New Lands

by Charles Fort

  Jan. 24, 1896—a triplet of triplets—between 2:30 and 3:30 p.m.—by M. Overloop, of Middelkirke, Belgium—three series of detonations, each of three sounds.

  The sounds went on, but, after this occurrence, there seems to me to be little inducement to me to continue upon the subject. This is indication that from somewhere there has been signaling: from extra-mundane vessels to one another, or from some unknown region to this earth, as nearly final as we can hope to find. There are persons who will see nothing but a susceptibility to the mysticism of numbers in a feeling that there is significance in threes of threes. But, if there be attempt in some other world to attract attention upon this earth, it would have to be addressed to some kind of a state of mind that would feel significances. Let our three threes be as mystic as the eleven horns on Daniel’s fourth animal; if throughout nature like human nature there be only superstition as to such serialization, that superstition, for want of something more nearly intelligent, would be a susceptibility to which to appeal, and from which response might be expected. I think that a sense of mystic significance in the number three may be universal, because upon this earth it is general, appearing in theologies, in the balanced compositions of all the arts, in logical demonstrations, and in the indefinite feelings that are supposed to be superstitious.

  The sounds went on, as if there were experiments, or attempts to communicate by means of other regularizations and repetitions. Feb. 18, 1896—a series of more than twenty detonations, at intervals of two or three minutes, heard at Ostend, by M. Pulzeys, an engineer of Brussels. Four or five sounds were heard at Ostend by someone else: repeated upon the 21st of February. Heard by M. Overloop, at Ostend, April 6: detonations at 11:57:30 a.m., and at 12:1:32 p.m. Heard the next day, by M. Overloop, at Blankenberghe, at 2:35 and 2:51 p.m.

  The last occurrence recorded by M. Van den Broeck was upon the English Channel, May 23, 1896: detonations at 3:20 and 3:40 p.m. I have no more data, as to this period, myself, but I have notes upon similar sounds, by no means so widely reported and commented upon, in France and Belgium about fifteen years later. One notices that the old earthquake explanation as to these sounds has not appeared.

  But there were other phenomena in England, in this period, and to considerable degree they were conventionally explained. They were not of the type of the Belgian phenomena, and, because manifestations were seen and felt, as well as heard, they were explained in terms of meteors and earthquakes. But in this double explanation, we meet a divided opposition, and no longer are we held back by the uncompromising attempt by exclusionist science to attribute all disturbances of this earth’s surface to a subterranean origin. The admission by Symons and Fordham that we have recorded, as to occurrences of 1887-89, has survived.

  The earliest of the accounts that I have read of the quakes in the general region of Worcester and Hereford (London Triangle) that associated with appearances in the sky, was published by two church wardens in the year 1661, as to occurrences of October, 1661, and is entitled, A True and Perfect Relation of the Terrible Earthquake. It is said that monstrous flaming things were seen in the sky, and that phenomena below were interesting. We are told “truly and perfectly” that Mrs. Margaret Petmore fell in labor and brought forth three male offsprings all of whom had teeth and spoke at birth. Inasmuch as it is not recorded what the infants said, and whether in plain English or not, it is not so much an extraordinary birth such as, in one way or another, occurs from time to time, that affronts our conventional notions, as it is the idea that there could be relation between the abnormal in obstetrics and the unusual in terrestrics. The conventional scientist has just this reluctance toward considering shocks of this earth and phenomena in the sky at the same time. If he could accept with us that there often has been relation, the seeming discord would turn into a commonplace, but with us he would never again want to hear of extraordinary detonating meteors exploding only by coincidence over a part of this earth where an earthquake was occurring, or of concussions of this earth, time after time, in one small region, from meteors that, only by coincidence, happened to explode in one little local sky, time after time. Give up the idea that this earth moves, however, and coincidences many times repeated do not have to be lugged in.

