by Charles Fort
I omit about sixty instances of seeming teleportations of stones and water, of which I have records. Numerousness hasn’t any meaning, as a standard to judge by.
The simplest cases of seeming teleportations are flows of stones, into open fields, doing no damage, not especially annoying anybody, and in places where there were no means of concealment for mischievous or malicious persons. There is a story of this kind, in the New York Sun, June 22, 1884. June 16th—a farm near Trenton, N.J.—two young men, George and Albert Sanford, hoeing in a field—stones falling. There was no building anywhere near, and there was not even a fence behind which anybody could hide. The next day stones fell again. The young men dropped their hoes and ran to Trenton, where they told of their experiences. They returned with forty or fifty amateur detectives, who spread out and tried to observe something, or more philosophically sat down and arrived at conclusions without observing anything. Crowds came to the cornfield. In the presence of crowds, stones continued to fall from a point overhead. Nothing more was found out.
A pig and his swill—
Or Science and data—
Or that the way of a brain is only the way of a belly—
We can call the process that occurs in them either assimilative or digestive. The mind-worshiper might as well take guts for his god.
For many strange occurrences there are conventional explanations. In the mind of a conventionalist, reported phenomena assimilate with conventional explanations. There must be disregards. The mind must reject some data. This process, too, is both alimentary and mental.
The conventional explanation of mysterious flows of stones is that they are peggings by neighbors. I have given data as I have found them. Maybe they are indigestible. The conventional explanation of mysterious flows of water is that they are exudations from insects. If so there must sometimes be torrential bugs.
New York Sun, Oct. 30, 1892—that, day after day, in Oklahoma, where for weeks there had been a drought, water was falling upon a large cottonwood tree, near Stillwater. A conventionalist visited this tree. He found insects. In Insect Life, 5-204, it is said that the Stillwater mystery had been solved. Dr. Neel, Director of the Agricultural Experimental Station, at Stillwater, had gone to the tree, and had captured some of the insects that were causing the precipitation. They were Proconia undata Fab.
And how am I going to prove that this was a senseless, or brutal, or anyway mechanical, assimilation?
We don’t have proofs. We have expressions.
Our expression is that this precipitation in Oklahoma was only one of perhaps many. We find three other recorded instances, at this time, and if they be not attributable to exudations from insects—but we’ll not prove anything. There is a theorem that Euclid never attempted. That is to take Q.E.D. as a proposition.
In Science, 21-94, Mr. H. Chaplin, of Ohio University, writes that, in the town of Akron, Ohio—about while water was falling upon a tree in Oklahoma—there had been a continuous fall of water, during a succession of clear days. Members of the faculty of Ohio University had investigated, but had been unable to solve the problem. There was a definite and persisting appearing-point from which to a small area near a brickyard, water was falling. Mr. Chaplin, who had probably never heard of similar occurrences far from damp places, thought that vapors from this brickyard were rising, and condensing, and falling back. If so there would often be such precipitations over ponds and other bodies of water.
About the same time, water was mysteriously appearing at Martinsville, Ohio, according to the Philadelphia Public Ledger, Oct. 19, 1892. Behind a house, a mist was falling upon an area not more than a dozen feet square. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, November 19—that, in Water Street, Brownsville, Pa., there was a garden, in which was a peach tree, upon which water was falling. As to the insect explanation, we note the statement that the water “seemed to fall from some height above the tree, and covered an area about fourteen feet square.”
For all I know, some trees may have occult powers. Perhaps some especially gifted trees have power to transport water, from far away, in times of need. I noted the drought in Oklahoma, and then I looked up conditions in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Rainfall was below normal. In Ohio, according to the Monthly Weather Review, of November, there was a drought. A watery manna came to chosen trees.
