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Nine days ago, a monkey was elected mayor of Hartlepool. Stuart Drummond, who campaigned in the costume of H'Angus the Monkey - the mascot of Hartlepool Football Club - won […]

Ricardo Yan, 27, a Filipino actor who played romantic heroes, died in his sleep on March 29, sparking fears that he had been struck down by the 'Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal […]

Last Sunday, Fred Moore, Britain's oldest man, died in New Milton, Hampshire. Mr Moore, who served as an electrician with the Royal Engineers in the First World War, improving Britain's […]

Nearly 70 years ago, a boy called Geoff Reece walked up Porlock Hill in Somerset with his fellow Boy Scouts and saw a group of Exmoor ponies standing in a […]

Lars Vilks is a controversial Swedish artist noted for his sculptures on the seashore of a nature sanctuary at Kullaberg, in the north-west part of the province of Skene. One […]

While hunting for some elusive news-clipping in the Fortean archives recently, I unearthed the following story from the Ivoir Soir newspaper, dated September 20, 1994. Abobo, a town on the […]

For many years, the Canadian stage magician James Randi has offered a cash prize - recently increased to a million dollars - to anyone who could, in a test agreed […]

Reports in the Philippine press have announced the discovery of human skulls with a single eye socket. These finds, in limestone caves in the country's southern islands, lend support to […]

This year there has been a rash of sightings of unidentified flying objects in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia, and Chile, amounting to what investigators call a UFO flap. As often […]

A feral child has been caught in the Brasov region of Romania after villagers noticed him eating from the carcass of a dead dog. The naked boy is thought to […]

Since a human skull was found near the Tri-State Crematory in Georgia nine days ago, scores of bodies have been discovered in the surrounding countryside, where they have been accumulating […]

A ginger tom cat called Garfield returned to his home in Waddington, Lincolnshire, at the end of November, and settled back in with no more fuss than if he had […]

Correspondents occasionally send me news items clipped from old newspapers, usually brittle and yellowing, which have been found stuffed round a window frame, behind a picture or under the floorboards. […]

While acres of newsprint have been devoted to crop circles over the past 20 years, ice discs (which some 'croppies' regard as their winter equivalent) go virtually unremarked. These are [...]

The Kyivo-Pecherska Lavra (Kiev Cave Monastery) is one of the main places of pilgrimage for the Orthodox faithful in the Ukraine. In open coffins can be seen the bodies of […]

An adult Eastern White Pelican has been 'admitted' to the RSPCA's Norfolk Wildlife Hospital after flying into power lines at Saham, near Watton. A dog walker found the pelican, which […]

A flying manhole cover propelled by a methane gas explosion in Monterrey, Mexico, last month tossed a young man 25 feet into the air. He hit live electric wires before [...]

On Hallowe'en last year, Kathy Nguyen, 61, a Vietnamese immigrant who worked in a Manhattan hospital, died of inhalation anthrax, the fourth fatality in a month of bioterrorism attacks. Unlike […]

CHARMED INFANTS The first year of the new millennium witnessed several especially memorable strange phenomena. There were two miraculous deliverances, perhaps heralding heroic lives. In April, an 18-month-old child survived [...]

In 1988, one of Tokyo's largest department stores had a large effigy of Father Christmas made with conscientious attention to detail. According to reports at the time, the staff were […]

The traditional pre-Christmas swine slaughter in the Hungarian village of Darvaspuszta turned to tragedy on November 24 when an unnamed Croat was electrocuted attempting to knock out a pig with […]

Edwin E. Robinson, 83, died last May at a Pennsylvania nursing home after a long illness. And, since he was the subject of a miraculous cure 20 years ago, I […]

The world of UFO investigation, not often easily shocked, was unsettled earlier this month at news of the end met by William Milton Cooper, one of America's most notorious conspiracy […]

