1) The Zodiac Killer. It’s probably slightly unhinged and inappropriate to name a serial killer as one of my favourite mystery stories, but there’s no denying the public fascination with such individuals. For me, the Zodiac Killer case is the weirdest and most mystifying unsolved spate of murders in history, even putting the foggy lore of jack The Ripper in the shade. What makes the San Francisco slayings of the 1960s, and possibly beyond, even more bizarre was the fact that the killer wrote to the police regularly, in the form of mocking letters and cryptic codes. This went on for several years. No-one knows exactly how many people the Zodiac killed or who he was but it remains the most complex, sinister and baffling unsolved mystery. For more info go to www.zodiackiller.com
2) The ‘ghost’ of Blue Bell Hill. This ghost story comes from my neck of the woods in Kent and despite almost everything written on the internet and in books concerning the story is inaccurate, it’s the one ghost story that changed my life. This spectre is often called the ‘queen of the road ghosts’, and is said to loiter on what is probably Britain’s weirdest hill – Blue Bell Hill, between Maidstone and Rochester. It is a complex ghost story which I won’t go in to here, but more can be found out about it on http://www.roadghosts.com/ and my upcoming Haunted Maidstone book. All I’ll say is this – phantom hitchhikers are often nothing more than powerful legend, but this with this wraith there is far more than meets the eye.
3) Satanic panics. I’m often of the opinion that if one believes in something enough the more it starts to happen – see the next entry as a prime example. Over the last few decades, and similar to Oll Lewis’ ‘Pokemon panic’ mention, there are events which run out of control due to mass hysteria. From the threat of anthrax in the mail to alien abduction, Satanic panics sit nicely alongside such bizarre tales which through a snowball effect take on a life of their own, even though they are based around one or two alleged cases. A few years ago, and every few years, there are mass panics concerning the fear that Satanists are loitering in our towns – especially across the USA – abducting children and sacrificing them in their secret covens. Are these cases true or simply the overactive imaginations of church goers?
4) The Highgate ‘vampire’ – one of forteana’s strangest yet hyped mysteries. Rarely investigated adequately since the ‘60s when it allegedly happened, the ‘vampire’ of Highgate (a Gothic cemetery in London) was said to be a tall, dark malevolent apparition said to lurk behind the North gate of the Western cemetery. It was responsible for attacking people not only on a mental level but also physically – if you believe some reports. At the time the local press covered the story regularly, people were arrested for trespassing, allegedly desecrating graves, allegedly conducting dark rituals blah, blah, blah. Some say the ‘vampire’ was tracked down to an old building and staked/exorcised, others believe the ghoul still inhabits the ivy-strewn pathways. It’s a great story and my upcoming Mystery Animals Of…London book delves deeper…
5) Phantom assailants – these stories are great panics. Whether it’s Spring Heeled Jack, the Halifax Slasher, the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, Jack The Snipper, the Phantom Wall Smasher, the London Monster, Whipping Tom, the Monte Maiz Phantom, the Platform Maniac, etc, etc. These elusive, and often non-existent bogeymen prowl every dark alleyway of folklore and are keen to vandalise, abuse, snip, rip, jab, stab, slash, hack, whip and gas their way into the minds of those who fear them most. Forteana is riddled with such spooks, most of which have been created by mass hysteria and local press and yet the more we believe in such ghouls, the more we fear them.
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