Authors: Charles Fort
I don’t know that my own attitude toward these data is understood, and I don’t know that it matters in the least; also from time to time my own attitude changes: but very largely my feeling is that not much can be, or should be, concluded from our meager accounts, but that so often are these occurrences, in our fields, reported, that several times every year there will be occurrences that one would like to have investigated by someone who believes that we have written nothing but bosh, and by someone who believes in our data almost religiously. It may be that, early in February, 1892, a luminous thing traveled back and forth, exploring for ten hours in the sky of Sweden. The story is copied from a newspaper, and ridiculed, in the
English Mechanic,
55-34. Upon March 7, 1893, a luminous object shaped like an elongated pear was seen in the sky of Val-de-la-Haye, by M. Raimond Coulon
(L’Astro.,
1893-169). M. Coulon’s suggestion is that the light may have been a signal suspended from a balloon. The signal idea is interesting.
In the summer of 1897, several weeks after Prof. Andrée and his two companions had sailed in a balloon, from Amsterdam Island, Spitzbergen, it was reported that a balloon had been seen in British Columbia. There was wide publicity: the report was investigated. It may be that had a terrestrial balloon escaped from somewhere in the United States or Canada, or if there had been a balloon ascension at this time, the circumstances would have been reported: it may well be that the object was not Andrée’s balloon. President Bell, of the National Geographic Society, heard of this object, and heard that details had been sent to the Swedish Foreign Office, and cabled to the American Minister, at Stockholm, for information. He publishes his account in the
National Geographic Magazine,
9-102. He was referred to the Swedish Consul, at San Francisco. In reply to inquiry, the Consul telegraphed the following data, which had been collected by the President of the Geographical Society of the Pacific:
“Statement of a balloon passing over the Horse-Fly Hydraulic Mining Camp, in Caribou, British Columbia, 52º, 20’, and Longitude 120º, 30’—
“From letters of J.B. Robson, manager of the Caribou Mining Co., and of Mrs. Wm. Sullivan, the blacksmith’s wife, there, and a statement of Mr. John J. Newsome, San Francisco, then at camp. About two or three o’clock, in the afternoon, between fourth and seventh of August last, weather calm and cloudless, Mrs. Sullivan, while looking over the Hydraulic Bank, noticed a round, grayish-looking object in the sky, to the right of the sun. As she watched, it grew larger and was descending. She saw the larger mass of the balloon above, and a smaller mass apparently suspended from the larger. It continued to descend, until she plainly recognized it as a balloon and a large basket hanging thereto. It finally commenced to swing violently back and forth, and move very fast toward the eastward and northward. Mrs. Sullivan called her daughter, aged eighteen, and about this time Mrs. Robson and her daughter were observing it.”
If someone saw a strange fish in the ocean, we’d like to know—what was it like? Stripes on him—spots—what? It would be unsatisfactory to be told over and over only that a dark body had crossed some waves. In
Cosmos,
n.s., 39-356, a satisfactory correspondent writes that, at Lille, France, Sept. 4, 1898, he saw a red object in the sky. It was like the planet Mars, but was in the position of no known planet. He looked through his telescope, and saw a rectangular object, with a violent-colored band on one side of it, and the rest of it striped with black and red. He watched it ten minutes, during which time it was stationary; then, like the object that was seen at the time of the Powell-mystery, it cast out sparks and disappeared.
In the
English Mechanic,
75-417, Col. Markwick writes that, upon May 10, 1902, a friend of his had seen in the sky, in South Devon, a great number of highly colored objects like little suns or toy balloons. “Altogether beats me,” says Col. Markwick.
Upon March 2, 1899, a luminous object in the sky, from 10 a.m., until 4 p.m., was reported from El Paso, Texas. Mentioned in the
Observatory,
22-247—supposed to have been Venus, even though Venus was then two months past secondary maximum brilliance. This seems reasonable enough, in itself, but there are other data for thinking that an unknown, luminous body was at this time in the especial sky of the southwestern states. In the
U.S. Weather Bureau Report (Ariz. Sec.,
March, 1899) it is said that, at Prescott, Arizona, Dr. Warren E. Day had seen a luminous object, upon the 8th of March, “that traveled with the moon” all day, until 2 p.m. It is said that, the day before, this object had been seen close to the moon, by Mr. G.O. Scott, at Tonto, Arizona. Dr. Day and Mr. Scott were voluntary observers for the
Weather Review.
This association with the moon and this localization of observation are puzzling.
