Charles Fort - The Book of The Damned - The Fortean Handbook

Now to be totally fair, Fort never said he actually believed everything he wrote about.
As a matter of fact, Fort actually said himself, "I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written.".
He also once said, "I offer the data. Suit yourself."
But Fort took his research very seriously, spending thirty years going through scientific journals, newspapers, and magazines in New York and London libraries and taking well over one thousand notes.
(Remember, back then there was no internet so he had to do a lot of leg work)
You get the feeling when you read his work, that he was just taking jabs at scientists for being so close minded.

Fort is actually credited with coining the term "teleportation" back in 1931.
He used it to describe the strange disappearances and appearances of anomalies, that he suggested might be connected.

But back to "The Book of the Damned" which reads kind of like a "X-Files" primer today.
In it, Fort mentions....

Reports of green suns in 1883, now that was attributed to the Krakatoa volcano...but Fort notes...
"But for seven years the atmospheric phenomena continued-Except that, in the seven, there was a lapse of several years and where was the volcanic dust all that time?"

Giant hail stones.....
"There is an account in Nature, Nov. I, 1894, of hailstones that weighed almost two pounds each. See Chambers' Encyclopedia for three-pounders. Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1870-479-two-pounders authenticated, and six-pounders reported."

Black rain...
"Such a rain as that which fell in Ireland, May 14, 1849, described in the Annals of Scientific Discovery, 1850, and the Annual Register, 1849. It fell upon a district of 400 square miles, and was the color of ink, and of a fetid odor and very disagreeable taste."

Out-of-place artifacts (OOPArt)...
"That Hiram De Witt, of Springfield, Mass., returning from California, had brought with him a piece of auriferous quartz about the size of a man's fist. It was accidentally dropped-split open-nail in it. There was a cut-iron nail, size of a six-penny nail, slightly corroded. "It was entirely straight and had a perfect head."

Objects that fell from the skies...with writing on them...
"Many years ago, a strange stone resembling a meteorite, fell into the Valley of the Yaqui, Mexico, and the sensational story went from one end to the other of the country that a stone bearing human inscriptions had descended to the earth."

Fort also puts forth his own interesting ideal as to why aliens haven't contacted us yet....
"Would we, if we could, educate and sophisticate pigs, geese, cattle?
Would it be wise to establish diplomatic relation with the hen that now functions, satisfied with mere sense of achievement by way of compensation?
I think we're property.
I should say we belong to something:
That once upon a time, this earth was No-man's Land, that other worlds explored and colonized here, and fought among themselves for possession, but that now it's owned by something:
That something owns this earth-all others warned off."

He mentions evidence of Giants...
"Copper ax from an Ohio mound: 22 inches long; weight 38 pounds."
"Or the footprints, in sandstone, near Carson, Nevada-each print 18 to 20 inches long."

Fairies...
"That, near the point where the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny Mountains unite, north of Patrick County, Virginia, many little stone crosses have been found.
A race of tiny beings.
They crucified cockroaches.
Exquisite beings-but the cruelty of the exquisite. In their diminutive way they were human beings. They crucified.
The "fairy crosses," we are told in Harper's Weekly, range in weight from one-quarter of an ounce to an ounce: but it is said, in the Scientific American, 79-395, that some of them are no larger than the head of a pin."

Poltergeists...
"From 4 o'clock, Thursday afternoon, until half past eleven, Thursday night, the houses, 56 and 58 Reverdy Road, Bermondsey, were assailed with stones and other missiles coming from an unseen quarter. Two children were injured, every window broken, and several articles of furniture were destroyed. Although there was a strong body of policemen scattered in the neighborhood, they could not trace the direction whence the stones were thrown."

Strange things seen in outer space...
"That, in 1645, a body large enough to look like a satellite was seen near Venus. Four times in the first half of the 18th century, a similar observation was reported. The last report occurred in 1767."

Mars...
"A light-reflecting body, or a bright spot near Mars: seen Nov. 25, 1894, by Prof. Pickering and others, at the Lowell Observatory, above an unilluminated part of Mars-self-luminous, it would seem-thought to have been a cloud-but estimated to have been about twenty miles away from the planet."

Mercury...
"Luminous spot seen moving across the disk of Mercury, in 1799, by Harding and Schroeter."

The "planet" Vulcan....
"In 1859, Dr. Lescarbault, an amateur astronomer, of Orgères, France, announced that, upon March 26, of that year, he had seen a body of planetary size cross the sun."
Dr. Lescarbault reported the finding and was examined by an Urbain Le Verrier.
Le Verrier was convinced that Lescarbault's reporting was accurate and...
"Le Verrier gave the name "Vulcan" to the object that Dr. Lescarbault had reported."
By the way, Le Verrier is noted for his part in discovering the planet Neptune.

More weird things in space...
"In the Monthly Notices of the R.A.S., 11-48, there is a letter from the Rev. W. Read:
That, upon the 4th of September, 1851, at 9:30 A.M., he had seen a host of self-luminous bodies, passing the field of his telescope, some slowly and some rapidly. They appeared to occupy a zone several degrees in breadth. The direction of most of them was due east to west, but some moved from north to south. The numbers were tremendous. They were observed for six hours."

The sky just suddenly turning dark...
"That, according to the La Crosse Daily Republican, of March 20, 1886, darkness suddenly settled upon the city of Oshkosh, Wis., at 3 P.M., March 19. In five minutes the darkness equaled that of midnight."

UFO's (way before 1947)...
"In Nature, Aug. 11, 1898, there is a story, taken from the July number of the Canadian Weather Review, by the meteorologist, F. F. Payne: that he had seen, in the Canadian sky, a large, pear-shaped object, sailing rapidly. At first he supposed that the object was a balloon, "its outline being sharply defined." "But, as no cage was seen, it was concluded that it must be a mass of cloud." In about six minutes this object became less definite-whether because of increasing distance or not-"the mass became less dense, and finally it disappeared." As to cyclonic formation-"no whirling motion could be seen."

The infamous "Black Triangles" in the 1800s?...
"That, upon Aug. 27, 1885, at about 8:30 A.M., there was observed by Mrs. Adelina D. Bassett, "a strange object in the clouds, coming from the north." She called the attention of Mrs. L. Lowell to it, and they were both somewhat alarmed. However, they continued to watch the object steadily for some time. It drew nearer. It was of triangular shape, and seemed to be about the size of a pilot-boat mainsail, with chains attached to the bottom of it. While crossing the land it had appeared to descend, but, as it went out to sea, it ascended, and continued to ascend, until it was lost to sight high in the clouds"

Of course the book goes on and on with many more tales.
My advice is that if you like strange stories and paranormal tales, read the book.
And through the wonders of modern technology, you don't even have to buy it.
You can go here:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/damn/index.htm
and read the entire book online for free.

But like Fort himself, don't fall into everything wide-eyed.
Do you own research, reach your own conclusions.

But no matter what conclusions you reach, you have to admit, Fort's world is a lot more colorful than ours.

The Earth is a farm. We are someone else's property.

The outrageous is the reasonable, if introduced politely.

If there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere.

If any spiritualistic medium can do stunts, there is no more need for special conditions than there is for a chemist to turn down lights, start operations with a hymn, and ask whether there's any chemical present that has affinity with something named Hydrogen.

My liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidences?