In a previous post I mentioned the Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Human Culture conference which looked at various ways in which the vampire serves as a metaphor in culture. The conference was held in April of this year on the campus of the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. (See the conference program here.)
As follow up with the program coordinator, Professor Sam George, I learned that the conference proceedings will be published in book form in 2012 on the centenary of Bram Stoker’s death and launched in his London House.
Related to this discussion of vampires in the UK is an interesting article on whether vampires have become too “Americanized.” The article, with the subtitle “Academics Lament How Vampires in Modern Culture Are ‘Losing Their British Passports’; Decaffeinated Version of Dracula,” appears, interestingly enough, in the Wall Street Journal at this link. The video below is found at the WSJ website as well.
Follow Professor George’s website for updates and international media interactions with this conference.
Sacred Space: The Quest for Transcendence in Science Fiction Film and Television by Douglas Cowan (Baylor University Press, 2010) goes on sale tomorrow, August 15. You can order a copy here now.
Description:
As humans, it is our trust in something larger than ourselves that invests our lives with meaning and value. We hope that outside the boundaries of everyday living there lies something greater. As Doug Cowan argues, science fiction is the genre of possibility and hope, a principal canvas on which writers, artists, and filmmakers have sketched their visions of this transcendent potential for generations. In Sacred Space, he leads readers in a compelling exploration of how this transcendence is manifested in science-fiction cinema and television of today.
From the millennial dreams of a future bright with potential to the promise of evolution from some as-yet-undreamed engine of creation, science fiction’s visions of transcendence animate the pages of Sacred Space. Drawing on the most popular examples–Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, and Stargate SG-1–as well as the lesser known but no less important, Cowan reveals the multivalent religious ideas present in this media. Why do these themes that consistently appear in science fiction matter? What do they reveal about the often ambivalent relationship between outer space and our spirits? Cowan insightfully shows how these films and shows express and reinforce culturally constructed conceptions of transcendent hope, and along the way provides a provocative reflection on what this ultimately says about our culture s worldviews, hopes, and fears.
Reviews:
Highly recommended. Here we learn that science fiction is more than bug-eyed aliens and saucers and that it often reveals our quest for the sacred.
–John W. Morehead, editor, Theofantastique.com
From the “millennial dreams” and “apocalyptic nightmares” of alien contact to the Buddhist visions of Neo s matrix, Doug Cowan weaves a grand adventure for fans and students of religion and science fiction. If the hope for transcendence is the universal human religious question, as Cowan ably presents, then science fiction film and television are the blank screens most qualified in our media-rich culture to propel us on that journey.
–Conrad Ostwalt, Professor of Religious Studies, Appalachian State University
Cowan convincingly demonstrates that modern science-fiction films and television shows have made religious questions and answers central to the issues they raise about human identity, values, and purpose. By emphasizing the diversity of religious ideas present in these media, Cowan shows how they are as multivariant as the nature of religion itself. In so doing, he sheds light not only on what religion is, but also on what it might be. –John Lyden, Professor and Chair of Religion, Dana College, and author of Film as Religion: Myths, Morals, and Rituals
I have finished reading, and enjoying, The Philosophy of Horror, edited by Thomas Fahy (The University Press of Kentucky, 2010), and with this concluding post on the book I will comment on Paul Cantor’s chapter, “The Fall of the House of Ulmer: Europe vs. America in the Gothic Vision of The Black Cat“.
Cantor’s chapter was of great interest to me not only because it interacts with an often neglected Universal Studios horror film from the classic age, but also because Cantor brings a fascinating cultural and historical analysis to the subject matter. Cantor’s discussion focuses on the work of the director of The Black Cat, Edgar Ulmer. Ulmer was an immigrant to the U.S. from Europe who had experienced the darkness of World War I, and had also worked with German expressionist film directors. These experiences would come together to provide an interesting mix in The Black Cat.
