Philiyra says:
Charles Fort, The Man Who Invented the Supernatural by Jim Steinmeyer is a fascinating biography of the man who brought us tales of unexplained and perhaps unexplainable phenomena.
The story of the Mary Celeste. The tale of Kasper Hauser, who was stabbed in a snowy field with no other tracks but his own, and no murder weapon.
Frogs, fish, stones, and blood falling from clear blue skies.
Charles Fort spent years of his life collecting these tales, years in the New York Public Library and the British Museum. He published four books on these phenomena, and for the most part, they were ignored by the general public.
The Fortean Society was created by Tiffany Thayer in 1930. But it wasn’t until after Fort’s death that the Society devolved into a conspiracy theorist’s haven, exactly the sort of thing Fort was not.
Jim Steinmeyer intersperses his book with selections from Fort’s autobiography to bring us the man himself and his thoughts as well as the thoughts of his contemporaries.
H.G. Wells said Fort was “One of the most damnable bores who ever cut scraps from out-of-the-way newspapers.
Fort’s friend Theodore Dreiser called him, “The most fascinating literary figure since Poe.
Which is the truth? Read Charles Fort and make up your own mind.
But the facts speak for themselves.
