Wild Talents (Annotated)

Charles Fort

Wild Talents

Table of contents

The importance of Charles Fort's The Book of the Damned as a precursor of pseudoscience

WILD TALENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

The importance of Charles Fort's The Book of the Damned as a precursor of pseudoscience

New York publisher Boni and Liveright Inc, one of the most influential and daring publishers of its time, published The Book of the Damned in January 1920. Confused by the title, many readers bought it thinking it was a crime and mystery novel. Undoubtedly, its contents would be the strangest thing they had ever read. The twenty-eight chapters rattled off a series of documented and real, but unbelievable events: rain of stones, metallic objects found inside coal mines or inside the bark of a tree, animals of impossible shapes, meteorites of unknown chemical composition, vision of unidentified celestial bodies... The author, Charles Hoy Fort, had spent twenty-five long years in libraries obsessively compiling those events that could not be explained by science. In his house in the Bronx he had an improvised archive in shoeboxes with more than sixty thousand notes on paranormal phenomena, strange cases that defied physics and mathematics: traces of extra-terrestrials, poltergeists, stigmata, rains from the sky of implausible objects, substances and animals... These were " the damned, those excluded by the scientific paradigm, all those who according to Fort had been scorned from knowledge for not conforming to the margins of official knowledge. These were not cases of ghosts or apparitions in séances (to Fort it seemed a fad for people in search of alternative amusements), but anomalous physical" phenomena, which could occur without prior invocations or trance, in the street swept by a waterspout of frogs or in any kitchen where objects flew and crashed against the walls. Fort believed to discover in these events, empty spaces of science, a pattern of anomalies, as if within the random and improbable there was also a sinister correlation.

Frantically reading scientific journals and magazines, all that was published during the 19th century until 1916, Charles Fort defended research free of prejudices, constant doubt against what we were told to believe and, above all, a great sense of humour, enough to combat criticism. As a vital umbrella against the incomprehension of his peers. In spite of the slyness of his style, or rather because of it, this work is not the occurrence of an allologist or the naïve amateur of curious data. The Book of the Damned is far from being a catalogue to become engrossed in rarity, very different in its approach from those cabinets of curiosities or rooms of wonders of the Modern Age, where rare or shocking objects were grouped together, aristocratic antecedent of today's museum. So often used in bibliographies and for filler content, the book has been misunderstood since its publication and used for purposes contrary to what it advocated.

Fort used a working method to systematize his notes and attempted to explain not only the reason for these phenomena, but that of the Whole, by means of a philosophical theory, which is daring even for our time. His intermediarism was ahead of the ideas of postmodern philosophy. For Fort, these condemned cases would be the key to approach the Truth, an impossible enterprise because we are immersed in a metaphysical totality, besides being constrained by the excluding and rigid scientific and religious systems. The only solution: to open ourselves to a new kind of thinking, to embrace the impossible as the only sensible thing to do, to tear down the walls of dogma and language. Before surrealism, before Dada, Fort dared to look at the world with the new eyes of the 21st century. His readings on quantum physics proved that mysticism was not far from the science of the future. And most interestingly, the damned were not only those unexplained phenomena. People who willingly isolate themselves from the collective, those who think for themselves on a level that does not reject the irrational or asystematic, will be able to generate another consciousness, similar to that of the shaman or the witch.

What for some was simply the text of a crackpot, for others became the beginning of something promising. With his skeptical endeavor, Fort inaugurated (to his regret) the field of " pseudosciences". The commercial terrain of the paranormal world and modern research in cryptozoology and ufology. A group of enthusiastic readers founded clubs and fanzines where they continued to discuss space visitors, the existence of the Yeti, or why there are instruments dating from prehistoric times that are made of ultramodern materials. Fortean Times magazine continues to be a reference for all those in search of that other reality. When he returned to the United States from his stay in England, Fort found these fans of the shocking, wishing to crown him king of the damned. He flatly refused: his purpose was not to look for oddities, but to solve the riddle. Others, less scrupulous, would enrich themselves by collecting strange data and selling it as spam in the press to this day. Take a look at digital newspaper blogs, infested with quirky news and characters, including estimated reading time.