For those who have not seen the film, it tells the story of an American couple in Europe on their honeymoon who end up in the home of Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff) after being rescued from a bus accident by Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi). As it turns out their stay with Poelzig is anything but an accident as they get caught up in a plot for revenge by Werdegast who seeks justice for his sufferings under Poelzig in the past during the Great War. We come to learn that Poelzig has an even darker side in that he has stolen Werdergast’s wife (who is now deceased), has been married to his own daughter, keeps the preserved corpses of his wives below his home, and is the high priest of a Satanic cult. As the film ends Werdegast finds his justice by torturing Poelzig and eventually blowing up his home, and with it the Satanic cult.
Although many fans familiar with this film no doubt enjoy it on the surface level of a Universal horror film involving two of classic horror’s greatest stars, Cantor reveals in his discussion that Ulmer worked in greater levels of depth into the film that drew upon his experiences. This includes not only various Gothic archetypes such as the dark and brooding home, the living dead, and incest, but also commentary that pits European sophistication against American naïveté, even while offering critique of European darkness and optimism about America’s possibilities. In Cantor’s view, “[t]he genius of The Black Cat lies in the way it maps the Gothic psychodynamics of the family onto a political landscape.” Ulmer accomplishes this as a European immigrant to America who had seen the horrors of the cultural situation which resulted in World War I, thus including an interesting and somewhat contradictory set of elements into the story. This involves the depiction of the “innocent” American travelers from a “low culture” background who are contrasted with the more sophisticated, yet potentially dangerous Europeans from a “high culture” background. As Cantor describes the depictions of these characters, the Europeans
are deeply neurotic, obsessive-compulsive, and self-destructive, not to mention downright evil and even Satanic, while the Americans are free, open, good-natured, and optimistic. But at the same time the Europeans are simply more interesting than the Americans. The Europeans are intelligent, cultured, and artistic, while the Americans are bland, prosaic, and more than a little obtuse.
It is Cantor’s view that Ulmer, through the vehicle of a horror film, was trying to work through the medium of pop culture in order to “tell a deeply serious tale of European tragedy.” Indeed, Ulmer’s lingering concerns over Europe not only looked back with concerns over the “horrors of World War I and, as a result, bordering on the bring of madness, ready to plunge into a nihilistic abyss,” but also sounded a warning of cultural dynamics that made possible the great evils of World War II.
Fans of classic Universal horror, as well as students of culture and history, will find a great deal to reflect upon in Ulmer’s masterpiece of The Black Cat. As Cantor concludes:
Along with the other European émigrés who directed horror movies in the 1930s, [Ulmer] helped make the avant-garde cinematic techniques of the German expressionists part of the Hollywood mainstream. In the end Ulmer’s project in The Black Cat is internally contradictory — to create a very European movie to argue for the cultural independence of America. Fortunately for him and us, this self-defeating quest resulted in a horror movie masterpiece, an unusually thoughtful product of pop culture that philosophically reflects on the relationship of pop culture to high culture.
There is an interesting post that came to my attention today while checking my daily Google searches for topics related to the fantastic. The source for the post is in the WIRED blog “GeekDad.” The article is by Curtis Silver is titled “Is Being a Geek a Personality Trait or a Way of Life?”. In the piece Silver confesses that while he is a geek, his children do not share this status. Sadly, my own experience is similar, but with a few grandsons in the family, and possibly more in the future, I haven’t given up hope yet that I can create yet another family geek as it relates to the fantastic. Silver describes his early love for all things geeky in pop culture, and then moves to consideration of the source for such interests, whether this is the result of personality traits developed early in life or something else. After considering a couple of scientific and psychological studies which seem to indicate that childhood personality traits are locked in early in life, and then carried through into adulthood, Silver is not convinced that this best explains his geek obsessions. For him it’s something deeper:
You see, while being a geek may embody certain personality traits I don’t think it itself is a personality trait. I think it’s more of a way of life, or perhaps an encompassing state of being. There are plenty of environmental and social factors that can change how one perceives and interprets life. There are always paths for new interests, new roads into the convoluted and ADHD world of geekdom. So there is plenty of time for your budding geeklet to morph into his eventual place in the world of geek. There is also just as much time for that same geeklet to put the way of the geek behind him. No matter what, our support as parents will make them successful no matter which path they choose, no matter what piques their interests.
