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Fortean
Phenomena
Any
paranormal or strange phenomena that appear to defy natural explanation,
such as rains of frogs, fish, stones, dead birds, flesh, and snakes;
mystifying religious experiences, such as stigmata;
floating balls of light in the night sky; spontaneous
human combustion; UFOs;
poltergeist
activity; and monstrous
creatures. Fortean phenomena are named after Charles Fort
(1874-1932), an American journalist.
After an inheritance
enabled him to quit work as a journalist in his early forties, Fort
devoted the rest of his life collecting and cataloguing thousands of odd
phenomena that had no explanation, which he found by poring through
scientific and popular journals in the British Museum and New York
Public Library. He never attempted to explain these phenomena, but used
these examples to point out the limitations of scientific knowledge and
the danger of dogmatic acceptance of natural laws, which the phenomena
seemed to contravene. Fort compiled his research into four books:
The
Book of the Damned ( 1919);
New
Lands (1923);
Lo!
(1931); and
Wild
Talents (1932). In
The
Book of the Damned, which lists over one thousand such
incidents, Fort challenged the scientific method of accepting a
phenomenon as genuine only if it could be proved. To Fort the fact that
a phenomenon had occurred and been reported was proof enough; the reason
why was less important.
To demonstrate the
folly of scientists who were convinced that there must be an explanation
for every event — for example, black rains falling on Scotland between
1863 and 1866 were said by scientists to be the result of eruptions of
Mount Vesuvius — Fort advanced his own catch-all theory. He invented
the SuperSargasso Sea, a place above the Earth that contained a
collection of matter drawn from the ground below. It was from the
Super-Sargasso Sea that the frogs, cannonballs, stones, and countless
other objects simply fall to the earth.
Fort's studies of the
inexplicable have continued since his death, research being pursued on a
scholarly basis by enthusiasts. Of major interest to modern Forteans are
UFOs and related phenomena. Long before the term 'UFO' was conceived,
Fort uncovered reports of sky oddities dating back to 1779.
Modern investigations
focus on missing time, close encounters, and a phenomenon known as the men
in black, mysterious people dressed in dark clothing who
sometimes purport to be government or United States Air Force
representatives, and intimidate UFO witnesses and confiscate UFO
photographs taken by private citizens.
Two other phenomena,
possibly related to UFOs, are the 'mystery
helicopters', black helicopters reported all over the world
since 1938, years before the helicopter was invented; and 'Mothman',
a gray man-sized and man-shaped creature with red eyes, and
wings three meters (ten feet) in span. More than one hundred reports of Mothman were made in 1966 and 1967 in an Ohio River valley area; a black
Mothman-type creature was reported performing aerial stunts over New
York and New Jersey in 1887 and 1880. Forteans also investigate reported
sightings of the Sasquatch,
or Bigfoot, the Loch
Ness monster, the Yeti,
or Abominable Snowman,
and other creatures.
Related videos.
Related books:
The
Book of the Damned.
The
Complete Books of Charles Fort (The Book Of The Damned,Lo,Wild
Talents,New Lands).
The
Mothman Prophecies.
Click here for more
related books.
Further info:
The
Charles Fort Files.
Fortean Times.
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