One of the lesser known aspects of Fortean monism, its terrible cosmology, which advocated the existence of planets scarcely dreamed of by the human mind, inhabited by beings of equally inconceivable age and appearance, our ancestors from very ancient times, inspired H. P. Lovecraft, who recognized in Fort a brother imbued with the same visions of the cosmos. Both had been lonely and imaginative people since childhood. A group of science fiction writers borrowed the powerful images of their doomsters to create science fiction reality fiction from their philosophical system (Henry Kuttner, Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson...). The dark planets of immense geometric shapes, inhabited by evil beings who watch over us from the ends of the universe, were the starting point of reflections that did not disdain the esoteric and terrifying elements of literature.

Forteans would become legion in later years, especially with the esoteric revival of the seventies and the publication of another key book in the emergence of alternative knowledge, The Return of the Sorcerers ( Le matin des magiciens), an unprecedented best seller by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier.

Charles Fort is recognized worldwide for his study of the paranormal and for having developed a new theory of psychic and mental power. This facet is reflected in relevant works such as Lo! (1931) and " Wild Talents" (1932).

The Editor, P.C. 2022

WILD TALENTS

Charles Fort

Chapter 1

You know, I can only surmise about this—but John Henry Sanders, of 75 Colville Street, Derby, England, was the proprietor of a fish store, and I think that it was a small business. His wife helped. When I read of helpful wives, I take it that that means that husbands haven't large businesses. If Mrs. Sanders went about, shedding scales in her intercourses, I deduce that theirs wasn't much of a fish business.

Upon the evening of March 4, 1905, in the Sanders' home, in the bedroom of their housemaid, there was a fire. Nobody was at home, and the firemen had to break in. There was no fireplace in the bedroom. Not a trace of anything by which to explain was found, and the firemen reported: Origin unknown. They returned to their station, and were immediately called back to this house. There was another fire. It was in another bedroom. Again—Origin unknown.

The Sanders', in their fish store, were notified, and they hastened home. Money was missed. Many things were missed. The housemaid, Emma Piggott, was suspected. In her parents’ home was found a box, from which the Sanders' took, and identified as theirs, £5, and a loot of such things as a carving set, sugar tongs, tablecloths, several dozen handkerchiefs, salt spoons, bottles of scent, curtain hooks, a hair brush, Turkish towels, gloves, a sponge, two watches, a puff box.

The girl was arrested, and in the Derby Borough Police Court, she was charged with arson and larceny. She admitted the thefts, but asserted her innocence of the fires. There was clearly such an appearance of relation between the thefts and the fires, which, if they had burned down the house, would have covered the thefts, that both charges were pressed.

It is not only that there had been thefts, and then fires: so many things had been stolen that—unless the home of the Sanders’ was a large household—some of these things would have been missed—unless all had been stolen at once. I have no datum for thinking that the Sanders lived upon any such scale as one in which valuables could have been stolen, from time to time, unknown to them. The indications were of one wide grab, and the girl's intention to set the house afire, to cover it.

Emma Piggott's lawyer showed that she had been nowhere near the house, at the time of the first fire; and that, when the second fire broke out, she, in the street, this off-evening of hers, returning, had called the attention of neighbors to smoke coming from a window. The case was too complicated for a police court, and was put off for the summer assizes.

Derby Mercury, July 19—trial of the girl resumed. The prosecution maintained that the fires could be explained only as of incendiary origin, and that the girl's motive for setting the house afire was plain, and that she had plundered so recklessly, because she had planned a general destruction, by which anything missing would be accounted for.

