The naked and frozen body of Norah Fornario (33) was discovered lying on a roughly hewn cross on the ground, far from her London home, in the wilds of the remote Hebridean island of Iona in November 1929. The doctor declared she had simply died of exposure, officially, no regard was paid to the strange circumstances under which she had been found, no post-mortem was carried out, no inquest was ordered and there was no major police investigation. Award-winning historian Neil Storey investigates the case and throws new light on the life and mysterious death of Norah Fornario in a gripping story akin to the plot of an Agatha Christie murder mystery novel blended with one of the darkest stories of the occult by Dennis Wheatley. A story that involves the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley, ‘The Wickedest Man in the World,’ elite secret societies in London, an ‘occult college’ in the Home Counties, mystical Glastonbury, vampires, demons, fairy folk, and curses set against the backdrop of the roaring 1920s. A story that culminates on a remote Scottish island where folklore and superstition were still believed and feared, and an apparent case of murder by black magic or was it?
