Lo!

by Charles Fort

I take from the Tipperary Star:

  “In Dwan’s house, and in the house of his sister-in-law, Mrs. Maher, where lived and worked the young man, James Walsh, statues started to bleed simultaneously.”

  This news sneaked up and down the roads. Its carriers were stealths amidst desolation and ruin. Then they scurried from farm to farm, and people were coming out from their homes. They went to Templemore to see. Then they went in droves. The roads began to hum. Sounds of tramping and the creaking of wheels—men and horses and primitive old carts and slickest of new cars from cities—it was medievalism honked with horns—or one of the crusades, with chariots slinging out beer bottles—and anachronism is just one more of the preposterous errors of Life, Nature, or an Organism, or whomever, or whatever may be the artist that does these things. The roads began to roar. Strings of people became ropes of marching thousands. Hope and curiosity, piety, and hilarity, and the incentive to make it a holiday: out for the fun of it, out to write letters to the newspapers, exposing the fakery of it, out to confirm religious teachings—but maybe all this cannot be explained in terms only of known human feelings: it was as enormous as some of the other movements of living things that I shall tell of. Then the news that was exciting Ireland was going out to the world.

  The terror that chanting processions were threading may have had relation with these rhythms of marchers. They were singing their song of the long, long way, and then arriving shiploads took up the song. Messrs. Cook, the tourist agents, sent inquiries as to whether the inns of Templemore could provide for 2,000 pilgrims from England. Scotchmen and Englishmen and Frenchmen—tourist agencies in the United States, European countries, and Japan sent inquiries. Waves that billowed from this excitement beat upon Table Mountain, South Africa, and in the surf that fell upon Cape Town, people bobbed into a Committee that was sent to investigate. Drops of blood from a statue in Ireland—and a trickle of turbans down a gangway at Bombay—a band of pilgrims set out from Bombay. I am far from making a religion of it, but whatever was directing all this would make hats come off at Hollywood. Also, whether somebody was monkeying with red ink, or not, is getting lost in this story. Because of a town that the world had never before heard of, Paris and London were losing Americans.

  Other phenomena, which may have been teleportations, were reported. In the earthen floor of the Walsh boy’s room, a hollow, about the size of a teacup, filled with water. No matter how it was drained—and thousands of persons took away quantities—water, from an unknown source, always returned to this appearing-point.

  The subject of “holy wells” occurs to me, as a field of neglected data. Everything that I can think of occurs to me as a field of disregard and neglect. Statues in Walsh’s room bled—that’s the story—and, as in poltergeist doings—or as in other poltergeist doings— objects moved about in an invisible force.

  I take notice of these stories of objects that moved in the presence of a boy, because scarcely can it be said that they were of value to priestcraft, and it can be said that they are common in accounts of occult phenomena of adolescence. I now offer as satisfactory an expression upon phenomena at Templemore, as has ever been conceived of by human mind. A Darwin writes a book about species. By what constitutes a species? He does not know. A Newton explains all things in terms of gravitation. But what is gravitation? But he has stopped. I explain the occurrences at Templemore in terms of poltergeist phenomena. Any questions? But I claim scientific license for myself, too.

  Marvelous cures were reported at Templemore. What teleportations have to do with cures, I don’t see: but I do see that if people believe that any marvel, such as a new arrival at a zoo, has curative powers, there will be a pile of crutches outside the cage of that thing.

  Walkers, bicyclists, motor cars, donkey carts, lorries, charabancs, wheelbarrows with cripples in them: jaunting cars, special trains rushing from Dublin. Some of the quietest old towns were in uproars. Towns all around and towns far away were reporting streets resounding with tramping thousands. There were not rooms enough in the towns. From storms of people, drifts slept on door steps. Templemore, partly in ruins, stood black in the center of a wide growth of tents. This new city, mostly of tents, was named Pilgrimsville.

