A visit to Rosslyn Chapel

Rosslyn Chapel is a small chapel located in the village of Roslin (about 7 miles south of Edinburgh), which was founded by William St Clair in 1446. The chapel lived a relatively quiet existence until the 20th Century when a number of interesting claims were made about the chapel's history in both works of fiction and non-fiction. 

A lot of the speculation that has arisen around the chapel and its history is inspired by the intricate carvings that adorn almost every part of the walls and ceilings of the chapel, and the attempts that people have made to decode the messages that they are assumed to contain. Some of the most prominent features of the chapel include:

• Three intricately carved pillars: the Master Pillar, the Journeyman Pillar, and the Apprentice Pillar. The Apprentice Pillar is the most well known of the three and it has a legend associated with it. The legend claims that the apprentice who carved the pillar was murdered by his jealous master, for carving it against his master's orders.

• 213 cubes which protrude from the pillars and arches within the chapel. Each of these cubes has patterns on its faces, and numerous attempts to decode the meaning of these patterns have been made. One theory is that the patterns on the cubes represent the wave patterns seen when flat surfaces vibrate at different frequencies, and that these frequencies can be interpreted into music. 
  

• Over 100 carvings of Green men (which are typically human faces adorned with various leaves and plants).
  

• Carvings of various plants, including carvings that are interpreted to depict both maize and aloe vera. Maize is believed to have originated from North America and to have been unknown in Europe at the time of the chapel's construction.
  

• The chapel crypt in which generations of the St Clair family have been buried. The contents of the crypt have been subject to many theories over the years, and it has been rumored to have housed such things as the Holy Grail and the treasure of the Knights Templars.

It is mostly likely that the chapel was built by the St Clairs purely as a family chapel for private use, however who knows? Perhaps there is a hidden message or treasure residing within the chapel awaiting discovery.

Chapel frontage.

 Chapel frontage. 

Memorial.

Memorial close up.

Chapel side.

Chapel frontage.

Pictures, Scotland (October 2011).

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The Great Dangaroo Flood

I happened across a bizarre plaque (see below photo) in Old Compton Street in London while wandering Soho on the trail of the Seven Noses of Soho and Lost Little Compton Street. Reading the plaque it made no sense to me whatsoever, and I had to have a good read of the referenced website before I could understand what it was all about. 

So what was the Great Dangaroo Flood? Well it seems that the flood occurred at the location of Old Compton Street, but in the parallel universe of Kcymaerxthaere. The Great Dangaroo Flood plaque is part of an otherworldly art project, which is the brain child of a man called Eames Demetrios. The project seems to be focused on disseminating Demetrios' alternative mythology of the planet based on the parallel universe of Kcymaerxthaere via the medium of plaques (refered to as markers) that give a snippet of the alternative history of a location.

There are markers outlining the history of Kcymaerxthaere all over the world, including in Europe, North America, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Singapore, Africa, and Indonesia (to name a few). In America for example there is an alternative Kcymaerxthaere history of the ghost town of Rhyolite.

In the UK there seem to be markers in: Angel Alley (Whitechapel), London; De Laune Street, London; Old Compton Street, London; Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire; Wardington, Oxfordshire; and in the Edinburgh College of Art Car Park, Edinburgh.

So keep your eyes open when you are on your travels, as you may come across a marker that gives you a little part of the weird history of Kcymaerxthaere.

The Old Compton Street plaque.

Pictures, London (May 2012).

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W. T. Stead

Pictured below on the banks of the Thames in London is a bronze monument to William Thomas Stead (5 July 1849 – 15 April 1912), which is the twin of an identical monument in Central Park, New York.

Stead was an English journalist and editor who is considered to be the pioneer of investigative journalism and the father of the tabloid. Stead is most famously known for using investigative journalism techniques to publicise the plight of young girls who were at times sold into servitude abroad, and Stead's work supported a government bill trying to raise the age of consent from 13 to 16 (commonly known as the "Stead Act").

What is less known about Stead is that he had an interest in spiritualism and psychic research and in 1893 he founded a short lived spiritualist publication call "Borderland". During the lifetime of the publication Stead frequently claimed to be in receipt of messages from the spirit world, from dead American journalist Julia Ames. Stead also had an assistant editor (Ada Goodrich Freer) with whom he claimed to regularly communicate with by telepathy and automatic writing.

Perhaps before the advent of "Borderland" Stead had already been dabbling with the spirit world and had had a glimmer of what his future held. In 1886 Stead published an article entitled "How the Mail Steamer went down in Mid Atlantic by a Survivor", in which a steamer collides with another ship resulting in a high death toll due to lack of lifeboats. Then in 1892 Stead published a story called "From the Old World to the New", in which a ship rescues survivors of another ship that had had the misfortune of colliding with an iceberg. Unsurprisingly Stead was of course himself one of the victims of the Titanic disaster in 1912!

Stead's Monument in London.

Pictures, London (May 2012).