Again counsel for the defense showed that the girl could not have started the fires. The charge of arson was dropped. Emma Piggott was sentenced to six months' hard labor, for the thefts.

Upon Dec. 2, 1919, Ambrose Small, of Toronto, Canada, disappeared. He was known to have been in his office, in the Toronto Grand Opera House, of which he was the owner, between five and six o'clock, the evening of December 2nd. Nobody saw him leave his office. Nobody—at least nobody whose testimony can be accepted—saw him, this evening, outside the building. There were stories of a woman in the case. But Ambrose Small disappeared, and left more than a million dollars behind.

Then John Doughty, Small's secretary, vanished.

Small's safe deposit boxes were opened by Mrs. Small and other trustees of the estate. In the boxes were securities, valued at $1,125,000. An inventory was found. According to it, the sum of $105,000 was missing. There was an investigation, and bonds of the value of $105,000 were found, hidden in the home of Doughty's sister.

All over the world, the disappearance of Ambrose Small was advertised, with offers of reward, in acres of newspaper space. He was in his office. He vanished.

Doughty, too, was sought. He had not only vanished: he had done all that he could to be unfindable. But he was traced to a town in Oregon, where he was living under the name of Cooper. He was taken back to Toronto, where he was indicted, charged with having stolen the bonds, and with having abducted Small, to cover the thefts.

It was the contention of the prosecution that Ambrose Small, wealthy, in good health, and with no known troubles of any importance, had no motive to vanish, and to leave $1,125,000 behind: but that his secretary, the embezzler, did have a motive for abducting him. The prosecution did not charge that Small had been soundlessly and invisibly picked out of his office, where he was surrounded by assistants. The attempt was to show that he had left his office, even though nobody had seen him go: thinkably he could have been abducted, unwitnessed, in a street. A newsboy testified that he had seen Small, in a nearby street, between 5 and 6 o'clock, evening of December 2nd, but the boy's father contradicted this story. Another newsboy told that, upon this evening, after 6 o'clock, Small had bought a newspaper from him: but, under examination, this boy admitted he was not sure of the date.

It seemed clear that there was relation between the embezzlement and the disappearance, which, were it not for the inventory, would have covered the thefts: but the accusation of abduction failed. Doughty was found guilty of embezzlement, and was sentenced to six years' imprisonment in the Kingston Penitentiary.

In the News of the World (London) June 6, 1926, there is an account of strangely intertwined circumstances. In a public place, in the daytime, a man had died. On the footway, outside the Gaiety Theatre, London, Henry Arthur Chappell, the manager of the refreshment department of the Theatre, had been found dead. There was a post-mortem examination by a well-known pathologist, Prof. Piney. The man's skull was fractured. Prof. Piney gave his opinion that, if, because of heart failure, Chappell had fallen backward, the fractured skull might be accounted for: but he added that, though he had found indications of a slight affection of the heart, it was not such as would be likely to cause fainting.

The indications were that a murder had been committed. The police inquired into the matter, and learned that not long before there had been trouble. A girl, Rose Smith, employed at one of the refreshment counters, had been discharged by Chappell. One night she had placed on his doorstep a note telling that she intended to kill herself. Several nights later, she was arrested in Chappell's back garden. She was dressed in a man's clothes, and had a knife. Also she carried matches and a bottle of paraffin. Presumably she was bent upon murder and arson, but she was charged with trespassing, and was sentenced to two months' hard labor. It was learned that Chappell had died upon the day of this girl's release from prison.

Rose Smith was arrested. Chappell had no other known enemy. Upon the day of this girl's release, he had died.

But the accusation failed. A police inspector testified that, at the time of Chappell's death, Rose Smith had been in the Prisoners' Aid Home.

Chapter 2

I am a collector of notes upon subjects that have diversity—such as deviations from concentricity in the lunar crater Copernicus, and a sudden appearance of purple Englishmen—stationary meteor-radiants, and a reported growth of hair on the bald head of a mummy—and Did the girl swallow the octopus?

