by Charles Fort
London Daily Mail, April 6, 1927—another “wolf child”—boy aged seven—found in a cave, near Allahabad. For an instance that is the latest, at this writing, see the New York Times, July 16, 1927. Elephant youngsters and rhinoceros brats have still to be heard of, but, in the London Morning Post, Dec. 31, 1926, is a story of a “tiger child.” A “leopard boy” and a “monkey girl” are told of, in the London Observer, April 10, 1927.
Our data are upon events that have astonished horses and tickled springboks. They have shocked policemen. I have notes upon an outbreak of ten “wild men,” who appeared in different parts of England, in that period of extraordinary phenomena, the winter of 1904-5. One of them, of origin that could not be found out, appeared in a street in Cheadle. He was naked. An indignant policeman, trying to hang his overcoat about the man, tried to reason with him, but had the same old trouble that Euclid and Newton and Darwin had, and that everybody else has, when trying to be rational, or when trying, in the inorganic, or scientific, way, to find a base to argue upon. I suppose the argument was something like this—
Wasn’t he ashamed of himself?
Not at all. Some persons might have reasons for being ashamed of themselves, but he had no reason for being ashamed of himself. What’s wrong with nakedness? Don’t cats and horses and dogs go around without clothes on?
But they are clothed with natural, furry protections.
Well, Mexican dogs, then.
Let somebody else try—somebody who thinks that, as products of logic, the teachings of astronomy, biology, geology, or anything else are pretty nearly final, though with debatable minor points, to be sure. Try this simple, little problem to start with. Why shouldn’t the man walk around naked? One is driven to argue upon the basis of conventionality. But we are living in an existence, which itself may be base, but in which there are not bases. Argue upon the basis of conventionality, and one is open to well-known counterarguments. What is all progress but defiance of conventionality?
The policeman, in Euclid’s state of desperation, took it as self-evident disgracefulness. Euclid put theorems in bags. He solved problems by encasing some circumstances in an exclusion of whatever interfered with a solution. The policeman of Cheadle adopted the classical method. He dumped the “wild man” into a sack, which he dragged to the station house.
Another of these ten “wild men” spoke in a language that nobody had ever heard of before, and carried a book, in which were writings that could not be identified, at Scotland Yard. Like a traveler from far away, he had made sketches of things that he had seen along the roads. At Scotland Yard, it was said of the writings: “They are not French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Turkish. Neither are they Bohemian, Greek, Portuguese Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, nor Russian.” See London newspapers, and the East Anglian Daily Times, Jan. 12, 1905.
I have come upon fragments of a case, which I reconstruct:
Perhaps in the year 1910, and perhaps not in this year, a Hindu magician teleported a boy from somewhere in England, perhaps from Wimbledon, London, perhaps not. The effect of this treatment was of mental obliteration; of profound hypnosis, or amnesia. The boy could learn, as if starting life anew, but mostly his memory was a void. Later the magician was dying. He repented, and his problem was to restore the boy, perhaps not to his home, but to his native land. He could not tell of the occult transportation, but at first it seemed to him that nobody would believe a story of ordinary kidnaping. It would be a most improbable story: that, in London, a Hindu had kidnaped a boy, and on the way to India had spent weeks aboard a vessel with this boy, without exciting inquiry, and with ability to keep the boy from appealing to other passengers. Still, a story of kidnaping is a story in commonplace terms. No story of ordinary kidnaping could account for the boy’s lapsed memory, but at the most some persons would think that some of the circumstances were queer, and would then forget the matter.
For fragments of this story, see Lloyd’s Sunday News (London), Oct. 17, 1920. Sometime in the year 1917, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, in Nepal, India, received a message from a native priest, who was dying, and wanted to tell something. With the priest was a well-grown boy. The priest told that, about the year 1910, in a street in Wimbledon (South London) he had kidnaped this boy. Details of a voyage to India not given. The boy was taken to Gorakapur, and was given employment in a railway workshop. He could speak a little English, but had no recollection of ever having been in England.
