Lo!

by Charles Fort

  If in the general electric conditions of a thunderstorm there be sometimes a counter-gravitational effect upon objects, somebody might find out how counter-gravitationally to electrify aircraft and aviators. If all work is opposition to gravitation, somebody may make a big discovery of benefit to general laziness. Elevators in skyscrapers might be run with half the power now needed. Here is an idea that may revolutionize industry, but just now I am too busy revolutionizing everything else, and I give this idea to the world, with the generosity of somebody who bestows something that isn’t any good to him.

  But mysterious disappearances?

  Our data have been upon mysterious appearances.

  If I could appeal to what used to be supposed to be known as common sense, I’d ask whether something that mysteriously appears somewhere had not mysteriously disappeared somewhere else.

  Annals of Electricity, 6-499—Liverpool, May 11, 1842—“not a breath of air.” Suddenly clothes on lines on a common shot upward. They moved away slowly. Smoke from chimneys indicated that above ground there was a southward wind, but the clothes moved away northward.

  There was another instance, a few weeks later. London Times, July 5, 1842—a bright, clear day, at Cupar, Scotland, June 30th—women hanging out clothes on a common. There was a sharp detonation, and clothes on lines shot upward. Some fell to the ground, but others went on and vanished. There was a seeming of selection, which, because of possible bearing upon various observations of ours interests me. Though this was a powerful force, nothing but the clothes it seized was affected. I wonder about the detonation, largely because it is in agreement with a detail of still another story.

  The closeness in time of these two occurrences attracts my attention. They were a few weeks apart, and I have no other such record, until seventy-seven years later. A sensible suggestion is that somebody, in Cupar, having read the Liverpool story, had faked a similar story from his town. A suggestion that is not so sensible is that, in this year 1842, somebody had learned the secrets of teleportation, and to avoid attracting much attention in any one place was experimenting in places far apart. It seems likely enough to me that, if there be teleportation, human beings may have come upon knowledge of it, and may have used it.

  “Likely enough?” a spiritualist would say. “Has he never heard of apports?”

  But whether it’s narrowness and bigotry, upon my part, or not, I do not go to séances for data. I have collected notes upon “mysterious robberies,” wondering whether a teleportative power has ever been used criminally. As to apports, if a medium could transport sea shells from the sea to his cabinet, he could abstract funds from a bank to his pocket. If he could, but would not, how account for his being a medium? Looking through newspapers, I have had a searching eye for something like an account of a medium, who had become mysteriously rich, in a town where there had been shortages of funds: clerks accused of embezzlement, and convicted, but upon evidence that was not altogether satisfactory. Although usually I can find data to “prove” anything that I want to “prove,” I have come upon no such account, and I am skeptical as to apports, and think that mediums are like most of the rest of us, who are not criminals, having no exceptional abilities. However, there may be criminal adepts who are not known mediums.

  There was, in June, 1919, at Islip, Northampton, England, an occurrence like the occurrences at Liverpool and Cupar. London Daily Express, June 12, 1919—a loud detonation—basketful of clothes shooting into the air. Then the clothes came down. There may be ineffective teleportative seizures.

  London Daily Mail, May 6, 1910—phenomena near Cantillana, Spain. From ten o’clock in the morning until noon, May 4th, stones shot up from a spot in the ground. Loud detonations were heard. “Traces of an extinct volcano are visible at the spot, and it is believed that a new crater is being formed.” But there is no findable record of volcanic activity in Spain, at this time—nor at any other time. I am reminded of the loud noises that often accompany poltergeist disturbances.

  In Niles’ Weekly Register, Nov. 4, 1815, there is an account of stones that had been watched rising in a field, near Marbleton, Ulster County, New York—that these stones had been seen to rise three or four feet from the ground, then moving horizontally, from thirty to sixty feet.