I am sympathetic to Silver’s perspective on this issue, but for me it’s a case of both/and rather than either/or. In my view, our exposure to certain things in childhood resonates with aspects of our personality, which is then carried over and adapts into adult life. When this is nurtured it becomes “a way of life” and “a state of being.” I throw the question to my readers. As a sci-fi/horror/fantasy geek, if you own such a moniker, is this a personality trait, a way of life, or both?
The American media has picked up on the British government’s decision to release hundreds of previously classified documents related to UFO sightings. (For a BBC News report see here.) The files are a part of the National Archives. The story includes a link to the web page for the archives which includes PDF files for the documents, as well as a sample of UFO historian Dr. David Clarke’s book The UFO Files, and an audio file where Clarke discusses the new material.
Beyond the phenomenon itself, another interesting facet of this story is the way in which both the US and UK media are reporting on the release of the files. Both refer to the materials as the “British X-Files,” and in the video clip below from UK television The X-Files theme can be heard at the beginning, and the closing scenes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind with the giant mothership is shown in the conclusion. Evidence, of course, of the impact and crossover between science fiction and paranormal television and film and real-world phenomena.
Video games have been an important part of pop culture for man years now, having come a long way from my first experiences with Atari in the 1970s. The genres of the fantastic has been an important part of game play, and with this post I’ll highlight a couple of my favorite games from the 1990s. It includes online casino games of course, I like playing free casino slot games for fun, the thrills and excitement I get it all while playing!
The first game I remember fondly is Zombies Ate My Neighbors which came out in 1993 for the Sega Genesis as developed by LucasArts. This game incorporated elements from horror and science fiction films from the 1950s through the 1980s, and included various monsters such as werewolves, zombies, aliens, and as the title indicates, a major focus on zombies. The player had to work their way through various levels, avoiding or killing monsters, while trying to save at least one neighbor per level in order to advance to the next level. As an interesting piece of trivia, this game was controversial overseas due to the blood depicted in game play (extremely mild by comparison to today’s horror and war games), as well as the title, going by the name Zombies outside of American culture due to concerns about creatures consuming one’s neighbors. This game was a lot of fun for a fan of the films which provided the inspiration for the creatures that chased you across the screen.
Another favorite game came for me as I upgraded and moved beyond my Sega Genesis to the first Playstation. This game was darker than the previous game discussed above. It was Nightmare Creatures which came out in 1997. I enjoyed this game quite a bit because it drew upon Gothic horror elements, taking place in a dark and foggy London and incorporating a number of monstrous creatures. Still in my collection of video games, the back of the game case describes the storyline:
In 1834 on London’s on London’s blackest eve, a secret cult known as The Brotherhood of Hecate, rediscovered the key to man’s unholiest fears. It was through this arcane act of terror that the evil leader of the Brotherhood, Adam Crowley, swore to overtake the world…Ever since this fateful night, not a London street, alley or town square has escaped the whispered screams of “Nightmare Creatures!”
One of the more interesting aspects of this game for me as an academic working in part in the area of new religious movements, and with some experience in Pagan studies, is the villain in the game, the character of Adam Crowley. For those with some familiarity with Western esotericism and the magickal family of religions, this is an adaptation of Aleister Crowley, the infamous esotericist and practitioner of sex magick, who proclaimed himself the “Great Beast 666.” Nightmare Creatures draws on the infamy of Crowley’s name for those who are aware of him and make the connection, and then creates a fictional villain who uses his magical abilities in the service of his cult and their desires for world domination. I must admit I was only able to defeat the final “boss” in the game, Crowley himself who takes one of his magical alchemy potions to transform himself into an uber-monster, as a result of the use of cheat codes. But heck, the monster had to be defeated, right?
Resident Evil was the next horror game I gravitated to, but with the various video game sequels, not to mention the various films that have come out based on the game, I don’t need to tell readers about a phenomenon they are already very familiar with. Horror had a significant expression in video games in the 1990s, far beyond the zombie subgenre so prevalent in today’s gaming.