  Our subject now is the supposed earthquake centering around Worcester and Hereford, Dec. 17, 1896; but there may have been related events, leading up to this climax, signifying long duration of something in the sky that occasionally manifested relatively to this corner of the London Triangle. Mrs. Margaret Petmore was too sensational a person for our liking, at least in our colder and more nearly scientific moments, so we shall not date so far back as the time of her performance; but the so-called earthquakes of Oct. 6, 1863, and of Oct. 30, 1868, were in this region, and we had data for thinking that they were said to be earthquakes only because they could not be traced to terrestrial explosions.

  At 5:45 p.m., Nov. 2, 1893, a loud sound was heard at a place ten miles northeast of Worcester, and no shock was felt (Nature, 49-245); however at Worcester and in various parts of the west of England and in Wales a shock was felt.

  According to James G. Wood, writing in Symons’ Met. Mag., 29-8, at 9:30 p.m., Jan. 25, 1894, at Llanthomas and Clifford, towns less than twenty miles west of Hereford, a brilliant light was seen in the sky, an explosion was heard, and a quake was felt. Half an hour later, something else occurred: according to Denning (Nature, 49-325) it was in several places, near Hereford and Worcester, supposed to be an earthquake. But, at Stokesay Vicarage, Shropshire (Symons’ Met. Mag., 29-8) was seen the same kind of an appearance as that which had been seen at Llanthomas and Clifford, half an hour before: an illumination so brilliant that for half a minute everything was almost as visible as by daylight.

  In the English Mechanic, 74-155, David Packer calls attention to “a strange meteoric light” that was seen in the sky, at Worcester, during the quake of Dec. 17, 1896. I should say that this was the severest shock felt in the British Isles, in the 19th century, with the exception of the shock of April 22, 1884, in the eastern point of the London Triangle. There was something in the sky. In Nature, 55-179, J. Lloyd Bozward writes that, at Worcester, a great light was seen in the sky, at the time of the shock, and that, in another town, “a great blaze” had been seen in the sky. In Symons’ Met. Mag., 31-180, are recorded many observations upon lights that were seen in the sky. In an appendix to his book, The Hereford Earthquake of 1896, Dr. Charles Davison says that at the time of the quake (5:30 a.m.) there was a luminous object in the sky, and that it “traversed a large part of the disturbed area.” He says that it was a meteor, and an extraordinary meteor that lighted up the ground so that one could have picked up a pin. With the data so far considered, almost anyone would think that of course an object had exploded in the sky, shaking the earth underneath. Dr. Davison does not say this. He says that the meteor only happened to appear over a part of this earth where an earthquake was occurring, “by a strange coincidence.”

  Suppose that, with ordinary common sense, he had not lugged in his “strange coincidence,” and had written that of course the shock was concussion from an explosion in the sky—

  Shocks that had been felt before midnight, December 17, and at 1:30 or 1:45, 2, 3, 3:30, 4, 5, and 5:20, and then others at 5:40 or 5:45 and at 6:15—and were they, too, concussions, but fainter and from remoter explosions in the sky—and why not, if of course the great shock of 5:30 was from a great explosion in the sky—and by what multiplication of strangeness of coincidence could detonating meteors, or explosions of any other kind, so localize in the one little sky of Worcester, if this earth be a moving earth—and how could their origin be otherwise than a fixed region nearby?

  In some minds it may be questionable that the earth could be so affected as it was at 5:30 a.m., Dec. 17, 1896, by an explosion in the sky. Upon Feb. 10, 1896, a tremendous explosion occurred in the sky of Madrid: throughout the city windows were smashed; a wall in the building occupied by the American Legation was throw
n down. The people of Madrid rushed to the streets, and there was a panic in which many were injured. For five hours and a half a luminous cloud of débris hung over Madrid, and stones fell from the sky.

  Suppose, just at present, we disregard all the Worcester-Hereford phenomena except those of Dec. 17, 1896. Draw a diagram, illustrating a stream of meteors pursuing this earth, now supposed to be rotating and revolving, for more than 400,000 miles in its orbit, and curving around gracefully and unerringly after the rotating earth, so as to explode precisely in this one little local sky and nowhere else. But we can’t think very reasonably even of a flock of birds flying after and so precisely pecking one spot on an apple thrown in the air by somebody. Another diagram—stationary earth—bombardment of any kind one chooses to think of—same point hit every time—thinkable.

