The Centre for Fortean Zoology, founded in 1992, is the world's only truly global resource centre for cryptozoology and allied disciplines. Our aim is to coordinate and promote research into cryptozoology, mystery animals, out-of-place animals, zooform and zoomorphic phenomena, folkloric animal archetypes and rare, unusual and aberrant animal behaviour.
'On The Track' is a monthly WebTV show, written and presented by Jon Downes and Charlotte Phillipson from the Centre for Fortean Zoology. Jon first started the show nearly 10 years ago after reading about Rachel Fuller’s WebTV show, ‘In The Attic’, where she, her boyfriend Pete, and various of his friends broadcast music and chat - literally from their attic! As ‘Pete’ happens to be the guitarist for one of the greatest British rock bands of all time, his ‘friends’ have tended to be very impressive media characters. In a similar way to when Jon first heard Pete Townshend’s music and thought “I wanna do that,” reading about their broadcasts made him decide to do one of his own.
However, as Jon’s household has always been a mixture of family and an ever-shifting population of friends, relatives and collaborators from across the world, he decided to try to involve as many of them as possible.
And because he has a very surreal outlook upon the world, and is still a seventeen-year-old hooligan guitar slinger at heart, there is a fair dollop of crazy humour and even some good old rock 'n' roll on occasions.
We hope you enjoy the show as much as the team enjoy making it. However, there are all sorts of things we want to do, that - at the moment - we simply cannot afford to, because we lack the equipment, manpower, or money.
And this is where you come in!
Our friend Louis was kind enough to set this page up for us (and we cannot thank him sufficiently, because we would never have done it without him). We would like to make 'On The Track' bigger and better, and with your help we can get bigger, better, more ambitious; to be able to take on larger projects and reach a wider audience, continue our groundbreaking work, and slip a few quid pocket money to the younger members of the operation, in return for their ongoing dedication to the CFZ and our activities.
Most of what we do is free, and will remain so; however, if people feel kindly disposed towards us, and want to "invest" in 'On The Track', to help us achieve our goals, there are some fun rewards to be had, and the sky to aim for.
So please help us if you feel that you can!