Believing in marvels: the works of Charles Fort

Jerome Clark writes that American writer and researcher of anomalous phenomena Charles Hoy Fort (August 6, 1874 – May 3, 1932) was "essentially a satirist hugely skeptical of human beings' – especially scientists' – claims to ultimate knowledge". Clark describes Fort's writing style as a "distinctive blend of mocking humor, penetrating insight, and calculated outrageousness."

Perhaps the most modern entrance of Fort’s work into pop-culture was the 1999 film Magnolia’s concluding rain of frogs—one of many inexplicable occurrences chronicled in his Book of the Damned, first published in 1919.

The title of Fort’s famous book refers to the data excluded by modern science, of which it is one modern collection. In his view, mainstream scientists are obeisant to accepted and popular conceptions about the nature of reality, in effect worshipping them unquestioningly with a fervor equivalent to any form of religious zealotry, never seeking, and highly critical of, any data contradicting this faith (like any evidence of Bigfoot's existence). Fort expanded on this theme in later works, including New Lands and Lo! (both of which I was fortunate enough to find used on my last visit to Fahrenheit’s Books).

Says writer Colin Wilson, "Expressed in a sentence, Fort's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels."

Despite his current obscurity among the mass audience, Fort's books remain in print. Today, the terms "Fortean" and "Forteana" are used in reference to anomalous phenomena, and a magazine called The Fortean Times continuing Charles Fort's work documenting the unexplained was founded by Robert JM "Bob" Rickard in 1973 .