There is no sense in trying to prove anything, if all things are continuous, so that there isn’t anything, except the inclusive of all, which may be Something. But aesthetically, if not scientifically, there may be value in expressions, and we’ll have variations of our theme. There were, in places far apart, simultaneous flows of water from stationary appearing-points, in and around Charleston, S.C, in the period of the long series of earthquake shocks there. Later I shall touch more upon an idea that will be an organic interpretation of falls of water in places that have been desolated by catastrophes. About the middle of September, 1886, falling water from “a cloudless sky,” never falling outside a spot twenty-five feet wide, was reported from Dawson, Ga. This shower was not intermittent. Of course the frequently mentioned circumstance of the “cloudless sky” has no significance. Water falling all the way from the sky, even at times of the slightest breezes, cannot be thought of as localizing strictly upon an area a few yards in diameter. We think of appearing-points a short distance above the ground. Then showers upon a space ten feet square were reported from Aiken, S.C. There were similar falls of water at Cheraw, S.C. For particulars, see the Charleston News and Courier, October 8, 21, 25, 26. For an account of falls of water, “from a cloudless sky,” strictly to one point, in Charlotte, N.C, according to investigations by a meteorologist, see the Monthly Weather Review, October, 1886. In the New York Sun, October 24, it is said that, for fourteen days, water had been falling from “a cloudless sky,” to a point in Chesterfield County, S.C, falling so heavily that streams of it had gushed from roof pipes.
Then came news that water was falling from a point in Charleston.
Several days before, in the News and Courier, had been published the insect explanation of falls of water. In the News and Courier, November 5, a reporter tells that he had visited the place in Charleston, where it was said that water was falling, and that he had seen a fall of water. He had climbed a tree to investigate. He had seen insects.
But there are limits to what can be attributed, except by the most desperate explainers, to insects.
In the Monthly Weather Review, August, 1886, it is said that, in Charleston, September 4th, three showers of hot stones had been reported.
“An examination of some of these stones, shortly after they had fallen, forced the conviction that the public was being made the victim of a practical joke.”
How an examination of stones could demonstrate whether they had been slung humorously or not, is more than whatever brains I have can make out. Upon September 4th, Charleston was desolated. The great earthquake had occurred upon August 31st, and continuing shocks were terrorizing the people. Still, I’d go far from my impressions of what we call existence, if I’d think that terror, or anything else, was ever homogeneous at Charleston, or anywhere else. Battles and shipwrecks, and especially diseases, are materials for humorists, and the fun of funerals never will be exhausted. I don’t argue that in the midst of desolation and woe, at Charleston, there were no jokers. I tell a story as I found it recorded in the Charleston News and Courier, September 6, and mention my own conclusion, which is that wherever jocular survivors of the catastrophe may have been cutting up capers, they were not concerned in this series of occurrences.
At 2:30, morning of September 4th, stones, which were found to be “warm,” fell near the News and Courier building, some of them bounding into the press room. Five hours later, when there was no darkness to hide mischievous survivors, more stones fell. It was a strictly localized repetition, as if one persisting current of force. At 1:30 in the afternoon again stones fell, and these were seen, coming straight down from a point overhead. If any conviction was forced, it was
forced in the same old way as that in which for ages convictions have been forced, and that is by forcing agreements with prior convictions. Other details were published in the Richmond Whig: it was told that the stones, which were flint pebbles, ranging from the size of a grape to the size of a hen’s egg, had fallen upon an area of seventy-five square feet, and that about a gallon of them had been picked up. In A Descriptive Narrative of the Earthquake of August 31, 1886, Carl McKinley, an Editor of the News and Courier, tells of two of these showers of stones, which, according to him, “undoubtedly fell.”
The localized repetitions of showers of stones are so much like the localized repetitions of showers of water, that one, inclusive explanation, or expression, is called for. Insects did them? Or the fishmonger of Worcester had moved to South Carolina?
A complication has been developing. Little frogs fell upon Mr. Stoker and his horses, but we had no reason to think that either Mr. Stoker or his horses had anything to do with bringing about the precipitation. But the children of Clavaux did seem to have something to do with showers of stones, and trees did seem to have something to do with the precipitations of water.
