A return to the Fortean and the supernatural, and to the eminently gullible world of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as Bunkum & Ballyhoo explores the story of fairies photographed in a Yorkshire garden, and how one of England's most famous authors made them a media sensation.
Selected Bibliography & Sources
The Coming Of The Fairies by Arthur Conan Doyle
Sprites, spiritualists and sleuths: the intersecting ownership of transcendent proofs in the Cottingley Fairy Fraud by Francesca Bihet
Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers
The James Randi Educational Foundation

Audio Credit

"Fairies Wear Boots" by Jazz Sabbath

Bunkum and Ballyhoo returns for its third series, as author and historian Patrick W. Reed looks at the phenomenon of True Believer Syndrome, through the story of the spiritualist medium M. Lamar Keene, his stranger than fiction true life story, and his fears of being stalked by who he called "The Psychic Mafia".
Selected Bibliography
The Psychic Mafia by M. Lamar Keene
Flim-Flam! by James Randi

Part two of a double-header on the story of The Highgate Vampire takes a closer look at the principle players - David Farrant, and Reverend Sean Manchester - to explore the background of two extraordinary characters, the unsavoury and unsettling beliefs that so often lurk behind the irrational and the conspiratorial world-view, and asks why Bunkum & Ballyhoo.
Selected Sources:
The Highgate Cemetery Vampire Hunt: The Anglo-American Connection In Satanic Cult Lore by Bill Ellis, in Folklore (1993)
London Uncanny by Clive Bloom
The Highgate Vampire by Sean Manchester
Haunted Highgate by Della Farrant
The Vampire's Bedside Companion by Peter Underwood
I am also indebted in these episodes to the work of Anthony Hogg, Erin Chapman, and Kevin Chesham.
Audio Sources:
True Horror with Anthony Head (2004)
Father Ted S3E1, "Are You Right There Father Ted?" (1998)