The 18th Yearly Conference
Esperaza, Occitanie, Southern France
Saturday 29th & Sunday 30th August 2026
For the first time the Mysterious Earth Conference will be a smaller event held in my home in Esperaza, in the Occitanie region of the South of France, in the beautiful foothills of the Pyrenees, known as the Cathar Country. This area, also known by some as the ‘Zone’, is the epicentre of so many mysteries and a place of deep spirituality.
Saturday 29th & Sunday 30th August – Speakers, Film and Book Launch
Post Conference Site Visits in Shared Cars
Mon 31st Aug – Rennes-le-Château
Tue 1st Sep – Chateau Montségur
Wed 2nd Sep – Cité de Carcassonne
We very much hope you will be able to join us for what will be a memorable experience.
Please contact Neil with any questions
Contact: Neil McDonald – 07799 061991 – neilmegalithic@gmail.com
Saturday
10.00 – Doors Open
10.25 – Opening Address
10.30 – 11.30 – Neil McDonald
“Rennes-le-Château Mysteries“
Bérenger Saunière – Mount Cardou – Strange Deaths – The Two Towers – The Nazies
Neil has a deep fascination with humanity’s ancient and pre-history, devoting many years to studying the subject — with a particular interest in its more unexplained and mysterious aspects. For a quarter of a century, he has led specialist tours for curious travellers to ancient, mystical, and historical sites across the UK and Europe.
A lifetime spent exploring the Western Mystery Wisdom Tradition has shaped Neil’s own course series, which, together with his book In Search of Ancient Wisdom, is designed to help people apply these timeless teachings to bring about positive change in their own lives.
Neil’s work has been featured across television and radio, including BBC Radio 4’s Excess Baggage, Edge Media TV’s Now That’s Weird, Glastonbury Radio’s Mysterious West, and BBC Radio Lancashire. He also founded and runs the annual Mysterious Earth Conference.
11.30 – 12.15 – Coffee Break
12.15 – 13.15 – Catherine de Courcy
‘The Cathars and the tragedy of Montsegur’
Irish author and historian Catherine de Courcy moved to Occitanie while researching her novel Montségur: a novel. The author of more than twenty books, most of them non-fiction, she has spent years exploring Cathar history through archival research, local traditions and the landscape itself. She continues to research and write about the history, people and enduring legacy of Montségur and the Cathars.
Pre-Conference chat with Catherine .
13.15 – 14.30 – Lunch Break
14.30 – 15.30 – Mark Froud
”The Circle and the Line’
Mark Froud is a British researcher and author whose work explores the hidden geometries and symbolic language of Britain’s prehistoric landscapes. Focusing on megalithic sites, he investigates the idea that ancient monuments form part of an intentional design rooted in number, proportion, and cosmic order.
He is best known for The Circle and the Line, where he examines how universal geometric principles—particularly the relationship between the circle and the square—may have been used to encode knowledge into the land. Drawing on measurements, alignments, and comparative analysis, he presents these forms as functional expressions of a worldview based on balance and harmony.
Working at the intersection of geometry, archaeoastronomy, and landscape study, Froud challenges conventional interpretations while remaining grounded in observation. His work invites a reconsideration of the ancient world as a continuum of knowledge, expressed through form, number, and the enduring mystery of stone circles.
Pre-Conference chat with Mark.
15.30- 16.15 – Coffee Break
16.15 – 17.15 – Rupert Soskin
‘Surprises from the World of Archaeology: Why Details Matter‘
Rupert Soskin is a British writer, researcher, and independent filmmaker whose work explores the deeper layers of Britain’s prehistoric past. Engaging with megalithic landscapes and ancient monuments, his approach combines grounded inquiry with a quiet sense of wonder.
He is best known for his involvement in the Standing with Stones film series, which examines stone circles, standing stones, and sacred sites through the lenses of geometry, astronomy, and landscape alignment. He is also a founding voice behind The Prehistory Guys, a collaborative platform exploring ancient cultures and lost knowledge alongside researchers such as Jim Vieira, Michael Collins, and Hugh Newman.