  I have not taken up definite accounts of the bleeding statues. See statements published in various issues of the Tipperary Star. They are positively convincing, or they are fairy stories for grown-up brats. I could fill pages, if I wanted to, but that would imply that I think there is any meaning in solemn assertions, or in sworn testimony, with hands on bibles. For instance, I have notes upon an account by Daniel Egan, a harnessmaker of Templemore, of blood that he had seen oozing from a statue—but this statement may be attributed to a sense of civic responsibility. He would be a bad citizen who would testify otherwise, considering the profit that was flowing into Templemore. The town’s druggist, a man of what is said to be education, stated that he had seen the phenomena. He was piling up a fortune from people who had caught bad colds sleeping in the fields. I suppose that some of them had come devoutly from far away, but had begun to sneeze, and had back-slid from piety to pills. However, something that I cannot find a hint of is that either Dwan or the Mahers charged admission. At first, people were admitted in batches of fifty, somebody, holding a watch, saying, every five minutes: “Time, please!” Soon Dwan and the Mahers placed the statues in windows, for all to see. There were crowds all day, and torchlight processions moved past these windows all night.

  The blood that was shed in Ireland continued to pour from human beings: but the bleeding statues stopped, or statements that statues were bleeding stopped. However, wherever the water was coming from, it continued to flow from the appearing-point in the Walsh boy’s room. In the Tipperary Star, September 25, the estimate is that, in about one month, one million persons had visited Pilgrimsville. To some degree the excitement kept up the rest of the year.

  They were threading terror with their peaceful processions. They marched through “a terrible toll of bloodshed—wild scenes at Nenagh—the Banshaw Horror.” Past burned and blackened fields in which corpses were lying, streamed these hundreds of thousands: chanting their song of the long, long way; damning the farmers, who were charging them two shillings apiece for hard-boiled eggs; praying, raiding chicken houses, telling their beads, stealing bicycles. “Mr. John McDonnell gave a pilgrim a lift, and was robbed of £250.”

  But one of these detachments enters a town. In another street, a man runs from a house—“My God! I’m shot!” Not far away—the steady sound of tramping pilgrims. These flows of beings are as mysterious as the teleportations of substances. They may mean an organic control, or maintenance of balance, even in a part that is diseased with bombs and ambuscades and arson.

  But it is impossible, except to the hopelessly pious, to consider, with anything like veneration, any such maintenance of a balance, because, if a god of order be conceived of, also is he, or it, a god of murder.

  But, regarded aesthetically, sometimes there are effects that are magnificent.

  “Bloody Sunday in the County Cork!” But, upon this day, somewhere upon every road in Ireland is maintained a rhythm.

  Somewhere, a lorry of soldiers is moving down a road. Out of bushes come bullets, and the sides of the car are draped with a droop of dead men. Not far away, men and women and children are marching. Along the roads of distracted Ireland—steady pulsations of people and people and people.

  7

  Nose in the mud, and the bend of a thing to the ground. There are postures from which life is acting to escape: one of them, the embryonic crouch; another, whether in the degradation of worship, or as a convenience in eating grass, the bend of a neck to the ground. The all-day gnaw of the fields. But the eater of meat is released from the munch. One way to broaden horizons is to climb a tree, but another way is to stand on one’s own hind legs, away from the grass. A Bernard Shaw dines on hay, and still looks behind for a world that’s far ahead.

  These are the disgusts
for vegetarians, felt by the planters of Ceylon, in July, 1910. Very likely, I am prejudiced, myself. Perhaps I think that it is gross and brutal to eat anything at all. Why stop at vegetarianism? Vegetarianism is only a semi-ideal. The only heavenly thing to do is to do nothing. It is gross and brutal and animal-like to breathe.

  We contribute to the records of strange alarms. There was one in Ceylon. Gigantic vegetarians were eating trees.

  Millions of foreigners, big African snails (Achatena fulica), had suddenly appeared, massed in the one small district of Kalutara, near Colombo. Shells of the largest were six inches long. One of them that weighed three quarters of a pound was exhibited at the Colombo Museum. They were crowded, or massed, in one area of four square miles. One of the most important of the data is that this was in one of the mostly thickly populated parts of Ceylon. But nothing had been seen of these “gigantic snails,” until suddenly trees turned knobby with the monsters. It was as surprising as it would be, in New York, going out one morning, finding everything covered with huge warts. In Colombo was shown a photograph of a tree trunk, upon the visible part of which 227 snails were counted. The ground was as thick with them as were the trees.

