Charles Fort's classic recording of unexplained, paranormal events and phenomena offer fascinating insights into bizarre occurrences the author felt had been unjustly damned from formal, scientific study.
The title derives from the author's perception that the book's subjects were so stigmatized and excluded from ordinary scientific inquiry that they had become 'damned'. Perhaps permanently forbade for formal study, the oddities and unexplained events in this text were felt worthy of attention by the author, who eventually became an authority on anomalous phenomena.
The topics in Fort's thesis include unexplained disappearances of large groups of people, frogs and fish suddenly raining from the sky, the possibility that mythical beasts such as giants exist, UFOs manifest as glowing and sometimes moving lights in the sky, and bizarre weather phenomena. Fort attributes credence to many of these oddities, and argues that science - by dismissing them - has become a religion in itself.
The Book of the Damned was one of the first ever comprehensive attempts to organize and chronicle the mysterious, bizarre and unexplained phenomena reported around the world. Charles Fort's distinct style of writing would inspire greater interest in the unexplained, and also had a marked influence upon the science fiction genre. To this day Fort's investigations have numerous fans and adherents, and some of whom have adopted the moniker 'Fortean'.
