Editing Charles Fort (section)

==Fort and the unexplained==

===Overview===
For more than 30 years, Fort visited libraries in New York City and London, assiduously reading scientific journals, newspapers, and magazines, collecting notes on [[phenomena]] that were not explained well by the accepted theories and beliefs of the time.

Fort took thousands of notes during his lifetime. In his undated short story "The Giant, the Insect and The Philanthropic-looking Old Gentleman" (first published by the [[International Fortean Organization]] in issue No. 70 of the ''INFO Journal: Science and the Unknown''), Fort spoke of having often toyed with the idea of burning a collection of some 48,000 notes, and of one day letting "several" notes be blown away by the wind because he couldn't be bothered to save them (they were supposedly returned to him by a gentleman on a neighbouring park bench).<ref>{{cite web|title=The Giant, the Insect, and the Philanthropic-looking Old Gentleman" by Charles Hoy Fort|url=http://www.resologist.net/story29.htm|access-date=December 10, 2012}}</ref> The notes were kept on cards and scraps of paper in shoeboxes, in Fort's cramped handwriting.<ref name=":5" /> More than once, depressed and discouraged, Fort destroyed his work, but began anew. Some notes were published by the [[Fortean Society]] magazine ''Doubt'', and upon the death of its editor [[Tiffany Thayer]] in 1959, most were donated to the New York Public Library, where they are still available to researchers.<ref>{{cite web|title=Archives and manuscripts Fort, Charles, 1874–1932|url=http://archives.nypl.org/controlaccess/13206?term=Fort,%20Charles,%201874-1932}}</ref> Material created by Fort has also survived as part of the papers of Theodore Dreiser, held at the University of Pennsylvania.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Theodore Dreiser papers - Philadelphia Area Archives |url=https://findingaids.library.upenn.edu/records/UPENN_RBML_PUSP.MS.COLL.30 |access-date=2023-01-02 |website=findingaids.library.upenn.edu}}</ref>

From this research, Fort wrote four books: ''The Book of the Damned'' (1919), ''[[New Lands]]'' (1923), ''[[Lo!]]'' (1931), and ''[[Wild Talents (book)|Wild Talents]]'' (1932). One book was written between ''New Lands'' and ''Lo!'' but it was abandoned and absorbed into ''Lo!.''

===Fort's writing style===
Fort suggested that a Super-[[Sargasso Sea]] exists, into which all lost things go,<ref name="ReadersDigest"/> and justified his theories by noting that they fit the data as well as the conventional explanations. As to whether Fort ''believed'' this theory, or any of his other proposals, he himself noted, "I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written".<ref name=":1" />

Notable literary contemporaries of Fort's openly admired his writing style and befriended him. Among these were: [[Ben Hecht]], [[John Cowper Powys]], [[Sherwood Anderson]], [[Clarence Darrow]], and [[Booth Tarkington]], who wrote the foreword to ''New Lands.''

After Fort's death, the writer [[Colin Wilson]] said that he suspected that Fort took few if any of his "explanations" seriously, and noted that Fort made "no attempt to present a coherent argument". He described Fort as "a patron saint of cranks"<ref>[[Colin Wilson|Wilson, Colin]], ''Mysteries'', Putnam ({{ISBN|0-399-12246-X}}), p. 199.</ref> while at the same time he compared Fort to [[Robert Ripley]], a popular contemporary [[cartoonist]] and writer who found major success publishing similar oddities in a syndicated newspaper panel series named ''[[Ripley's Believe It or Not!]]''

Wilson called Fort's writing style "atrocious" and "almost unreadable", yet despite his objections to Fort's prose, he allowed that "the facts are certainly astonishing enough." In the end, Fort's work gave him "the feeling that no matter how honest scientists ''think'' they are, they are still influenced by various ''unconscious'' assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed in a sentence, Fort's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to ''believe'' in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need ''not'' to believe in marvels."<ref>Wilson, Colin: ''ibid.'', p. 201 (emphasis in original).</ref>

By contrast, [[Jerome Clark]], wrote that Fort was "essentially a [[Satire|satirist]] hugely [[skeptical]] of human beings'—especially scientists'—claims to ultimate knowledge".<ref>[[Jerome Clark|Clark, Jerome]]: "The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis in the Early UFO Age" in ''UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge'', edited David M. Jacobs, University Press of Kansas: 2000 ({{ISBN|0-7006-1032-4}}), p. 123. See [[Pyrrhonism]] for a similar type of skepticism.</ref> Clark described Fort's writing style as a "distinctive blend of mocking humor, penetrating insight, and calculated outrageousness".<ref>Clark, Jerome: ''The UFO Book'', Visible Ink: 1998, p. 200.</ref> Fort was skeptical of sciences and wrote his own mocking explanations to defy scientists who used traditional methods.<ref name="ReadersDigest"/>

In a review of ''Lo!'', ''The New York Times'' wrote: "Reading Fort is a ride on a comet; if the traveler returns to earth after the journey, he will find, after his first dizziness has worn off, a new and exhilarating emotion that will color and correct all his future reading of less heady scientific literature."<ref name="shipley"/>

