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Posted: 02-03-2006 19:04 Post subject:

Posted: 02-03-2006 21:12 Post subject:

I have tried, and failed, to find any confirmation of the 'lost children in Malta's Hypogeum' story. The website mentions a National Geographic issue in August 1940, about lost schoolchildren in the 'catacombs' beneath Valetta.
Although I have not been able to find a copy of that article I suspect that the whole story is a fabrication, and no school party was ever lost.
It is easy to make up a story like that, and add a spurious reference to an article in an old magazine.
Even if the lost schoolchildren story is true, or partly true, the 'humanoid' element is almost certainly nonsense.

The Hypogeum is a fascinating place, but it certainly isn't connected to a system of catacombs.

Posted: 03-03-2006 12:09 Post subject: Hell

[quote="eburacum"] "The website mentions a National Geographic issue in August 1940, about lost schoolchildren in the 'catacombs' beneath Valetta."

Eburacum, like you I've long been fascinated by the "lost students of Malta" legend and likewise puzzled by the marked lack of solid documentation.

However,. I HAVE examined that August, 1940, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC issue and it DOES indeed mention, AS FACT, the story of the vanishing students! However. the information is contained only in a photo caption. Even so, NG is usually pretty darn accurate in its reporting. So I think we can establish that the story was at the very least in common circulation on Malta at the time when the article was written (1939 or 1940).

But even if we acept the story as true, there are all sorts of unanswered questions which nobody (other than me and thee) seems to have the slightest interest in solving. Among others:

1. When DID this happen? (Before mid-1940, obviously.)

2. Were the students of primary, high school or college/university age?

3. Were the students local Maltese or foreigners?

George Wagner (Old Time Radio)

Posted: 03-03-2006 19:03 Post subject:

Remarkable. Thank you for that; the Fortean index of this story has become much higher.

Of course the story told by 'Miss Jessup' about 'hairy humanoids' is not directly connected to the dissapearance of the children, but just refers to it as a local incident. So there is no reason to expect that the humanoids story is authentic, or that any of these events involved the Hypogeum. In fact it is pretty certain that the Hypogeum has no passages connecting to any other 'catacombs', as it has been thoroughly surveyed by archaeologists in the past.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypogeum_of_Hal-Saflieni

Posted: 03-03-2006 20:22 Post subject:

The "screams from the underground" story reminds me of the Iceberg Sound recordings that are mentioned here:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24383

It really sounds like voices from hell. If the russians tried to record the sound of scaping continental plates then that must have been a pretty hellish sound. I would like to hear the recording!

The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum has one tatalizing link in Google, which seems to be lost, even from the cache:

Posted: 03-03-2006 20:45 Post subject:

Most of these links seem to point back to a retelling of the Miss Jessup story
Google Results Here

as often happens, a story on the internet can be picked up and multiplied into a dozen or more sources.

One skeptic view I found compared it to similar stories about school parties lost in the Rome catacombs, also apparently without foundation.

Posted: 04-03-2006 04:48 Post subject: Catacombs

Posted: 04-03-2006 05:29 Post subject: "Miss 'Jessup' - IDENTIFIED

I've FOUND "Miss 'Jessup'"!!

I went into Google and tried the variant spelling "Jessop" and all became clear and I realized where I'd seen the name before.

She was "Mrs. Constance Lois Jessop" and in the 1950s and 1960s she lived at 101 West 55th Street, New York City (10019).

At that time she was the secretary of the "New York Saucer Bureau," which I believe was rather contactee-oriented. She was apparently a good friend of contactee Dan Fry as well as of Riley Crabb of the Borderland Sciences Research Foundation.

Lois Jessop informed Crabb of the adventures which had befallen her during the mid-1930s as she hiked through tunnels underneath or very near the Maltese Hypogeum.

This seems to have been within weeks of the "missing students" debacle.

Posted: 04-03-2006 14:30 Post subject:

Hal Saflieni is about four kilometers from Valetta old town, where any catacombs might be expected to be found; I can't find any mention of catacombs in Valetta open to the public, although there are some in Rabat, more than ten kilometers away.

With a high degree of confidence I think it is possible to say that there are no catacombs connected to the Hypogeum, which is a World Heritage site and has been surveyed thoroughly, not least to make this 3D model.
http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~alan/Arch/INSITE/research/comvis/insite1.htm

But this is an interesting story none-the-less.

Posted: 04-03-2006 22:08 Post subject: Mrs. Lois Jessop

Mrs. C. Lous Jessop seems to have informed Riley Crabb that after her hike through the tunnel or catacomb she was warned by the locals against trying this again - because this was precisely the location where the teacher and students had disappeared, apparently only a few weeks earlier. And when Mrs. Jessop decided to repeat her journey anyway, in spite of the warnings, she found that the tunnel had now been SEALED OFF.

Posted: 05-03-2006 10:51 Post subject:

Yes; that is where the link with the Shaver Mystery comes in.
In the Forties and Fifties the SF magazine Amazing Stories began to publish fantastic tales of underground civilisations on Earth, written by one Richard Shaver;
http://www.softcom.net/users/vtown/feardownbelow.html
These became very popular apparently, and seem to have contributed to the great UFO flap of 1947 (according to the author of that link.)

The Malta tale may have had a kernel of truth, taken from the National Geographic perhaps (or possibly Ms Jessop actually went there); but the whole is part of a great subterranean confection without basis in reality.

Fascinating though.

Posted: 05-03-2006 19:01 Post subject: Questions

Are there any Forteans on Malta, or who read Maltese, and who may have access to 1930s newspaper files?

Is there an English-language newspaper on Malta which was there as early as the 1930s?

Or an Italian-language paper? (That's more likely.) Forteanism has a number of scholars fluent in Italian, including historian Dr. T. Peter Park who has written extensively for THE ANOMALIST..

Posted: 05-03-2006 19:15 Post subject: National Geographic

Even if Mrs. Jessop merely cribbed her story from one line beneath a 1940 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC photo caption (and my gut feeling is that she did NOT do this), the question remains - where did NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC obtain ITS information? That respected magazine has rarely - if ever - been accused of "just making things up."

Again, the information we need is going to have to come FROM Maltese sources.

A letter or even an email to the right Maltese scholar might bring the information we need.

Posted: 19-07-2013 15:14 Post subject:

I don't suppose you ever wrote them, OTR? Very Happy