Passions: Fortean Times, one of the greatest magazines in the world

Alistair Grant, The Scotsman’s political editor, on a magazine like no other

It was love at first sight. I started buying the magazine Fortean Times as a student, after spotting it on the lowest shelf of a WHSmith. I can’t remember the contents of that first issue, but I can tell you it was brilliant. It has been a highlight of each month ever since.

Covering all manner of strange phenomena and offbeat subjects – ghosts, the unexplained, UFOs, folklore, the occult, unusual film and TV, cryptozoology, conspiracies, cults and bizarre deaths – there really is nothing else quite like it.

What’s the weirdest, most fascinating mystery you can think of? I can almost guarantee Fortean Times has covered it – and probably from multiple angles.

Founded in 1973 by Bob Rickard, the pleasing whiff of that era’s fading counterculture still seems to emanate from its pages. But the magazine draws on a legacy that long predates the Age of Aquarius.

It takes its name from American writer Charles Fort (1874-1932), who collected accounts of unexplained phenomena, and describes its role as “dispassionate weird-watching”, which pretty much sums it up. Rest assured: this is no credulous journal of New Age quackery.

“Besides being a journal of record, FT is also a forum for the discussion of observations and ideas, however absurd or unpopular, and maintains a position of benevolent scepticism towards both the orthodox and unorthodox,” the magazines states. “FT toes no party line.”

The August issue alone contains a fascinating article on Britain’s fairy lore by the historian Francis Young, a sceptical cover story on past life regressions – in which hypnosis is supposedly used to recover memories of past lives – and the third part of a series looking back on Arthur C Clarke's World of Strange Powers, the 1980s TV show.

And that’s just scratching the surface. “Camel carnage, possessed sex doll, Satan in Suffolk, human seagulls,” promises the cover. What more could you possibly want?

The journalist Lynn Barber once described the writing in Fortean Times as “a model of elegant English”, adding: “Unfortunately its subject matter is crop circles, vampires, freak toads and suchlike, but its style cannot be faulted.” I’ve never understood that “unfortunately”.

My partner bought me a Fortean Times subscription in 2014, and it remains one of the most thoughtful gifts I have ever received. I drink tea almost every day from my Fortean Times mug. As it marks five decades in print later this year, here’s to the next 50 years.