WHAT ARTHUR DID NEXT

Welcome to our Fortean Times magazine June issue, in which we kick off a three-part retrospective of a classic fortean television series. Regular readers will recall that in 2021 Ryan Shirlow took a deep dive into Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World, the 1980 series that introduced a generation of TV viewers to a wide range of fortean topics, from entombed toads and dinosaur survivals to mysterious falls and UFOs.
In 1985, Clarke was back with another series, this time focusing more on the human and esoteric dimensions of forteana: mind-over-matter, ghosts and poltergeists, stigmatics and pre-walkers, dowsing and telepathy. Arthur C Clarke’s World of Strange Powers was a worthy follow-up to Mysterious World, serving up some serious weirdness (including “a now unthinkable teatime gorefest that showcased the wounds of Christ”) for budding forteans and fascinated viewers. Over the next three issues Ryan will be revisiting each episode in detail and assessing how the cases
Clarke and company presented in 1985 stack up today: so stay tuned for further instalments. Elsewhere in this issue we look at the conluence of history, hauntings and urban legends as Rebecca Batley details the history of ‘Bloody Mary’ and Alan Murdie explores a stately home where her phantom is said to walk; and we shouldn’t forget the Bunny Man of
Clifton Bridge, Virginia, a rabbit-suited, axe-wielding Seventies psychopath and his even stranger contemporary avatars Meanwhile, Richard Freeman carries
on up the jungle in search of Sumatra’s elusive orang pendek and its even more elusive cousin the orang kardil. And if you need a further 􀃥x of cryptoloological capers, order a copy of the new FT bookaline Monster Hunters: In Search of Unknown Animals – see p.49 for details.

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