RONAN COGHLAN

The undoubted star of the last few years, we couldn't imagine hosting a Weird Weekend without him; in a weekend packed with great performers, Ronan will probably be the most funniest speaker. He was born in Dublin, 1948.

After a school career in which he often made minimal effort, he went on to Trinity College, Dublin, from which he holds an MA degree and the Higher Diploma in Education. He has worked at a large number of schools in both Ireland and Britain, notably at Hawkhurst Court (Sussex) and Rockport (Northern Ireland). He harbours a low opinion of current education and the philosophy lying behind it.

His first venture into writing occurred with Irish Christian Names (1979). His Encyclopaedia of Arthurian Legends (1991) proved highly popular, selling 120,000 copies worldwide and being translated into Japanese. His small Dictionary of Irish Myth and Legend has also sold widely. His major work on cryptozoology A Dictionary of Cryptozoology (2004) was aimed chiefly at those who could not afford the monumental works of Eberhart and Newman, yet who needed a good reference book on the subject, which is approached more from a folkloric than a zoological angle. His Handbook of Fairies (1998) is a n alphabetical guide to that subject. He has also written Cryptosup, a booklet supplementing his dictionary. He is currently working on a number of projects.

Ronan Coghlan is married with three children. He currently lives in Bangor, Northern Ireland.

TIM MATTHEWS

"Tim "Charming But Dangerous" Matthews is, it is said, a man of many possible identities and at this rare public appearance he will whirl through his 13 years of involvement in the weird, the wunderbar and the way out. Born in 1967, Matthews has had what might be best described as a colourful life, combining political extremes, controversy, accusation, counter-accusation and life in the fast lane. His 1999 book UFO Revelation on military UFOs caused a stir and sold out in a few months. Between 1995 and 2001 he was the guest on numerous TV and radio shows featuring the Paranormal.

He currently lives in Northern England, is the Head of Corporate Sales for a growing company, regularly DJs at specialist all-night trance parties, was a professional dance instructor for five years, loves visiting Wiltshire during the summertime and believes in enlightenment through bacon sandwiches. Tim's daughters Alex (9) and Freya (6) are undoubtedly the Fortean Footsoldiers of tomorrow.

He looks forward to seeing you all the 2008 Weird Weekend......

LEE WALKER

Biography and picture coming soon..

GEOFF WARD

Geoff Ward is a journalist, author and musician who lives in Somerset, England. He has been writing the weekly Mysterious West page in the Western Daily Press newspaper since the autumn of 2004, and has a weekly programme of the same name on Glastonbury Radio, the new online station.

In 2006, his book, Spirals: the Pattern of Existence, was published with an introduction by the best-selling author Colin Wilson, with whom Geoff has a website project running. Geoff has a deep and lifelong interest in earth mysteries, literature, psychology, philosophy and the ancient wisdom. He has an Hons degree in English and is currently studying for his MA.

Geoff will be talking about the researches that led to his book, showing how spiral energy fields are all around us and within us, patterning our very existence, from microcosm to macrocosm, determining structures from the tiny vortices of sub-atomic particles and the DNA molecule to the awesome "island universes" of galaxies where stars are born and the conditions for life created. The protean spiral is nature's most favoured pattern of growth and most efficacious deployer of its energy - life-inducing, life-protecting and life-supporting. It is also the age-old intuitive symbol of spiritual development and our identity with the universe found in societies throughout history.

MATTHEW WILLIAMS

The one many who is legally entitled to call himself a `crop circle maker` after his conviction a few years back for doing just that, Matthew is making his third visit to the Weird Weekend. He is a film maker, lighting engineer and all round good egg, who as well as giving us a lecture on the links between mystery animals and crop circles, is also providing the AV services for the whole weekend.

RICHARD FREEMAN

Richard Freeman is one of Britain's few professional cryptozoologists. His interest in unknown animals reaches back to his childhood and he has had a long and varied career working with exotic creatures. He was head curator of reptiles at Twycross zoo in the Midlands. In 1996 he took a degree in zoology at Leeds university and after graduation moved to Exeter to work full time as the Zoological Director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology, the UK`s only cryptozoological organisation.

MATT SALUSBURY

Matt Salusbury is a freelance journalist. He is secretary of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) London Freelance Branch and deputy editor of the Freelance, the newsletter and website for freelance journalists, and he represents freelance interests on various union policy-making bodies. After fifteen years as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language in Holland, Turkey and the UK, he recently left the profession to work as news and features editor of the English language teaching industry magazine English Language Gazette, where he now writes about how dreadful the industry is, and how appallingly it treats its teachers. He is a frequent contributor toFortean Times.

Matt is acknowledged as an expert on subjects including education in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Metropolitan Police's Forward Intelligence Team and Trotskyite UFO cult the Posadists. He learnt the rudiments of zoology at his mother's knee – she was in one of the first intakes of female zoology undergraduates at Oxford in the early 1950s. His collection of model dinosaurs, while modest by the standards of some other CFZ members, now totals something in the region of 300 items and occupies most of his bedroom walls.

