by Charles Fort
For a yarn, or an important record, of a reptile of “prehistoric size and appearance,” said to have been found on the beach of the Gulf of Fonseca, Salvador, see the New York Herald Tribune, June 16, 1928. It was about ninety feet long, marked with black and white stripes, and was “exceedingly corpulent.” Good-natured, fat monsters, too, are new to me.
I have searched especially for sea stories of hairy, or fur-covered monsters. Such creatures would not be sea animals, in the exclusive sense that something covered with scales might be. If unknown, they would have to be considered inhabitants of lands. Then up comes the question—what lands?
English Mechanic, April 7, 1899—that, according to Australian newspapers, the captain of a trading vessel had arrived in Sydney, with parts of an unknown monster. “The hide, or skin, of the monster was covered with hair.”
The arrival of these remains is reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, in issues from Feb. 23 to March 2, 1899. It is said that, according to Capt. Oliver, of the trading ship Emu, he had found, upon the beach of Suarro Island, the carcass of a two-headed monster.
That is just a little too interesting.
We find that the reporter who told this story dropped the most interesting part of it, in his subsequent accounts, which were upon two skulls, a vertebra, and a rib bone: but he was determined to discredit the find, and told that the bones were obviously fossils, implying that the Captain had invented a story of bodies of two animals that had recently been alive.
When we come upon assurances that a mystery has been solved, we go on investigating.
In the Sydney Daily Telegraph, February 28, it is said that an attempt to identify the bones as fossils had been refuted. Professional and amateur scientists had accepted an invitation to examine the bones, and, according to the testimony of their noses, these things decidedly were not fossils. Each skull was more than two feet long, and was shaped somewhat like a horse’s, but upon it was a beak. There are beaked whales, but these remains were not remains of beaked whales, if be accepted Captain Oliver’s unsupported statements as to hairiness and great size. It is said that no specimens of the hairy hide had been taken, because all parts, except the scraped bones, of these bulks that had been lying under a tropical sun weren’t just what one would want to take along in a small ship. According to Capt. Oliver, one of the bodies was sixty feet long. The largest beaked whales are not known to exceed thirty feet in length.
Mr. Waite, of the Australian Museum, examined the bones. He said that they were of beaked whales.
Mr. F.A. Mitchell-Hedges, in Battles with Giant Fish, tells of remains of a tremendous, unknown mammal, which was washed ashore, at Cape May, N.J., November, 1921. “This mammal whose weight was estimated at over fifteen tons, which—to give a comparison of size—is almost as large as five fully grown elephants, was visited by many scientists, who were unable to place it, and positively stated that nothing yet known to science could in any way compare with it.”
I investigated the story of the Cape May monster, wherever I got the idea that I could find out anything in particular.
Somebody in Cape May wrote to me that the thing was a highly undesirable carcass of a whale, which had been towed out to sea. Somebody else wrote to me that it was a monster with a tusk twelve feet long, which he had seen. He said that, if I’d like to have it, he’d send me a photograph of the monster. After writing of having seen something with a tusk twelve feet long, he sent me a photograph of something with two tusks, each six feet long. But only one of the seeming tusks is clear in the picture, and it could be, not a tusk, but part of the jaw bone of a whale, propped up tusk-wise.
In the London Daily Mail, Dec. 27, 1924, appeared a story of an extraordinary carcass that was washed up, on the coast of Natal, Oct. 25, 1924. It was forty-seven feet long, and was covered with white hair, like a polar bear’s—
I won’t go into this, because I consider it a worthless yarn. In accordance with my methods, considering this a foolish and worthless yarn, I sent out letters to South African newspapers, calling upon readers, who could, to investigate this story. Nobody answered.
In the New Zealand Times, March 19, 1883, it is said that bones of an unknown monster, about forty feet long, had been found upon the coast of Queensland, and had been taken to Rockhampton, Queensland. “There are the remains of what must have been an enormous snout, eight feet long, in which the respiratory passage are yet traceable.” These could not have been the remains of a beaked whale. Whatever hip bones a cetacean has are only vestigial structures. In a sperm whale, fifty-five feet long, the hip bones are detached and atrophied relics of former uses, each about one foot long. A hip bone of the Queensland monster is described as enormous.