This is the account that the Society sent to its London representative, Mrs. Sanderson, Earl’s Court, London. A confirmation of the story, by Judge Muir, of Gorakapur, was sent. Mrs. Sanderson communicated with Scotland Yard.
Lloyd’s Sunday News, October 24—“boy not yet identified by Scotland Yard. An even more extraordinary development of the story is that quite a number of boys disappeared in Wimbledon, ten years ago.” It is said that the police had no way of tracing the boy, because, in Scotland Yard, all records of missing children were destroyed after a few years. I have gone through the Wimbledon News, for the year 1910, without finding mention of any missing child. Someone else may take a fancy to the job, for 1909, or 1911. In Thomson’s Weekly News, Oct. 23, 1920, there are additional details. It is said that without doubt the boy was an English boy: as told by the priest, his Christian name was Albert.
Hants and Sussex News, Feb. 25, 1920—“one of the most sensational discoveries and most mysterious cases of tragedy that we have ever been called upon to record”—a naked body of a man, found in a plowed field, near Petersfield, Hampshire, England.
The mystery is in that there had not been a murder. A body had not been thrown from a car into this field. Here had appeared a naked man, not in possession of his senses. He had wandered, and he had died. It was not far from a road, and was about a mile from the nearest house. Prints of the man’s bare feet were traced to the road, and across the road into another field. Police and many other persons searched for clothes, but nothing was found. A photograph of the man was published throughout England, but nobody had seen him, clothed or unclothed, before the finding of the body. At the inquest, the examining physician testified that the body was that of a man, between thirty-five and forty; well-nourished, and not a manual worker; well-cared-for, judging from such particulars as carefully trimmed ringer nails. There were scratches upon the body, such as would be made by bushes and hedges, but there was no wound attributable to a weapon, and in the stomach there was no poison, nor drug. Death had been from syncope, due to exposure. “The case remains one of the most amazing tragedies that could be conceived of.”
This mystery did not immediately subside. From time to time there were comments in the newspapers. London Daily News, April 16—“Although his photograph has been circulated north, east, south, and west, throughout the United Kingdom, the police are still without a clue, and there is no record of any missing person, bearing the slightest resemblance to this man, presumably of education and good standing.”
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There was the case of Mrs. Guppy, June 3, 1871, for instance. As the spiritualists tell it, she shot from her home, in London. Several miles away, she flopped down through a ceiling. Mrs. Guppy weighed 200 pounds. But Mrs. Guppy was a medium. She was a prominent medium, and was well-investigated, and was, or therefore was, caught playing tricks, several times. I prefer to look elsewhere for yarns, or veritable accounts.
In the New York World, March 25, 1883, is told a story of a girl, the daughter of Jesse Miller, of Greenville Township, Somerset Co., Pa., who was transported several times, out of the house, into the front yard. But it was her belief that apparitions were around, and most of our data are not concerned with ghostly appearances.
As told in the Cambrian Daily Leader (Swansea, Wales), July 7, 1887, poltergeist phenomena were occurring in the home of the Rev. David Phillips, of Swansea. Sometime I am going to try to find out why so many of these disturbances have occurred in the homes of clergymen. Why have so many supposed spirit
s of the departed tormented clergymen? Perhaps going to heaven makes people atheists. However, I do not know that poltergeists can be considered spirits. It may be that many of our records—see phenomena of the winter of 1904-5—relate not to occult beings, as independent creatures, but to projected mentalities of living human beings. A woman of Mr. Phillips’ household had been transported over a wall, and toward a brook, where she arrived in a “semi-conscious condition.” I note that, not in agreement with our notions upon teleportation, it was this woman’s belief that an apparition had carried her. Mr. Phillips and his son, a Cambridge graduate, who had probably been brought up to believe in nothing of the kind, asserted that this transportation had occurred.
