The word "Fortean" refers to the Charles Fort, a writer in New York who collected reports of strange natural phenomena through the 1920’s and published them. Fort’s opinion was that science inadequately explained, neglected or ignored incidents that were outside normal occurrences. Fortean phenomena has come to mean any topic that conventional science does usually address, subjects on the fringes of science. The term “Fortean phenomena” covers a wide range of topics such as geologic, biologic, historic and weather anomalies (things that are out of the ordinary), and also UFOs, psychic phenomena, ghosts and mass hysteria – almost everything that is considered paranormal. People who investigate this type of phenomena call themselves “Forteans”. Several publications, such as Fortean Times, Strange Magazine and Fate, report on these topics. William Corliss has taken up where Fort left off with the Sourcebook Project – a collection of anomalous phenomena from land, sea, sky, space, humans and animals.
Some Fortean phenomena has spawned rather unscientific theories. Fort himself was responsible for the term “teleportation” (the act of an object or person disappearing from one place and reappearing somewhere else without means of normal travel) and the idea of a sea in the clouds (Super-Sargasso Sea). But, some fortean phenomena has passed into more legitimate study such as characteristics of earthquakes and associated lights and weather phenomena such as ball lightning and tornadoes. Human and animal oddities are now better explained through the study of genetics. Perhaps one day, if incidents are not otherwise shown to be hoaxes or mistaken observations, all so-called paranormal phenomena will have scientific explanations.
- Sharon Hill (Scientist) |
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