  They were explained.

  So were the periwinkles of Worcester: but we had reasons for omitting from our credulities the story of the mad fishmonger of Worcester and his frenzied assistants.

  In the Zoologist, February, 1911, Mr. E. Ernest Green, the Government Entomologist, of Ceylon, explained. Ten years before, Mr. Oliver Collet, in a place about fifty miles from Kalutara, had received “some of these snails” from Africa, and had turned them loose in his garden. Then, because of the damage by the monsters, he had destroyed all, he thought: but he was mistaken, some of them having survived. In Kalutara lived a native, who was related to other natives, in this other place (Watawella). In a parcel of vegetables that he had brought from Watawella two of these snails had been found, and had been turned loose in Kalutara, and the millions had descended from them. No names: no date.

  All the accounts, in the Ceylon Observer, in issues from July 27 to September 23, are of a sudden and monstrous appearance of huge snails, packed thick, and not an observation upon them until all at once appeared millions. It takes one of these snails two years to reach full size. All sizes were in this invasion. “Never known in Ceylon before.” “How they came here continues to be a mystery.” According to Mr. Green’s report, published in a supplement of the Ceylon Observer, September 2, stories of the multitudes were not exaggerations: he described “giant snails in enormous numbers,” “a horde in a comparatively small space,” “a foreign pest.” This was in a region of many plantations, and even if the hordes could have been hidden from sight in a jungle, the sounds of their gnawing and of the snapping of branches of trees under the weight of them would have been heard far.

  Plantations—and the ceaseless sound of the munch. The vegetarian bend—the sagging of trees, with their tops to the ground, heavy with snails. Natives, too, and the vegetarian bend—they bowed before the invasion. They would destroy no snails: it would be a sin. A bubonic crawl—lumps fall off and leave skeletons. There would be a sight like this, if a plague could hypnotize a nation, and eat, to their bones, rigid crowds. Tumors that crawl and devour— clothing and flesh disappearing—congregations of bones.

  There was a hope for infidels. When a lost soul was found, there was rejoicing in Kalutara, and double pay was handed out, satanically. The planters raked up infidels, who sinfully gathered snails into mounds and burned them.

  One of our reasons for being persuaded into accepting what we wanted to accept, in the matter of the phenomenon at Worcester, was that not only periwinkles appeared: also appeared crabs, which could not fit in with the conventional explanation. Simultaneously with the invasion of snails, there was another mysterious appearance. It was of unusually large scale-insects, which, according to Mr. Green (Ceylon Observer, August 9), had never before been recorded in Ceylon.

  Maybe, in September, 1929, somebody lost an alligator. According to some of our data upon the insecurities of human mentality, there isn’t anything that can’t be lost by somebody. A look at Losts and Founds—but especially at Losts—confirms this notion. New York American, Sept. 19, 1929—an alligator, thirty-one inches long, killed in the Hackensack Meadows, N.J., by Carl Weise, 14 Peerless Place, North Bergen, N.J. But my attention is attracted by another “mysterious appearance” of an alligator, about the same time. New York Sun, September 23—an alligator, twenty-eight inches long, found by Ralph Miles, in a small creek, near Wolcott, N.Y.

  In the Gentleman’s Magazine, August, 1866, somebody tells of a young crocodile, which, about ten years before, had been killed on a farm, at Over-Norton, Oxfordshire, England. In the November issue of this magazine, C. Parr, a well-known writer upon antiquarian subjects, says that, thirty years before, near Over-Norton, another young crocodile had been killed. According to Mr. Parr, still another young crocodile had been seen, at Over-Norton. In the Field, Aug. 23, 1862, is an account of a fourth young crocodile that had been seen, near Over-Norton.

  It looks as if, for about thirty years, there had been a translatory current, especially selective of young crocodiles, between somewhere, say in Egypt, and an appearing-point near Over-Norton. If, by design and functioning, in the distribution of life in an organism, or in one organic existence, we mean anything so misdirected as a teleportation of young crocodiles to a point in a land where they would be out of adaptation, we evidently mean not so very intelligent design and functioning. Possibly, or most likely. It seems to me that an existence that is capable of sending young butchers to medical schools, and young boilermakers to studios, would be capable of sending young crocodiles to Over-Norton, Oxfordshire, England. When I go on to think of what gets into the Houses of Congress, I expect to come upon data of mysterious distributions of cocoanuts in Greenland.