A great deal has been written upon the phenomena, or the alleged phenomena, of the Pansini boys. Their story is told in the Occult Review, 4-17. These boys, one aged seven and the other aged eight, were sons of Mauro Pansini, an architect, of Bari, Italy. Their experiences, or their alleged experiences, began in the year 1901. “One day Alfredo and his brother were at Ruvo, at 9 a.m., and at 9:30 a.m., they were found in the Capuchin Convent, at Malfatti, thirty miles away.” In the Annals of Psychic Science it is said that, about the last of January, 1901, the Pansini boys were transported from Ruvo to a relative’s house, in Trani, arriving in a state of profound hypnosis. In volumes two and three of the Annals, a discussion of these boys continues.
But I haven’t told the damnedest. Oh, well, we’ll have the damnedest. A Mediterranean harbor—a man in a boat—and, like Mrs. Guppy, down the Pansini boys flop into his boat.
Into many minds flops this idea—“It isn’t so much the preposterousness of this story alone: but, if we’d accept this, what else that would threaten all conventional teachings, would we be led into?”
I can’t help arguing. I have cut down smoking some, and our home brew goes flat so often that at times I have gone without much of that, but I can’t stop arguing. It has no meaning, but I argue that much that is commonplace today was once upon a time denounced from pulpits as the way to hell. For all I know, a couple of kids flopped into a boat. I don’t feel hellish about it. The one thought that I do so little to develop is that if there be something that did switch the Pansini boys from place to place, it may be put to work, and instead of wharves and railroad stations, there may be built departing and receiving points for commodities, which may be “wished,” as it were, from California to London. Let stockholders of transportation companies get ahold of this idea, and, if I’m not satisfied with having merely science and religion against me, I’ll have opposition enough to suit anybody who can get along without popularity. Just at present, however, I am not selling short on New York Central.
Has anybody, walking along a street, casually looking at someone ahead of him, ever seen a human being vanish? It is a common experience to think that one has seen something like this occur. Another common experience, which has been theorized upon by James and other psychologists, is to be somewhere and have an uncanny feeling that, though so far as one knows, one was never there before, one, nevertheless, was at some time there. It may be that many persons have been teleported back and forth, without knowing it, or without having more than the dimmest impression of the experience.
But about walking along a street, and having a feeling that somebody has vanished—there have been definitely reported observations upon disappearances. In these instances, the explanation has been that someone had seen a ghost, and that the ghost had vanished. We shall have accounts that look as if observers have seen, not ghosts, but beings like themselves, vanish.
In the Jour. Soc. Psychical Research, 11-189, is published a story by a painter, named John Osborne, living at 5 Hurst Street, Oxford, England. He said that, about the last of March, 1895, he was walking along a road to Wolverton, when he heard sounds of a horse’s hoofs behind him, and, turning, saw a man on horseback, having difficulty controlling his horse. He scurried out of the way and, when safe, looked again. Horse and man had vanished. Then came the conventionalization, even though it would be widely regarded as an unorthodox conventionalization. It was said that, the week before, a man on horseback had been killed in this part of the road, and that the horse, badly injured, had been shot. Usually there is no use searching for anything further in a publication in which a conventionalization has appeared, but this instance is an exception. In the June number of the Journal, there is a correction: it is said that the accident with which this disappearance had been associated, had not occurred a week before, but years before, and was altogether different, having been an accident to a farmer in a hayfield. Several persons investigated, among them a magistrate, who wrote that he was convinced at least that Osborne thought that he had seen the “figures” disappear.
Well, then, why didn’t I get a Wolverton newspaper, and even though it would be called “a mere coincidence” find noted the disappearance of somebody who had been last seen on horseback? I forget now why I did not, but I think it was because no Wolverton newspaper was obtainable. I haven’t the item, but with all our experience with explanations, I should have the knack, myself, by this time. I think of a man on horseback, who was suddenly transported, but only a few miles. If, when he got back, he was a wise man on horseback, he got off the back of his horse and said nothing about this. Our general notion is that he would have been unconscious of the experience. Perhaps, if Osborne had lingered, he would have seen this man and his horse re-appear.