In looking over the London Daily News, I came upon an item. Trawlers of the steamship Balmedic had brought to Grimsby the skull of an unknown monster, dredged up in the Atlantic, north of Scotland (Daily News, June 26, 1908). The size of the skull indicated an animal the size of an elephant, and it was in “a wonderful state of preservation.” It was unlike the skull of any cetacean, having eye sockets a foot across. From the jaws hung a leathery tongue, three feet long. I found, in the Grimsby Telegraph, June 29th, a reproduction of a photograph of this skull, with the long tongue hanging from the beak-like jaws. I made a sketch of the skull, as pictured, and sent it with a description to the British Museum (Natural History). I received an answer from Mr. W.P. Pycraft, who wrote that he had never seen any animal with such a skull—“and I have seen a good many!” It is just possible that nobody else has ever seen anything much resembling a sketch that I’d make of anything, but that has nothing to do with descriptions of the tongue. According to Mr. Pycraft no known cetacean has such a tongue.
I went on searching, trying to come upon something about a hairy monster: furred, anything except scaled, or with a hide like a whale’s.
London newspapers, July 6, 1913—a lengthy telegram that had been sent by Mr. Hartwell Conder, Tasmanian State Mining Engineer, to Mr. Wallace, the Secretary of Mines, of Tasmania—that, upon April 20, 1913, two of Mr. Conder’s companions, named Davies and Harris, had seen a huge, unknown animal, near Macquarie Harbor, Tasmania. “The animal was about fifteen feet long. It had a very small head, only the size of the head of a kangaroo dog. It had a thick, arched neck, passing gradually into the barrel of the body. It had no definite tail and no fins. It was furred, the coat in appearance resembling that of a horse of chestnut color, well-groomed and shining. It had four distinct legs. It traveled by bounding—i.e., by arching its back and gathering up its body, so that the footprints of the forefeet were level with those of the hind feet. It made definite footprints. These showed circular impressions, with a diameter (measured) of nine inches, and the marks of claws, about seven inches long, extending outward from the body. There was no evidence for or against webbing.”
In reply to my inquiries, Mrs. Conder—North Terrace, Burnie, Tasmania—wrote to me, as asked to by Mr. Conder, saying that the published description is accurate, and that, unless there be a seal with jointed flippers, upon which the creature could raise itself and run, Mr. Conder “could not be altogether convinced that the animal was a seal.”
I have not looked for record of any such known seal. I take for granted that the seal type has conventionalized so that there is no such seal.
It may be that there have been several finds of remains of a large, long-snouted animal that is unknown to the paleontologists, because, though it has occasionally appeared here, it has never been indigenous to this earth. New York Sun, Nov. 28, 1930—“Monster in ice has long snout.” Skeleton and considerable flesh, of an unknown animal found in the ice, upon Glacier Island, Alaska. The animal was 24 feet long; head 59 inches long; snout 39 inches long. In some of the reports it was said that the animal was covered with hair, or fur. Conventionally one thinks of mammoths of Siberia, preserved for ages in ice. But, if nothing proves anything simply that something is found in ice may not mean that for ages it was preserve
d in ice.
10
Unknown, luminous things, or beings, have often been seen, sometimes close to this earth, and sometimes high in the sky. It may be that some of them were living things that occasionally come from somewhere else in our existence, but that others were lights on the vessels of explorers, or voyagers, from somewhere else.
From time to time, luminous objects, or beings, have been reported from Brown Mountain, North Carolina. They appear, and then for a long time are not seen, and then they appear again. See the Literary Digest, Nov. 7, 1925. I have other records. The luminosities travel, as if with motions of their own. They are brilliant, globular forms, and move in the sky, with a leisureliness and duration that exclude any explanation in meteoric terms. For many years, there had been talk upon this subject, and then, in the year 1922, people of North Carolina, asking for a scientific investigation, were referred to the United States Geological Survey. A geologist was sent from Washington to investigate these things in the sky.
