Book of the Damned

Book of the Damned was the first published nonfiction work of the author Charles Fort, first published in 1919. It deals with various types of anomalous phenomenon, including UFOs, strange falls of fish and other materials from the sky, odd weather patterns, the possible existence of giants and fairies, disappearances of people under strange circumstances, and many other phenomena.

Overview/Fort's Thesis

The title of the book referred to what he termed the "damned" data - data which had been damned, or excluded, by modern science because of its not conforming to accepted guidelines. The way Fort sees it, mainstream scientists are trend followers who believe in what is accepted and popular, and never really look for a truth that may be contrary to what they believe. He also compares the close-mindedness of many scientists to that of religious fundamentalists, implying that the supposed "battle" between science and religion is just a smokescreen for the fact that, in his view, science is, in essence, simply a de facto religion in of itself. This is a theme that Fort would develop more heavily in his later works, New Lands and Lo! particularly. To be fair to Fort, this is (or was) not entirely inaccurate, as a large number of scientists remain as conservative as their religious counterparts, reluctant to accept new ideas.

Fort was one of the first major writers to deal extensively with paranormal phenomena (see parapsychology), and in that aspect at least, The Book of the Damned should be considered an important work. It should be viewed as a formulative work, perhaps understandably, as it is his first major book. Though Fort's uniquely acerbic writing style is already in evidence, and there are plenty of interesting phenomena to read about, Fort's theories (as such) are only beginning to be developed, and Fort tends to ramble in this book moreso than his later ones. Still, it's a very readable book for those interested in this subject, and a solid introduction to Fort and his works.

Content of the Book

The first few chapters of the book deal largely with explaining Fort's thesis (as mentioned above). As a particular instance, he sights the strange glowing in the sky worldwide, which supposedly resulted due to the 1883 erruption of the volcano Krakatoa. Ford shows that such phenomenon had in fact preceded the erruption by several months, and suggests that the scientists, who had been puzzled by the phenomenon initially, used Krakatoa as a convenient explanation to something that they could not previously explain.

While Fort has a particular interest in strange "falls" - focusing quite a bit of the book on the falls of fish, frogs, and various unidentifiable materials - he does not focus exclusively on this category. He also has chapters discussing the findings of "thunderbolts", which supposedly fell from the sky during lightning storms; a discussion of evidence for the existence of giants (huge oversized axes too big for any person to use) and fairies (so-called "fairy crosses" and "coffins"); a brief chapter on poltergeist phenomena; the disappearances of many people (he briefly mentions the famous case of the Mary Celeste, which he would detail much more in his later Lo!); a rather long section on a number of proported UFO sightings (this book was written well before 1947, Kenneth Arnold, and the start of the modern UFO craze); and sums up with a mention of the famous "The Devil's Footprints" mystery in England in 1855, also citing a number of similar cases.

Fort's Theory And Criticism

Fort's explanation for the above "falls" and UFO sightings is that of the Super-Sargasso Sea - i.e., kind of a stationary "sea" where all things on Earth that are lost mysteriously turn up in, and occasionally rain back down on Earth. (He would develop this idea in much more detail in his later books.) Though Fort himself apparently doesn't really believe this explanation, he (at least in this book) does not purport to explain the phenomena as a whole, simply stating the facts as they are, and leaving the reader to make their own conclusions.

Due to this lack of explanation for the phenomena he presents, some skeptics and critics, particularly Martin Gardner, have attacked Fort as simply a destructive critic (or "crank") who has nothing to say for himself, an explanation which is admittedly true in the strictest sense, but also a bit unfair, and ignores Fort's central point - that science should be more open-minded and less dogmatic - entirely, by more or less proving his central thesis.

The Book of the Damned is available in paperback from Prometheus Books, and can also be found in Dover Publications' The Complete Works of Charles Fort, which contains all of his books on this subject. An online version of the book is linked below.

Edited and Annotated Version of The Book of the Damned: [1]