12 May 2025
The story of the Commonwealth Covenant Church (CCC) has been hanging out in the chasms of my Google Drive for some time. A while ago I was asked about cults or sects that might be in the Wairarapa besides the 2x2s. This group came up in my search, although much of what I found about their activities was not based in the Wairarapa but rather in the Hutt Valley. The CCC is not the easiest group to research, as their numbers had thinned considerably by the early 2000s, and numbered just six by 2013. They were a long-dead congregation by the time anything would be recorded on the web. Archival records are limited (or restricted), and when the CCC does warrant a mention in a book or academic work, it's limited to one or two lines.
10 June 2024
We last left the story of Colin Amery at the precipice of his 2nd attempt at immigration to the Pacific, this time following his pregnant girlfriend back to her home country of New Zealand. Before he departed the UK, he decided to stage a UFO 'talk-down' on Hampstead Heath. Amery fails to provide any further detail on what a UFO talk-down is exactly, but boy did it deliver.
11 September 2023
The Skeptical Calendar is 90% done and far be it for the Editors of this illustrious newsletter to even suggest its readers go out and be newsworthy, we might have a few days you want to aim for.
6 June 2023
“An auditor and client using an E-Meter”, or the longest running stitch up in New Zealand History - you decide.
16 January 2023
As Mark and I continue to chip away at the NZ Skeptical Calendar project, my search for fringe groups in the Papers Past database introduced me to Ānanda Mārga (The Path of Bliss or officially,Ānanda Mārga Pracāraka Saṃgha). The groups had an absolutely wild time in New Zealand and Australia throughout the 1970s before they disappeared from the archives, resurfacing intermittently when their humanitarian efforts were being promoted. Ānanda Mārga came to New Zealand in 1974 and soon there were groups in each major New Zealand city; they even operated a health food shop in Nelson.
16 May 2022
On May 17th, 1894, news of an arrest made in Petone the previous night hit the broadsheets and started spreading across the country and even over the ditch. While it wasn't a case of murder, there was certainly no small amount of mayhem and mystery which left reporters hoping for some scandalous revelations to be made.
1 May 1987
A group called New Zealand Skeptics has called on newspapers and magazines in New Zealand to carry a disclaimer with their astrology columns.