thirteenfridays: To Pembrokeshire & Beyond

Posted on April 14, 2018 by Jacob Whittaker

Our 13 week picnic marathon started on Friday 13 April, we’ll be visiting a haunted location every Friday until Friday 13 July…

We started off with a thirteenfridays road trip armed with sound recording equipment, digital cameras and an original Polaroid camera – to take an unfakeable and unique Polaroid image at each location. We followed Pembrokeshire Beyond’s haunted map of Pembrokeshire with seven locations to visit.

Our first stop was St Thomas‘ church in Haverfordwest, which is now out of use, (an apparent 40% chance of a paranormal encounter…) where we unpacked the first part of our 13 themed picnic in the graveyard.

Located in the centre of town, there are reported sightings of hooded figures making their way to the old priory situated by the river below the hill and the notorious Owl Man who leaps from trees to assail unsuspecting walkers!We had the first part of our picnic feast of 13 in the churchyard, with 13 cucumber and cheese sandwiches; 13 samosa, 13 cherry tomatoes on the vine, a selection of 13 teas and 13 peanut butter cookies..

With the sun shining and the wildflowers in bloom all around us it was hard to imagine our supernatural fellows at this location, but with the strange growth patterns of the trees – one looking like a giant man-sized nest – it would be quite another prospect after dark.

Our next location, Clay Lanes (a whopping 80% chance of an encounter…), is described as ‘..may be the most metaphysically active road in the county’

Most of the reported activity is on the road itself so we didn’t stop for any 13 picnic snacks – it is a very atmospheric area though. We stopped for a wander around the ruins at Haroldston seeking a glimpse of the white/grey lady and made a sound recording there which we will take a little time to process and draw out any EVP in the recording.
AudioComp

Our next stop was at one of two locations on the A4076 (70% probability…), another road which ‘..was home to an epidemic of sightings earlier this year. 44 sightings in two weeks.’

The image below shows the church at Steynton where ‘Legend says if you see the shadowy figure waiting by the church in Steynton and you don’t pick it up it will appear in your back seat and you will be involved in an accident not long after!”

We weren’t aware of any shadowy hitchhikers hopping aboard…

Steynton

The next location on our route was the Waterston Road (80%…), ‘For decades an old woman in a ragged dress and emitting an eerie blue glow is said to be seen on this road. There is also said to be a lady seen holding a bundle of rags.’. Perhaps we were a little early for the weekend (when most reported sightings occur), but we did find a mysterious bundle of rags in the hedge! This location really was quite spooky and certainly sent a little tingle up the spine…

In Broadhaven (only 30%…), ‘…the epicenter of a UFO and alien activity epidemic from 1977 to 1982.’ we keenly watched the skies for signs of activity and sat at a picnic table near the beach for our second picnic break.

With a bottle of Hop House 13 lager to drink we served 13 veggie sausage rolls, a tortilla made with 13 ingredients (potato, sweet potato, squash, beetroot, parsnip, celery, fennel, onion, cheese, eggs, butter, black olives and oregano), and a 13 ingredient lentil pate (red lentils, water, garlic, ginger, tomato puree, oats, cumin, coriander, bay leaf, tumeric, chili, sumac and salt) served with 13 mini oatcakes.

Our next stop was at Newgale (50%…), where ‘A man is said to run across the road into the path of unsuspecting motorists. he has been described as young with fair hair while others have described him as wearing a red jacket’.

It was a misty evening and there were certainly a few young men criss crossing the road with pints from the pub to sit on the beach in the evening light – probably all corporeal we imagine…

So on to our final destination on a small road from Llys y Fran to Clarbeston (just 10%…but wow…) where ‘A flaming coffin is said to travel through the road and over the hedgerow. The object was said to have knocked a man off his bicycle and gave him a terrible scare while another man walking thought the object was on collision to kill him.’.

No flaming coffins encountered we’re disappointed to report.Stopping at the reservoir to enjoy the last part of our picnic – 13 chocolate chip cookies and a warming cup of one of our 13 tea selection.

Looking at the Polaroids and processing the photos and audio clips from the day we found a couple of unusual results…one polaroid might show an interesting anomaly and something happened to the metadata on photos taken around Broadhaven and Newgale…IMG_7226 from Newgale is out of place and the ‘date modified’ suggests it was modified before it was taken!
meta2

We’ll be exhibiting the original Polaroids, sound works and other outcomes from our 13 weeks of supernatural picnicking later in the year.

Quote of the week: “I’m 80% delighted with this road trip!”

thirteenfridays : 13 picnics

Posted on April 11, 2018 by Jacob Whittaker

This year has two Friday 13ths and like 2013 (when we started the thirteenfridays project) there are 13 weeks in between! In celebration we are planning a new series of events.