Rand Daily Mail, May 29, 1922—that Mr. D. Neaves, living near Roodeport, employed as a chemist in Johannesburg, having for several months endured showers of stones, had finally reported to the police. Five constables, having been sent to the place, after dark, had hardly taken positions around the house, when a stone crashed on the roof. Phenomena were thought to associate with the housemaid, a Hottentot girl. She was sent into the garden, and stones fell vertically around her. This is said to have been one of the most mysterious of the circumstances: stones fell vertically, so that there was no tracing of them to an origin. Mr. Neaves’ home was an isolated building, except for outhouses. These outhouses were searched, but nothing to suspect was found. The stones continued to fall from an unknown source.
Police Inspector Cummings took charge. He ordered all members of the family, servants, and newspapermen to remain in the house for a while: so everybody was under inspection. Outside were constables, and all around were open fields, with no means of concealment. Stones fell on the roof. Watched by the police, the Hottentot girl went to the well. A large stone fell near her. She ran back to the house, and a stone fell on the roof. It is said that everything that could be done was done, and that the cordon of police was complete. More stones fell. Convinced that in some way the girl was implicated, the Inspector tied her hands. A stone fell on the roof.
Then everything was explained. A “civilian,” concealed in one of the outhouses, had been caught throwing a stone. If so, whoever wrote this account did not mention the name of the culprit, and it is not said that the police made any trouble for him for having made them work.
Then everything was explained again. It was said that the girl, Sara, had been taken to the police station, where she had confessed. “It is understood that Sara admits being a party to all the stone-throwing, and has implicated two other children and a grown native. So ends the Roodeport ghost story, shorn of all its alleged supernatural trappings.”
Though usually we do not think piously of the police, their stations are confessionals. But they’re confessionals more in a scientific than in a religious sense. When a confessor holds a club over a conscience, he can bully statements with the success of any scientist who slugs data with a theory. There is much brutality in police stations and in laboratories, but I can’t say that we’re trying to reform anything; and if there never has been a Newton, or a Darwin, or an Einstein—or a Moses, or a Christ, or a St. Augustine—who has practiced other than the third degree upon circumstances, I fear me that sometimes we are not innocent of one or two degrees, ourselves.
However, the story reads more as if the girl had been taken to a barber shop. Her story was shorn, we read. It was clipped bald of all details, such as the cordon of police, search of the outhouses, and the taking of precautions, such as will not fit in with this yarn of the tricky kids. In this book we shall note much shearing.
The writer, in the Monthly Weather Review, is not the only clipper who forces a conviction, when he can. There was a case, in another part of South Africa, not long before the bombardments at Roodeport began. In the Klersdorp Record, Nov. 18, 1921, it is said that for several weeks there had been “mysterious stonethrowing by invisible agencies” at the houses of Mr. Gibbon Joseph and Mr. H.J. Minnaar, in North Street. A detective was put upon the case. He was a logician. It was a ghost story, or it was a case of malicious mischief. He could not pinch a ghost. So he accused two Negroes, and arrested them. The Negroes were tried upon testimony given by two boys of their race. But the boys contradicted each other, and it was brought out that they were lying. They admitted that the logical detective had promised them five shillings to substantiate his syllogisms.
In the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 12-260, is published a letter from Mr. W.G. Grottendieck, telling that, about one o’clock, one morning in September, 1903, at Dortrecht, Sumatra, he was awakened by hearing something fall on the floor of his room. Sounds of falling objects went on. He found that little, black stones were falling, with uncanny slowness, from the ceiling, or the roof, which was made of large, overlapping, dried leaves. Mr. Grottendieck writes that these stones were appearing near the inside of the roof, not puncturing the material, if through this material they were passing. He tried to catch them at the appearing-point, but, though they moved with extraordinary slowness, they evaded him. There was a coolie boy, asleep in the house, at the time. “The boy certainly did not do it, because at the time that I bent over him, while he was sleeping on the floor, there fell a couple of stones.” There was no police station handy, and this story was not finished off with a neat and fashionable cut.