One imagines, but most likely only faintly, the superiority of this geologist from Washington. He heard stories from the natives. He contrasted his own sound principles with the irresponsible gab of denizens, and went right to the investigation, scientifically. He went out on a road, and saw lights, and made his report. Forty-seven percent of the lights that he saw were automobile headlights; thirty-three percent of them were locomotive headlights; ten percent were lights in houses, and ten percent were bush fires. Tot that up, and see that efficiency can’t go further. The geologist from Washington, having investigated nothing that he had been sent to investigate, returned to Washington, which also, by the way, is a place where there’s plenty to investigate, and I suppose that the people of North Carolina will be no wiser, as to these things in the sky, if some other time they appeal to a United States Fish Commission, or the Department of Labor.
I don’t know to just what degree my accusation, in these matters, is of the laziness and feeble-mindedness of scientists. Or, instead of accusing, I am simply pointing out everybody’s inability seriously to spend time upon something, which, according to his preconceptions, is nonsense. Scientists, in matters of our data, have been like somebody in Europe, before the year 1492, hearing stories of lands to the west, going out on the ocean for an hour or so, in a rowboat, and then saying, whether exactly in these words, or not: “Oh, hell! There ain’t no America.”
In Knowledge, September, 1913, Count de Sibour enjoyed his laziness, or incompetence, which a merciful providence, bent upon keeping us human beings reconciled to being human beings, made him think was his own superiority. He told a story of foolish, credulous people, in North Norfolk, England, who, in the winter of 1907-8, believed that a pair of shining things, moving about the fields, could not be explained as he explained them. We are told of a commonplace ending of this alleged mystery: that finally a gamekeeper shot one of these objects, and found that it was a common barn owl, phosphorescent with decayed wood from its nesting place, or with a fungus disease of its feathers. According to other accounts, these things were as brilliant as electric lights. But a phosphorescent owl could not shine with a light like an electric light. So De Sibour described the light as “a pale, yellow glow,” such as a phosphorescent owl could shine with.
Science concerns itself with adaptations, and science itself is adaptation. We are reminded of the Rev. Hugh Guy. He could not explain downpours: so he turned downpours into “a small quantity,” which he could explain.
De Sibour knew nothing about this subject, from his own experiences. We go to the same records to which he went. Like him, we find just about what we want to find. In the London Times, Dec. 10, 1907, and in following issues, are accounts of these luminous objects, which were flying about the fields of North Norfolk, having been reported by Mr. R.W. Purdy, a well-known writer upon biologic subjects.
Among other attempts to assimilate with the known, or among other expressions of a worldwide antipathy to the finding out of anything new, was the idea that owls are sometimes luminous. The idea came first, or the solution of the problem was published first, and then the problem was fitted to the solution. This is said to be a favorite method of ratiocination with inmates of a home for the mentally deficient, but I should think that one of these inmates should feel at home anywhere. De Sibour and others fitted in a story that a luminous owl had been shot. I think that at times there may be faintly luminous owls, because I accept that, under some circumstances, almost anything may be luminous. English Mechanic, 10-15—case of a man with a luminous toe.
Shining things, flying like birds, in the fields of North Norfolk continued to be reported. The brilliant things looked electric. When they rested on trees, everything around them was illuminated. Purdy’s descriptions are very different from “a pale, yellow glow.” Upon the night of December 1st, he saw something that he thought was the lamp of a motor cycle, moving rapidly toward him, in a field, stopping, then rising several yards, moving higher, and then retreating. It moved in various directions. See the Field, Jan. 11, 1908.
De Sibour was uncareful, in his mystery-squelching story, his bobbed story, a story that forced a mystery to a commonplace ending. No gamekeeper shot a luminous owl, at this time, in North Norfolk.