It was midnight on Halloween when Ramiro Parra Gonzalez, a farmer outside the city of Bocoyna in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, heard the howling of dogs that usually sleep […]

Three British amateur explorers on the Indonesian island of Sumatra may have found evidence of the man-beast known as orang pendek ('little man'). Andrew Sanderson, Adam Davies and Keith Towley […]

Thirty years ago, when I first heard the term for Chinese geomancy - 'feng shui', or wind and water - there seemed to be only one book in English available […]

Dave Overton might have been the most eccentric man in Austin, Texas. He slept on a bare mattress on his living room floor in West 30th Street, his head nesting […]

On September 29, a cat was found alive after 18 days in a loft in Liberty Street, Manhattan, which was all but destroyed when the World Trade Centre collapsed on […]

A COUPLE of weeks ago, 72-year-old Salomon Vides was found by local farmers in the Honduran jungle where he had been hiding for 32 years. In 1969, he was working […]

Eight mysterious cow killings have been reported in Montana since June 12, the most recent on August 31. In each case, part of the cow's face, called the mask, was [...]

This year has seen several news items about men meeting their own wives in disconcerting erotic situations. Folklorists would no doubt see these reports as variations on an urban legend; […]

An Australian cult with the peculiar name of Infinity - Forms of Yellow Remember is under investigation by consumer watchdogs for selling 50ml bottles of apparently ordinary water for A$80 […]

There have been some stunning examples of improbable coincidences reported this year. Since such occurrences are impossible to disentangle from the great web of cause and effect, there is really […]

Anecdotes by Prof Joseph J Ellis about his days in Vietnam as a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division added spice to his lectures on Vietnam and American Culture [...]

When I read earlier this month that the wreck of the Mary Celeste, the sailing ship at the centre of the world's most famous marine mystery, had been found off […]

Some time in June, Jess East, 46, of Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, who has been a taxi driver for about six years, picked up a young girl at a lay-by near Keadby […]

ON Saturday, June 16, about 25 people reported seeing a 2ft alligator lurking in the waters and shoreline reeds of Harlem Meer, a lake in the north-east corner of Central [...]

A woman from Chongqing in China had her suspicions about her husband's infidelity confirmed by their mynah bird, according to the Xinmin Evening News last month. After the woman returned […]

A few days ago, a woman saw a baby owl fall from a tree in her garden in Reading, Berkshire. She covered the bird with a washing-up bowl so that [...]

Eric Wilkinson and his brother, John, were playing their usual weekly game of golf last May and had reached the 148-yard eighth hole at Ravensworth Golf Club in Wrekenton, Tyne [...]

Sightings of Scotland's favourite monster continue as usual despite the recent suggestion of Dr Luigi Piccardi, an Italian seismologist, that Nessie was a by-product of seismic activity in the Great […]

People vanish every day, but some disappearances are stranger than others. David Eason, 46, an advertising executive from Battersea in London, was last seen about lunch-time on March 29, sitting [...]

Last Tuesday, an 11-year-old boy called Alex was rescued from the sea as he tried to escape from the police. For the previous three months or so he had been […]

Mysterious black stains fouling the streets of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, have spawned conspiracy theories and put drivers in fear of their lives. The police suspect that the sticky […]

A scare story that tricksters posing as perfume sellers are using a knock-out spray to drug and rob women has spread rapidly around the country by e-mail. In the first [...]

A few weeks ago, I described the strange feeling of dread that can overcome people walking in the country in the middle of the day, a phenomenon ascribed by the […]

In the realm of strange phenomena, the human brain has pride of place. Take synaesthesia, for instance, the crossing of the senses where words are experienced as colours, shapes as […]

The mysterious 'monkeyman' panic currently causing alarm in the crowded tenements of New Delhi began as reports of a supposed rogue monkey biting sleeping people in Vijaynagar, a village on […]

There has been a spate of deaths of people killed by wild animals that normally present no danger to humans. Even swans and sheep, it would appear, should be treated […]