CNN Living included a feature on legendary science fiction writer Ray Bradbury which revealed a surprising aspect of the author’s life and writing inspiration. The title of the article is “Sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury on God, ‘monsters and angels'”. In the piece Bradbury describes himself as a man of religious faith, although not one to which one can easily apply a label. In fact, Bradbury doesn’t want any labels applied to his religious pathway. He describes himself as a “delicatessin religionist” inspired by a number of religions from the East and the West in pluralist fashion. Christianity has been part of this mix, with the Gospel of John and its focus on love a key aspect of it, although surely not the only aspect. The significance and positive role of religion in Bradbury’s life and fiction is a surprise in that two other influential sci-fi authors similar to Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, were atheists, or at least agnostic in the latter case. My assumption would have been that Bradbury would have had irreligious views similar to their’s.
Another interesting aspect of this article is the description of his writing as a “summoning [of] ‘the monsters and angels’ of his imagination for his enchanting tales,” and his own description of his writing career as one where he has been “[a]t play in the fields of the Lord.” I find this connection between play, the sacred, and the imagination of interest and have written on this connection previously both in my graduate thesis on Burning Man Festival, as well as my chapter on videogames and digital cultures in Halos & Avatars (Westminster John Knox, 2010).
At times play may be superficial, but at other times it expresses the human desire for the sacred dimension of life. We might recall that experiences of the transcendent in connection with play were part of C. S. Lewis’s discovery of spirituality that eventually led to his embrace of Christianity. In addition, the noted sociologist of religion, Peter Berger, mentions the “argument from play” and connects it to conceptions of human religiosity in his discussion of “signals of transcendence” in ordinary human experience that point beyond that experience and toward the transcendent. It is not a stretch then to view the imaginative play with the fantastic as a signal of and window into transcendence.
The connection between religion, or at least the sacred, and science fiction as well as the broader realm of the fantastic, surfaces from time to time, and it was an interesting pleasure to see this as an aspect of the life and work of one of the most influential writers of science fiction, and grandfathers of the children of the fantastic.
As regular readers of this blog are aware, I am a huge fan of 1950s science fiction/horror, those films that had an early formative influence on my love for the fantastic. In reading through a science fiction magazine today I came across a documentary that makes interesting use of these films as it argues for their positive impact on our culture. It is titled Monsters From the Id: Science is Mankind’s Last Great Hope. The documentary’s website provides this synopsis:
The 1950’s was an idealistic time in American History, filled with hope, opportunity, and wonder. It was also, “The Atomic Age”, where new technology promised to both save humanity as well as put it in jeopardy. All of these factors gave birth to one of the most prolific genres in film history, 1950’s Science Fiction Cinema. More then just bug eyed monsters and little green men, 1950’s Sci-fi Cinema provided science inspiration for millions of eager youths across the country.
While monsters and invaders of many forms have always existed in cinema, it wasn’t until the 1950’s that Hollywood created a new character. This new character is the Modern Scientist. His predecessor, the Mad Scientist was evil and intent on using science for his own personal gains, no matter the outcome. With atomic energy now a part of the world everyone lived in, this type of scientist was more dangerous then ever. Instead, the Modern Scientist was created to calm the fears associated with the atomic age. This new American Citizen was brilliant, polite, thoughtful, charming and not surprisingly very good looking. Just as science took the lead in much of the news of the 1950’s, the scientist became Hollywood’s new leading man and a role model for young boys and girls across America.
Although Hollywood was mostly interested in selling tickets and popcorn, there were others that understood the power of these films and the influence they had on society. Soon filmmakers like Walt Disney and George Pal started collaborating with famed rockets scientists, Werner Von Braun and Willie Ley in an effort to energize the American public and peak their interest in manned space travel. What followed were technically accurate sci-fi films that both entertained and educated the next generation of scientists in America. However as progress marched on, it was a real life event that finally sent the wheels into motion.
