The Book of the Damned (34 page)
Read The Book of the Damned Online
Authors: Charles Fort
An object from which nets were suspended—
Deflated balloon, with its network hanging from it—
A super-dragnet?
That something was trawling overhead?
The birds of Baton Rouge.
Mr. Gosling wrote that the item of chains, or suggestion of a basket that had been attached, had originated with Mr. Bassett, who had not seen the object. Mr. Gosling mentioned a balloon that had escaped from Paris in July. He tells of a balloon that fell in Chicago, September 17, or three weeks later than the Bermuda object.
It’s one incredibility against another, with disregards and convictions governed by whichever of the two Dominants looms stronger in each reader’s mind. That he can’t think for himself any more than I can is understood.
My own correlates:
I think that we’re fished for. It may be that we’re highly esteemed by super-epicures somewhere. It makes me more cheerful when I think that we may be of some use after all. I think that dragnets have often come down and have been mistaken for whirlwinds and waterspouts. Some accounts of seeming structure in whirlwinds and waterspouts are astonishing. And I have data that, in this book, I can’t take up at all—mysterious disappearances. I think we’re fished for. But this is a little expression on the side: relates to trespassers; has nothing to do with the subject that I shall take up at some other time—or our use to some other mode of seeming that has a legal right to us.
Nature,
33-137:
“Our Paris correspondent writes that in relation to the balloon which is said to have been seen over Bermuda, in September, no ascent took place in France which can account for it.”
Last of August: not September. In the London
Times
there is no mention of balloon ascents in Great Britain, in the summer of 1885, but mention of two ascents in France. Both balloons had escaped. In
L’Aéronaute,
August, 1885, it is said that these balloons had been sent up from fetes of the fourteenth of July—44 days before the observation at Bermuda. The aeronauts were Gower and Eloy. Gower’s balloon was found floating on the ocean, but Eloy’s balloon was not found. Upon the 17th of July it was reported by a sea captain: still in the air; still inflated.
But this balloon of Eloy’s was a small exhibition balloon, made for short ascents from fetes and fair grounds. In
La Nature,
1885-2-131, it is said that it was a very small balloon, incapable of remaining long in the air.
As to contemporaneous ballooning in the United States, I find only one account: an ascent in Connecticut, July 29, 1885. Upon leaving this balloon, the aeronauts had pulled the “rip-cord,” “turning it inside out.”
(New York Times,
Aug. 10, 1885.)
To the Intermediatist, the accusation of “anthropomorphism” is meaningless. There is nothing in anything that is unique or positively different. We’d be materialists were it not quite as rational to express the material in terms of the immaterial as to express the immaterial in terms of the material. Oneness of allness in quasiness. I will engage to write the formula of any novel in psycho-chemic terms, or draw its graph in psycho-mechanic terms: or write, in romantic terms, the circumstances and sequences of any chemic or electric or magnetic reaction: or express any historic event in algebraic terms—or see Boole and Jevons for economic situations expressed algebraically.
I think of the Dominants as I think of persons—not meaning that they are real persons—not meaning that we are real persons—
Or the Old Dominant and its jealousy, and its suppression of all things and thoughts that endangered its supremacy. In reading discussions of papers, by scientific societies, I have often noted how, when they approached forbidden—or irreconcilable—subjects, the discussions were thrown into confusion and ramification. It’s as if scientific discussions have often been led astray—as if purposefully—as if by something directive, hovering over them. Of course I mean only the Spirit of all Development. Just so, in any embryo, cells that would tend to vary from the appearances of their era are compelled to correlate.
In
Nature,
90-169, Charles Tilden Smith writes that, at Chisbury, Wiltshire, England, April 8, 1912, he saw something in the sky—
“—unlike anything that I had ever seen before.”
“Although I have studied the skies for many years, I have never seen anything like it.”
He saw two stationary dark patches upon clouds.
The extraordinary part:
They were stationary upon clouds that were rapidly moving.
They were fan-shaped—or triangular—and varied in size, but kept the same position upon different clouds as cloud after cloud came along. For more than half an hour Mr. Smith watched these dark patches—
His impression as to the one that appeared first:
That it was “really a heavy shadow cast upon a thin veil of clouds by some unseen object away in the west, which was intercepting the sun’s rays.”
