Recent Fortean tinged artistic events have been in the anomalous news lately: fairy doors, mermaid tales, and eerie radio sounds among them. Probably by now you've read more than one article about the fairy door in San Fransico's Golden Gate park. This idea of creating fairy doors as wee public art installations isn't new; here's a link to an article on the fairy doors (courtesy of The Anomalist) from 2009. A recent article on the current Golden Gate Park fairy door -- the Parks department put an end to the citizens and their whimsy. But not quite, thankfully. In my home town of Eugene, someone leaves little fairy gnomes about in one of our city parks every spring. So far I've only found one but I know others who have found many through the years. Two stories about mermaids -- more accurately, humans who have chosen mimicking mermaid-ism as a "life style" choice --. caught my eye. One story concerns Eric Ducharme of Florida. Ducharme made the UK news. Mr. Ducharme : "...eats, sleeps and breathes mermaids while physically looking and acting like one as often as time allows. 'It's a lifestyle. It's a path in life that I have chosen,' says the 22-year-old from Crystal River who's one of the latest characters to appear on TLC's My Crazy Obsession." But Ducharme isn't just about swimming around in a mermaid tale; he makes and sells mermaid tales. Ducharme calls his mermaid lifestyle "mermaiding." He started on the path to mermanism when he was a child, performing as a "little merprince" in a Florida Little Mermaid water show. (Playing the Fortean Name Game, I notice that "charm", as in Prince Charming, can be derived from Ducharme.) Yahoo's Shine reported on "mermaid" Linden Wolbert, who calls herself a "geeky science mermaid." Wolbert free dives, which means she can hold her breath under water for five minutes. She swims about in a 35 pound, $15,000 custom made fiberglass mermaid "costume." The article mentions a "mermaid fan site" -- iamamermiad.com, "A delicate, ladylike blog for mermaids and the humans who love them." The blog Who Forted had a recent item about a strange recording made, according to the story, in 1995. The person who recorded it used to tape record interesting pieces of music or what not off the radio. One night, this very odd selection was recorded. Who Forted speculates it could have been, among other things, a "number station" something I was unfamilar with: "Numbers stations, for those unaware, are radio stations that are widely believed to communicate with spy networks since as early as the first world war." To my ear, it does sound eerie, but not supernatural. No ghostly EVP or ET message from outer space. I think it's a beautifully done piece of music, along the lines of Laurie Anderson.