13picnicslogo_edited-2

The series kicks off on Friday 13th April with a road trip suggested by the Pembrokeshire Beyond website. Equipped with Polaroid camera, audio & video recorders, an open mind and a picnic feast of 13 we aim to visit all of the seven spooky sites around Pembrokeshire, stopping for a snack and a search for paranormal activity at each location (some are haunted roads so might not be possible to stop).

The series will continue with each Friday taking us out to different haunted locations with different 13 themed picnics, to explore sites and stories of strange and supernatural goings on around Wales.

thirteenfridays: Portuguese Portents

Posted on October 13, 2017 by Jacob Whittaker

Friday 13th October 2017 is the centenary of ‘The Miracle of the Sun‘ in Fatima, Portugal. We took this as a sign to create a Portuguese style thirteenfridays meal with an added sun theme.

13 Spooky Sardines – Simple and tasty with 13 lemon slices.

Sides
We served both starter and main course with a 13 ingredient salad of rocket, spinach, watercress, celery, fennel, cherry tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, sprouts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, capers, red pepper, and olives along with a side dish of 13 cornichons and more green olives.

Stewandpotato
Paranormal Punahou – A 13 ingredient Portuguese Bean stew (modified to be vegetarian) – red kidney beans, white kidney beans, stock, onion, carrots, potatoes, chopped tomatoes, macaroni, pasata, savoy cabbage, garlic, water and seasoning. Served with 13 Batatas a Portuguesa (Portuguese fried potato).

Tarts

13 Petrifying Pastéis de Nata (Portuguese Custard Tarts) – A must have Portuguese dessert!

Sweets
Evil Espresso Thirtinis & Scary Sunflower Seed Brittle – a little extra dessert to celebrate the sun theme!

thirteenfridays: Hen Galan, Radios, Opera & Bernard

Posted on January 13, 2017 by Jacob Whittaker

Friday January 13 2017

The first Friday 13th of 2017 and we decided to combine three celebrations into one to celebrate in fine thirteenfridays style.

We started the evening by setting up a radio experiment to commemorate the first public radio broadcast made on January 13th 1910 and at the same time pay homage to Jacob’s Grandad Bernard Jones, born on January 13th 1914, an inventor and pythagorean, interested in using technology to communicate with the other side. Bernard was one of the inspirations for setting up the Absent but not Forgotten project back in 2010, so we wanted to send him birthday greetings across the great divide.
Bernard was interested in EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) so we set up a detuned radio to play white noise into a Latitude 150 walkie-talkie (446.00625-446.04375 MHz)) while a Sennheiser EW100 wireless microphone kit (830-866MHz) picked up the noise at the other end of the walkie-talkie and sent the noise to a reciever where an Ipad webcast live to youtube. Bernard would undoubtedly have enjoyed the new technologies we could bring to the experiment.
Using 2 radio frequency transmitters and receivers potentially increases the chances of paranormal communication…the experiment ran while we dined in the adjacent room, the result is below. The intermittant transmission is the result of the frighteningly poor upload speeds in rural west Wales rather than any spooky goings-on we fear!

During our thirteenfridays meal we listened to the opera Cavalleria Rusticana which is cited as the first public radio broadcast in 1910 and included this song by Enrico Caruso. Not natural consumers of opera we were feeling quite high brow, but it must be said that not all our guests appreciated the cultural adjustment (you know who you are…).

Hen Galan is the Welsh New Year or the old new year as it was before the calendar change of 1752. Still observed in the Gwaun Valley not far away, our thirteenfridays menu took a Welsh turn in celebration.

Worrying Welsh Rarebit – 13 slices of local Bara Menyn 5 seed bread topped with classic Welsh rarebit made with Welsh cheddar and served with a foraged garnish of 13 pennywort leaves and 13 wild sorrel leaves.

fishpi
Pastai Bysgod Peryglus – Welsh fish pie made with 13 ingredients – Cod, Smoked Salmon, Mussels, Potatoes, Leeks, Fish Stock, Parsley, Bayleaf, Dill, Flour, Butter, Egg, Pepper. Served with 13 New Potatoes, 13 Purple sprouting Broccoli and 13 Kalettes.

welsh-cakes
13 Twisted Welsh Cakes – 13 crushed cardamom pods and dried cranberries providing the twist on the classic.

Bernard’s birthday cake was a Lemon Drizzle with 13 drizzle holes and 13 candles. In memory of the stories by Liz Whittaker about a strange series of events on another of Bernard’s birthdays some years ago, we had a helium balloon and phone at the table throughout the meal…

January 13th – Happy Birthday Bernard

Posted on January 13, 2017 by Jacob Whittaker

The Perceptor was invented by my Grandfather Bernard Jones. My mother, Liz Whittaker, recollects –
“Bernard was an engineer, worked for Renold Chains as a Precision Chain Inspector until 1963 when he left to go into business opening the electrical shop VAX in Claremont Road. He had always invented things – horlicks mixer, hanging scales, designograph (the prototype idea that led to the spirograph), and once he had the shop he invented the Invertest, the electrical safety testing device that won him an award in the early 1970’s from the Inventor’s Society (Manchester ?) who had a regular stand annually at the Ideal Home exhibition where he showed his inventions every year.

