Published in ILLUMINATION-Curated·May 28, 2022Member-onlyI Meet a Famous Ghost — New Zealand’s Vulcan HotelOr Did I? When Expectations Don’t Quite Work Out The Ghost of a young prostitute Locals know that Room 1 of the old Vulcan Hotel, in the tiny village (permanent population in single figures) of St Bathans, New Zealand, is haunted. It’s generally thought to be the ghost of a…Paranormal6 min readParanormal6 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION-Curated·May 22, 2022Member-onlyAn Indigenous Australian ApparitionOne of the Old Fellas comes to check me out — I see an apparition of an Australian Aboriginal man One evening in Brisbane, I was invited around to a friend’s place for dinner. We ate and shared a bottle of wine, and eventually I went off to bed in the guest room. …Paranormal5 min readParanormal5 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION-Curated·May 17, 2022Member-onlyDid You Just See Reality?Are you sure it wasn’t a ghost? — The second cat I saw in Mongolia, was not of this world “Cats are no-good animals!” This was the opinion of one of our local translators in Mongolia. Her attitude may explain why cats are very few and far between in Mongolia. Unlike, say, Turkey, Mongolia is a dog country…Ghosts7 min readGhosts7 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION-Curated·May 10, 2022Member-onlyDid We Once Worship Wetlands?And if we didn’t, maybe we should — Ancient Europeans venerated swamps A display of magnificent amber necklaces dug from a Danish peat bog had a profound impact on me — I came away understanding that our ancient ancestors worshiped bogs! It’s a few decades down the track now, but I’ve never forgotten seeing that display in the…Climate Change9 min readClimate Change9 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION-Curated·Apr 23, 2022Member-onlyGhosts That Go Bang in the NightWhat is this thing about women? — Unexplained Noises in Dunedin, New Zealand “Just one other thing”, my landlady said, “do you have a problem with ghosts? The place is haunted”. I had started renting an upstairs room from her a few weeks before, in a building on Dunedin’s central Octagon, as a photographic studio. It came…Ghosts7 min readGhosts7 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION-Curated·Apr 16, 2022Member-onlyThe Ghost of Moron, MongoliaWhen someone else shares a paranormal experience We travel to Lake Khovsgul, northern Mongolia It was on the flight back to UIaan Baatar that I remembered the ghost. My field partner, Nyambayar, and I had been working in an area near the Mongolian town of Moron (pronounced ‘muh-roon’). Moron lies…Ghosts4 min readGhosts4 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION-Curated·Apr 9, 2022Member-onlyMy First GhostThe Ghoul of Dundas St — Strange Footsteps In the middle of the night, when the sounds of someone stalking around above me finally got too much, I got out of bed for a look. What were my mother, father, or sister doing up there at this time of night?The upper level of our house was…Superna5 min readSuperna5 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION-Curated·Apr 4, 2022Member-onlyMongolians, Greeks and AmazonsThe shock of Female Equality — The shrieks of a woman having the living daylights beaten out of her started just after I arrived. It was in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. In the evening I’d walked from my place several blocks to that of a colleague. On the occasions we were in the city, we…History8 min readHistory8 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION-Curated·Mar 26, 2022Member-onlyDid Putin Really Say That?Was it THE greatest catastrophe of the century? — Some Languages don’t have words for ‘a’ or ‘the’ As an academic, I’m sometimes playing my part in ‘science’ by correcting the English in manuscripts written by non-English speaking scientists. Much of this is trying to find a better, or more concise way of saying something. Sometimes, it’s a struggle…Russia7 min readRussia7 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION-Curated·Sep 4, 2021Member-onlyThe Taliban, Women, and MisogynyIt long predates Islam. But it wasn’t always with us. — In which your narrator recounts his experiences of women. It was the sight of bikini clad girls in the swimming pool that really caught my attention. …Books14 min readBooks14 min read