But somebody did say that he had conventionally solved the mystery. Eastern Daily Press (Norwich), Feb. 7, 1908—that, early in the morning of the 5th, Mr. E.S. Cannell, of Lower Hellesdon, saw something shining on a grass bank. According to him, it fluttered up to him, and he found that it was the explanation of a mystery. It was a luminous owl, he said; and, as told by him, he carried it to his home, where it died “still luminous.”
But see the Press of the 8th—that Mr. Cannell’s dead owl had been taken to a taxidermist, who had been interviewed. Of course a phosphorescence of a bird, whether from decayed wood, or feather fungi, would be independent of life or death of the bird. Questioned as to whether the body of the owl was luminous or not, the taxidermist said: “I have seen nothing luminous about it.”
In zoological journals, one frequently comes upon allusions to these things, or beings, of North Norfolk. No gamekeeper killed one of them, but the story of the gamekeeper who had killed a luminous owl is told in these records that are said to be scientific. It is not necessary that a gamekeeper should kill a luminous owl, and so put an end to a mystery. A story that he did will serve just as well.
The finding, or the procuring in some way or another, of the body of an owl, did not put an end to the mystery, except in most of the records that are said to be scientific. There were at first two lights, and there continued to be two lights. The brilliant things continued to be seen in the fields, flitting about, appearing and disappearing. The last observation findable by me (May 3, 1908) is recorded in the Trans. Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society, 8-550. Purdy records an observation upon the two lights, seen together, more than a month after the date upon which Mr. Cannell said that his owl had fluttered right up to him.
Something else was reported, in this region. In the Eastern Daily Press, Jan. 28, 1908, it is said that, at night—moon bright—“a dark, globular object, with a structure of some kind upon the side of it, traveling at a great pace,” had been seen in the sky, by employees of the Norwich Transportation Company, at Mousehead. “It seemed too large for a kite, and, besides, its movements seemed under control, for it was traveling against the wind.”
I am here noting only a few of the many records of unknown, seemingly living, luminous things that used to be called will-o’-the-wisps. They come and they go, and their reappearances in a small region make me think of other localized repetitions that we have noted.
London Daily Express, February 15, and following issues, 1923—brilliant, luminous things moving across fields, sometimes high in the air, at Fenny Compton, Warwickshire. They were “intense lights,” like automobile headlights. Sometimes these luminous things, or beings, hovered over a farmhouse. It was a deserted farmhouse, according to the London Daily News, February 1
3. About a year later, one of these objects, or whatever they were, returned, and was reported as “a swiftly moving light,” by several persons, one of them Miss Olive Knight, a school teacher, of Fenny Compton (London Sunday News, Jan. 27, 1924).
The Earl of Erne tells, in the London Daily Mail, Dec. 24, 1912, of brilliant luminosities that, from time to time, in a period of seven or eight years, had been appearing near Lough Erne, Londonderry, Ireland, “in size and shape very much like a motor car lamp.” In later issues of the Daily Mail, the Countess of Erne tells of these things, or creatures, “like motor car lamps, large and round.”
11
Science is very much like the Civil War, in the U.S.A. No matter which side won, it would have been an American victory. By Science, I mean conventionalization of alleged knowledge. It, or maybe she, acts to maintain itself, or whatever, against further enlightenment, or alleged enlightenment but when giving in, there is not surrender, but partnership, and something that had been bitterly fought then becomes another factor in its, or her, prestige. So, seventy years ago, no matter whether evolutionists or anti-evolutionists had won, it would have been a big, scientific victory anyway. No wonder so many of us are humbled by a reputation that can’t lose any way.
Science is a maw, or a headless and limbless stomach, an amoeba-like gut that maintains itself by incorporating the assimilable and rejecting the indigestible. There are whirlwinds and waterspouts, and it seems acceptable that there have been rare occurrences of faintly luminous owls. Then by a process of sorting over data, rejecting the objectionable, and taking in the desirable, Science saves itself great pains, because a bellyache is something that is only a gut in torment. So, with alimentary treatments, a shower of living things can always be made to assimilate with the whirlwind-explanation, and a brilliant, electric thing can be toned down digestibly. In extreme cases there is a secretion of fishmongers or gamekeepers.