In the Jour. S.P.R., 4-50, is a story of a young woman, who was more than casually looked at, near the foot of Milton Hill, Mass. She vanished. She was seen several times. So this is a story of a place that was “haunted,” and the “figure” was supposed to be a ghost. For a wonder there was no story of a murder that was committed, years before, near this hill. For all I know, some young woman, living in Boston, New York, some distant place, may have had teleportative affinity with an appearing-point, or terminal of an occult current, at this hill, having been translated back and forth several times, without knowing it, or without being able to remember, or remembering dimly, thinking that it was a dream. Perhaps, sometime happening to pass this hill, by more commonplace means of transportation, she would have a sense of uncanny familiarity, but would be unable to explain, having no active consciousness of having ever been there before. Psychologists have noted the phenomenon of a repeating scene in different dreams, or supposed dreams. The phenomenon may not be of fancifulness, but of dim impressions of teleportations to one persisting appearing-point. A naive, little idea of mine is that so many ghosts in white garments have been reported, because persons, while asleep, have been teleported in their nightclothes.
In Real Ghost Stories, published by the Review of Reviews (English), a correspondent tells of having seen a woman in a field, vanish. Like others who have had this experience, he does not say that he saw a woman vanish, but that he saw “a figure of a woman” vanish. He inquired for some occurrence by which to explain, and learned that somewhere in the neighborhood a woman had been murdered, and that her “figure” had haunted the place. In the Proc. S.P.R., 10-98, someone tells of having walked, with her father, upon a sandy place, near Aldershot, hearing footsteps, turning, seeing a soldier. The footsteps suddenly ceased to be heard. She turned again to look. The soldier had vanished. This correspondent writes that her father never would believe anything except that it was “a real soldier, who somehow got away.” In the Occult Review, 23-168, a correspondent writes that, while walking in a street in Twickenham, he saw, walking toward him, “a figure of a man.” The “figure” turned and vanished, or “disappeared through a garden wall.” This correspondent failed to learn of a murder that had been committed in the neighborhood, but, influenced by the familiar convention, mentions that there was an old dueling ground nearby.
The most circumstantial of the stories appears in the Jour. S.P.R., November, 1893. Miss M. Scott writes that, upon the afternoon of the 7th of May, 1893, between five and six o’clock, she was walking upon a road,
near St. Boswells (Roxburghshire) when she saw ahead of her a tall man who, dressed in black, looked like a clergyman. There is no assertion that this “figure” looked ghostly, and there is a little circumstance that indicates that the “figure,” or the living being, was looked at more than casually. Having considerable distance to go, Miss Scott started to run: but it occurred to her that it would not be dignified to run past this stranger: so she stood still, to let the distance increase. She saw the clerical-looking man turn a corner of the road, the upper part of his body visible above a low hedge—“he was gone in an instant.” Not far beyond this vanishing point, Miss Scott met her sister, who was standing in the road, looking about her in bewilderment, exclaiming that she had seen a man disappear, while she was looking at him.
One of our present thoughts is that teleportations, back and forth, often occur. There are many records, some of which may not be yarns, or may not be altogether yarns, of persons who have been seen far from where, so far as those persons, themselves, knew, they were, at the time. See instances in Gurney’s Phantasms of the Living. The idea is that human beings have been switched away somewhere, and soon switched back, and have been seen, away somewhere, and have been explained to the perceivers, as their own hallucinations.
It may be that I can record a case of a man who was about to disappear, but was dragged back, in time, from a disappearing-point. I think of the children of Clavaux, who were about to be taken into a vortex, but were dragged back by their parents, who were not susceptible. Data look as if there may have been a transporting current through so-called solid substance, which “opened” and then “closed,” with no sign of a yawning. It may be that what we call substance is as much open as closed. I accept, myself, that there is only relative substance, so far as the phenomenal is concerned: so I can’t take much interest in what the physicists are doing, trying to find out what mere phenomenal substance really, or finally, is. It isn’t, or it is intermediate to existence and non-existence. If there is an organic existence that is more than relative, though not absolute, it may be The Substantial, but its iron and lead, and gold are only phenomenal. The greatest seeming security is only a temporary disguise of the abysmal. All of us are skating over thin existence.