His interest in arcane subjects grew in his later years. He’d always enjoyed number, maths problems stuff like that, and he noticed there were mathematical patterns in astrology, cartomancy and numerology (his own pet subject) that seemed to be consistent throughout and could be ‘pooled’ to give some kind of predictive possibility. The Perceptor was produced in small numbers and advertised in Exchange and Mart, that would probably have been around 1970/72 I imagine. There were a few newspaper articles about him back then and there was a particular journalist called Peter Everett who interviewed him more than once and was impressed by what he called ‘his giant brain’. That was around the time when Lily got into spiritualism and more or less persuaded him to go along with her. He was never really a spiritualist and if ever asked his religion he said he was a ‘Pythagorean’.”

Watch a documentary about ‘Bernard and the Phone.’ made for the first Absent but not Forgotten exhibition in 2010.

(from ABNF 2010)
Aspects of the exhibition are loosely based on some of my Grandfather’s research into EVP. As an electrical engineer and inventor he was convinced he could make a telephone that would communicate with ‘the other side’. Oddly enough, he, like me, had a barn full of semi-working and broken Hifi and TV – interesting that we both share a fascination with what might be found in the broken, silent or noisy portions of recorded media. Jacob Whittaker.

The interview was processed and edited to include the audio waveform and a sequence of images derived from frequency analyses of the silences within the audio.

“I remember as a kid, whenever we visited my grandparents, he (Bernard) would take great interest in whatever electronic game or gadget us kids were playing with that week… once taking apart a light up Yo-Yo, much to my annoyance, in order to see and explain how the motion was switching the light on…
…Im sure the technologies available now would have interested and excited his ‘Giant Brain’ “.

thirteenfridays – Lemuria special

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Jacob Whittaker

The ancient Roman festival of Lemuria is thought to be a pre-christian antecedent of All Saints Day. Taking place from May 11th to 13th, feasts and rituals took place ‘…to exorcise the malevolent and fearful ghosts of the dead from their homes. The unwholesome spectres of the restless dead, the lemures or larvae were propitiated with offerings of beans.’ (read more)
MackerelOatcakes
13 Homemade Oatcakes with Manes Mackerel Pate, served with a 13 ingredient seasonal salad – Red cos, Green Batavia, Spinach, Rocket, Little Gem lettuce, Wild Sorrel, Pennywort, Jack in the Hedge, Wild Garlic & Violets dressed with Mustard, Honey, & Olive oil.

BeanPot
Bellona’s Bean Stew, a 13 ingredient stew with Black Turtle beans, Pinto Beans, Cannellini Beans, Green Beans, Tomatoes, Stock, Onion, Garlic, Worcestershire Sauce, Carrots, Celery, Chilli, Olive oil.

PearPudding
13 ingredient Plutonian Pear Pudding – Passum, Honey, Hazelnuts, Plain flour, Caster sugar, Butter, Baking powder, Bicarbonate of Soda, Eggs, Vanilla, Dark chocolate, Cream, Milk.

So having dined on oatmeal cakes (a nod to the Vestals’ ‘Mola salsa’,) Passum poached pear pudding (passum was a sweet raisin wine with honey), garnishes of wild violet flowers and more honey we continued the evening with a short and effective ritual –

‘Ovid notes that at this festival it was the custom to appease or expel the evil spirits by walking barefoot and throwing black beans over the shoulder at night. It was the head of the household who was responsible for getting up at midnight and walking around the house with bare feet throwing out black beans and repeating the incantation, “I send these; with these beans I redeem me and mine” (Haec ego mitto; his redimo meque meosque fabis.) nine times. The household would then clash bronze pots while repeating, “Ghosts of my fathers and ancestors, be gone!” nine times.’

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Tŷ Distaw (Silent House)

Posted on November 16, 2015 by kathryncampbelldodd

During the two weeks between Halloween and Friday 13 November 2015, Absent but not Forgotten explored making new work; experimenting with various ideas, locations and techniques.

Tŷ Distaw: Bangor Teifi is the first in a planned new series of video works located in derelict buildings in west Wales which utilise projection and re-filmed footage which make reference to the aesthetics of early silent horror film.

We debuted the first cut at Gwrando’s Open Screen Night at Small World Theatre in Cardigan – an opportunity to see the piece projected on a large screen and gather some responses from the audience.