Anomalous phenomena and Fortean research

Charles Fort

1874 – 1932

Charles Hoy Fort was an American writer who devoted his life to cataloguing events that mainstream science ignored or rejected — rains of frogs, unexplained disappearances, unidentified aerial phenomena, and other anomalies — compiling them from newspaper morgues into four books beginning with The Book of the Damned (1919). His relentless documentation of phenomena that fell outside official explanatory frameworks established what is now called Forteana and inspired a lasting tradition of skeptical inquiry into the boundaries of scientific orthodoxy and the suppression of uncomfortable data. Fort's work became a touchstone for occultists, paranormal researchers, and anyone suspicious of materialist consensus reality.