In episode three of the 2016 series of The X-Files, Agent Scully walks in to find Mulder throwing pencils at her “I Want to Believe” poster. Mulder informs Scully that since their absence “much of the unexplained has been explained.” This has led to a deep disillusion on his part, hence the vandalism of Scully’s poster. “I’m a middle-aged man,” Mulder moans, wondering whether it’s time to put away childish things and stop hunting monsters in the dark. He has been struck with a case of “Middle-Aged Mulder Syndrome”.

A similar disillusion seems today to pervade fortean circles. It seems easy to conclude that in the third decade of the 21st century “visions and miracles have ceased”. In successive issues of , case after phenomenal case is revealed as having mundane origins. An extant plesiosaur was probably responsible for a tragedy at sea in March 1962 ; a small, stone built 19th century house in Leeds was haunted , and a mysterious encounter with the ‘Risley silver man’ in an alien but a hoax .