Upon page 244, of this volume of
Nature,
is a letter from another correspondent, to the effect that similar shadows are cast by mountains upon clouds, and that no doubt Mr. Smith was right in attributing the appearance to “some unseen object, which was intercepting the sun’s rays.” But the Old Dominant that was a jealous Dominant, and the wrath of the Old Dominant against such an irreconcilability as large, opaque objects in the sky, casting down shadows upon clouds. Still the Dominants are suave very often, or are not absolute gods, and the way attention was led away from this subject is an interesting study in quasi-divine bamboozlement. Upon page 268, Charles J.P. Cave, the meteorologist, writes that, upon April 5 and 8, at Ditcham Park, Petersfield, he had observed a similar appearance, while watching some pilot balloons—but he describes something not in the least like a shadow on clouds, but a stationary cloud—the inference seems to be that the shadows at Chisbury may have been shadows of pilot balloons. Upon page 322, another correspondent writes upon shadows cast by mountains; upon page 348 someone else carries on the divergence by discussing this third letter: then someone takes up the third letter mathematically; and then there is a correction of error in this mathematic demonstration—I think it looks very much like what I think it looks like.
But the mystery here:
That the dark patches at Chisbury could not have been cast by stationary pilot balloons that were to the west, or that were between clouds and the setting sun. If, to the west of Chisbury, a stationary object were high in the air, intercepting the sun’s rays, the shadow of the stationary object would not have been stationary, but would have moved higher and higher with the setting of the sun.
I have to think of something that is in accord with no other data whatsoever:
A luminous body—not the sun—in the sky—but, because of some unknown principle or atmospheric condition, its light extended down only about to the clouds; that from it were suspended two triangular objects, like the object that was seen in Bermuda; that it was this light that fell short of the earth that these objects intercepted; that the objects were drawn up and lowered from something overhead, so that, in its light, their shadows changed size.
If my grope seem to have no grasp in it, and, if a stationary balloon will, in half an hour, not cast a stationary shadow from the setting sun, we have to think of two triangular objects that accurately maintained positions in a line between sun and clouds, and at the same time approached and receded from clouds. Whatever it may have been, it’s enough to make the devout make the sign of the crucible, or whatever the devotees of the Old Dominant do in the presence of a new correlate.
Vast, black thing poised like a crow over the moon.
It is our acceptance that these two shadows of Chisbury looked, from the moon, like vast things, black as crows, poised over the earth. It is our acceptance that two triangular luminosities and then two triangular patches, like vast black things, poised like crows over the moon, and, like the triangularities at Chisbury, have been seen upon, or over, the moon:
Scientific American,
46-49:
Two triangular, luminous appearances reported by several observers in Lebanon, Conn., evening of July 3, 1882, on the moon’s upper limb. They disappeared, and two dark triangular appearances that looked like notches were seen three minutes later upon the lower limb. They approached each other, met and instantly disappeared.
The merger here is notches that have at times been seen upon the moon’s limb: thought to be cross sections of craters
(Monthly Notices, R.A.S.,
37-432). But these appearances of July 3, 1882, were vast upon the moon—“seemed to be cutting off or obliterating nearly a quarter of its surface.”
Something else that may have looked like a vast black crow poised over this earth from the moon:
Monthly Weather Review,
41-599:
Description of a shadow in the sky, of some unseen body, April 8, 1913, Fort Worth, Texas—supposed to have been cast by an unseen cloud—this patch of shade moved with the declining sun.
Rept. Brit. Assoc.,
1854-410:
Account by two observers of a faint but distinctly triangular object, visible for six nights in the sky. It was observed from two stations that were not far apart. But the parallax was considerable. Whatever it was, it was, acceptably, relatively close to this earth.
I should say that relatively to phenomena of light we are in confusion as great as some of the discords that orthodoxy is in relatively to light. Broadly and intermediatistically, our position is:
That light is not really and necessarily light—any more than is anything else really and necessarily anything—but an interpretation of a mode of force, as I suppose we have to call it, as light. At sea level, the earth’s atmosphere interprets sunlight as red or orange or yellow. High up on mountains the sun is blue. Very high up on mountains the zenith is black. Or it is orthodoxy to say that in interplanetary space, where there is no air, there is no light. So then the sun and comets are black, but this earth’s atmosphere, or, rather, dust particles in it, interpret radiations from these black objects as light.
We look up at the moon.
The jet-black moon is so silvery white.
I have about fifty notes indicating that the moon has atmosphere: nevertheless most astronomers hold out that the moon has no atmosphere. They have to: the theory of eclipses would not work out otherwise. So, arguing in conventional terms, the moon is black. Rather astonishing—explorers upon the moon—stumbling and groping in intense darkness—with telescopes powerful enough, we could see them stumbling and groping in brilliant light.
Or, just because of familiarity, it is not now obvious to us how the preposterousnesses of the old system must have seemed to the correlates of the system preceding it.
