Charles H. Fort (1874–1932)

I’ve never got around to reading Charles Fort until now. If you’re unfamiliar with him, he flourished around the turn of the 19th century, and apparently devoted his life to perusing the world’s newspapers and clipping accounts of strange events. In Wild Talents, Fort is concerned with spontaneous human combustion and a variety of poltergeist phenomena, which he attributes to – witchcraft. Not nude hags worshiping a demon goat (Fort has no use for conventional religion), but people show more who have mental powers that allow them set others on fire, cause their cooking utensils to leap through the air, make stones shower on their houses, etc.

Fort’s writing style, although literate, is extremely involved and circumlocutory; his cases cry out for a couple of tables – so that all the people bursting into flames could be studied together rather than scattered through hundreds of pages and mixed amidst mutilated cattle and ambulating furniture. Fort’s cases are almost all self-debunking; while Fort was famously disparaging of science, he was completely credulous when it came to newspaper accounts – even if (for example) the newspaper was in Madras and the event being described took place in Minneapolis.

In the 1950s, a lot of Fort’s material was culled and reissued by Frank Edwards; I remember running across Edward’s book Stranger than Science sometime in my grade school years and being frightened almost out of my housebreaking by it; I was particularly freaked out by accounts of spontaneous human combustion, and somehow convinced myself that if I always crawled around on my hands and knees I wouldn’t burst into flames. This was difficult to explain to my parents and peers. I was also terrified by the Moving Coffins of Barbados (Fort doesn’t mention these – at least not in this book – but Edwards did) and was afraid they would move into my bedroom in the middle of the night. Fortunately, both spontaneous combustion and coffin home invasions were set aside when I read an article in True magazine (or maybe Argosy?) about fire ants, which I expected to appear en masse over the southern horizon at any moment, devouring all in their path. I believe this was also about the time I took the back door off the hinges to keep Communists from stealing it. Ah, for the care-free days of childhood. show less

Some people dismiss Fort as an unscientific crank, some people embrace him whole-heartedly as a reporter of the paranormal, others just love him as a champion of the ABnormal. I like his language - wch may generally go undercommented on as people pay more attn to the more spectacular "Fortean" phenomena described. I find Fort's language to be EXTREMELY CAREFUL in its attempt to NOT BE DEFINITIVE & it's in this that, for me, therein lies Fort's extreme importance. It's not just that he show more stresses that scientists are capable of ignoring data/experiences that fall outside 'convenient' &/or 'consensus' 'reality', it's also that Fort describes things in such a way that's both expressive of & CONDUCIVE TO a state-of-mind of CONTINUAL QUESTIONING. Bravo! show less

Lo! Charles Fort explains the world! Rains of living things, mysterious disappearances, unexplained appearances, spontaneous human combustion, Kaspar Hauser, natural disasters, it’s all here in this book! Charles Fort spent many hours in the libraries of New York and London rifling through newspapers and journals looking for strange occurrences. He lists all of the unusual phenomena and then asks you the reader to decide if the scientific or theological explanation is correct, then he show more gives you his ideas.

Fort was an intelligent man and even though his idea of how the world works is a bit wacky, it doesn’t seem totally implausible because it is obvious he has thought about it a great deal. He has a wry wit when dealing with scientists and theologians. His sense of humor helps to keep you interested in the book because lists of articles in newspapers and scientific journals can get boring after a while.

This book was written in the 1930s. The first half is a lot of fun to read. It slows down in the last section which is about astronomy and the rotation of the earth and how that affects natural disasters on our planet. This section in dated because he is speculating on whether or not man could leave the Earth’s orbit and travel to a distant star. If he had written the book today he may have seen space differently or maybe not. He probably wouldn’t have believed the moon landing. show less

Charles Fort is sui generis, the jedi master of the cataloguers of the weird, the inexplicable, the unkown, the scathingly brutal skunk at the garden party of modern scientism. Half the new age book shop is still spinning it's wheels on the trail Fort blazed so long ago. Almost all the 'true but weird' genre really should be sending a royalty to Fort's descendants, because they pretty much owe their income to him, and after all this time he is still the best.

Yet actually you don't see much show more of Fort's books actually in the new age shops these days, maybe because they know that once you've read Fort non of these johny-come-lately's can hold a candle to him and it might depress sales.

This Dover edition gives you what Dover is best at, a good cheap durable book of a classic that has been to long out of print, and this one is a special treat gathering all of Forts books under one cover.

Anyone interested in the paranormal,the unexplained, the weird, the supernatural or just stuff that makes you go huh?... you just HAVE to have this book in your collection. show less