La Nature (Sup.)
Nov. 11, 1899—that at Luzarches, France, upon the 28th of October, 1899, M.A. Garrie had seen, at 4:50 p.m., a round, luminous object rising above the horizon. About the size of the moon. He watched it for fifteen minutes, as it moved away, diminishing to a point. It may be that something from external regions was for several weeks in the especial sky of France. In
La Nature (Sup.)
Dec. 16, 1899, someone writes that he had seen, Nov. 15, 1899, 7 p.m. at Dourite (Dordogne) an object like an enormous star, at times white, then red, and sometimes blue, but moving like a kite. It was in the south. He had never seen it before. Someone, in the issue of December 30th, says that without doubt it was the star Formalhaut, and asks for precise position. Issue of Jan. 20, 1900—the first correspondent says that the object was in the southwest, about thirty-five degrees above the horizon, but moving so that the precise position could not be stated. The kite-like motion may have been merely seeming motion—object may have been Formalhaut, though thirty-five degrees above the horizon seems to me to be too high for Formalhaut—but, then, like the astronomers, I’m likely at times to expose what I don’t know about astronomy. Formalhaut is not an enormous star. Seventeen are larger.
May 1, 1908, between 8 and 9 p.m., at Vittel, France—an object, with a nebulosity around it, diameter equal to the moon’s, according to a correspondent to
Cosmos,
n.s., 58-535. At nine o’clock a black band appeared upon the object, and moved obliquely across it, then disappearing. The Editor thinks that the object was the planet Venus, under extraordinary meteorologic conditions.
Dark obj., by Prof. Brooks, July 21, 1896
(Eng. Mec.,
64-12); dark obj., by Gathmann Aug. 22, 1896
(Sci. Amer. Sup.,
67-363); two luminous objs., by Prof. Swift, evidently in a local sky of California, because unseen elsewhere in California, Sept. 20, and one of them again, Sept. 21, 1896
(Astro. Jour.
17-8, 103); “Waldemath’s second moon,” Feb. 5, 1898
(Eng. Mec.,
67-545); unknown obj., March 30, 1908
(Observatory,
31-215); dark obj., Nov. 10, 1908
(Bull. Soc. Astro. de France,
23-74).
31
Cold Harbor, Hanover Co., Virginia—two men in a field—“an apparently clear sky.” In the
Monthly Weather Review,
28-29, it is said that upon Aug. 7, 1900, two men were struck by lightning. The Editor says that the weather map gave no indication of a thunderstorm, nor of rain, in this region at the time.
In July, 1904, a man was killed on the summit of Mt. San Gorgionio, near the Mojave Desert. It is said that he was killed by lightning. Two days later, upon the summit of Mt. Whitney, 180 miles away, another man was killed “by lightning”
(Ciel et Terre,
29-120).
It is said, in
Ciel et terre,
17-42, that, in the year 1893, nineteen soldiers were marching near Bourges, France, when they were struck by an unknown force. It is said that in known terms there is no explanation. Some of the men were killed, and others were struck insensible. At the inquest it was testified that there had been no storm, and that nothing had been heard.
If there occur upon the surface of this earth pounces from blank-ness and seizures by nothings, and “sniping” with bullets of unfindable substance, we nevertheless hesitate to bring witchcraft and demonology into our fields. Our general subject now is the existence of a great deal that may be nearby, or temporarily nearby, ordinarily invisible, but occasionally revealed by special circumstances. A background of stars is not to be compared, in our data, with the sun for a background, as a means of revelations. We accept that there are sunspots, but we gather from general experience and special instances that the word “sunspot” is another of the standardizing terms like “auroral” and “meteoric” and “earthquakes.” See Webb’s
Celestial Objects
for some observations upon large definite obscurations called “sunspots” but which were as evanescent against the sun as would be islands and jungles of space, if intervening only a few moments between this earth and the swifting moving sun. According to Webb, astronomers have looked at great obscurations upon the sun, have turned away, and then looked again, finding no trace of the phenomena. Eclipses are special circumstances, and rather often have large, unknown bulks been revealed by different light effects during eclipses. For instance, upon Jan. 22, 1898, Lieut. Blackett, R.N., assisting Sir Norman Lockyer, at Viziadrug, India, during the total eclipse of the sun, saw an unknown body between Venus and Mars
(Jour. Leeds Astro. Soc.,
1906-23). We have had other instances, and I have notes upon still more. The photographic plate is a special condition, or sensitiveness. In
Knowledge,
16-234, a correspondent writes that, in August, 1893, in Switzerland, moonlighted night, he had exposed a photographic plate for one hour. Upon the photograph, when developed, were seen irregular, bright markings, but there had been no lightning to this correspondent’s perceptions.