In addition to his film work, Soskin is the author of several books reflecting his interest in ancient engineering, symbolism, and forgotten knowledge. Across his writing and filmmaking, he encourages a more open yet critically aware engagement with the past, acknowledging both the limits of current understanding and the possibility of deeper insights within ancient cultures.
18.00 – Close
Sunday
11.00 – Doors Open
11.30 – 12.30 – Anna F. Crowley – (AKA. Anna Kingsford)
‘Hidden in Plain Sight.’
The enduring allure of the Holy Grail lies not in a lost object or hidden bloodline, but in the way its meaning has continually shifted across time. Works like The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code did not so much uncover secrets as reinterpret fragments of history, legend, and symbolism into compelling modern myths. At sites such as Rennes-le-Château, the mystery owes more to the legacy of Bérenger Saunière and later speculation than to verifiable evidence. The Grail itself, first emerging in medieval literature, was never a fixed object but a fluid symbol—one that evolved from a mysterious vessel into a metaphor for spiritual insight and transformation.
What appears as secrecy is, in truth, a shifting symbolic tradition rather than a concealed historical fact. Claims of encoded messages in works like the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, or connections to ancient monuments such as Stonehenge, reflect a human tendency to seek patterns and deeper meaning rather than demonstrable links. The Grail endures because it resists definition—it is rediscovered in each age not as something found, but as something understood differently, shaped by the inner and cultural landscape of those who seek it.
12.30 – 13.15 – Coffee Break
13.15 – 13.45 – Anna Kingsfold
“Questions & Answers with Anna”
Pre-Conference chat with Anna
13.45- 15.00 – Lunch Break
15.00 – 16.00 – Film ‘The Zone’
“Boris Brander and Juho Aittanen”
ZONE
A film by Boris Brander & Juho Aittanen
Deep in the Occitanie, where the Pyrenean foothills keep their oldest secrets, lies a territory that has drawn seekers and visionaries for centuries — a place where the boundary between the known world and something stranger grows thin.
Zone is a documentary journey through this haunted landscape: from Rennes-le-Château and its inexplicable priest, to the Cathar last stand at Montségur, to the geometrically impossible mountain of Bugarach. Along the way, it traces the Holy Grail, Otto Rahn’s fatal obsession, and questions Jules Verne may have encoded in plain sight.
Lyrical and rigorous, Zone does not offer answers — only the experience of a question that will not let you go.
Pre-Conference chat with Boris Brander & Juho Aittanen
17.00 – 17.45 – Coffee Break
17.45 – 18.45 – Alex Anttila
“The Ninth Gate in the Zone”
Alex Anttila is an entertainment producer and freelance researcher of paranormal, esoteric and the occult. In Finland Alex Anttila has produced five concerts for Italian horror film, prog rock group Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin and produced in co-operation with Svart records with three successful live albums from Italian horror films Suspiria, Profondo Rosso and George A Romero’s Dawn of the dead. With black metal group Mayhem’s lead vocalist Attila Csihar Alex Anttila has produced live concerts for silent film classics; Cabinet of dr Caligari and F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu.
Besides event and book productions ever since childhood Alex Anttila has been interested in paranormal and esoteric. Ghosts, sightings of vampires and special art pieces, statues and paintings that have dual or multiple different meanings have always been keen interest of his research.
In this lecture Alex Anttila will go through part of the extremely interesting esoteric statues of the main capital of Finland Helsinki, and the connection of these statues have for the Aude “zone” (the Cathar Country), specially the statues and village of Alet-les-Bains. Also the references these statues have to Arturo Perez Reverte’s 9th gate book and tarot.
Pre-Conference chat with Alex Antilla
19.00 – Close
Booking for the Conference Weekend
Attandance Limited to 20 People
Full Weekend (Sat & Sun) – £70 Including Lunch