| Clapham Wood | |
|---|---|
 | |
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| Location | West Sussex, England |
| Coordinates | 50°51′12″N0°26′26″W / 50.8533°N 0.4405°W |
Clapham Wood is a woodland area in Clapham, West Sussex, England, which Fortean authors and paranormal enthusiasts believe to be a locus of UFO sightings, Satanic cult activity, deaths, and lost or sick pets. [1] [2]
According to an article by Nick Brownlow in the Fortean Times magazine, reports of UFO sightings and pets going missing or becoming ill in the area date back to the 1960s, as do reports of inexplicable nausea, sudden patches of grey mist, and sensations of being pushed or followed there. [2]
Four bodies have been found in Clapham Wood. In June 1972, Police Constable Peter Goldsmith went missing, and his body was found hidden in a patch of thick bramble there some six months later. [3] In August 1975, missing pensioner Leon Foster's body was found in the woods by a couple searching for a lost horse. [3] In 1978, the missing Reverend Harry Neil Snelling's body was found by a Canadian tourist. In November 1981, the body of Jillian Matthews, a homeless individual with schizophrenia, was discovered; she had been raped and strangled. [2]
In their 1987 book The Demonic Connection, authors Toyne Newton, Charles Walker and Alan Brown claimed that the woods were used for rituals by a Satanic cult and offshoot of the Freemasonry movement calling itself "the Friends of Hecate". [2] However, when journalist Will Storr investigated this claim for his book Will Storr vs the Supernatural, he found no evidence to back it up besides odd campfires and unfriendly locals. Writer Barry Stevens has also expressed skepticism, suggesting that Newton and his co-authors either invented the lurid paranormal stories for their book, or uncritically accepted urban legends and rumours. [4]
Charles Hoy Fort was an American writer and researcher who specialized in anomalous phenomena. The terms "Fortean" and "Forteana" are sometimes used to characterize various such phenomena. Fort's books sold well and are still in print. His work continues to inspire admirers, who refer to themselves as "Forteans", and has influenced some aspects of science fiction.
The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse starting in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient, Michelle Smith, which used the discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make sweeping lurid claims about satanic ritual abuse involving Smith. The allegations, which afterwards arose throughout much of the United States, involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. In its most extreme form, allegations involve a conspiracy of a global Satanic cult that includes the wealthy and elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifices, pornography, and prostitution.
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