[i] "He overwhelmed her with catastrophic endearments---"
[ii] 
LO!

CHARLES FORT
author of NEW LANDS and
THE BOOK OF THE DAMNED

Introduction by
TIFFANY THAYER
Illustrated by
ALEXANDER KING
Published in New York by
CLAUDE KENDALL
[iii] 
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 9, 1931
SECOND PRINTING MARCH 3, 1931


COPYRIGHT, 1931, CLAUDE KENDALL
DESIGNED BY AARON SUSSMAN, SET
UP, PRINTED AND BOUND BY J.J.
LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW
YORK. PAPER FURNISHED BY PERKINS
AND SQUIRE, NEW YORK.
[iv] 
ILLUSTRATIONS

"He overwhelmed her with catastrophic endearments---" FRONTISPIECE

FACING PAGE
"A whirlwind runs amok, and is filled with confusions---" 18
"---and maybe for ages the secret of it has been known by esoteric ones---" 66
"There have been sudden appearances of mice---" 80
"Ordinarily, one pays little if any attention to astronomers---" 100
"An epidemic of fancied observations---" 112
"Recall Voltaire's incredulity as to fossils---" 150
"Everybody is supposed to know his own wolf---" 170
"We have only faith to guide us---" 242
"In rivalry to religious mysticism, a scientific pornography---" 262
"The inhabitants who cried to the heavens prayed to Epilepsy---" 296
"The natives were told there was no danger---" 336
[vi] 
LO! 
 
[1] 
INTRODUCTION 





CLOSED

Because it has been discovered that the earth does not revolve about the sun and 
does not rotate on an axis; because the "stars" have been found to be lights 
only a few miles away; because almost every pronouncement from this hall of 
learning issued since its corner-stone was so solemnly laid has been a mistake, 
a joke, an error or a hoax -- the older and more susceptible of the professors 
who once played whilst here in the shadow of the refracting telescope have gone 
away to die of chagrin while the younger of us take a short trip to what we have 
so often jokingly referred to as "the constellation Orion". Back in thirty days. 

(Signed) The Astronomers 





Can you imagine the consternation in class room and counting house if the 
astronomers should suddenly become honest enough and frank enough to post this 
notice on the door of Yerkes or Mount Wilson Observatory? But rest content. It 
will not appear until Charles Fort and you and I have mouldered many a year 
under the sod of this stationary or nearly stationary earth. [1/2] 
Charles Fort has published three books. The first, The Book of the Damned, was 
issued in 1919 by Boni and Liveright. Do you remember how important new books 
were in 1919? It depended, of course, upon who wrote them. No one had ever heard 
of Charles Fort. Yet, by my calculations, the stream of data which began to flow 
from this man's hand in 1919 had been in the process of accumulation since 1904. 