  Out in open fields, there have been showers of water, strictly localized, and of unknown origin. A Dr. Neel will be heard from. He has captured, not indefinitely alluded to insects, but Proconia undata Fab. Every mystery has its fishmonger. Considered figuratively, he need not be a seller of fish. His name may be Smith, or O’Brien, or it may be Proconia Undata Fab.

  But presumably in the wintertime, in England, members of the Proconia family are not busy and available for explanations. In the Chorley (Lancashire) Standard, Feb. 15, 1873, is a story of excitement in the town of Eccleston. At Bank House, occupied by two elderly women and their niece, streams of water started falling, about the first of February, seemingly from ceilings. Furniture was soaked, and the occupants of the house were alarmed. The falls seemed to come from the ceiling, but “probably the most singular feature of the affair is that ceilings were apparently quite dry.” See back to Mr. Grottendieck’s story of objects that were appearing near a ceiling, or roof, with no signs of penetrating the material. Workmen had been called to the house, and had investigated, but were unable to explain. Openness again. House packed with neighbors, watching the showers. These data would make trouble for spiritualistic mediums and their requirements for special, or closed, conditions, and at least semi-darkness, if mediums were bothered by more than unquestioning or, occasionally politely questioning, faith. If some of them have been knocked about a bit, they were relatively few. Nobody in this house sat in a cabinet. Nobody was a logician. Nobody reasonably argued that chemists, for instance, must have special conditions, or their reactions will not work out. “For instance,” said nobody, “how could you develop a photograph, except in the special conditions of darkness, or semi-darkness?”

  The look to me is that, throughout what is loosely called Nature, teleportation exists, as a means of distribution of things and materials, and that sometimes human beings have command, mostly unconsciously, though perhaps sometimes as a development from research and experiment, of this force. It is said that in savage tribes there are “rain makers,” and it may be that among savages there are teleportationists. Some years ago, I’d have looked superior, if anybody had said this to me but a good many of us are not so given to the “tut-tut!” as we used to be. It may be that in civilized communities, because of their storages, a power to attract flows of water, being no longer needed, has virtually died out, still appearing occasionally, however.

  It could be that, in reading what most persons think are foolish little yarns of falling stones, we are, visionarily, in the presence of cosmic constructiveness—or that once upon a time this whole earth was built up by streams of rocks, teleported from other parts of an existence. The crash of falling islands—the humps of piling continents—and then the cosmic humor of it all—or utmost spectacularity functioning, then declining, and surviving only as a vestige— or that the force that once heaped the peaks of the Rocky Mountains now slings pebbles at a couple of farmers, near Trenton, N.J.

  So I’d conceive of the existence of a force, and the use of it, unconsciously mostly, by human beings. It may be that, if somebody, gifted with what we think we mean by “agency,” fiercely hates somebody else, he can, out of intense visualizations, direct, by teleportation, bombardments of stones upon his enemy.

  Water falls on a tree, in Oklahoma. It is told of in an entomological magazine. Water falls in a house in Eccleston. I read that in a spiritualists’ periodical, though I went to a newspaper for the data. These are the isolations, or the specializations, of conventional treatments. I tell of water falling upon a tree, in Oklahoma, and of water falling in a house, in Eccleston, and think that both phenomena are manifestations of one force. It is my attempt to smash false demarcations: to take data away
from narrow and exclusive treatments by spiritualists, astronomers, meteorologists, entomologists: also denying the validity of usurpations of words and ideas by metaphysicians and theologians. But my interest is not only that of a unifier: it is in bringing together seeming incongruities, and finding that they have affinity. I am very much aware of the invigoration of products of ideas that are foreign to each other, if they mate. This is exogamy, practiced with thoughts—to fertilize a volcanic eruption with a storm of frogs—or to mingle the fall of an edible substance from the sky with the unexplained appearance of Cagliostro. But I am a pioneer and no purist, and some of these stud-stunts of introducing vagabond ideas to each other may have about the eugenic value of some of the romances in houses of ill fame. I cannot expect to be both promiscuous and respectable. Later, most likely, some of these unions will be properly licensed.