On October 4, 1957 the Russians provided the spark in the form of the first man made satellite, Sputnik. America immediately went into a panic and suddenly science and the need to match the Russians in space became a top priority. From that point forward, the American Government took exploratory space flight seriously and the first man they called was Werner Von Braun. With the help of science fairs and a revamped science curriculum an inspired population worked toward one of the greatest achievement of mankind, spaceflight. Along the way, Sci-Fi cinema and science fact worked together to change the lives of American Students in ways we only dreamed of before.
Through the use of the movies themselves and expert analysis from scientists and educators, Monsters From The Id weaves the intersecting themes of over thirty classic films in order to tell the untold story of the Modern Scientist and his role in inspiring a nation. The film continues to explore the psychological and cultural impact of 1950’s Sci-Fi cinema and asks, “where is science inspiration found today?”
As mentioned in the introduction to this post, finding inspiration for careers in the sciences through 1950s science fiction/horror is indeed an unusual and unique approach. But the positive aspects of science and the scientist in these films must be held in tension with the science run amok and “mad scientist” elements also frequently found in these films, and with the anti-rationalizing element in them as discussed by Mark Jancovich in Rational Fears: American Horror in the 1950s (Manchester University Press, 1996).
Author and TheoFantastique contributor Paul Meehan introduces the story of Picnic at Hanging Rock and its possible connection to a paranormal phenomenon. Paul is the author of a number of books including SAUCER Movies: A UFOlogical History of the Cinema (The Scarecrow Press, 1998).
The Strange Case of Picnic at Hanging Rock
By Paul Meehan
“On Saturday, 14th of February 1900 a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College picnicked at Hanging Rock near Mount Macedon in the state of Victoria. During the afternoon several members of the party disappeared without trace…”
So begins Peter Weir’s 1975 mystery-thriller Picnic at Hanging Rock. Based on a 1967 novel by Australian writer Joan Lindsey, the film follows the plot of the book fairly closely to weave an eerie tale of mass-disappearance that would become an urban legend and suggest deeper, more alien mysteries behind the strange events.
The girls at Appleyard College embark on their fateful picnic on Valentine’s Day, in the full heat of the Australian summer. They are transported in a horse-drawn wagon to Hanging Rock, a geologic formation comprised of weird volcanic monoliths. The spinsterish headmistress Miss McCraw (Vivean Gray) is in charge of the expedition, and warns the girls against any “tomboy foolishness,” but in spite of her admonitions four of the girls go off exploring by themselves. As Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), Irma (Karen Robson), Marion (Jane Vallis) and Edith (Christine Schuler) traipse off to the Rock on their voyage of discovery, they are briefly observed by two young men, Michael (Dominic Guard) and his valet Albert (John Jarratt), who are also picnicking at the Rock with Michael’s parents. While they are gone Miss McCraw notices that all of the party’s watches have mysteriously stopped at exactly 12 noon.
Ascending amid strange-looking rock formations, the girls reach a plateau where they suddenly fall into a deep, mysterious slumber. Back at the picnic, all of the members of the Appleyard party also fall asleep, with the exception of Miss McCraw. Then, just as suddenly, the four girls awaken. As Edith watches in horror, Miranda, Irma and Marion march up the hill in lockstep as if they are in a trance. Edith also notices an anomalous red cloud hovering over the Rock as she is consumed in a sudden terror and runs back toward the picnic site.
When the picnickers return to the college late that evening the three girls, along with Miss McCraw, are missing, and a massive police manhunt from the nearby town of Woodend fails to find any trace of them. Edith’s recollections of the event are confused and fragmentary, but she does rememberseeing Miss McCraw walking toward the hill where the girls were last seen in an entranced state, wearing nothing but her underwear.
After a week goes by there is little hope that the girls or the headmistress will be found alive, but Michael, who harbors a lingering obsession with the students after glimpsing them on the day of the picnic, decides to look for them on his own. He winds up spending the night at Hanging Rock, and is found the next day in a confused state, clutching a piece of lace from one of the girl’s dresses, Soon afterward, Irma is discovered alive in a nearby cave. A medical examination reveals that she has not been raped, and that her feet are curiously unmarked although she is not wearing shoes or stockings. Oddly, her hands are bruised and her fingernails torn, and she was found not to be wearing her corset.
