Charles Fort: Defining the Anomalous, 1874 - 1932
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Whether you know it or not, your thinking on the paranormal owes a lot to an early-twentieth-century writer named Charles Fort. Fort collected reports of scientific anomalies in an effort to undermine the mathematized and mechanistic worldview that he felt was entrenched in the science of his era. In four seminal books, Fort showed the world that there was a lot about nature that is still unexplained, and he carved the outlines of the over-arching category for anomalous phenomena that we know today as the “paranormal.”
Life and Work
Charles Fort was born to a well-to-do family in Albany, New York in 1874, but abandoned his home and family business to start a career as a freelance writer. Perpetually unsatisfied with his own output, Fort allowed only one of ten novels he wrote to be published, but his sharp wit and abstracted sense of perspective won him some notable fans in the literary world. One such fan was the American novelist Theodore Dreiser, who hounded contacts to publish Fort’s work.
After failing to find a publisher for his science-fiction novels, Fort gave up on fiction entirely. He began spending his days at the New York Public Library, reading through backlogs of science journals and newspapers for anecdotes of unexplained anomalies. He compiled thousands, and they became the basis of Fort’s first “non-fiction” work, The Book of the Damned. With Dreiser’s help, it was published in 1919.
The Book of the Damned is a bizarre and radical document. Fort bombards his readers with anecdotes of all kinds of unexplained phenomena; out-of-place artifacts; reports of UFOs and aerial wonders, and records of strange things falling from the sky - lots of strange things falling from the sky, including fish, frogs, meat, metals, and rocks, just to name a few. Fort called these forgotten anomalies the damned facts of science because specialists in other disciplines tended either to overlook them or force-fit them with crude explanations. The Book of the Damned was the first time that these marginalized data were collected from different disciplines and presented together as a set of data in themselves.
In biting, acerbic humour, Fort criticized the academic sciences for excluding these data because they did not conform to previously held scientific beliefs. By excluding data that can’t easily be explained, scientists came to erroneous ideas about the natural world, while at the same time dismissing all the evidence that proved them wrong.
Fort’s next three books before his death in 1932- New Lands, Lo!, and Wild Talents - were all devoted to the subject of scientific anomalies. Some stand up well today, while others do not. In New Lands, Fort presented the theory that the Earth was a stationary body encased in a starry, perforated shell, and that floating masses of land and ice drifted around inside of it. In Lo!, Fort focused on the spontaneous relocation of people, objects, and organic matter, and suggested that the Earth had moved them there itself. He called this process “teleportation,” and coined the term. In Fort’s final book, Wild Talents, published in 1931, he focused on unexplained cases - deaths, thefts, fires, attacks, and disappearances - in which peoples’ psychic abilities - or, wild talents - seems to have played a role.
Fort buried his readers in data, but famously preferred to leave them unexplained. His own theories, when offered, were often playful and extravagant, intended more to provoke thought than to provide any real tidy resolutions.
A Lukewarm Reception
Fort enjoyed respectable sales, but he had a tremendous impact on a few key intellectuals, including screenwriter Ben Hecht, novelist Booth Tarkington, Alexander Woollcott, and Tiffany Thayer. Together, these men founded the Fortean Society in New York in January 1931. Fort was lured to the inaugural event under false pretences, and was asked to serve as president. Ever distrustful of authority, he declined. Still, the society, the only institution Fort had any part in establishing, survives to this day.
Fort died in 1932, probably of leukaemia, after refusing help from doctors. He was survived by his wife of 36 years, Anna Fort, who claimed to see or hear Fort’s ghost on at least two occasions in the months after his death.
The Man Who Invented the Supernatural
Fort’s short career and meagre literary output had more influence on popular thought than many more prolific authors. Although he never used the term, Fort is often credited with inventing the paranormal as a discursive concept and category of scientific analysis. However, he objected to terms like “supernatural” on the basis that all things were “natural” and could not be anything more.
Before Charles Fort, anomalous events like lights in the night sky were more likely to be interpreted as religious omens and absorbed into pre-existing mythologies, rather than simply set aside for further research. By giving these observations their own, neutral category, Fort enabled them to be compared and contrasted as a whole body of scientific data.
Some of the phenomena that Fort highlighted have inspired their own disciplines, including UFOs, cryptids, and out-of-place artifacts. Some have even been recognized by the mainstream academic community as genuinely new phenomena. For example, Fort famously described incidences of “ball lightning” when these were thought to be fishermen’s tales. Though still largely unexplained, ball lightning is now considered to be a well-documented, natural phenomenon.
Although he never committed to explanations, Fort made some lasting contributions to anomalistic theory. He was among the first to propose an extraterrestrial explanation for unidentified lights and craft in the sky, and to propose alien abduction as an explanation for cases of missing persons or spontaneous teleportation.
Second, Fort was one of the first to explore stories of hauntings, spirits, and miracles without assuming a theological or spiritualist explanation. Since then, anomalists have reimagined biblical wonders, for example, as UFO sightings, and proposed psychic explanations for poltergeist activity.
Many of Fort’s tentative theories have now been disproven, but most of the phenomena Fort presented remain unexplained, and mostly unexplored, in modern science. Fort’s work is still as relevant as ever.
Sources:
Jim Steinmeyer. "Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural." New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/ Penguin, 2008.
Charles Fort. "The Complete Books of Charles Fort." New York: Dover Publications, 1974.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Illustration by Colin Campbell. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain.