Dr GAIL-NINA ANDERSON

Dr. Gail-Nina Anderson is an elderly Goth who has spent a lfetime carefully nurturing her natural streak of morbidity. Trained as an art historian and now based in Newcastle, she works as a free-lance arts lecturer and journalist, covering areas of literature, film studies and visual culture. Main employers are Sunderland University, Northumbria University Gallery, the Tyneside Cinema and assorted local papers, but this pattern tends to mutate on a regular if erratic basis. She is a long-time member of the Dracula Society and has lectured more often than she can remember on the literature, cinema, folklore and imagery of vampires. When this palls, she varies it with fairies, angels and dragons. Her academic specialism is the art of the Pre-Raphaelites, especially Rossetti, and she has organised and written the catalogues for two exhibitions of Victorian art. She also runs courses on the supernatural in film and literature and has had several short spooky stories published (one in Russian, though she's not sure why) plus the occasional poem. She is a regular contributor to the Fortean Times magazine and associated Unconventions, so has delved into the world of the weird and the ways we perceive and categorise it. Her hobbies are collecting mourning jewellery and drinking red wine.

CHRIS MOISER

Chris Moiser was born, at an early age, in Berkshire. This was a great disappointment to his father who wanted him to be born in Yorkshire with a view to playing cricket for the County. This didn’t unnecessarily upset Chris as he wasn’t interested in cricket. As a result of making a lot of noise on the first day of his life he wasn’t allowed to spend the night on the ward, but was made to spend the night in the lady’s toilet together with a little girl of similar volume. Despite common interests he failed to get her name when they were suddenly parted the following morning.

Childhood was spent in various towns in the West Midlands, going to a series of the local schools. None of the schools were of great note, and two have since become Sikh temples. He ended up at Bridgnorth Grammar School, where his tendency to get locked in toilets with ladies, overnight, again appeared. The fact he was genuinely looking for an escaped ferret did not improve his credibility. Fortunately when discovered his father had just accepted a job in Plymouth, and so the family moved there. Devonport High School for Boys was attended for two years, during which he started the pirate radio club, and, celebrated sports day by dropping a twenty foot steel, Royal Navy Surplus, radio aerial down a school chimney. A brief spell at the local College of Further Education got him much needed A levels and he then went back to the Midlands to read for a degree in Biology and Biochemistry.

His undergraduate days are still clouded in much mystery, but he was involved in the campaign to keep Dudley Zoo open, and for a period of time, presented a Sunday morning programme on a local radio station.

Shortly after graduating he went to work in the courts in Liverpool for 4 years. As he put it where else can you learn about criminal law so quickly. A part time course in Manchester led to his first legal qualification.

After qualifying he left Liverpool and returned to the parental home in Plymouth where a large number of animals subsequently arrived. After a short spell at the local Polytechnic he set up a small publishing company and started teaching at the local College of Further Education. He always considered this to be jolly sporting of the college as they still remembered him from seven years previously. During his twenty years teaching he strenuously avoided getting any teaching qualifications, but did get a law degree and a qualification in Egyptology.

Interest in cryptozoology started to grow from about 1990 onwards and in view of the fact that he lived in Plymouth, these interests focused on big cats of the South West and marine animals. A series of articles followed some initial investigations, as did some television work. His college work was spiced up with a number of trips, with students, to West Africa. The trips were moderately successful, although Chris was heard to say, on more than one occasion that it was the staff behaviour that worried him, not the students. Two short papers on sacred crocodile pools followed, as did a report of a secret late night dig on a tourist beach for monster remains.

Eventually, after a series of minor disagreements with the College, Chris decided to leave and finally, try to qualify as a Solicitor. He attended Exeter University and, to his surprise, passed the legal practice course. He is currently attempting to find a firm of Solicitors to take him on to do a training contract. As he says it is difficult trying to persuade them that they need a fifty year old cryptozoologist with an interest in crime, employment law, big cats and sea monsters. Besides he can’t start yet as still owes a lot of people articles!

PAUL VELLA

Paul is an independent Forensic Computer Expert Witness by trade, specialising in criminal defence cases, but he also runs the CFZ BHM (Bigfoot etc) Study Group as well as administrating one of the world's most popular Bigfoot related websites bigfootforums.com. Paul is also a founding member of the Alliance of Independent Bigfoot Researchers, and has far too many books on the subject fighting for room on his office bookcases.

A long term aficionado of such things he has made several trips to the relevant areas of the United States over the years gathering evidence much to his long-suffering wife's dispair, and is widely regarded as one of the most credible authorities on the subject to be found this side of the Atlantic.

A natural skeptic, Paul errs on the side of caution when it comes to bigfoot evidence and reports, but as someone who works with forensic evidence on a daily basis, says that some of the evidence for the existence of bigfoot is compelling, but reserves judgement until he has seen one for himself.

Paul's long-term aim is to get researchers around the world to collect and present evidence in a meaningful and professional way.

