Charles Fort was a crank in the best sense of the word. Lovecraft and the X-files can't begin to compete with the spooky stuff he uncovered. In the early twentieth century he put together great quantities of exhaustively documented 'puzzling evidence' (in the words of David Byrne), data which science is unable or unwilling to explain. Forts' books gave me nightmares when I read them when I was seven. Strange items drop from the sky, bizarre artifacts turn up in unexpected places, stars violate the laws of astronomy, giant clouds blot out the moon and the sun trembles in the sky. Is the world inside out? Is it flat? Or maybe shaped like a giant spindle?
What does it all mean? He drops cryptic, breathless hints such as "I think we're property." and "I think that we're fished for. It may be that we're highly esteemed by super-epicures somewhere." Whatever you think about this information, you will at some point while reading Forts' books feel like the foundations of your reality are slipping slightly to the south...
Consider yourself warned!
EXCERPT
YOU KNOW, I can only surmise about this -- but John Henry Sanders, of 75 Colville Street, Derby, England, was the proprietor of a fish store, and I think that it was a small business. His wife helped. When I read of helpful wives, I take it that that means that husbands haven't large businesses. If Mrs. Sanders went about, shedding scales in her intercourses, I deduce that theirs wasn't much of a fish business.
Upon the evening of March 4th, 1905, in the Sanders' home, in the bedroom of their housemaid, there was a fire. Nobody was at home, and the firemen had to break in. There was no fireplace in the bedroom. Not a trace of anything by which to explain was found, and the firemen reported: "Origin unknown." They returned to their station, and were immediately called back to this house. There was another fire. It was in another bedroom. Again -- "Origin unknown." The Sanders', in their fish store, were notified, and they hastened home. Money was missed. Many things were missed.
The housemaid, Emma Piggott, was suspected. In her parents' home was found a box, from which the Sanders' took, and identified as theirs, 5, and a loot of such things as a carving set, sugar tongs, table cloths, several dozen handkerchiefs, salt spoons, bottles of scent, curtain hooks, a hair brush, Turkish towels, gloves, a sponge, two watches, a puff box.
The girl was arrested, and in the Derby Borough Police Court, she was charged with arson and larceny. She admitted the thefts, but asserted her innocences of the fires. There was clearly such an appearance of relation between the thefts and the fires, which, if they had burned down the house, would have covered the thefts, that both charges were pressed.
It is not only that there had been thefts, and then fires: so many things had been stolen that - unless the home of the Sanders' was a large household -- some of these things would have been missed -- unless all had been stolen at once. I have no datum for thinking that the Sanders lived upon any such scale as one in which valuables could have been stolen, from time to time, unknown to them. The indications were of one wide grab, and the girl's intention to set the house afire, to cover it.
Emma Piggott's lawyer showed that she had been nowhere near the house, at the time of the first fire; and that, when the second fire broke out, she, in the street, this off-evening of hers, returning, had called the attention of neighbors to smoke coming from a window. The case was too complicated for a police court, and was put off for the summer assizes.
Derby Mercury, July 19 -- trial of the girl resumed. The prosecution maintained that the fires could be explained only as of incendiary origin, and that the girl's motive for setting the house afire was plain, and that she had plundered so recklessly, because she had planned a general destruction, by which anything missing would be accounted for.
Again counsel for the defense showed that the girl could not have started the fires. The charge of arson was dropped. Emma Piggott was sentenced to six months' hard labor, for the thefts.
Upon Dec. 2, 1919, Ambrose Small, of Toronto, Canada, disappeared. He was known to have been in his office, in the Toronto Grand Opera House, of which he was the owner, between five and six o'clock, the evening of Dec. 2nd. Nobody saw him leave his office. Nobody -- at least nobody whose testimony can be accepted -- saw him, this evening, outside the building. There were stories of a woman in the case. But Ambrose Small disappeared, and left more than a million dollars behind.
Then John Doughty, Small's secretary, vanished.
Small's safe deposit boxes were opened by Mrs. Small and other trustees of the estate. In the boxes were securities, valued at $1,125,000. An inventory was found. According to it, the sum of $105,000 was missing. There was an investigation, and bonds of the value of $105,000 were found, hidden in the home of Doughty's sister.
