The Five Bells

A couple of very cold nights ago I was walking home and passed a pub I used to very occasionally drink in: The Five Bells. It's been closed now for at least a year, I think, but I recall one or two warm memories of the place; including what may have been my first ever random pub snog aged about sixteen. I have a feeling it was where I broke the news to my then-best friend that I had finally lost my virginity too. Anyhow, on this particular occasion my thoughts were somewhat more Fortean: as I recalled the unusual frequency with which Bell (and its variants) crop up in reports of weird phenomena.

Today I discovered not quite the magic Five Bells but at least four in different news reports, all of which betray very obvious occult influence. The first concerned Mary Bell, a rehabilitated murderer of great notoriety in the United Kingdom, who killed two children in the 1960s. (She was herself only 11 years old at the time.) I have emphasized what I regard as the salient points, from a spooky perspective, here. Her co-accused, oddly enough, was also called Bell: Norma Bell, also mentioned in the article.

I then turned my attention to one of several Fortean stories presently receiving heavy coverage in the British press. This is the claim that a 'ghostly woman' has been seen haunting a remote spot in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland; attracting hundreds of paranormal enthusiasts to the area in the hope of catching a glimpse of her. (Hasn't she suffered enough already?) One of the witnesses interviewed was Raymond Bell:

'Raymond Bell, who owns a pub nearby in Brackaville, said his 17-year-old son Ryan had not believed in ghosts until he saw the "woman" several times.

"My son says he has seen the shadowy figure on numerous occasions and others have seen it too - it is the face of an elderly lady wearing a long white dress with a long white cape," he said.'

Full story: http://conspiracy-research.blogspot.com/2009/01/claims-of-ghostly-woman-haunting-remote.html

Finally, I turn again to the incredible tale of the 'Tentacle UFO', reported hovering in the vicinity of a wind turbine in a farm in the East Lindsay district of Lincolnshire. The next morning, as you may well know, the turbine was visibly damaged: one of its rotor sails had sheered off, and another was cracked beyond repair. Interestingly, one of the theories being presented to explain the multitude of lights seen darting around the turbine shortly before the incident is a firework display, being held just two miles from the farm, given to mark the eightieth birthday of the father of Emily Bell, director of digital content for The Guardian newspaper.

According to her:

'There were several roman candles, and some of those ones which are orange and have the little blue dots when they go off," Bell said yesterday. "My brother said he got them from the local garden centre. Because it's so flat in that part of the world, you can see for miles and miles. So if you were perhaps a certain distance away and perhaps had had a drink, you might mistake them for orange balls of fire."

Full story: http://the-daily-behemoth.blogspot.com/2009/01/tentacle-ufo-mystery-deepens.html

Of further interest to me is the fact that this highly significant Ufological development came about forty eight hours after what I tentatively suggested was another sighting of my own. In a recent Daily Behemoth article, I made reference to a very bright, completely stationary light which hovered over a neighbouring house for several hours a few nights ago, seemingly too low (and apparently moving) to have been a star or planet. This exactly matches one of the reports of phenomena witnessed by a Lincolnshire resident on the evening before the destruction of the turbine. (Others are more sensational, and could- in some cases- be attributed to the firework display, though not in the case of the massive 'tentacle' one man claims to have seen descend from the craft.)

My own 'sighting' happened to have occurred the same night as my Bell ruminations... Make of that what you will.