Charles Goy Fort is an American "self-taught publicist, successful novelist, loser novelist, inventor and eccentric natural philosopher" - has many followers as a pioneer in the field of scientific anomalies.
Scientific anomalies are defined as phenomena or events that are not explained by the currently accepted scientific theories. Fort spent most of his life collecting evidence of such events.
Difficult youth
Charles Fort was born on August 6, 1874 in Albany, New York, to Dutch immigrants who ran a wholesale grocery business. Fort's father, being authoritarian, raised the boy in strict obedience and often beat him.
Charles Fort
Photo: Public Domain
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In 1892, at the age of 18, Fort began working as a journalist for the New York newspaper, then became editor of the Long Island newspaper. However, in 1893 he left his job and went to travel the world.
His journey was interrupted in 1896 when he contracted malaria in South Africa. Anna Feeling looked after him. One source claims that Anna was an Irish immigrant he knew in Albany, while another says she was the cook at his father's house. Fort married Anna, who was 4 years older than him and did not share her husband's interests.
Fort writings
They returned to America and lived in the Bronx, New York for several years. To make ends meet, Forth wrote stories for newspapers and magazines. In 1906, he began collecting evidence of anomalous phenomena, spending a lot of time in the New York Public Library. In 1915, Forth finished two books, X and Y, which Theodore Dreiser liked and even tried to publish them. However, the publishers were not interested and subsequently Fort destroyed both manuscripts.
Charles Fort and Theodore Dreiser
Photo: conspirology.org
The following year, Fort received a modest inheritance from his uncle, which allowed him to focus on literary and research activities. Fort's followers believe that he was a pioneer in the study of anomalies, but not everyone shares their opinion. One source describes Fort as "an anti-dogmatist who collected strange and bizarre stories."
Fort legacy
In 1919 he published his "Book of the Damned" on the paranormal. In it, Fort wrote about the strange atmospheric phenomena in 1883, preceding the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano; about the fall from the sky of organic and living beings (fish, birds and frogs); about poltergeist; about people giants and extraterrestrial civilizations; about the Super Sargasso Sea, supposedly surrounding the Earth, and many other phenomena unexplained by science.
Fort's second book, New Lands (1923), deals with astronomical phenomena. In addition, Fort writes that in the sky, as on Earth, there are continents and the waste products of their inhabitants spill out onto the surface of the Earth. This book by Forth is written in heavy language and is not as popular as the others.
The book "Volcanoes of Heaven" was published in 1931 and is devoted to parapsychology, in which Fort first introduced the term "teleportation" and described the deformities of people and animals.
Wild Talents is Forth's last book, published a few weeks after his passing. Fort abandoned the idea of teleportation and introduced the concept of the "Space Joker", the evidence of which allegedly serves as a poltergeist, "fires in the sky" (UFO), spontaneous human combustion, vampirism, etc. Further, Fort turned to magic and occultism.
All these books have been translated into many languages, including Russian.
Charles Fort died on May 3, 1932 in the Bronx, New York, at the age of 57.