But 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?

Ambrose Small disappeared, and to only one person could be attributed a motive for his disappearance. Only to one person's motives could the fires in the house in Derby be attributed. Only to one person's motives could be attributed the probable murder of Henry Chappell. But, according to the verdicts in all these cases, the meaning of all is of nothing but coincidence between motives and events.

Before I looked into the case of Ambrose Small, I was attracted to it by another seeming coincidence. That there could be any meaning in it seemed so preposterous that, as influenced by much experience, I gave it serious thought. About six years before the disappearance of Ambrose Small, Ambrose Bierce had disappeared. Newspapers all over the world had made much of the mystery of Ambrose Bierce. But what could the disappearance of one Ambrose, in Texas, have to do with the disappearance of another Ambrose, in Canada? Was somebody collecting Ambroses? There was in these questions an appearance of childishness that attracted my respectful attention.

Lloyd's Sunday News (London) June 20, r920—that, near the town of Stretton, Leicestershire, had been found the body of a cyclist, Annie Bella Wright. She had been killed by a wound in her head. The correspondent who wrote this story was an illogical fellow, who loaded his story with an unrelated circumstance: or, with a dim suspicion of an unexplained relationship, he noted that in a field, not far from where the body of the girl lay, was found the body of a crow.

In the explanation of coincidence there is much of laziness, and helplessness, and response to an instinctive fear that a scientific dogma will be endangered. It is a tag, or a label: but of course every tag, or label, fits well enough at times. A while ago, I noted a case of detectives who were searching for a glass-eyed man named Jackson. A Jackson, with a glass eye, was arrested in Boston. But he was not the Jackson they wanted, and pretty soon they got their glass-eyed Jackson, in Philadelphia. I never developed anything out of this item—such as that, if there's a Murphy with a hare lip, in Chicago, there must be another hare-lipped Murphy somewhere else. It would be a comforting idea to optimists, who think that ours is a balanced existence: all that I report is that I haven't confirmed it.

But the body of a girl, and the body of a crow—

And, going over files of newspapers, I came upon this:

The body of a woman, found in the River Dee, near the town of Eccleston ( London Daily Express, June 12, 1911). And near by was found the body of another woman. One of these women was a resident of Eccleston: the other was a visitor from the Isle of Man. They had been unknown to each other. About ten o'clock, morning of June 10th, they had gone out from houses in opposite parts of the town.

New York American, Oct. 20, 1929—Two bodies found in desert mystery. In the Coachella desert, near Indio, California, had been found two dead men, about Too yards apart. One had been a resident of Coachella, but the other was not identified. Authorities believe there was no connection between the two deaths.

In the New York Herald, Nov. 26, 1911, there is an account of the hanging of three men, for the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, on Greenberry Hill, London. The names of the murderers were Green, Berry, and Hill. It does seem that this was only a matter of chance. Still, it may have been no coincidence, but a savage pun mixed with murder. New York Sun, Oct. 7, 1930—arm of William Lumsden, of Roslyn, Washington, crushed under a tractor. He was the third person, in three generations, in his family, to lose a left arm. This was coincidence, or I shall have to come out, accepting that there may be curses on families. But, near the beginning of a book, I don't like to come out so definitely. And we're getting away from our subject, which is Bodies.

Unexplained drownings in Douglas Harbor, Isle of Man. In the London Daily News, Aug. 19, 1910, it was said that the bodies of a young man and of a girl had been found in the harbor. They were known as a young couple, and their drowning would be understandable in terms of a common emotion, were it not that also there was a body of a middle-aged man not known in any way connected with them.

London Daily Chronicle, Sept. 10, 1924—Near Saltdean, Sussex, Mr. F. Pender, with two passengers in his sidecar, collided with a post, and all were seriously injured. In a field, by the side of the road, was found the body of a Rodwell shepherd, named Funnell, who had no known relation with the accident.