Ye jet-black silvery moon.
Altogether, then, it may be conceivable that there are phenomena of force that are interpretable as light as far down as the clouds, but not in denser strata of air, or just the opposite of familiar interpretations.
I now have some notes upon an occurrence that suggests a force not interpreted by air as light, but interpreted, or reflected by the ground as light. I think of something that, for a week, was suspended over London: of an emanation that was not interpreted as light until it reached the ground.
Lancet,
June 1, 1867:
That every night for a week, a light had appeared in Woburn Square, London, upon the grass of a small park, enclosed by railings. Crowds gathering—police called out “for the special service of maintaining order and making the populace move on.” The Editor of the
Lancet
went to the Square. He says that he saw nothing but a patch of light falling upon an arbor at the northeast corner of the enclosure. Seems to me that that was interesting enough.
In this Editor we have a companion for Mr. Symons and Dr. Gray. He suggests that the light came from a street lamp—does not say that he could trace it to any such origin himself—but recommends that the police investigate neighboring street lamps.
I’d not say that such a commonplace as light from a street lamp would not attract and excite and deceive great crowds for a week—but I do accept that any cop who was called upon for extra work would have needed nobody’s suggestion to settle that point the very first thing.
Or that something in the sky hung suspended over a London Square for a week.
21
Knowledge,
Dec. 28, 1883:
“Seeing so many meteorological phenomena in your excellent paper,
Knowledge,
I am tempted to ask for an explanation of the following, which I saw when on board the British India Company’s steamer
Patna,
while on a voyage up the Persian Gulf. In May, 1880, on a dark night, about 11:30 p.m., there suddenly appeared on each side of the ship an enormous luminous wheel, whirling around, the spokes of which seemed to brush the ship along. The spokes would be 200 or 300 yards long, and resembled the birch rods of the dames’ schools. Each wheel contained about sixteen spokes, and, although the wheels must have been some 500 or 600 yards in diameter, the spokes could be distinctly seen all the way round. The phosphorescent gleam seemed to glide along flat on the surface of the sea, no light being visible in the air above the water. The appearance of the spokes could
be
almost exactly represented by standing in a boat and flashing a bull’s eye lantern horizontally along the surface of the water, round and round. I may mention that the phenomenon was also seen by Captain Avern, of the
Patna,
and Mr. Manning, third officer.
“Lee Fore Brace.
“P.S.—The wheels advanced along with the ship for about twenty minutes.—L.F.B.”
###
Knowledge,
Jan. 11, 1884:
Letter from “A. Mc. D.”:
That “Lee Fore Brace,” “who sees ‘so many meteorological phenomena in your excellent paper,’ should have signed himself ‘The Modern Ezekiel,’ for his vision of wheels is quite as wonderful as the prophet’s.” The writer then takes up the measurements that were given, and calculates a velocity at the circumference of a wheel, of about 166 yards per second, apparently considering that especially incredible. He then says: “From the nom de plume he assumes, it might be inferred that your correspondent is in the habit of ‘sailing close to the wind.’ ” He asks permission to suggest an explanation of his own. It is that before 11:30 p.m. there had been numerous accidents to the “main brace,” and that it had required splicing so often that almost any ray of light would have taken on a rotary motion.
In
Knowledge,
Jan. 25, 1884, Mr. “Brace” answers and signs himself “J. W. Robertson”:
“I don’t suppose A. Mc. D. means any harm, but I do think it’s rather unjust to say a man is drunk because he sees something out of the common. If there’s one thing I pride myself upon, it’s being able to say that never in my life have I indulged in anything stronger than water.” From this curiosity of pride, he goes on to say that he had not intended to be exact, but to give his impressions of dimensions and velocity. He ends amiably: “However, ‘no offense taken, where I suppose none is meant.’ ”
To this letter Mr. Proctor adds a note, apologizing for the publication of “A. Mc. D’s.” letter, which had come about by a misunderstood instruction. Then Mr. Proctor wrote disagreeable letters, himself, about other persons—what else would you expect in a quasi-existence?
The obvious explanation of this phenomenon is that, under the surface of the sea, in the Persian Gulf, was a vast luminous wheel: that it was the light from its submerged spokes that Mr. Robertson saw, shining upward. It seems clear that this light did shine upward from origin below the surface of the sea. But at first it is not so clear how vast luminous wheels, each the size of a village, ever got under the surface of the Persian Gulf: also there may be some misunderstanding as to what they were doing there.
