David Bramwell - The Mysterium: Unexplained and extraordinary stories for a post-Nessie generation

Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Brewers, an imprint of Chambers Publishing Limited.
An Hachette UK company.

Copyright David Bramwell and Jo Keeling 2017

The right of David Bramwell and Jo Keeling to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781473670198

Chambers Publishing Limited
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ

www.chambers.co.uk

Eighty years ago, to the very day that this introduction is being written, American aviator Amelia Earhart disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. No one knows what happened to her, but boy do we have some awesome theories: she was captured by the Japanese and spent the entire Second World War broadcasting propaganda over the radio under the name Tokyo Rose; she was abducted by aliens; or perhaps, as the book Amelia Earhart Lives (1970) insists, she anonymously returned to the US and lived out her life as a suburban housewife named Irene Bolam.

Of course, no one has accepted any of these theories as fact especially Irene Bolam, who was furious about it and so the mystery endures. To this exact day in fact 2 July 2017 when, over 9,000 miles from where Im sat typing these words, a pack of four bone-sniffing dogs are wandering around the tiny island of Nikumararo, hunting for her remains.

These highly trained border collies, which can sniff out burial sites that date back as far as 1,500 years up to nine feet underground, are the latest bright idea of an obsessed team who, over the last three decades, have led 12 similar missions attempting to locate the missing pilot.

Why the need for dogs that can smell as far down as a nine feet, you ask? Because this time around theyre investigating a new theory: that Earhart survived the crash and lived on Nikumararo as a castaway, but then met her death by giant killer coconut crabs, who ate her, stole her bones and then hid them in their underground burrows. Thats an actual theory.

Why are we still fascinated by Amelia Earhart? For some, its the sheer mystery of it all. For others, its the need to solve a case. Just like crime writer Patricia Cornwell, who became so convinced of her theory, that Jack the Ripper was the painter Walter Sickert, that she has spent more than $6 million buying up his paintings to prove it (even reportedly shredding two of them in search of clues). Or ex-footballer Gary Lineker, who revealed in January 2017 that hes been quietly trying to work out why every month, for the last 20 years, someone has been sending him a single sheet of used toilet paper in the post.

Even Sir Edmund Hillary, who definitely had more important things to do at the time, revealed that upon reaching the summit of Mount Everest, he couldnt help but look for signs that George Mallory and Andrew Irvine had got there before him. According to Mallorys daughter, her father was carrying a photo of his wife with him, which he was going to leave on the summit. Sadly, Hillary found no photo, nor did he find any other evidence.

So far, none of the above-mentioned mysteries Earhart, Ripper, Mallory, that weird toilet paper guy have been solved. Should we give up on them? Never. In 1999, an expedition was launched to search for Mallory and Irvines camera on Everest. Had they reached the summit, the camera might contain a photo of them doing so. Within two hours, the team stumbled on something completely unexpected: the body of a man on whose shirt was a name tag that read G. Leigh Mallory, his body eerily preserved by natures freezer. On the body, they found Mallorys personal belongings, still in perfect condition some 75 years on his knife, still in its leather casing; a pair of snow goggles, unbroken; and his brass altimeter. It was an astonishing discovery. The one thing they didnt find though, rather devastatingly, was his camera.

Amelia Earhart and George Mallory are not included as stories in The Mysterium . And for good reason they are far too well documented, and are much better served up as an appetizer ahead of what you are about to read. What David and Jo have so brilliantly done with this tome, is theyve forced open a gap in that bookshelf labelled mystery and wedged in something original and different to remind us of all the many new mysteries out there worthy of our eagle-eyed attention. There is more to be marvelled at than just Bigfoot and Roswell.

If youre anything like me, by the time you finish reading this book you will know the rules to a potentially fatal, dimension-shifting elevator game daring yourself to play it; you will undoubtedly find yourself with ears poised listening out for that unexplainable Earthly hum; you will be sitting with eyes glued to your computer waiting in anticipation for the appearance of the next mysterious Cicada 3301 puzzle; and youll watch in fascination at the evolution of the terrifying Slenderman as his mythology grows and grows.

So go now and get stuck into the world of The Mysterium , soak up all the stories, ponder all the clues, start making your own new connections and if you can put those ideas out into the world for others to chew on. Time may pass, landscapes may change, evidence may erode, but as long as there is someone out there who, 80 years down the road, is still willing to say What about using bone-sniffing dogs?, these stories are kept alive.

We may never know the answer to any of these strange tales. Perhaps what really matters is that we never stop getting that tingle down our spine when we discover a new enigma or another twist in an enduring mystery such as the fact that another thing they didnt find on Mallorys body, that day in 1999, was the picture of his wife. DS

Dan Schreiber is a comedian, host of the No Such Thing As A Fish podcast, and creator and founding producer of the BBC Radio 4 series The Museum of Curiosity .

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

In 2015, Guinness World Record holder, Steve Feltham, hung up his binoculars and headed home. For 24 years, living in a loch-side caravan in Scotland, he had waited for a sighting of the Loch Ness Monster until reaching the inevitable conclusion that it was, in all likelihood, a catfish.