Adventures in independent publishing
Sergeant W.H. Perry of the Signal Corps reported in Monthly Weather Review, July 1888, that common water-worn pebbles fell at Palestine, Texas on July 6, 1888. These were a formation not found near Palestine.
–Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned, p. 176 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974)
On Nov. 3, 1888, about 8 p.m. near Reading, Berkshire, flocks of sheep in a tract of land 25 miles long and 8 miles wide were affected by some simultaneous impulse, according to Symons’ Meteorological Magazine and the London Times, Nov. 20, 1888. Thousands of sheep burst from their pens and were found widely scattered the next morning, “some of them still panting with terror under hedges, and many crowded into corners of fields.”
Another panic occurred the next year in Berkshire, not far from Reading.
–Charles Fort, New Lands, p490 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).
In November 1888, as reported in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat on Dec. 20, 1888, two residents of Birmingham, Alabama were murdered and their bodies found in the woods. But, notes the paper, “‘then there was such a new mystery that these murder-mysteries were being overlooked.’” A body of a stranger was found in the woods, a man ‘evidently in good circumstances, if not wealthy,’ and no one was certain what he was doing in the area where he was found. ‘Several persons who have seen the body are of the opinion that the man was a foreigner,’ the article said.
–Charles Fort, Wild Talents, p849 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).
Fort mentions that on Oct. 8, 1888, at Merexull, Russia, a mirage of a city, identified as St. Petersburg, 200 miles away, was seen, lasting an hour.
On Oct. 16, 1884, at Lindsberg, Sweden, a mirage of a large town was seen, with four-storied houses, a castle and a lake.
–Charles Fort, New Lands, p445 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).