  The phenomena associate with an opposition of Mars. Dec. 10, 1896—opposition of Mars.

  But we have gone on rather elaborately with perhaps an insufficiency to base upon. We cannot say, directly, that all the phenomena of the night of Dec. 16-17, 1896, were shocks from explosions in the sky: only during the greatest of the concussions was something seen, or was something near enough to be seen.

  We apply the idea of the diagrams to another series of occurrences in this period. Now draw a diagram relatively to the sky of Florida, and see just what the explanation of coincidence demands or exacts. But then consider the diagram as one of an earth that does not move and of something that is fixed over a point upon its surface. Things can be thought of as coming down from somewhere else to one special sky of this earth, as logically as precariously placed objects on one special window sill sometimes come down to a special neighbor.

  In the Monthly Weather Review, 23-57, is a report by the Director of the Florida Weather Service, upon “mysterious sounds” and luminous effects in the sky of Florida. According to investigation, these phenomena did occur in the sky of Florida, about noon, Feb. 7, 1895, again at five o’clock in the morning of the 8th, and again between six and ten o’clock, night of the 8th. The Editor of the Review thinks that three meteors may have exploded so in succession in the sky of Florida, and nowhere else, “by coincidence.”

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  Char me the trunk of a redwood tree. Give me pages of white chalk cliffs to write upon. Magnify me thousands of times, and replace my trifling immodesties with a titanic megalomania—then might I write largely enough for our subjects. Because of accessibility and abundance of data, our accounts deal very much with the relatively insignificant phenomena of Great Britain. But our subject, if not so restricted, would be the violences that have screamed from the heavens, lapping up villages with tongues of fire. If, because of appearances in the sky, it be accepted that some of the so-called earthquakes of Italy and South America represented relations with regions beyond this earth, then it is accepted that some of this earth’s greatest catastrophes have been relations with the unknown and the external. We have data that seem to be indications of signaling, but not unless we can think that foreign giants have hurled explosive mountains at this earth can we see such indications in all the data.

  Our data do seem to fall into two orders of phenomena: sounds of Melida, Barisal, and Belgium, and nothing falling from the sky, and nothing seen in the sky, and excellently supported observations for accepting a signal-like intent in intervals and grouping of sounds, at least in Barisal and Belgium; and the unregularized phenomena of Worcester-Hereford, Colchester, Comrie, and Birmingham, in which appearances are seen in the sky, or in which substances fall from the sky, and in which effects upon this earth, not noted at all in Belgium and Bengal, are great, and sometimes tremendous. It seems that extra-geography divides into the extra-sociologic and the extra-physical; and in the second type of phenomena, we suppose the data are of physical relations between this earth and other worlds. We think of a difference of potential. There were tremendous detonations in the sky at the times of the falls of the little black stones of Birmingham and Wolverhampton, and the electric manifestations, according to descriptions in the newspapers, were extraordinary, and great volumes of water fell. Consequently the events were supposed to be thunderstorms. I suppose, myself, that they were electric storms, but electric storms that represented difference of potential between this earth and some region that was fixed, at least eleven years, over Birmingham and Wolverhampton, bringing down stones and volumes of water from some other world, or bringing down stones, and dislodging intervening volumes of water, such as we have many data for thinking exist in outer space, sometimes in bodies of warm or hot water, and sometimes as great masses, or fields, of ice.

  Let two objects be generically similar, but specifically different and a relation that may be known as a difference of potential, though that term is usually confined to electric relations, generates between them. Quite as the Gulf Stream—though there are no reasons to suppose that there is such a Gulf Stream as one reads of—represents a relation between bodies of water heated differently, given any two worlds, alike in general constitution, but differing, say, electrically, and given proximity, we conceive of relations between them other than gravitational.

  But this cloistered earth, and its monkish science—shrinking from, denying, or disregarding, all data of external relations, except someone controlling force that was once upon a time known as Jehovah, but that has been re-named Gravitation—

  That the electric exchanges that were recognized by the ancients, but that were anthropomorphically explained by them, have poured from the sky and have gushed to the sky, afferently and efferently, between this earth and the nearby planets, or between this mainland and its San Salvadors, and have been recognized by the moderns, or the neo-ancients, but have been meteorologically and seismologically misconstrued by them.