I point out that these stories of flows of stones are not conventional stories, and are not well-known. Their details are not standardized, like “clanking chains” in ghost stories, and “eyes the size of saucers,” in sea serpent yarns. Somebody in France, in the year 1842, told of slow-moving stones, and somebody in Sumatra, in the year 1903, told of slow-moving stones. It would be strange, if two liars should invent this circumstance—
And that is where I get, when I reason.
If strangeness be a standard for unfavorable judgment, I damn at a swipe most of this book.
But damnation is nothing to me. I offer the data. Suit yourself.
Nobody can investigate the reported phenomena that we’re taking up, without noticing the number of cases in which boys and girls, but a great preponderance of girls, appear. An explanation by those who disregard a great deal—or disregard normally—is that youngsters are concerned so much, because it is their own mischief. Poltergeist phenomena, or teleportations of objects, in the home of Mr. Frost, 8 Ferrostone-road, Hornsey, London, for several months, early in the year 1921, cannot be so explained. There were three children. Phenomena so frightened one of them that, in a nervous breakdown, she died (London Daily Express, April 2, 1921). Another, in a similar condition, was taken to the Lewisham (London) Hospital (London Daily News, April 30, 1921).
In attempting to rationalize various details that we have come upon, or to assimilate them, or to digest them, the toughest meal is swallowing statements upon mysterious appearances in closed rooms, or passages of objects and substances through walls of houses, without disturbing the material of the walls. Oh, yes, I have heard of “the fourth dimension,” but I am going to do myself some credit by not lugging in that particular way of showing that I don’t know what I’m writing about. There’s a story in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Jan. 27, 1888—large stones that were appearing and “falling slowly” in closed rooms in the home of Mr. P.C. Martin, Caldwell County, N.C. Madras (India) Mail, March 5, 1888—pieces of brick that, in the presence of many investigators, were falling in a schoolroom, in Pondicherry.
I can understand this phenomenon, or alleged phenomenon, of appearances in closed rooms, no more than I can understand the passage of a
magnetic field of force through the wall of a house, without disturbing the material. But lines of this force do not transport objects through a dense material. Then I think of X-rays, which do something like this, if it be accepted that X-rays are aggregations of very small objects, or particles. X-rays do, or sometimes do, disturb materials penetrated by them, but this disturbance is not evident until after long continuance.
If there is Teleportation, it is in two orders, or fields: electric and non-electric—or phenomena that occur during thunderstorms, and phenomena that occur under “a cloudless sky,” and in houses. In the hosts of stories that I have gathered—but with which I have not swamped this book—of showers of living things, the rarest of all statements is of injury to the falling creatures. Then, from impressions that have arisen from other data, we think that the creatures may not have fallen all the way from the sky, but may have fallen from appearing-points not high above the ground—or may have fallen a considerable distance under a counter-gravitational influence.
I think that there may be a counter-gravitational influence upon transported objects, because of the many agreeing accounts—more than I have told of—of slow-falling stones, by persons who had probably never heard of other stories of slow-falling stones, and because I have come upon records of similar magic, or witchcraft, in what will be accepted as sane and sober meteorological observations.
See the Annual Register, 185970—an account by Mr. E.J. Lowe, a meteorologist and an astronomer, of a fall of hailstones, at Nottingham, England, May 29, 1859. Though the objects were more than an inch across, they fell slowly. In September, 1873, near Clermont-Ferrand, France, according to La Nature, 7-289, hailstones, measuring from an inch to an inch and a half across, fell. They were under an unknown influence. Notwithstanding their size, they fell so slowly that they did no damage. Some fell upon roofs, and rebounded, and it was as if these shook off the influence. Those that rebounded then fell faster than fell those that came down in an unbroken fall. For other records of this phenomenon, see Nature, 36-445; Illustrated London News, 34-546; Bull. Soc. Astro. de France, June 19, 1900.