The details of the sheep panic of Nov. 3, 1888, are extraordinary. The region affected was much greater than was supposed by the writer whom we quoted in an earlier chapter. It is said in another account in
Symons’ Meteorological Magazine,
that, in a tract of land twenty-five miles long and eight miles wide, thousands of sheep had, by a simultaneous impulse, burst from their bounds; and had been found the next morning, widely scattered, some of them still panting with terror under hedges, and many crowded into corners of fields. See London
Times,
Nov. 20, 1888. An idea of the great number of flocks affected is given by one correspondent who says that malicious mischief was out of the question, because a thousand men could not have frightened and released all these sheep. Someone else tries to explain that, given an alarm in one flock, it might spread to the others. But all the sheep so burst from their folds at about eight o’clock in the evening, and one supposes that many folds were far from contiguous, and one thinks of such contagion requiring considerable time to spread over 200 square miles. Something of an alarming nature and of a pronounced degree occurred somewhere near Reading, Berkshire, upon this evening. Also there seems to be something of special localization: the next year another panic occurred in Berkshire not far from Reading.
I have a datum that looks very much like the revelation of a ghost moon, though I think of it myself in physical terms of light effects. In
Country Queries and Notes,
1-138, 417, it is said that, in the sky of Gosport, Hampshire, night of Sept. 14, 1908, was seen a light that came as if from an unseen moon. It may be that I can here record that there was a moon-like object in the sky of the Midlands and the south of England, this night, and that, though to human eyesight, this world, island of space, whatever it may have been, was invisible, it was, nevertheless, revealed. Upon this evening of Sept. 14, 1908, David Packer, then in Northfield, Worcestershire, saw a luminous appearance that he supposed was auroral, and photographed it. When the photograph was developed, it was seen that the “auroral” light came from a large, moon-like object. A reproduction of the photograph is published in the
English Mechanic,
88-211. It shows an object as bright and as well-defined as the conventionally accepted moon, but only to the camera had it revealed itself, and Mr. Packer had caught upon a film a space island that had been invisible to his eyes. It seems so, anyway.
In
Country Queries and Notes,
1-328, it is said that, upon Aug. 2, 1908, at Ballyconneely, Connemara coast of Ireland, was seen a phantom city of different-sized houses, in different styles of architecture; visible three hours. It is said that no doubt the appearance was a mirage of some city far away—far away, but upon this earth, of course. This apparition is not of the type that we consider so especially of our own data. The so-called mirages that so especially interest us are interesting to us not in themselves, but in that they belong to the one order of phenomena or evidence that unifies so many fields of our data: that is, repetitions in a local sky, signifying the fixed position of something relatively to a small part of this earth’s surface. We cannot think that mirages, terrestrial or extraterrestrial, could so repeat. But if in a local sky of this earth there be a fixed region, perhaps not a city, but something of rugged and featureful outlines, with projections that might look architectural, reflections from it, shadows, or Brocken specters repeating always in one special sky are thinkable except by the Chinese-minded who regard all our data as “foreign devils.” The writer in
Country Queries and Notes
says—“Circumstantial accounts have even been published of the city of Bristol being distinctly recognized in a mirage seen occasionally in North America.” If we shall accept that anywhere in North America repeated representations of the same city or city-like scene have appeared in the same local sky, I prefer, myself, a foreign devil of a thought, and its significance, whether hellish or not, that this earth is stationary, to such a domestic vagrant of a thought as the idea that mirage could so pick out the city of Bristol, or any other city, over and over, and also invariably pick out for its screen the same local sky, thousands of miles, or five miles, away.
In the
English Mechanic,
Sept. 10, 1897, a correspondent to the
Weekly Times and Echo
is quoted. He had just returned from the Yukon. Early in June, 1897, he had seen a city pictured in the sky of Alaska. “Not one of us could form the remotest idea in what part of the world this settlement could be. Some guessed Toronto, others Montreal, and one of us even suggested Pekin. But whether this city exists in some unknown world on the other side of the North Pole, or not, it is a fact that this wonderful mirage occurs from time to time yearly, and we were not the only ones who witnessed the spectacle. Therefore it is evident that it must be the reflection of some place built by the hand of man.” According to this correspondent, the “mirage” did not look like one of the cities named, but like “some immense city of the past.”
