain as being nothing but prairies and deserts filled with “tumbling tumbleweeds” to quote the famous song.
However, in East Texas, which is where the majority of the reported sightings of Bigfoot occur in the state, there are approximately 12 million acres of forest land. There are four national forests and five state forests in Texas, all located in East Texas, the primary and most important forested area in Texas. The East Texas Pine Belt, or “Piney Woods” as it is commonly called, extends over forty-three counties and accounts for almost all of the state’s commercial timber.
Continue reading Craig’s article...
August 2009
Fortean Ufology: Long Live the Old Guard, Long Live the New Flesh
by Skylaire Alfvegren
The real UFO story must encompass all of the many manifestations being observed. It is a story of ghosts and phantoms and strange mental aberrations; of an invisible world that surrounds us and occasionally engulfs us; of prophets and prophecies, and gods and demons. It is a world of illusion and hallucination where the unreal seems very real, and where reality itself is disorted by strange forces which can seemingly manipulate space, time, and physical matter--forces that are almost entirely beyond our powers of comprehension. [...]
Continue reading Skylaire’s article...
June 2009
Adam Gorightly In The Land of Enchantment
by Adam Gorightly
At first glance, New Mexico seems nothing more than a second sister to the Longhorn State, as big oil rules in the southern reaches of The Land of Enchantment where many of the towns one encounters along the way resemble greatly those rural landscapes stretching for hundreds of miles across the plains of Texas and Oklahoma.
However, New Mexico is rich not only in oil, but arcane lore, with its fabled history of crashed saucers, atomic bomb blast sites and, some would suggest, Freemasonic conspiracies... [...]
Continue reading Adam’s article...
April 2009
ALIENS WILL BE ALIEN
by Mick Farren
I have always had reservations about grey aliens. Indeed, I have always found them a little too trite to be true. Okay, the egg-headed, abducting, little bastards are all over t-shirts, fridge magnets and The History Channel, but, for me, that doesn’t make them any more convincing. That alien visitors to our world should turn out to be upright, four limbed, bi-pedal entities, seems just too much of a coincidence, particularly as the current configuration of human beings was created by a very specific set of evolutionary circumstances. Was it possible that our first extra terrestrial contact would be with a species that – like us – had some small, grey ancestral quadruped who also stood up on its hind legs to look over what passed for long grass on a distant planet, under another star? [...]
Continue reading Mick’s article...
March 2009
Intermediatism Is Bliss...
Fortean Intermediatism and Indeterminacy
by Greg Bishop
“I can conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy, that is anything more than the proper thing to wear, for a while.”
-Charles Hoy Fort
When I first heard about the LOWFI project from Skylaire, I thought that the “I” stood for “indeterminist.” This was excellent news. FINALLY someone was going to enshrine the concept of indeterminacy in a formal organization.
When I found that the word was “intermediatist,” I must admit that I was stumped. Charles Miller’s article from Patrick Huyghe’s excellent Anomalist journal provides an answer: [...]
Continue reading Greg’s article...
February 2009
Government Files, Police Helicopters and Wind Turbines
The Incredible Story of Britain's Latest UFO Flap
By Nick Pope
Britain is in the middle of a UFO flap. Edward J. Ruppelt, one of the former heads of Project Blue Book (the United States Air Force's now defunct UFO investigation program) offered this definition of a flap in his book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects:
“In Air Force terminology a “flap” is a condition, or situation, or state of being of a group of people characterized by an advanced degree of confusion that has not quite yet reached panic proportions. It can be brought on by any number of things,” [...]
Continue reading Nick’s article...