Whether you know it or not, your thinking on the paranormal owes a lot to an early-twentieth-century writer named Charles Fort. Fort collected reports of scientific anomalies in an effort to undermine the mathematized and mechanistic worldview that he felt was entrenched in the science of his era. In four seminal books, Fort showed the world that there was a lot about nature that is still unexplained, and he carved the outlines of the over-arching category for anomalous phenomena that we know today as the “paranormal.”
Life and Work
Charles Fort was born to a well-to-do family in Albany, New York in 1874, but abandoned his home and family business to start a career as a freelance writer. Perpetually unsatisfied with his own output, Fort allowed only one of ten novels he wrote to be published, but his sharp wit and abstracted sense of perspective won him some notable fans in the literary world. One such fan was the American novelist Theodore Dreiser, who hounded contacts to publish Fort’s work.
After failing to find a publisher for his science-fiction novels, Fort gave up on fiction entirely. He began spending his days at the New York Public Library, reading through backlogs of science journals and newspapers for anecdotes of unexplained anomalies. He compiled thousands, and they became the basis of Fort’s first “non-fiction” work, The Book of the Damned. With Dreiser’s help, it was published in 1919.
The Book of the Damned is a bizarre and radical document. Fort bombards his readers with anecdotes of all kinds of unexplained phenomena; out-of-place artifacts; reports of UFOs and aerial wonders, and records of strange things falling from the sky - lots of strange things falling from the sky, including fish, frogs, meat, metals, and rocks, just to name a few. Fort called these forgotten anomalies the damned facts of science because specialists in other disciplines tended either to overlook them or force-fit them with crude explanations. The Book of the Damned was the first time that these marginalized data were collected from different disciplines and presented together as a set of data in themselves.
In biting, acerbic humour, Fort criticized the academic sciences for excluding these data because they did not conform to previously held scientific beliefs. By excluding data that can’t easily be explained, scientists came to erroneous ideas about the natural world, while at the same time dismissing all the evidence that proved them wrong.
Fort’s next three books before his death in 1932- New Lands, Lo!, and Wild Talents - were all devoted to the subject of scientific anomalies. Some stand up well today, while others do not. In New Lands, Fort presented the theory that the Earth was a stationary body encased in a starry, perforated shell, and that floating masses of land and ice drifted around inside of it. In Lo!, Fort focused on the spontaneous relocation of people, objects, and organic matter, and suggested that the Earth had moved them there itself. He called this process “teleportation,” and coined the term. In Fort’s final book, Wild Talents, published in 1931, he focused on unexplained cases - deaths, thefts, fires, attacks, and disappearances - in which peoples’ psychic abilities - or, wild talents - seems to have played a role.
Fort buried his readers in data, but famously preferred to leave them unexplained. His own theories, when offered, were often playful and extravagant, intended more to provoke thought than to provide any real tidy resolutions.
A Lukewarm Reception
Fort enjoyed respectable sales, but he had a tremendous impact on a few key intellectuals, including screenwriter Ben Hecht, novelist Booth Tarkington, Alexander Woollcott, and Tiffany Thayer. Together, these men founded the Fortean Society in New York in January 1931. Fort was lured to the inaugural event under false pretences, and was asked to serve as president. Ever distrustful of authority, he declined. Still, the society, the only institution Fort had any part in establishing, survives to this day.
Fort died in 1932, probably of leukaemia, after refusing help from doctors. He was survived by his wife of 36 years, Anna Fort, who claimed to see or hear Fort’s ghost on at least two occasions in the months after his death.
The Man Who Invented the Supernatural
Fort’s short career and meagre literary output had more influence on popular thought than many more prolific authors. Although he never used the term, Fort is often credited with inventing the paranormal as a discursive concept and category of scientific analysis. However, he objected to terms like “supernatural” on the basis that all things were “natural” and could not be anything more.
Before Charles Fort, anomalous events like lights in the night sky were more likely to be interpreted as religious omens and absorbed into pre-existing mythologies, rather than simply set aside for further research. By giving these observations their own, neutral category, Fort enabled them to be compared and contrasted as a whole body of scientific data.
Some of the phenomena that Fort highlighted have inspired their own disciplines, including UFOs, cryptids, and out-of-place artifacts. Some have even been recognized by the mainstream academic community as genuinely new phenomena. For example, Fort famously described incidences of “ball lightning” when these were thought to be fishermen’s tales. Though still largely unexplained, ball lightning is now considered to be a well-documented, natural phenomenon.
Although he never committed to explanations, Fort made some lasting contributions to anomalistic theory. He was among the first to propose an extraterrestrial explanation for unidentified lights and craft in the sky, and to propose alien abduction as an explanation for cases of missing persons or spontaneous teleportation.
Second, Fort was one of the first to explore stories of hauntings, spirits, and miracles without assuming a theological or spiritualist explanation. Since then, anomalists have reimagined biblical wonders, for example, as UFO sightings, and proposed psychic explanations for poltergeist activity.
Many of Fort’s tentative theories have now been disproven, but most of the phenomena Fort presented remain unexplained, and mostly unexplored, in modern science. Fort’s work is still as relevant as ever.
Sources:
Jim Steinmeyer. "Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural." New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/ Penguin, 2008.
Charles Fort. "The Complete Books of Charles Fort." New York: Dover Publications, 1974.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Illustration by Colin Campbell. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain.
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