  Sometimes, in what I call “teleportations,” there seems to be “agency” and sometimes not. That the “agency” is not exclusively human, and has nothing to do with “spirits of the departed” is indicated, I suppose, if we accept that sometimes there are “occult powers” of trees. Some other time I may be able more clearly to think out an expression upon flows of pigeons to their homes, and flows of migratory birds, as teleportative, or quasi-teleportative. My suggestion as to the frequently reported “agency” of children, is that “occult forces” were, in earlier times of human affairs, far more prevalent, and far more necessary to the help and maintenance of human communities than they are now, with political and economic mechanisms somewhat well-established, or working, after a fashion; and that, wherein children are atavistic, they may be in rapport with forces that mostly human beings have outgrown.

  Though just at present I am no darling of the popes, I expect to end up holy, some other time, with a general expression that all stories of miracles are not lies, or are not altogether lies; and that in the primitive conditions of the Middle Ages there were hosts of occurrences that now, considerably, though not altogether, have been outgrown. Anybody who broadly accepts the doctrine of relativity should accept that there are phenomena that exist relatively to one age, that do not, or do not so pronouncedly, exist in another age. I more or less accept a great deal that religionists piously believe. As I see myself, I represent a modernization of the old-fashioned atheist, who so sweepingly denied everything that seemed to interfere with his disbeliefs.

  There are of course other explanations of the “occult powers” of children. One is that children, instead of being atavistic, may occasionally be far in advance of adults, foreshadowing coming human powers, because their minds are not stifled by conventions. After that, they go to school and lose their superiority. Few boy-prodigies have survived an education.

  The outstanding suggestion, which, however, like many other suggestions, I cannot now develop, is that, if teleportation exists, it may be used. It may be criminally used, or it may be used commercially. Cargoes, without ships, and freights, without trains, may be of the traffics of the future. There may be teleportative voyages from planet to planet.

  Altogether, so many of our data are bound up with jokes, hoaxes, and flippant treatments that I think of the toy and play genesis of many practical inventions. Billions of dollars are today seriously drawing dividends from toys and games that were put to work. Billions of laughs and jeers have preceded solemn expressions of satisfaction with fat bank accounts. But this is only reasoning, and is nothing but logic and argument, and there have been billions of laughs that never turned into anything more satisfactory—though where do I get the idea that there is anything more satisfactory than a laugh?

  If, in other worlds, or in other parts of one relatively little existence, there be people who are far ahead of terrestrians, perhaps, teleportatively, beings from other places have come to this earth. And have seen nothing to detain them. Or perhaps some of the more degraded ones have felt at home here, and have hung around, or have stayed here. I’d think of these fellows as throw-backs: concealing their origin, of course; having perhaps only a slightly foreign appearance; having affinity with our barbarisms, which their own races had cast off. I’d think of a feeling for this earth, in other worlds, as corresponding to the desire of most of us, now and then, to go to a South Sea Island and be degraded. Throw-backs, translated to this earth, would not, unless intensely atavistic, take to what we regard as vices, but to what their own far-advanced people regard as perhaps unmentionable, or anyway, unprintable, degradations. They would join our churches, and wallow in pews. They’d lose all sense of decency and become college professors. Let a fall start, and the decline is swift. They’d end up as members of Congress.

  There is another view, for which I am now gathering material—

  New York Times, Dec. 6, 1930—“Scores die; 300 stricken by poison fog in Belgium; panic grips countryside. Origin complete mystery. War scenes recalled.” It may be that it was war.

  Mostly, explanations by the scientists were just about what one would expect, but, in the New York Telegram, December 6, Prof. H.H. Sheldon was quoted—“If there is a widespread, lethal fog in the Meuse Valley, the conclusion of science would be that it is being deliberately caused by men or women.”

  It may be that inhabitants of other worlds, or other parts of one, organic existence, have declared war upon this earth, and have discharged down here, sometimes under cover of fogs, volumes of poisonous gases. I have other records that may indicate something of this kind, but, reluctantly, I give up this interesting notion, as applied to the occurrence of Dec. 5, 1930, because it associates with another phenomenon, of which I shall tell later.