When she recovers, Irma can remember nothing that transpired during her disappearance at Hanging Rock. The strange goings-on cause a furor in the town as rumors fly, including a report of an anomalous light flashing around a pigsty on a farm about a mile from the Rock. Ultimately, the missing people are never found and the mystery is never solved. As one townsman wryly observes, “There’s some questions got answers, some haven’t.”
Weir’s offbeat film, shot on location at Hanging Rock, brilliantly utilizes the Australian landscape while deftly evoking the quirky sexual repressiveness of the late Victorian period. While the film is slow-paced by American movie standards, the director builds a powerful sense of mystery around the inexplicable events. The film was a critical success in Australia and overseas, and helped pave the way for the popularity of Australian cinema of the 1970s and 80s in the international market. Weir would go on to direct The Last Wave (1977) an imaginative apocalyptic thriller that explored the magical world of aboriginal shamanism.
A curious urban legend grew up around the events portrayed in the novel and the film. Joan Lindsey’s book coyly suggests that the story is based on true events. She wrote: “Whether (the book) is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves. As the fateful picnic took place in the year nineteen hundred, and all the characters who appear in this book are long since dead, it hardly seems to matter.” Similarly, in an interview with the Melbourne Herald, Lindsay stated that, “I can’t tell you whether the story is fact or fiction…but a lot of very strange things have happened around the area of Hanging Rock…things that have no logical explanation.” However, after many extensive journalistic
investigations, no documentary evidence of the alleged event has ever surfaced, leading to the conclusion that the plot of Picnic at Hanging Rock is entirely fictive.
Even after the story was proven to be fiction, fans of the movie and the book continued to try to solve the mystery over the years. In 1980, Yvonne Rousseau published a book entitled The Murders at Hanging Rock, which offered up a number of scenarios explaining the enigma. It theorized that the missing girls and their teacher could have been raped and murdered by Aborigines, or by Michael and Albert, or they could simply have been buried underneath a rockslide. In 1987, another book, The Secret of Hanging Rock appeared, which contained Lindsay’s previously unpublished chapter of the original novel that provided a more mystical resolution to the mystery. According to Lindsay, the girls were confronted by a kind of time warp and were transformed into little crab-like arachnid creatures who disappeared into the interior of the earth by crawling through cracks in the rocks.
But while more conventional explanations of the disappearances and Lindsay’s own bizarre resolution to the mystery fail to satisfy, there is one phenomenon that would seem to offer a more likely solution for the enigmatic events–alien abduction. Many of the anomalies described in the Hanging Rock narrative are consistent with features reported in cases of UFO close encounters.
First, there is the matter of the strange red cloud observed hovering above the Rock during the disappearance. As if to underscore a viewpoint looking down from above, Weir shoots the scene of Edith running from the Rock in terror from an extremely high angle. UFOs have long been associated with anomalous clouds, as evidenced in the encounter of Rex Heflin, an Orange County, California highway traffic inspector who took a series of Polaroid photos of a metallic craft transforming into a cloud in 1965.
Then there is the matter of the stopped watches at the picnic. In the famous abduction case of New Hampshire couple Betty and Barney Hill in 1961, both Betty and Barney found that their watches had stopped after the abduction event. In 1979, Minnesota Deputy Sherrif Val Johnson had a late night close encounter with a glowing UFO that damaged his police cruiser. Johnson’s mechanical wristwatch and the car’s electric dashboard clock were both found to be inexplicably running exactly 14 minutes slow. Some researchers theorize that UFOs are actually time travel devices that sometimes cause temporal anomalies to occur.
The odd behavior of the picnickers is also consistent with events reported during abductions. All of the students and staff at the picnic fall into a mysterious sleep, while only those who are slated to disappear awaken. This phenomenon parallels what is known as being “switched off” in UFO parlance, where those chosen for abduction remain conscious while those not selected are rendered unconscious. Non-abductees being “switched off” is a fairly common feature of abduction reports. Abductee Betty Andreasson, for instance, claims that several members of her family were switched off while she was taken aboard a UFO.