  When a village spouts to the sky, it is said to have been caught up in a cyclone: when unknown substances fall from the sky, not much of anything is said upon the subject.

  Lost tribes and the nations that have disappeared from the face of this earth—that the skies have reeked with terrestrial civilizations, spreading out in celestial stagnations, where their remains to this day may be. The Mayans—and what became of them? Bones of the Mayans, picked white as frost by space-scavengers, regioned to this day in a sterile luxuriance somewhere, spread upon existence like the pseudo-breath of Death, crystallized on a sky-pane. Three times gaps wide and dark the history of Egypt—and that these abysses were gulfed by disappearances—that some of the eliminations from this earth may have been upward translations in functional suctions. We conceive of Supervision upon this earth’s development, but for it the names of Jehovah and Allah seem old-fashioned—that the equivalence of wrath, but like the storms of cells that, in an embryonic thing, invade and destroy cartilage cells, when they have outlived their usefulness, have devastated this earth’s undesirables. Likely enough, or not quite likely enough, one of these earlier Egypts was populated by sphinxes, if one can suppose that some of the statuary still extant in Egypt were portraitures. This is good, though also not so good, orthodox Evolutionary doctrine—that between types occur transitionals—

  That Elimination and Redistribution swept an earlier Egypt with suctions—because it was written, in symbols of embryonic law, that life upon this earth must form onward—and the crouching sphinx on the sands of Egypt, blinking the mysticism of her morphologic mixtures, would perhaps detain forever the less interesting type that was advancing—

  That often has Clarification destroyed transitionals, that they shall not hold back development.

  One conceives of their remains, to this day, wafting still in the currents of the sky: floating avenues of frozen sphinxes, solemnly dipping in cosmic undulations, down which circulate processions of Egyptian mummies.

  An astronomer upon this earth notes that things in parallel lines have crossed the sun.

  We offer this contribution as comparing favorably with the works of any other historian. We think that some of the details may need revision, but
that what they typify is somewhere nearly acceptable.

  Latitudes and longitudes of bones, not in the sky, but upon the surface of this earth. Baron Toll and other explorers have, upon the surface of this earth, kicked their way through networks of ribs and protrusions of skulls and stacks of vertebrae, as numerous as if from dead land they had sprouted there. Anybody who has read of these tracts of bones upon the northern coast of Siberia, and of some of the outlying islands that are virtually composed of bones cemented with icy sand, will agree with me that there have been cataclysms of which conventionality and standardization tell us nothing. Once upon a time, some unknown force translated, from somewhere, a million animals to Colorado, where their remains now form great bone-quarries. Very largely do we express a reaction against dogmatism, and sometimes we are not dogmatic, ourselves. We don’t know very positively whether at times the animal life of some other world has been swept away from that world, eventually pouring from the sky of Siberia and of Colorado, in some of the shockingest floods of mammoths from which spattered cats and rabbits, in cosmic scenery, or not. All that we can say is that when we turn to conventionality it is to blankness or suppression. Every now and then, to this day, occurs an alleged fall of blood from the sky, and I have notes upon at least one instance in which the microscopically examined substance was identified as blood. But now we conceive of intenser times, when every now and then a red cataract hung in the heavens like the bridal veil of the goddess of murder. But the science of today is a soporific like the idealism of Europe before the War broke out. Science and idealism—wings of a vampire that lulls consciousness that might otherwise foresee catastrophe. Showers of frogs and showers of fishes that occur to this day—that they are the dwindled representatives to this day of the cataclysms of intenser times when the skies of this earth were darkened by afferent clouds of dinosaurs. We conceive of intenser times, but we conceive of ail times as being rhythmic times. We are too busy to take up alarmism, but, if Rome, for instance, never was destroyed by terrestrial barbarians, if we cannot very well think of Apaches seizing Chicago, extra-mundane vandals may often have swooped down upon this earth, and they may swoop again; and it may be a comfort to us, someday, to mention in our last gasp that we told about this.