  Only two weeks after the tragedy in Belgium, appeared the fishmonger. The writer of an editorial, in the New York Herald Tribune, Dec. 19, 1930, started the conventionalizing and the minimizing and the obscurizing that always cloak events that are inconsistent with a main norm of supposed knowledge. “One may suspect that a sensational newspaper man, counting up the deaths, some dark day, in the smoky steel towns on the Allegheny River, could produce a story not far behind that from Belgium.”

  Seventy-seven men and women were struck dead in Belgium. Oh, there’s always some commonplace explanation for these occurrences, if we only use our common sense.

  5

  Upon the 9th of January, 1907, Mr. McLaughlin, of the town of Magilligan, County Derry, Ireland, hadn’t a red light. Neither had his sister, nor his niece, nor his maidservant. They hadn’t a cabinet. But a show was staged at their house, as if they knew altogether too much about phosphorescent paint, and as if Mr. McLaughlin bought false whiskers. There were phenomena in sunlight, and there was an atmosphere as unmystical as pigs and neighbors. If any spiritualistic medium can do stunts, there is no more need for special conditions than there is for a chemist to turn down lights, start operations with a hymn, and ask whether there’s any chemical present that has affinity with something named Hydrogen.

  Mr. McLaughlin had cleaned soot from the chimney. I wonder what relation there may be. It is said that immediately afterward, phenomena began. There were flows of soot from undetectable sources, in rooms, and from room to room, independent of drafts, sometimes moving against drafts. Also there were flows of stones, or bombardments. About thirty panes of glass were broken by stones, in the daytime, some of them in the presence of neighbors. This is the story, as it was told by reporters of the Derry Journal and the Coleraine Constitution, who had been sent to investigate. Probably there was a girl, aged fourteen or fifteen, in this house, but as to the ages of Mr. McLaughlin’s niece and maidservant, I could not learn particulars.

  The conventionally scientific, or fishmongerish, thing to do would be to think of some commonplace explanation of the soot, and forget the stones. There would not be so much science, if people had good memories. The flows of stones can be explained as peggings by neighbors, if the soot be forgotten.

  Our data have been bullied by two tyrannies. On one side, the spiritualists have arbitrarily taken over strange occurrences
, as manifestations of “the departed.” On the other side, conventional science has pronounced against everything that does not harmonize with its systematizations. The scientist goes investigating, about as, to match ribbons, a woman goes shopping. The spiritualist stuffs the maws of his emotions. One is too dainty, and the other is gross. Perhaps, between these two, we shall someday be considered models of well-bred behavior.

  Showers of frogs and worms and periwinkles—and now its showers of nails. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Oct. 16, 1888—dispatch from Brownsville, Texas—that, on the night of the 12th, the lighthouse, at Point Isabel, occupied by Mrs. Schreiber, widow of the keeper, who had departed not long before, had been struck by a rain of nails. The next night, about dark, came another shower of nails. More variety—also down pelted clods of earth and oyster shells. Bombardments continued. People gathered and saw showers, mostly of nails, but could not find out where they were coming from.

  In Human Nature, March, 1871, is a story of flows of corn that were passing from a locked crib, in Buchanan, Virginia. But, in this case, it was said that apparitions were seen, and mostly, at least so far as apparitions are concerned, our accounts are not ghost stories.

  There have been mysterious showers of money, in public places. I have gravely copied accounts from newspapers, but there must have been something the matter with my gravity, because I put the notes away, without indexing them, and just now can’t find them, among about 60,000. One of the stories was of coins that, for several days, a few years ago, fell intermittently into Trafalgar Square, London. Traffic was so interfered with by scramblers that the police investigated, but could trace nothing to the buildings around the Square. Every now and then there was a jingle of coins, and a scramble, and the annoyance of the police was increased. They investigated.