Abductees often report that they are compelled to perform certain actions as if they have been placed in some kind of hypnotic trance in which they are placed under the control of their abductors. Betty and Barney Hill, for instance, felt compelled to inexplicably turn off the main road they had been traveling on and onto a secluded side road where the abduction took place. In Picnic at Hanging Rock, Amanda, Irma, Marion and Miss McCraw are drawn to the place where they will disappear as if they are entranced.
When Irma returns, she has total amnesia about what occurred during the time when she was missing. This “missing time amnesia” is another common feature of alien abduction reports, and was first explored in depth in researcher Budd Hopkins’s 1981 book Missing Time. The Hills experienced this type of amnesia in connection with their abduction experience, the details of which only emerged as they underwent hypnotic therapy. Researchers don’t know if missing time amnesia is imposed upon abductees via alien mind control, or if it is a natural function of the human mind that suppresses unpleasant experiences.
Joan Lindsay’s novel was written in 1967, when little was known about the abduction phenomenon. Nonetheless, her work of fiction eerily anticipates exotic details of alien abduction narratives. There are other examples of life imitating art in the history of the UFO phenomenon. Bernard Newman’s 1948 novel The Flying Saucer, for instance, posits UFOs that stop automobile engines long before this became a common theme in many UFO reports. Similarly, Arthur Koestler’s 1933 play The Twilight Bar portrays a UFO that causes an electrical power blackout decades before this aspect of the phenomenon was reported in the UFO literature.
Oddly, the fictional vanishings in Picnic at Hanging Rock also seem to prefigure a mysterious real-life disappearance that occurred in the same general area of Victoria, Australia. Just three years after the release of Weir’s film, on the evening of October 21, 1978, a young Australian pilot named Frederick Valentich was flying a Cessna 182 light aircraft on a relatively short flight from Moorabbin Airport in Victoria to King Island. While over the area of the Bass Strait, Valentich radioed that he encountered a large, brightly lit UFO that hovered over his plane. Soon afterward, all radio contact with the aircraft abruptly ceased. A massive, three-week search of the area failed to find any trace of Valentich or his airplane. No debris or even an oil slick on the water’s surface was ever discovered. Like the picnickers from Appleyard College, the young pilot seemed to have simply vanished into thin air under mysterious circumstances.
The Valentich disappearance remains one of the most puzzling incidents in the history of the UFO phenomenon. Like the Australian farmer in the film explains, “There’s some questions got answers, some haven’t.”
Two items recently came to my attention that originate from the same source, that is, the interaction of Christians with elements of the fantastic. In this case the contexts are those of a former writer of vampire fiction, and comic fans.
Anne Rice made news this week with an announcement that she had left Christianity. At least that’s how it was originally reported. Rice was raised as a Roman Catholic, but embraced atheism for much of her life, but eventually returned to Roman Catholicism, even as she gave up writing vampire fiction in favor of fiction that resonated with her Catholicism. Rice’s recent announcement of a departure from Christianity caught the attention of the media in general, and the atheist subculture in particular:
As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of …Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.
But the most recent reporting from examiner.com clarifies Rice’s views from Facebook comments where she has issues with the political and social stances of Catholicism but still embraces Christ:
My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.
Moving from Rice’s issues with institutional Catholicism to the troubling reactions of a Protestant fundamentalist church, the Westborough Church, infamous for its picketing of soldiers’ funerals with signs like “God hates fags,” also has issues with comic fans and culture. According to The Celebrity Cafe.com, at the recent Comic-Con in San Diego members of the church picketed and accused attendees of idolatry. A video of the protest can be seen below.
These incidents are interesting as they illustrate some of the reactions of those intersecting the worlds of both Christianity and the fantastic.
In a previous post I mentioned the Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Human Culture conference which looked at various ways in which the vampire serves as a metaphor in culture. The conference was held in April of this year on the campus of the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. (See the conference program here.) 
