EVEN by the second evening, Jonathan Downes, prime mover of

the Weird Weekend conference and director of the Devon-based

Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ), was feeling decidedly weird

himself.

"My legs have given out, my back has given out, and my

pancreas is playing merry hell!" he confided.

The effect of setting up and then presiding over three days

and nearly 30 hours of talks, and making sure everything was at

least organised chaos at this, the most anarchic event in the

alternative conference calendar, was evidently starting to take

its toll on Jonathan, valiantly soldiering on despite a

diabetic condition.

For me, the annual Weird Weekend at Woolfardisworthy

(Woolsery) in North Devon, which is the biggest annual

convention of mystery animal investigators on the planet,

turned out to be a surprisingly homely and unpretentious

gathering.

It was centred on the double act of the towering figure of

Jonathan himself, buffeted this way and that by the various

demands continually made on him, and CFZ zoological director

Richard Freeman – if Jonathan was the lion- tamer, Richard was

the circus ringmaster. As well as cryptozoology involving such

creatures as the yeti, mystery big cats in Dorset and Devon,

and lake and sea serpents including the Loch Ness Monster, the

Weird Weekend this year also covered UFOs, crop circles,

fairies (in art), poltergeists and even children's imaginary

friends.

It must surely be the major date in the Fortean calendar in

the UK – the term Fortean, for those not in the know, taken

from Charles Fort, the Dutch-American writer and researcher

into anomalous phenomena who died in 1932. Importantly, as

Jonathan says, the event is unique in that it is the only

conference anywhere which caters for both the "Fortean

faithful" and the man in the street and his family, with a

special children's programme aimed at bringing back a sense of

wonder of the world for these younger initiates.

Jonathan McGowan, from Bournemouth, of the Big Cats In

Britain group, which receives 2,000 reports of sightings every

year, said Devon was "very hot" for big cat encounters at

present.

There had been 40 sightings of a female leopard which had

delivered two sets of cubs on the MoD ranges on the Isle of

Purbeck in Dorset – "a fantastic place to breed" – for seven

years.

Zoologist Chris Moiser, of the Tropiquaria animal and

adventure park at Watchet, Somerset, in which CFZ is a partner,

spoke of the problems of escaping mara, a large South African

rodent, four of which had been killed by a dog, and one rescued

after becoming stuck in a creek in the town centre.

But the most intriguing talk of the weekend came from Tim

Matthews, of Manchester, billed as "the most controversial man

in ufology", and author of the 1999 book, UFO

Revelation. Tim says UFOs are simply a military cover-up

story for tests of the latest weapons technology, such as

Stealth airships.

He told of attempts to discredit him by the aviation

research community in whose interests it was to see the UFO

"myth" continued. Speaking of mysteriously cancelled mortgage

payments and threatening phone calls in the middle of the

night, Tim said: "It happened to me and it wasn't very

pleasant."

Jonathan Downes was now "the only man in this country who

has the guts to ask me to do this talk".

Certainly, the Weird Weekend is an antidote to normality,

and a real eye-opener.

As Jonathan exclaimed: "It's the beginning of the 21st

century and there are still mysteries to solve."