Perhaps most everyone listening to this show is familiar with the
term "Fortean," meaning something related to the paranormal, the
supernatural, or just generally strange phenomena. But where did
that term come from? How did "Forteana" come to describe many of
the topics we cover on the podcast? We owe that cognomen and a
good deal of our inspiration for our reportage to the work of one
man, Charles Hoy Fort. Fort (b. August 6, 1874 - d. May 3, 1932)
was a journalist, author, and researcher best known for his
collection of accounts of extraordinary incidents and bizarre
phenomena. These reports and Fort's commentaries and speculations
on them mostly ended up in four books: The Book of the Damned
(1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents
(1932). Within these volumes of nonfiction are found testimonies
of rains of meat, frogs, blood, manna, black rain, and
unbelievably large stones, poltergeists and spontaneous human
combustion, vampires, animal mutilations, UFOs, and alien
abductions – anomalies we're familiar with nowadays. Fort is also
widely credited for coining the term "teleportation." However,
there were likely no other compilations of these incredible tales
in Fort's time or before, aside from local newspaper reports. For
that reason alone, those of us who are fascinated by such
subjects owe him a debt of gratitude. For over 30 years, Fort
pored over magazines, books, newspapers, and scientific journals
in New York and London libraries and had amassed thousands of
notes on odd occurrences. By his own account, Fort would become
discouraged by the futility of his endeavors and purpose and
claimed to have tossed into the wind around 48,000 notes once
while sitting on a park bench at The Cloisters in New York City.
Yet his defiance at the dismissal or ridicule from contemporary
scientists, or the mystification by religious thinking about
these happenings, kept him working until the end. Fort's theories
about the causes of such impossibilities would evolve or
vacillate throughout his oeuvre, sometimes even within the same
book. Whether speculating that the paranormal is the prank of
some kind of "Cosmic Joker," to these aberrations being the
vestigial byproducts of extraordinary primordial human survival
skills, Fort remained compelled by their occurrences regardless.
As suggested by the title, The Book of the Damned, Fort
postulated that the facts of these cases were "damned" to be
excluded by science. Yet no amount of scoffing from anyone would
keep the data from these baffling events from proceeding –
"they'll march" on, and so did Charles Hoy Fort. We're glad that
they, and he, did.
Visit our webpage for this episode for a lot more information!
Kommentare (0)
Melde dich an, um einen Kommentar zu schreiben.