A deep-sea fish, and its adaptation to a dense medium—
That, at least in some regions aloft, there is a medium dense even to gelatinousness—
A deep-sea fish, brought to the surface of the ocean: in a relatively attenuated medium, it disintegrates—
Super-constructions adapted to a dense medium in interplanetary space—sometimes, by stresses of various kinds, they are driven into this earth’s thin atmosphere—
Later we shall have data to support just this: that things entering this earth’s atmosphere disintegrate and shine with a light that is not the light of incandescence: shine brilliantly, even if cold—
Vast wheel-like super-constructions—they enter this earth’s atmosphere, and, threatened with disintegration, plunge for relief into an ocean, or into a denser medium.
Of course the requirements now facing us are:
Not only data of vast wheel-like super-constructions that have relieved their distresses in the ocean, but data of enormous wheels that have been seen in the air, or entering the ocean, or rising from the ocean and continuing their voyages.
Very largely we shall concern ourselves with enormous fiery objects that have either plunged into the ocean or risen from the ocean. Our acceptance is that, though disruption may intensify into incandescence, apart from disruption and its probable fieriness, things that enter this earth’s atmosphere have a cold light which would not, like light from molten matter, be instantly quenched by water. Also it seems acceptable that a revolving wheel would, from a distance, look like a globe; that a revolving wheel, seen relatively close by, looks like a wheel in few aspects. The mergers of ball lightning and meteorites are not resistances to us: our data are of enormous bodies.
So we shall interpret—and what does it matter?
Our attitude throughout this book:
That here are extraordinary data—that they never would be exhumed, and never would be massed together, unless—
Here are the data:
Our first datum is of something that was once seen to enter an ocean. It’s from the puritanic publication,
Science,
which has yielded us little material, or which, like most Puritans, does not go upon a spree very often. Whatever the thing could have been, my impression is of tremendousness, or of bulk many times that of all meteorites in all museums combined: also of relative slowness, or of long warning of approach. The story, in
Science,
5-242, is from an account sent to the Hydrographic Office, at Washington, from the branch office, at San Francisco:
That, at midnight, Feb. 24, 1885, Lat. 37º N., and Long. 170 º E., or somewhere between Yokohama and Victoria, the captain of the bark
Innerwich
was aroused by his mate, who had seen something unusual in the sky. This must have taken appreciable time. The captain went on deck and saw the sky turning fiery red. “All at once, a large mass of fire appeared over the vessel, completely blinding the spectators.” The fiery mass fell into the sea. Its size may be judged by the volume of water cast up by it, said to have rushed toward the vessel with a noise that was “deafening.” The bark was struck flat aback, and “a roaring, white sea passed ahead.” “The master, an old, experienced mariner, declared that the awfulness of the sight was beyond description.”
In
Nature,
37-187, and
L’Astronomie,
1887-76, we are told that an object, described as “a large ball of fire,” was seen to rise from the sea, near Cape Race. We are told that it rose to a height of fifty feet, and then advanced close to the ship, then moving away, remaining visible about five minutes. The supposition in
Nature
is that it was “ball lightning,” but Flammarion,
Thunder and Lightning,
p. 68, says that it was enormous. Details in the American
Meteorological Journal,
6-443—Nov. 12, 1887—British steamer
Siberian
—that the object had moved “against the wind” before retreating—that Captain Moore said that at about the same place he had seen such appearances before.
Report of the British Association,
1861-30:
That, upon June 18, 1845, according to the
Malta Times,
from the brig
Victoria,
about 900 miles east of Adalia, Asia Minor (36 º
40’ 56”, N. Lat.: 13º 44’ 36” E. Long.), three luminous bodies were seen to issue from the sea, at about half a mile from the vessel. They were visible about ten minutes.
The story was never investigated, but other accounts that seem acceptably to be other observations upon this same sensational spectacle came in, as if of their own accord, and were published by Prof. Baden-Powell. One is a letter from a correspondent at Mt. Lebanon. He describes only two luminous bodies. Apparently they were five times the size of the moon: each had appendages, or they were connected by parts that are described as “sail-like or streamer-like,” looking like “large flags blown out by a gentle breeze.” The important point here is not only suggestion of structure, but duration. The duration of meteors is a few seconds: duration of fifteen seconds is remarkable, but I think there are records up to half a minute. This object, if it were all one object, was visible at Mt. Lebanon about one hour. An interesting circumstance is that the appendages did not look like trains of meteors, which shine by their own light, but “seemed to shine by light from the main bodies.”
About 900 miles west of the position of the
Victoria
is the town of Adalia, Asia Minor. At about the time of the observation reported by the captain of the
Victoria,
the Rev. F. Hawlett, F.R.A.S., was in Adalia. He, too, saw this spectacle, and sent an account to Prof. Baden-Powell. In his view it was a body that appeared and then broke up. He places duration at twenty minutes to half an hour.
