Archives for October 2010

Not from a spiritual existence

Fort discusses an occurrence from Oct. 3, 1843, detailed in a pamphlet by Curtis Eli entitled Wonderful Phenomena, in which a man named Charles Cooper, at Warwick, C.W., heard “a rumbling sound in the sky.” Accompanying this sound, under a cloud, were three perfectly white human forms, sailing no higher than the treetops through the air. Cooper said they were “male angels.” They “seemed to have belts around their bodies” and made a “loud and mournful noise,” according to a boy who also saw the phenomenon. Others saw the cloud and heard the sound, but did not see the “angels.”

Fort comments, “The gloriousness of it is an inverse function of the dolefulness of it: Sunday Schools will not take kindly to the doctrine–be good and you will moan forever.”

–Charles Fort, New Lands, p419 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).

Only by coincidence

Ponton’s Earthquakes, p. 118, describes an earthquake in Illinois preceded by “‘a luminous appearance, described by some as a meteor and by others as vivid flashes of lightning’” on October 8, 1857. Although felt in Illinois, the center of the event was in St. Louis, Missouri. Something “exploded terrifically in the sky,…and shook the ground ‘severely’ or ‘violently,’ at 4:20 a.m., Oct. 8, 1857.” Timbs’ Year Book of Facts, 1858-271, says that “’a blinding meteoric ball from the heavens’” was seen. The St. Louis Intelligencer of that date also describes the “large and brilliant” meteor. The New York Times reported that it sounded “’like thunder or the roar of artillery.’”

–Charles Fort, New Lands, p406 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).

The mystery of the local sky

Comrie, Perthshire, England, was subject to a strange phenomenon from 1839 to 1841. Throughout the month of October 1839 in particular, a series of “shocks” were felt, some slight, some severe. The noise was described as “‘like distant thunder or reports of artillery, …sometimes high in the air, and was often heard without any sensible shock.’” The most violent quake occurred, according to the Edin. New Phil. Jour., vol. 32, on October 23. Various people in the vicinity reported that the sounds seemed to come from high in the air rather than underground. According to that same journal, 32-107, there were 247 occurrences of these sounds between Oct. 3, 1839 and Feb. 14, 1841.

–Charles Fort, New Lands, pp.404-405 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).

Dark part of the moon

Someone named Gruithuisen reported, in Sci. Amer. Sup., 7-2712, that at 5 a.m. on Oct. 20, 1824, a light was seen upon the dark part of the moon. It disappeared, and six minutes later it reappeared. It disappeared again, then flashed intermittently until 5:30 a.m., when sunrise ended the observations.

–Charles Fort, New Lands, p395 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).

Said to be displays of aurora borealis

Fort quotes the Edinburgh Annual Register, 1812-II-124, as reporting the sighting of “phantom soldiers” at Havarah Park, near Ripley, England, on October 28, 1812.

–Charles Fort, New Lands, p392 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).