Obskuristan » Forteanismus

Fort für euch 11 – Angelo Faticoni

nachtstrom — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 06:53:15 +0000

Hartford, Conn., Aug. 12 — Angelo Faticoni, known as „The Human Cork“, because he could stay afloat in water for fifteen hours with twenty pounds of lead tied to his ankles, died on August 2 in Jacksonville, Fla., it became known here today. He was seventy-two years old. Faticoni could sleep in water, roll up into a ball, lie on his side, or assume any position asked of him. Once he was sewn into a bag and then thrown headforemost into the water, with a twenty-pound cannonball lashed to his legs. His head reappeared on the surface soon afterward, and he remained motionless in that position for eight hours. Another time he swam across the Hudson tied to a chair weighted with lead.

Some years ago he went to Harvard to perform for the students and faculty. He had been examined by medical authorities who failed to find support for their theory that he was able to float at such great lengths by the nature of his internal organs, which they believed were different from those of most men. Faticoni had often promised to reveal the secret of how he became „The Human Cork“, but he never did.

(Aus “Wild Talents“, 1932)

Fort für euch 10 – Steine, die vom Himmel fallen

nachtstrom — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 05:57:57 +0000

In Science, March 9, 1888, we read of a block of limestone, said to have fallen near Middleburgh, Florida. It was exhibited at the Sub-tropical Exposition, at Jacksonville. The writer, in Science, denies that it fell from the sky. His reasoning is: There is no limestone in the sky; Therefore this limestone did not fall from the sky.

Better reasoning I cannot conceive of — because we see that a final major premise — universal — true — would include all things: that, then, would leave nothing to reason about — so then that all reasoning must be based upon „something“ not universal, or only a phantom intermediate to the two finalities of nothingness and allness, or negativeness and positiveness.

La Nature 1890-2-127:

Fall, at Pel-et-Der (L’Aube) France, June 6, 1890, of limestone pebbles. Identified with limestone at Chateau Landon — or up and down in a whirlwind. But they fell with hail — which, in June, could not very well be identified with ice from Chateau-Landon. Coincidence, perhaps.

Upon page 70, Science Gossip, 1887, the Editor says, of a stone that was reported to have fallen at Little Lever, England, that a sample had been sent to him. It was sandstone. Therefore it had not fallen, but had been on the ground in the first place. But, upon page 140, Science Gossip, 1887, is an account of „a large, smooth, waterworn, gritty sandstone pebble“ that had been found in the wood of a full-grown beech tree. Looks to me as if it had fallen red-hot, and had penetrated the tree with high velocity. But I have never heard of anything falling red-hot from a whirlwind –

The wood around this sandstone pebble was black, as if charred.

Dr. Farrington, for instance, in his books, does not even mention sandstone. However, the British Association, though reluctant, is less exclusive: Report of 1860, p. 107: substance about the size of a duck’s egg, that fell at Raphoe, Ireland, June 9, 1860 — date questioned. It is not definitely said that this substance was sandstone, but that it „resembled“ friable sandstone.

(Aus „The Book Of The Damned„, 1919)

Fort für euch 9 – The Revival

nachtstrom — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:50:11 +0000

Liverpool Echo, Jan. 18 — „Wales in the Grip of Supernatural Forces!“ This was in allusion to the developing frenzies of the revival, and the accompanying luminous things, or beings, that had been reported. „Supernatural“ is a word that has no place in my vocabulary. In my view, it has no meaning, or distinguishment. If there never has been, finally, a natural explanation of anything, everything is, naturally enough, the supernatural.

The grip was a grab by the craze. The excitement was combustion, or psycho-electricity, or almost anything except what it was supposed to be, and perhaps when flowing from human batteries there was a force that was of use to the luminous things that hung around. Maybe they fed upon it, and grew, and glowed, brilliant with nourishing ecstasies. See data upon astonishing growths of plants, when receiving other kinds of radio-active nourishment, or stimulation. If a man can go drunk on God, he may usefully pass along his exhilarations to other manifestations of godness.

There were flares where they’d be least expected. In the big stores, in the midst of waiting on customers, shop girls would suddenly, or electrically, start clapping hands and singing. [...] There were confession-addicts who, past possibility of being believed, proclaimed their own wickedness, and then turned to public confessions for their neighbours, until sinful neighbours appealed to the law for protection. In one town, a men went from store to store, „returning“ things that he had not stolen. Bands of girls roved the streets, rushing earnestly and mischievously into the more sedate churches, where the excitation was not encouraged, singing and clapping their hands, all of them shouting, and some of them blubbering, and then some of the most sportive ones blubbering, compelled into a temporary uniformity. This clapping of hands, in time with the singing, was almost irresistible: some vibrational reason: power of the rhythm to harmonize diverse units; primitive power of the drum-beat. Special trains set out from Liverpool to Welsh meeting-places, with sightseers, who hadn’t a concern for the good of their souls; vendors of things that might have a sale; some earnest ones. Handclapping started up, and emotional furies shot through Wales.