In the
Report of the British Association,
1860-82, the phenomenon was reported from Syria and Malta, as two very large bodies “nearly joined.”
Rept. Brit. Assoc.,
1860-77:
That, at Cherbourg, France, Jan. 12, 1836, was seen a luminous body, seemingly two-thirds the size of the moon. It seemed to rotate on an axis. Central to it there seemed to be a dark cavity.
For other accounts, all indefinite, but distortable into data of wheel-like objects in the sky, see
Nature,
22-617; London
Times,
Oct. 15, 1859;
Nature,
21-225;
Monthly Weather Review,
1883-264.
L’Astronomie,
1894-157:
That, upon the morning of Dec. 20, 1893, an appearance in the sky was seen by many persons in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. A luminous body passed overhead, from west to east, until at about fifteen degrees in the eastern horizon, it appeared to stand still for fifteen or twenty minutes. According to some descriptions it was the size of a table. To some observers it looked like an enormous wheel. The light was a brilliant white. Acceptably it was not an optical illusion—the noise of its passage through the air was heard. Having been stationary, or having seemed to stand still fifteen or twenty minutes, it disappeared, or exploded. No sound of explosion was heard.
Vast wheel-like constructions. They’re especially adapted to roll through a gelatinous medium from planet to planet. Sometimes, because of miscalculations, or because of stresses of various kinds, they enter this earth’s atmosphere. They’re likely to explode. They have to submerge in the sea. They stay in the sea awhile, revolving with relative leisureliness, until relieved, and then emerge, sometimes close to vessels. Seamen tell of what they see: their reports are interred in scientific morgues. I should say that the general route of these constructions is along latitudes not far from the latitudes of the Persian Gulf.
Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society,
28-29:
That, upon April 4, 1901, about 8:30, in the Persian Gulf, Captain Hoseason, of the steamship
Kilwa,
according to a paper read before the Society by Captain Hoseason, was sailing in a sea in which there was no phosphorescence—“there being no phosphorescence in the water.”
I suppose I’ll have to repeat that:
“. . . there being no phosphorescence in the water.”
Vast shafts of light—though the captain uses the word “ripples”—suddenly appeared. Shaft followed shaft, upon the surface of the sea. But it was only a faint light, and, in about fifteen minutes, died out: having appeared suddenly, having died out gradually. The shafts revolved at a velocity of about sixty miles an hour.
Phosphorescent jellyfish correlate with the Old Dominant: in one of the most heroic compositions of disregards in our experience, it was agreed, in the discussion of Capt. Hoseason’s paper, that the phenomenon was probably pulsations of long strings of jellyfish.
Nature,
21-410:
Reprint of a letter from R.E. Harris, Commander of the A.H.N. Co.’s steamship
Shahjehan,
to the Calcutta
Englishman,
Jan. 21, 1880:
That upon the 5th of June, 1880, off the coast of Malabar, at 10 p.m., water calm, sky cloudless, he had seen something that was so foreign to anything that he had ever seen before, that he had stopped his ship. He saw what he describes as waves of brilliant light, with spaces between. Upon the water were floating patches of a substance that was not identified. Thinking in terms of the conventional explanation of all phosphorescence at sea, the captain at first suspected this substance. However, he gives his opinion that it did no illuminating but was, with the rest of the sea, illuminated by tremendous shafts of light. Whether it was a thick and oily discharge from the engine of a submerged construction or not, I think that I shall have to accept this substance as a concomitant, because of another note. “As wave succeeded wave, one of the most grand and brilliant, yet solemn, spectacles that one could think of, was here witnessed.”
Jour. Roy. Met. Soc.,
32-280:
Extract from a letter from Mr. Douglas Carnegie, Blackheath, England. Date some time in 1906—
“This last voyage we witnessed a weird and most extraordinary electric display.” In the Gulf of Oman, he saw a bank of apparently quiescent phosphorescence: but, when within twenty yards of it, “shafts of brilliant light came sweeping across the ship’s bows at a prodigious speed, which might be put down as anything between sixty and 200 miles an hour.” “These light bars were about twenty feet apart and most regular.” As to phosphorescence—“I collected a bucketful of water, and examined it under the microscope, but could not detect anything abnormal.” That the shafts of light came up from something beneath the surface—“They first struck us on our broadside, and I noticed that an intervening ship had no effect on the light beams: they started away from the lee side of the ship, just as if they had traveled right through it.”