In the
New York Tribune,
Feb. 17, 1901, it is said that Indians of Alaska had told of an occasional appearance, as if of a city, suspended in the sky, and that a prospector, named Willoughby, having heard the stories, had investigated, in the year 1887, and had seen the spectacle. It is said that, having several times attempted to photograph the scene, Willoughby did finally at least show an alleged photograph of an aerial city. In
Alaska,
p. 140, Miner Bruce says that Willoughby, one of the early pioneers in Alaska, after whom Willoughby Island is named, had told him of the phenomenon, and that, early in 1899, he had accompanied Willoughby to the place over which the mirage was said to repeat. It seems that he saw nothing himself, but he quotes a member of the Duc d’Abruzzi’s expedition to Mt. St. Elias, summer of 1897, Mr. C.W. Thornton, of Seattle, who saw the spectacle, and wrote—“It required no effort of the imagination to liken it to a city, but was so distinct that it required, instead, faith to believe that it was not in reality a city.” Bruce publishes a reproduction of Willoughby’s photograph, and says that the city was identified as Bristol, England. So definite, or so unmirage-like, is this reproduction, trees and many buildings shown in detail, that one supposes that the original was a photograph of a good-sized terrestrial city, perhaps Bristol, England.
In Chapter 10 of his book,
Wonders of Alaska,
Alexander Badlam tries to explain. He publishes a reproduction of Willoughby’s photograph: it is the same as Bruce’s, except that all buildings are transposed, or are negative in positions. Badlam does not like to accuse Willoughby of fraud: his idea is that some unknown humorist had sold Willoughby a dry plate, picturing part of the city of Bristol. My own idea is that something of this kind did occur, and that this photograph, greatly involved in accounts of the repeating mirages, had nothing to do with the mirages. Badlam then tells of another photograph. He tells that two men, near the Muir Glacier, had, by means of a pan of quicksilver, seen a reflection of an unknown city somewhere, and that their idea was that it was at the bottom of the sea near the glacier, reflecting in the sky, and reflecting back to and from the quicksilver. That’s complicated. A photographer named Taber then announced that he had photographed this scene, as reflected in a pan of quicksilver. Badlam publishes a reproduction of Taber’s photograph, or alleged photograph. This time, for anybody who prefers to think that there is, somewhere in the sky of Alaska, a great, unknown city, we have a most agreeable photograph: exotic-looking city; a structure like a coliseum, and another prominent building like a mosque, and many indefinite, mirage-like buildings. I’d like to think this photograph genuine, myself, but I do conceive that Taber could have taken it by photographing a panorama that he had painted. Badlands explanation is that mirages of glaciers are common, in Alaska, and that they look architectural. Some years ago, I read five or six hundred pounds of literature upon the Arctic, and I should say that far-projected mirages are not common in the Arctic: mere looming is common. Badlam publishes a photograph of a mirage of Muir Glacier. The looming points of ice do look Gothic, but they are obviously only loomings, extending only short distances from primaries, with no detachment from primaries, and not reflecting in the sky.
For the first identification of the Willoughby photograph as a photograph of part of the city of Bristol, see the
New York Times,
Oct. 20, 1889. That this photograph was somebody’s hoax seems to be acceptable. But it was not similar to the frequently reported scene in the sky of Alaska, according to descriptions. In the
New York Times,
Oct. 31, 1889, is an account, by Mr. L.B. French, of Chicago, of the spectral representation, as he saw it, near Mt. Fairweather. “We could see plainly houses, well-defined streets, and trees. Here and there rose tall spires over huge buildings, which appeared to be ancient mosques or cathedrals . . . It did not look like a modern city—more like an ancient European City.”
Jour. Roy. Met. Soc.,
27-158:
That every year, between June 21 and July 10, a “phantom city” appears in the sky, over a glacier in Alaska; that features of it had been recognized as buildings in the city of Bristol, England, so that the “mirage” was supposed to be a mirage of Bristol. It is said that for generations these repeating representations had been known to the Alaskan Indians, and that, in May 1901, a scientific expedition from San Francisco would investigate. It is said that, except for slight changes, from year to year, the scene was always the same.
La Nature,
1901-1-303:
That a number of scientists had set out from Victoria, B.C, to Mt. Fairweather, Alaska, to study a repeating mirage of a city in the sky, which had been reported by the Duc d’Abruzzi, who had seen it and had sketched it.