(Aus “Lo!“, 1931)

Fort für euch 8 – Electric Girl

nachtstrom — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:43:50 +0000

There are many accounts of poltergeist-phenomena that are so obscured by the preconceptions of witnesses that one can’t tell whether they are stories of girls who had occult powers, or of invisible beings, who, in the presence of girl-mediums, manifested. But the story of Angelique Cottin is an account of a girl, who, by an unknown influence of her own, acted upon objects in ways like those that have been attributed to spirits. The phenomena of Angelique Cottin, of the town of La Perriere, France, began upon January 15, 1846, and lasted ten weeks. Anybody who would like to read an account of this wild, or undeveloped, talent, that is free from interpretations by spiritualists and anti-spiritualists, should go to the contemporaneous story, published in the Journal des Debats (Paris) February, 1846. Here are accounts by M. Arago and other scientists. When Angelique Cottin went near objects, they bounded away. She could have made a perpetual motion machine whiz. She was known as the Electric Girl, so called, because nobody knew what to call her. When she tried to sit in a chair, there was low comedy. The chair was pulled away, or, rather, was invisibly pushed away. There was such force here that a strong man could not hold the chair. A table, weighing 60 pounds, rose from the floor, when she touched it. When she went to bed, the bed rocked.

(Aus “Wild Talents“, 1932)

Fort für euch 7 – Botschaften vom Mars

nachtstrom — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 09:54:15 +0000

New York Tribune, Sept. 2, 1921: „J.C.H. Macbeth, London Manager of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd., told several hundred men, at a luncheon of the Rotary Club, of New York, yesterday, that Signor Marconi believed he had intercepted messages from Mars, during recent atmospheric experiments with wireless on board his yacht Electra, in the Mediterranean. Mr. Macbeth said that Signor Marconi had been unable to conceive of any other explanation of the fact that, during his experiments he had picked up magnetic wavelengths of 150,000 metres, whereas the maximum length of wave-production in the world today is 14,000 metres. The regularity of the signals, Mr. Macbeth declared, disposed of any assumption that the waves might have been caused by electrical disturbance. The signals were unintelligible, consisting of a code, the speaker said, and the only signal recognized was one resembling the letter V in the Marconi code.“

(Aus “New Lands“, 1923)

Fort für euch 6 – Die fliegende Schlange

nachtstrom — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 05:24:44 +0000

I don’t know what will be thought generally of our data, but in the New York Times, July 6, 1873, the writer of General Notes tells of something that he considered „the very worst case of delirium tremens on record.“ This was before my time. He copied from the Bonham (Texas) Enterprise — that a few days before the time of writing, a man living 5 or 6 miles from Bonham, had told of having seen something like an enormous serpent, floating over his farm; and that other men working in the fields had seen the thing and had been frightened. I suppose that, equally delirious, inhabitants of the backwoods of China, would similarly describe one of this earth’s airships floating over their farms. I don’t know that this one account, considered alone, amounts to anything, but, in the Times, of the 7th of July, I found something else noted. A similar object had been reported from Fort Scott, Kansas. „About half way above the horizon, the form of a huge serpent, apparently perfect in form, was plainly seen.“

(Aus „Lo!„, 1931)

Fort für euch 5 – Unheimliche Friseure

nachtstrom — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:32:37 +0000

There were accounts in the London newspapers, of Dec. 2 and 10, 1922, of a scare in places east and west of London. In a street, in Uxbridge, Middlesex, a woman found that her braid had been cut off. She had been aware of no such operation, but remembered that, in a crowd, her hat had been pushed over her eyes. According to the stories, women were terrorized by „a vanishing man.“ „Disappeared as if by magic.“ It is an uncatchable again, a defiant fellow, operating openly, as if confident that he could not be caught. Note that these are not ghost stories. They are stories of human beings, who seemed to have ghostly qualities, or powers. Dorris Whiting, aged 17, approaching her home, in the village of Orpington, saw a man, leaning on the gate. As she was passing him, he grabbed her, and cut off her hair. The girl screamed, and her father and brother ran to her. They searched, but the clipper was unfindable. A maid, employed by Mrs. Glanfield, of Crofton Hall, Orpington, was pounced upon by a man, who hacked off a handful of her hair. He vanished. There was excitement in Orpington, at the end of a bus route. A girl exclaimed that much of her hair had been cut off. Merely this does not seem mysterious; it seems that a deft fellow could have done this without being seen by the other passengers. But other girls were saying whatever girls say when they discover that their hair has been cut off. At Enfield, a girl named Brand, employed as a typist, at the Constitutional Club, was near the club house, one morning, about eight o’clock, when a man grabbed her and cut off her hair. „No trace of him was found, though the search was taken up a minute after the outrage.“