  There have often been sudden, astonishing appearances of mice, in great numbers. In the autumn of 1927, millions of mice appeared in the fields of Kern County, California. Kern County, California, is continuous with all the rest of a continent: so a sudden appearance of mice there is not very mysterious.

  In May, 1832, mice appeared in the fields of Inverness-shire, Scotland. They were in numbers so great that foxes turned from their ordinary ways of making a living and caught mice. It is my expression that these mice may have arrived in Scotland, by way of neither land nor sea. If they were little known in Great Britain, the occurrence of such multitudes is mysterious. If they were unknown in Great Britain, this datum becomes more interesting. They were brown; white rings around necks; tails tipped with white. In the Magazine of Natural History, 7-182, a correspondent writes that he had examined specimens, and had not been able to find them mentioned in any book.

  I have four records of snakes that were said to have fallen from the sky, in thunderstorms. Miss Margaret McDonald, of Hawthorne, Mass., has sent me an account of many speckled snakes that appeared in the streets of Hawthorne, one time, after a thunderstorm.

  Because of our expressions upon teleportative currents, I am most interested in repetitions in one place. Upon May 26, 1920, began a series of tremendous thunderstorms, in England, culminating upon the 29th, in a flood that destroyed fifty houses, in Louth, Lincolnshire. Upon the 26th, in a central part of London—Gower Street—near the British Museum, a crowd gathered outside Dr. Michie’s house. Gower Street is in Bloomsbury. To the Bloomsbury boarding houses go the American schoolmarms who visit London, and beyond the standards of Bloomsbury—primly pronounced Bloomsbry—respectability does not exist. Dr. Michie went out and asked the crowd what it, or anything else, could mean by being conspicuous in Bloomsbry. He was told that in an enclosure behind his house had been seen a snake.

  In a positive sense, he did not investigate. He simply went to a part of the enclosure that was pointed out to him. Though, in his general practice, Dr. Michie was probably as scientific as anybody else, I must insist that this was no s
cientific investigation. He caught the snake.

  The creature was explained. It was said to be a naja haja, a venomous snake from Egypt. Many oriental students live in Gower Street, to be near the British Museum and University College: in all probability the oriental snake had escaped from an oriental student.

  You know, I don’t see that oriental students haying oriental snakes is any more likely than that American students should have American snakes: but there is an association here that will impress some persons. According to my experience, and according to data to come, I think that somebody “identified” an English adder, as an oriental snake, to fit in with the oriental students, and then fitted in the oriental students with the oriental snake, arguing reasonably that if an oriental snake was found where there were oriental students, the oriental snake had probably escaped from the oriental students. As I have pointed out, often enough, I know of no reasoning process that is not parthenogenetic, and if this is the way the identification and the explanation came about, the author of them has companionship with Plato and Darwin and Einstein, and earthworms.

  The next day, there was another crowd: this one in a part of London far from Gower Street (Sydenham). A snake had been seen in a garden. Then a postman killed it. Oriental students do not live in Sydenham. This snake was an adder (London Daily Express, May 28).

  Upon the 29th, in Store Street, near Gower Street, a butcher, Mr. G.H. Hill, looked out from his shop, and saw a snake wriggling along the sidewalk. He caught the snake which was probably an adder—picture of it in the Weekly Dispatch, of the 30th.

  So there were some excitements, but they were mild, compared with what occurred in a crowded part of London, June 2nd. See the Daily Express, June 3. Outside the Roman Catholic Cathedral (Westminster) an adder appeared. This one stopped traffic, and had a wide audience that approached and retreated, and reacted with a surge to every wriggle, in such a disproportion that there’s no seeing how action and reaction can always be equal. Three men jumped on it. This one is told of, in the Westminster and Pimlico News, June 4 and 11, and here it is said that another adder had appeared in Westminster, having been caught under a mat at Morpethmansions. About this time, far away in North London (Willesden), an adder was killed in a field (Times, June 21).