Charles Fort

<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Charles Fort was an early 1874–1932 20th-century American journalist and chronicler of anomalous, or unexplained, events. Although born in Albany, New York, he lived most of his life in the New York City borough called the Bronx.

His books are filled with citations of articles of things such as fish falling from the sky, poltergeists and strange creatures. He coined the term "teleportation" and is widely regarded as both the father of modern science fiction and the study of all things paranormal.

These are not mere listings of stories but a carefully constructed argument for the interconnection between all things. Fort philosophizes, criticizes, and entertains. Admirers of Fort are referred to as Forteans, although he himself hated the concept of followers and cautioned the reader to be neither a skeptic nor a true believer for, perhaps, the truth lies in-between.

Forteana suggests that delineations between objects and concepts are simply human constructs: that all things blend into all other things.

This is how Fort expresses it in The Book of the Damned:

"Conventional monism, or that all "things" that seem to have identies of their own are only islands that are projections from something underlying, and have no real outlines of their own.

But that all "things", though only projections, are projections that are striving to break away from the underlying that denies them identity of their own."

Probably Fort's most famous expression of this is:

"One measures a circle beginning anywhere."

In other words, UFOs may be connected to Bigfoot which may be connected to ghost reports in the same way that a rain of beads in India may be related to a migration of butterflies to Mexico. In other words, "one measures a circle beginning anywhere". Fort has been quite influential, and there continue to be societies and publications that carry his name.

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