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Suffolk’s Green Children

In Suffolk, 9 miles west along the A14 from Bury St Edmunds, there is a village called Woolpit. The village possibly got its name from a nearby pit that was used to trap wolves (a wolf pit), and it was near to this pit sometime in the 12th century where two weird visitors were reported to have been found. The visitors in question were a pair of children (a brother and sister) who looked like normal children except that their skin had a green colour to it and they seemed to speak in a strange language.

As the legend goes the children were looked after by the villagers, however it seems that the boy was ill and did not survive for very long. The girl seems to have adjusted to her new life and over the course of time eventually learned to speak English. The girl claimed that she and her brother came from a place called St Martin's Land, which she explained was an underground world where the inhabitants were green. It is believed that the girl eventually married a man from King's Lynn and may have eventually been buried in the town.

It is unclear whether the legend is based on some form of historical event or if it is just pure folklore. The legend is a staple for Forteans and numerous possible explanations for the legend have been proposed over the years. A very good in-depth summary of the tale can be found over at Karl Shuker's Eclectarium.

The below photos show some of the prominent features of the village including the village sign which depicts the fabled green children. Some of these photos have also previously featured on Andrew May's Forteana Blog.

The Woolpit village sign - with green children and a wolf.

Village sign - close up. 

Woolpit church.

Woolpit church.

Village information board.

Pictures, Suffolk (January 2012).

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Sotheby's Lioness Warrior Goddess

If you every happen to walk past the London auction firm of Sotheby's in New Bond Street be sure to take a look at the black basalt statue that sits above the entrance. The statue is a bust of the lioness warrior goddess Sekhmet and is believed to have been carved in ancient Egypt around 1320 B.C. The Sotheby's Sekhmet is supposedly the oldest privately owned statue on outdoor display in London (for comparison Cleopatra's Needle is dated from around 1460 BC). The statue apparently came to Sotheby's in the 1800s as part of a collection of Egyptian artifacts, which were subsequently sold for £40. However, the statue's buyer never appeared to collect it, and as such Sotheby's retained the Sekhmet.

Pictures, London (May 2012).

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Major Oak and Simulacrum

The tree pictured below is the “Major Oak”, which is a large and ancient English Oak tree that can be found in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire. According to Robin Hood lore, the oak was a place of shelter for Robin Hood and his associates. The tree is estimated to be around 800 to 1000 years old, have a mass of 23 tons and its trunk is 10 meters in circumference.

Due to the tree’s immense size, its limbs have had to be supported by a system of scaffolding, which was erected during the Victorian era. It is not known how the tree became so huge, but two potential theories include: the tree may in fact be several trees that were fused together when saplings; or that the tree was possibly pollarded (a system of pruning aimed at stimulating continuous new growth of wood), which caused the trunk to grow large and thick.

The Major Oak is one of fifty “Great British Trees”, the rest of which I shall look out for on my travels.

Major Oak. 

Major Oak.

While wandering Sherwood Forest I also came across the below Simulacrum, that reminded me of some form of cartoon character. While probably not good enough for the Fortean Times Simulacra Corner, it certainly caught my eye!

Can you see the face?

Pictures, Nottingham (January 2013).

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Hunting for Alien Life in California

Pictured below is Mono Lake, which is a highly saline lake near the town of Lee Vining in California (about 75 miles by road from Yosemite National Park and 35 miles from the Ghost Town of Bodie).

Mono Lake is believed to have formed at least 760,000 years ago and is thought to be a remnant of a much larger and older lake that once covered a large part of Nevada and Utah. It is estimated that at its peak (during the most recent ice age) the lake may have been around 270 m deep. Old shore lines which show the previous extent of the lake (known as strandlines) can be seen above the town of Lee Vining and along the hills to the northeast of the current lake.

Because Mono Lake now has no outlet to the sea, high levels of salt have become dissolved in the water over time and this has resulted in the lake becoming highly alkaline. Depending on the water level, the lake is typically seen to be two to three times more salty than the sea. Despite this high alkalinity the lake is still home to life and the most complex creature that resides within the lake is a form a brine shrimp.

Mono lake is of particular interest to astrobiologists as the extreme conditions in the lake give them the opportunity to study how life could potentially evolve and exist on other planets. In 2010 a study claimed that a form of bacteria had been found in Mono Lake that could use arsenic as one of its building blocks, in place of phosphorus - the current understanding of biochemistry being that all life comprises of at least the six elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur and phosphorus. If this claim was indeed true then the implication was that life could have potentially formed on earth (and other planets) in a radically different way to what is currently accepted.

These claims were unfortunately short lived however, with two further studies suggesting that the bacteria in question still needed to use phosphorus to grow, and that they did not break the current accepted model of biochemistry.

So it seems that Mono Lake may not be a home to “alien life” on Earth, but the search for a “shadow biosphere” will no doubt continue and the focus is likely to remain on extreme environments (like that of Mono Lake) where unknown forms of life may have carved out a niche for themselves.

Pictures of Mono Lake have also featured on Andrew May’s Forteana Blog

Pictures, California (2008).

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