Fukuchiyama For a brief palate cleanser, before we continue with the dictionary, here’s a “position statement” from John from 1986. It’s a clear summation of his views at the time, and is, I think, a useful supplement to his definitions. It was published in the INFO Journal (#50, October, 1986), the magazine of the International Fortean Organization, following a biographical article by Phyllis Benjamin.
John’s next few entries give us his concise definitions of “world soul” and “space warp,” among other things. I hadn’t heard of a connection between salt and grays before, although Jaye Paro reported that the entities she claimed to know ate great amounts of it. This is one place where the folklore of aliens and fairies diverges: fairies are supposedly repelled by salt.
These next entries include some topics that eventually became part of ufology–ghosts, the Shaver Mystery, and fairy folklore–as well as John’s memorable definition 0f a skeptic. Since Shaver and the sidhe are mentioned, I’ll add an old Amazing Stories cover illustrating a Shaver story about the sidhe: not part of his “Mystery,” just a rousing sword-and-sorcery yarn about Irish warriors and fairy magic. Nevertheless, Shaver did maintain that all the folklore about people living underground was evidence for his own beliefs.
We head into the letter S now, starting with “saint.” “Scruff” is a new one to me. For younger readers, George Adamski was one of the first contactees, and quite a curious character. And for some reason, John wrote two definitions of the word “sensitive,” so take your pick.
The next five definitions give us a couple of provocative versions of reality. One note: Korsakoff’s psychosis is caused by both thiamine deficiency and alcoholism. Confabulation is traditionally considered a major symptom (it’s also known as “confabulatory psychosis”), but is not found in all cases.