MIKE HALLOWELL

Mike Hallowell was born in South Shields, Tyne & Wear, in May 1957. He is married to his wife, Jackie, and has three grown sons. Mike runs his own media firm - Thunderbird Craft & Media - and is a full-time writer, broadcaster and paranormal researcher.

Mike was the founder of the Twilight Worlds Paranormal Research Society, but left the organization in 2003 after disagreements regarding its running. Mike is now the patron of The North East Ghost Research Team.

Mike is a regular contributor to/columnist with many journals, newspapers and magazines, including Contemporary Review, UFO DATA, Magonia, Paranormal Magazine and VISION. He frequently appears on radio and TV, and has starred in several documentaries.

Mike's first book on ghostly phenomena was Ales & Spirits, which detailed the history of over twenty haunted public houses. He has since written Invizikids; The Curious Enigma of “Imaginary” Childhood Friends which was published by Heart of Albion Press in 2007. His book Mystery Animals of Northumberland & Tyneside is to be published by CFZ in 2008, as is the book he has co-authored with Darren W. Ritson, The South Shields Poltergeist: One Family’s Fight Against an Invisible Intruder (Sutton Publishing).

Mike has interviewed many of the leading lights in the world of paranormal research and alternative spirituality, including Uri Geller, Jon Downes, Stephen Holbrook, Richard Freeman, Cliff Crook, Colin Fry, Tony Stockwell, Timothy Good and Nick Redfern. Mike also writes the UK's longest-running paranormal column in a provincial newspaper. WraithScape appears every Thursday in the Shields Gazette, which also happens to be the oldest provincial daily newspaper in the British Isles.

Dr KARL SHUKER

Dr. Karl P. N. Shuker (born 1959) is a British zoologist living in the West Midlands, England. He is currently working as a full-time freelance zoological consultant, media consultant, and author, specializing in cryptozoology, for which he is internationally renowned. During the course of his continuing researches and writings, he regularly travels worldwide, and also appears frequently on television and radio.

Shuker has authored many hundreds of articles, and twelve books, including the cryptozoological works Mystery Cats of the World (1989), The Lost Ark: New and Rediscovered Animals of the 20th Century (1993; expanded in 2002 as The New Zoo), and In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995), as well as two worldwide bestsellers - Dragons: A Natural History (1995; resissued in 2006), and The Unexplained (1996; reissued in 2002). During his writings and researches, Shuker has been the first cryptozoologist to bring to widespread public attention a considerable number of cryptids that were previously little-known. These include the Sri Lankan horned jackal and devil bird, Gambo the Gambian sea serpent, Goodenough Island mystery bird, New Guinea ropen and devil pig or gazeka, Scottish earth hound, Indonesian veo and horned cat, New Caledonian du, Irish dobhar-chú, Shatt al Arab venomous mystery fish, Zanzibar makalala, Ethiopian death bird, Zululand kondlo, Arctic North American waheela, Kellas cat, Mongolian Death Worm, Hungarian reedwolf, Fujian blue or Maltese tiger, Welsh cenaprugwirion, bigfin squid, St Helena sirenian, Timor Sea ground shark, and crowing crested cobra.

Dr. MIKE DASH

Mike Dash (b. 1963) is a Welsh writer, journalist and researcher. Born in London, he attended the University of Cambridge and King's College London, and holds a PhD in naval history for the thesis British Submarine Policy 1853–1918.

Dash worked for 20 years as contributing editor and publisher of the journal Fortean Times. He is regarded as one of the most serious modern investigators into such phenomena, preferring the use of first hand sources and other historically accurate information.

His works investigate misconceptions and errors in the field of strange phenomena, typically finding a middle path between "believers" (who, in Dash's view, often accept extraordinary or unusual claims without investigation or on scant evidence) and skeptics and debunkers (who, in Dash's view, often overlook interesting or valuable evidence in their seeming desire to disprove alleged paranormal or anomalous phenomena).

In Borderlands (1997), Dash repeatedly notes that researchers of unusual phenomena must always be wary of potential hoaxes; time and again people have perpetrated elaborate pranks or hoaxes with little motive other than to fool others.

Dash has published six books, and a number of articles and papers in Fortean Times and later spin-off titles such as the academic annual Fortean Studies, published from 1994 through 2000.

OLL LEWIS

Oll is the Ecological Director of the CFZ, and at 26 is both the youngest, and newest, member of the team. We know what to do with these young turks! We put them on a stage and get them to talk about lake monsters.

MICHAEL WOODLEY

Michael Woodley has been an avid fan of Cryptozoology for as long as he can remember. He credits his early fascination with the discipline as being the catalyst for his life long love of Biology.

He has published scientific articles on subjects ranging from Environmental Engineering to Physical Anthropology, and is the author of The Limits of Ecology: New Perspectives from a Theoretical Borderland - a book of essays on Theoretical Ecology, and In the wake of Bernard Heuvelmans - The history - and future - of sea-serpent classification.

Michael holds a BSc degree from Columbia University, New York. He is currently studying for a PhD at the University of London, where he is investigating plant-bacteria interactions.