All over the world, the disappearance of Ambrose Small was advertised, with offers of reward, in acres of newspaper space. He was in his office. He vanished.
Doughty, too, was sought. He had not only vanished: he had done all that he could to be unfindable. But he was traced to a town in Oregon, where he was living under the name of Cooper. He was taken back to Toronto, where he was indicted, charged with having stolen the bonds, and with having abducted Small, to cover the thefts.
About the Author: Charles Hoy Fort
Charles Fort (1874-1932) fancied
himself a true skeptic, one who
opposes all forms of dogmatism,
believes nothing, and does not take
a position on anything. He claimed
to be an "intermediatist," one who
believes nothing is real and nothing
is unreal, that "all phenomena are
approximations one way or the
other between realness and
unrealness." Actually, he was an
anti-dogmatist who collected weird
and bizarre stories.
Fort spent a good part of his
adult life in the New York City public
library examining newspapers,
magazines, and scientific journals.
He was looking for accounts of anything
weird or mysterious which
didn't fit with current scientific theories.
He collected accounts of frogs
and other strange objects raining
from the sky, UFOs, ghosts, spontaneous
human combustion, the stigmata,
psychic abilities, etc. He published
four collections of weird tales
and anomalies during his lifetime:
Book of the Damned (1919), New
Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild
Talents (1932). In these works, he
does not seem interested in questioning
the reliability of his sources,
which is odd, given that he had
worked as a news reporter for a
number of years before embarking
on his quest to collect stories of the
weird and bizarre. He does reject
one story about a talking dog who
disappeared into a puff of green
smoke. He expresses his doubt that
the dog really went up in green
smoke, though he doesn't question
its ability to speak.
Fort did not seem particularly
interested in making any sense out
of his collection of weird stories. He
seemed particularly uninterested in
scientific testing, yet some of his
devotees consider him to be the
founding father of modern paranormal
studies. His main interest in scientific
hypotheses was to criticize
and ridicule the very process of
theorizing. His real purpose seems
to have been to embarrass scientists
by collecting stories on "the borderland
between fact and fantasy"
which science could not explain or
explain away. Since he did not generally
concern himself with the reliability
or accuracy of his data, this
borderland also blurs the distinction
between open-mindedness and
gullibility.
Fort was skeptical about scientific
explanations because scientists
sometimes argue "according to their
own beliefs rather than the rules of
evidence" and they suppress or ignore
inconvenient data. He seems to
have understood that scientific theories
are models, not pictures, of reality,
but he considered them to be
little more than superstitions and
myths. He seems to have had a profound
misunderstanding of the nature
of scientific theories. For, he
criticized them for not being able to
accommodate anomalies and for
requiring data to fit. He took particular
delight when scientists made incorrect
predictions and he attacked
what he called the "priestcraft" of
science. Fort seems to have been
opposed to science as it really is:
fallible, human and tentative, after
probabilities rather than absolute
certainties. He seems to have
thought that since science is not infallible,
any theory is as good as any
other. This is the same kind of misunderstanding
of science that we
find with so-called "scientific creationists"
and many other pseudoscientists.
Apparently, Fort was a prolific
writer. He is said to have written ten
novels, but only one was published:
The Outcast Manufacturers (1906).
One of Fort's amusements as an
adult seems to have been to speculate
about such things as frogs falling
from the sky.
He postulated that
there is a Super-Sargasso Sea above
the Earth (which he called
Genesistrine) where living things
originate and periodically are
dumped on Earth by intelligent beings
who communicate with secret
societies down below, perhaps using
teleportation.
Fort had very few friends, but
one of them, Tiffany Thayer, created
the Fortean Society to promote and
encourage Fort-like attacks on science
and scientists.Ê When Fort died
in 1937, he left over 30 boxes of
notes, which the Fortean Society
began publishing in the Fortean Society
Magazine. In 1959 Thayer died
and the Fortean Society came to an
end. Others, however, took up the
torch. There are many Fortean
groups, but it is worth noting that
Fort opposed the idea of a Fortean
Society. He thought that such a
group would attract spiritualists and
crackpots.
... And sure enough...
Softcover, 8¼" x 10¾", 205+ pages
Perfect-Bound