An occurrence of the 14th of June, 1931, is told of, in the Home News (Bronx) of the 15th. When Policeman Talbot, of the E. 126th St. station, went into Mt. Morris Park, at 10 A.M., yesterday, to awaken a man apparently asleep on a bench near the 124th St. gate, he found the man dead. Dr. Patterson, of Harlem Hospital, said that death had probably been caused by heart failure. New York Sun, June 15—that soon after the finding of this body on the bench, another dead man was found on a bench near by.

I have two stories, which resemble the foregoing stories, but I should like to have them considered together.

In November, 1888 ( St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Dec. 20, 1888), two residents of Birmingham, Alabama, were murdered, and their bodies were found in the woods. Then there was such a new mystery that these murder-mysteries were being overlooked. In the woods, near Birmingham, was found a third body. But this was the body of a stranger. The body lies unidentified at the undertaker's rooms. No one who had seen it can remember having seen the man in life, and identification seems impossible. The dead man was evidently in good circumstances, if not wealthy, and what he could have been doing at the spot where his body was found is a mystery. Several persons who have seen the body are of the opinion that the man was a foreigner. Anyway he was an entire stranger in this vicinity, and his coming must have been as mysterious as his death.

I noted these circumstances, simply as a mystery. But when a situation repeats, I notice with my livelier interest. This situation is of local murders, and the appearance of the corpse of a stranger, who had not been a tramp.

Philadelphia Public Ledger, Feb. 4, 1892—murder near Johnstown, Pa.—a man and his wife, named Kring, had been butchered, and their bodies had been burned. Then, in the woods, near Johnstown, the corpse of a stranger was found. The body was well-dressed, but could not be identified. Another body was found—well-dressed man, who bore no means of identification.

There is a view by which it can be shown, or more or less demonstrated, that there never has been a coincidence. That is, in anything like a final sense. By a coincidence is meant a false appearance, or suggestion, of relations among circumstances. But anybody who accepts that there is an underlying oneness of all things, accepts that there are no utter absences of relations among circumstances—

Or that there are no coincidences, in the sense that there are no real discords in either colors or musical notes—

That any two colors, or sounds, can be harmonized, by intermediately relating them to other colors, or sounds.

And I'd not say that my question, as to what the disappearance of one Ambrose could have to do with the disappearance of another Ambrose, is so senseless. The idea of causing Ambrose Small to disappear may have had origin in somebody's mind, by suggestion from the disappearance of Ambrose Bierce. If in no terms of physical abduction can the disappearance of Ambrose Small be explained, I'll not say that that has any meaning, until the physicists intelligibly define what they mean by physical terms.

Chapter 3

In days of yore, when I was an especially bad young one, my punishment was having to go to the store, Saturdays, and work. I had to scrape off labels of other dealers’ canned goods, and paste on my parent's label. Theoretically, I was so forced to labor to teach me the errors of deceitful ways. A good many brats are brought up, in the straight and narrow, somewhat deviously.

One time I had pyramids of canned goods, containing a variety of fruits and vegetables. But I had used all except peach labels. I pasted the peach labels on peach cans, and then came to apricots. Well, aren't apricots peaches? And there are plums that are virtually apricots. I went on, either mischievously, or scientifically, pasting the peach labels on cans of plums, cherries, string beans, and succotash. I can't quite define my motive, because to this day it has not been decided whether I am a humorist or a scientist. I think that it was mischief, but, as we go along, there will come a more respectful recognition that also it was scientific procedure.

In the town of Derby, England—see the Derby Mercury, May 15, and following issues, 1905—there were occurrences that, to the undiscerning, will seem to have nothing to do with either peaches or succotash. In a girls’ school, girls screamed and dropped to the floor, unconscious. There are readers who will think over well-known ways of peaches and succotash, and won't know what I am writing about. There are others, who will see symbolism in it, and will send