===Fortean phenomena===

Examples of the odd phenomena in Fort's books include many occurrences of the sort variously referred to as [[occult]], [[supernatural]], and [[paranormal]]. Reported events include [[teleportation]] (a term Fort is generally credited with inventing),<ref>"Mostly in this book I shall specialize upon indications that there exists a transportory force that I shall call Teleportation." in [http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/lo/lo02.htm Fort. C. ''Lo!''] at Sacred Texts.com. Retrieved January 4, 2009</ref><ref>"less well-known is the fact that Charles Fort coined the word in 1931" in Rickard, B. and Michell, J. ''Unexplained Phenomena: a Rough Guide special'' (Rough Guides, 2000 ({{ISBN|1-85828-589-5}}), p. 3)</ref> [[Raining animals|falls of frogs, fishes, and inorganic materials]],<ref name="ReadersDigest"/> [[spontaneous human combustion]],<ref name="ReadersDigest"/> [[ball lightning]]<ref name="ReadersDigest"/> (a term explicitly used by Fort), [[poltergeist]] events, [[List of unexplained sounds|unaccountable noises]] and explosions, [[Levitation (paranormal)|levitation]], [[unidentified flying object]]s, [[List of people who disappeared mysteriously|unexplained disappearances]], [[Unidentified submerged object|giant wheels of light in the oceans]], and animals found outside their normal ranges (see [[phantom cat]]). <!--Fort does not seem to have mentioned crop circles in his works, see http://www33.brinkster.com/cropcircles/askpoppy.html--> He offered many reports of [[out-of-place artifact]]s (OOPArts), strange items found in unlikely locations. He was also perhaps the first person to explain strange human appearances and disappearances by the hypothesis of [[alien abduction]], and was an early proponent of the [[extraterrestrial hypothesis]], specifically suggesting that strange lights or objects sighted in the skies might be alien spacecraft.

===Forteans===
Fort's work has inspired some people to consider themselves "Forteans". The first of these was Hecht, a screenwriter, who in a review of ''The Book of the Damned'', declared, "I am the first disciple of Charles Fort... henceforth, I am a Fortean".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Knight |first=Damon |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/279082 |title=Charles Fort: prophet of the unexplained |date=1971 |publisher=Gollancz |isbn=0-575-00613-7 |location=London |pages=70 |oclc=279082}}</ref>

Precisely what is encompassed by the term "Fortean" is a matter of great debate; the term is widely applied to people ranging from Fortean purists dedicated to Fort's methods and interests, to those with open and active acceptance of the actuality of paranormal phenomena, a belief with which Fort may not have agreed. Most generally, Forteans have a wide interest in unexplained phenomena, concerned mostly with the natural world, and have a developed "agnostic [[skepticism]]" regarding the anomalies they note and discuss. For Hecht, as an example, being a Fortean meant hallowing a pronounced distrust of authority in all its forms, whether religious, scientific, political, philosophical, or otherwise. It did not, of course, include an actual belief in the anomalous data enumerated in Fort's works.

The [[Fortean Society]] was initiated at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel in New York City on January 26, 1931, by some of Fort's friends, including such significant writers as Hecht, Dreiser, and [[Alexander Woollcott]], and organized by fellow American writer Thayer, half in earnest and half in the spirit of great good humor, like the works of Fort himself. The board of founders included Dreiser, Hecht, Tarkington, Powys, [[Aaron Sussman]], former ''Puck'' editor [[Harry Leon Wilson]], Woollcott, and [[J. David Stern]], publisher of ''[[The Philadelphia Record]]''. Active members of the Fortean Society included prominent science-fiction writers such as Knight and  [[Eric Frank Russell]].

Fort, however, rejected the society and refused the presidency, which went to his friend Dreiser; he was lured to its inaugural meeting by false telegrams. As a strict nonauthoritarian, Fort refused to establish himself as an authority, and further objected on the grounds that those who would be attracted by such a group would be spiritualists, zealots, and those opposed to a science that rejected them; it would attract those who ''believed'' in their chosen phenomena—an attitude exactly contrary to Forteanism. Fort did hold unofficial meetings and had a long history of getting together informally with many of New York City's literati such as Dreiser and Hecht at their apartments, where they would talk, have a meal, and then listen to brief reports.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Steinmeyer |first=Jim |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/608554928 |title=Charles Fort : the man who invented the supernatural |date=2008 |publisher=J.P. Tarcher/Penguin |isbn=978-1-4362-0566-5 |location=New York |page=144 |oclc=608554928}}</ref>

The magazine ''[[Fortean Times]]'' (first published in November 1973) is a proponent of Fortean journalism, combining humor, skepticism, and serious research into subjects that scientists and other respectable authorities often disdain. Another such group is the International Fortean Organization (INFO), which was formed during the early 1960s (incorporated in 1965) by brothers and writers Ron and Paul Willis, who acquired much of the material of the Fortean Society, which had largely ceased by 1959 with the death of Thayer. INFO publishes the ''INFO Journal: Science and the Unknown'' and organizes the FortFest, the world's first continuously running conference on anomalous phenomena dedicated to the spirit of Charles Fort. INFO, since the mid-1960s, also provides audio CDs and filmed DVDs of notable conference speakers, including [[Colin Wilson]], [[John Michell (writer)|John Michell]], [[Graham Hancock]], [[John Anthony West]], [[William Corliss]], [[John Keel]], and [[Joscelyn Godwin]]. Other notable Fortean societies include the [[London Fortean Society]], [[Edinburgh Fortean Society]], in Edinburgh and the [[Isle of Wight]].

===Scholarly evaluation===
Religious scholars such as [[Jeffrey J. Kripal]] and Joseph P. Laycock view Fort as a pioneering theorist who helped define "paranormal" as a discursive category and provided insight into its importance in human experience. Consistently critical of how science studied abnormal phenomena in his day, Fort remains a point of reference for those who engage in such studies today.<ref name="ReadersDigest"/><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Laycock|first1=Joseph|title=Approaching the Paranormal|journal=Nova Religio|volume=18|issue=1|pages=5–15|jstor=10.1525/nr.2014.18.1.5|doi=10.1525/nr.2014.18.1.5|year=2014}}</ref><ref>Bester, Alfred. ''The Stars My Destination'', p. 5; Orion Books; 1956.</ref>