Not only in playhouses

“It is not only in playhouses that there are theatrical performances,” Fort observes in connection with the events surrounding the June 12, 1897 earthquake in Assam. The Englishman (Calcutta), July 14 and 21, 1897, reported that six days before and one day before the quake, a green moon was observed in Assam. The day before, torrents of rain fell suddenly from the sky, as had never been seen before, from a clear sky. According to the Allahabad Pioneer of June 23, 1897, there had been a drought previously. Following the quake, dust fell from the sky near Calcutta on June 25 (The Englishman, July 3). Mud fell at Thurgrain (Midnapur) on the 27th, and in the Jessore District of Bengal on a cloudless night on June 29, according to Madras Mail, July 8. Further falls of dust that lent a perpetual haze to the horizon occurred five days later at Ghattal, while mud fell again around July 1 at Hetamphore (Beerbhoom).

–Charles Fort, Lo!, p. 768ff (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).

Like the neutral zone of a magnet’s attraction

On Sept. 20, 1839, a fall of living fishes occurred about 20 miles south of Calcutta, India (A Popular Treatise, p414). A witness in Living Age, 52-186, comments, “The most strange thing which ever struck me was that the fish did not fall helter-skelter, or here and there, but they fell in a straight line, not more than a cubit in breadth.”

–Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned, p87 (The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover, c1974).