(Aus „Wild Talents„, 1932)

Fort für euch 4 – Besucher von anderen Welten

nachtstrom — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:53:00 +0000

I should like to think that inhabitants of other worlds, or other parts of one existence, have been teleported to this earth. How I’d like it, if I were teleported the other way, has nothing to do with what I’d like to think has befallen somebody else. But I can’t say that our own stories, anyway so far, have the neat and convincing finish of the conventional stories. Toward the end of the year 1850, or I should say a „mysterious stranger,“ was found wandering in a village near Frankfort-on-the-Oder. How he got there, nobody knew. See the Athenæum, April 15, 1851. We are told that his knowledge of German was imperfect. [...] The man was taken to Frankfort where he told his story, or where, to pose as a linguist, somebody told one for him. It was told that his name was Joseph Vorin, and that he had come from Laxaria. Laxaria is in Sakria, and Sakria is far from Europe — „beyond vast oceans.“

In the London Daily Mail, Sept. 18, 1905, and following issues, are accounts of a young man who had been arrested in Paris, charged with vagrancy. It was impossible to understand him. In vain had he been tried with European and Asiatic languages, but, by means of signs, he had made known that he had come from Lisbian. Eisar was the young man’s word for a chair: a table was a lotoba, and his sonar was his nose. Mr. George R. Sims, well-known criminologist, as well as a story writer, took the matter up scientifically. As announced by him, the mystery had been solved by him. The young man, an impostor, had transposed letters, in fashioning his words. So the word raise, transposed, becomes eisar. But what has a raise to do with a chair? It is said that true science is always simple. A chair raises one, said Mr. Sims, simply. Now take the word sonar. As we see, when Mr. Sims points it out to us, that word is a transposition of the word snore, or is almost. That’s noses, or relation to noses.

(Aus „Lo!„, 1931)

Fort für euch 3 – Engel am Himmel

nachtstrom — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 06:31:20 +0000

In a pamphlet entitled Wonderful Phenomena by Curtis Eli, is the report of an occurrence, or of an alleged occurrence, that was investigated by Mr. Addison A. Sawin, a spiritualist. He interpreted in the only way that I know of, and that is the psychochemic process of combining new data with preconceptions with which they seem to have affinity. It is said that, at Warwick, Canada West (Ontario), Oct. 3, 1843, somebody named Charles Cooper heard a rumbling sound in the sky, and saw a cloud, under which were three human forms, „perfectly white,“ sailing through the air above him, little higher than the tree-tops. It is said that the beings were angels. They were male angels. That is orthodox. The angels wafted through the air, but without motions of their own, and an interesting observation is that they seemed to have belts around their bodies — as if they had been let down from a vessel above, though this poor notion is not suggested in the pamphlet. They „moaned.“ Cooper called to some men who were laboring in another field, and they saw the cloud, but did not see the forms of living beings under it. It is said that a boy had seen the beings in the air, „side by side, making a loud and mournful noise.“ Another person, who lived six miles away, is quoted: „He saw the clouds and the persons, and heard the sounds.“ Mr. Sawin quotes others, who had seen „a very remarkable cloud,“ and had heard the sounds, but had not seen the angels. He ends up: „Yours, in the glorious hope of the resurrection of the soul.“ The gloriousness of it is an inverse function of the dolefulness of it: Sunday Schools will not take kindly to the doctrine — be good and you will moan forever. One supposes that the glorious hope colored the whole investigation.

(Aus „New Lands„, 1923)

Fort für euch 2 – Massenpsychologie

nachtstrom — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:55:49 +0000

New York Sun, May 22, 1928 — story from the town of Newton, Mass. In this town, a physician was, by telephone, called to the home of William M. Duncan. There was nobody to meet him at the front door, but he got into the house. He called, but nobody answered. There seemed to be nobody at home, but he went through the house. He came to a room, upon the floor of which were lying four bodies. There was no odor of gas, but the doctor worker over the four, as if upon cases of asphyxiation, and they revived, and tried to explain. Duncan had gone to his room, and, upon entering it, had dropped, unconscious. Wondering at what was delaying him, his wife had followed, and down she had fallen. One of his sons came next, and, upon entering this room, had fallen to the floor. The other son, by chance, went to this room, and felt something overcoming him. Before losing consciousness, he had staggered to the telephone.

The doctor’s explanation was „mass psychology.“

(Aus: „Wild Talents„, 1932)