Mr. Fort has this one satisfaction, if he cares to enjoy it, that probably no 
other book had such a select group of readers; and few books have ever stirred 
their limited audiences to such a degree. The readers were mostly writers. It 
was that kind of book. Four or five friends of mine took it to their bosoms as a 
source book, a mine of plots, a text for the study of startling and amazing 
utterance. Believe it or not, books now current, of very recent date, owe 
Charles Fort a tremendous but unacknowledged debt. 
Wild men, the stormy souls who admitted no masters and no rules, rushed to pay 
homage to Charles Fort when his first book appeared. The correspondents of 
Garrett P. Serviss continued to correspond with Garrett P. Serviss. The world 
went on as usual. 
But -- for the first time in written history -- the half conscious reading 
public had the opportunity, if it cared to take it, to read of ten thousand 
occurrences on this earth which the Great God Science had failed to explain, had 
refused to explain or had explained with gross imperfections, from a thoughtful 
standard. 
Ben Hecht reviewed The Book of the Damned in The Chicago Daily News. The review 
has become almost classic. It appeared before the publication of Erik Dorn, 
Hecht's first novel. 
It began: [2/3] 
I am the first disciple of Charles Fort. He has made a terrible onslaught upon 
the accumulated lunacy of fifty centuries. The onslaught will perish. The lunacy 
will survive, intrenching itself behind the derisive laughter of all good 
citizens.... Whatever the purpose of Charles Fort, he has delighted me beyond 
all men who have written books in this world. Mountebank or Messiah, it matters 
not. Henceforth I am a Fortean. If it has pleased Charles Fort to perpetuate a 
Gargantuan jest upon unsuspecting readers, all the better. If he has in all 
seriousness heralded forth the innermost truths of his soul, well and good. I 
offer him this testament. I believe. 
It is a little difficult to find in the book just what Ben Hecht believed. Mr. 
Fort was extremely careful to offer no theories or hypotheses of his own to 
supplant those his data assailed. None, that is, which he cared to develop 
dogmatically. But regardless of the absence of anything to believe, I was 
converted too. I "believed" -- anything Charles Fort wished me to. 
Mr. Hecht goes on: 
Has science by a process of maniacal exclusion of telltale data, of telltale 
phenomena, foisted an algebraic Mother Goose upon the world in the name of 
astronomy? 
An when we answer "Yes!" -- we have expressed what we believe. 
Mr. Hecht again: 
...that the theory he has hurled into being is destined, like some phantom 
gargoyle, to perch itself astride every telescope and laboratory test tube in 
the land. [3/4] 
But this prediction has not come noticeably true. So far as I can observe 
nothing Mr. Fort has said has had the slightest effect upon dogmatic science. 
The "accumulated lunacy of fifty centuries," the "algebraic Mother Goose" remain 
ascendant. All of this was more than eleven years ago. 
I tried to learn once, what H. L. Mencken had said of The Book of the Damned. He 
was going around busting things. One would think there would be some affinity. I 
could not learn. Now, Mr. Fort tells me that he called it "poppycock" or 
something similar. Upon analysis that is understandable. Mr. Mencken, like 
Voltaire, had to "believe" in science and its pronouncements to carry on against 
religion. It is incomprehensible to him that they may both be products of the 
same imbecilic urge to worship what is not readily explainable. 
In 1923, Liveright published a second volume of "pallid data," New Lands, 
arranged by Charles Fort from his enormous collection of material and 
embellished in his individual, sulphurous and vitriolic style. Booth Tarkington 
wrote an introduction to this book. He, too, "believed" -- to this extent: 
(After dipping here and there in The Book of the Damned -- ) 
I turned back to the beginning and read this vigorous and astonishing book 
straight through, and then re-read it for the pleasure it gave me in the way of 
its writing and in the substance of what it told. Doré should have illustrated 
it, I thought, or Blake. Here indeed was a "brush dipped in earthquake and 
eclipse"; though the wildest mundane earthquakes are but earthquakes in teapots 
compared to what goes on in the visions [4/5] conjured up before us by Mr. 
Charles Fort. For he deals in nightmare, not on the planetary, but on the 
constellation scale, and the imagination of one who staggers along after him is 
frequently left gasping and flaccid. 
This book was a further digest of newspaper and magazine references to the 
inexplicable -- usually accompanied with scientists' "explanations". As the 
title suggested, lands -- not planets -- in the sky, were becoming thinkable. It 
is Charles Fort's way to confine his thinking to the thinkable, an altogether 
too obvious method for science to bother with. 
It is this nasty habit which separates Mr. Fort from quacks and cranks, doctors 
and professors and all other mystics. It is this reprehensible practice and his 
demonic skill at overturning all that is pompous, smug and satisfied with the 
most surprising of phrases that endear his books to other men cursed with 
logical or -- as he would prefer it stated -- quasi-logical minds. 
In 1924 I wrote to Charles Fort, submitting some data I had come upon. We have 
corresponded sporadically ever since, until he returned to the United States 
recently. My first letter found him "searching the British Museum Library for 
more data." Data, more data, more data. For at least twenty-six years he has 
been accumulating, weighing, sifting, recording and arranging data. Who cares? 
Do you? Not a bit. That alarm clock will call you just as monotonously morning 
after morning no matter what shape the Earth may be. Roast beef will bring about 
the same price per plate -- no matter. Well, run along. Read something else. 
Charles Fort is heady stuff, too strong for most stomachs, too bitter for 
orthodox palates. 
But here is his third book which is getting itself recorded on this page of Time 
we call the twentieth [5/6] century -- just in case it may some day come out 
scandalously in the tabloids of the future that man did not know so damned much 
in 1931 as he was pleased to think he did. 
But these clippings and records of sources are the greatest single monument to 
revolt against smug complacency in existence. When the textbooks of another day 
refer to this, our age, as a time of great mental contentment, of mutual 
back-slapping and no troublesome doubts, it is just possible that the name 
Charles Fort will be mentioned as the lone dissenter, the one small voice raised 
in defense of suspended judgments. It will be best to see that Mr. Fort is 
thoroughly dead before that day arrives, because he could brook no such honors. 
If his findings are ever accepted as ultimate or absolute, he will attack 
himself in a fever of frustration, and attempt to establish that even at his 
rightest he was wrong. I can see him, still at his interminable game of a 
personal improvement upon checkers, moving phalanxes and platoons of "men" 
across a board of more than a thousand squares, planning his own destruction. 
This is Charles Fort's third book and it will find some readers. It may even be 
answered by dogmatic science because -- whereas the two previous volumes were 
profanations of astronomic deities -- this is the gage thrown down. It is the 
loudest scream of all. It flouts and taunts and jeers at astronomers who sleep 
well o'nights, leaving the discoveries to interested amateurs. It records the 
murder of 30,000 people -- by dogmatic science. What will his next book reveal? 
It is better not to guess. Nor does it greatly matter. As Charles Fort points 
out, the velocity of thought is not mensurable because it moves too slowly. 
So. 
Take your time, little earth people; swallow the [6/7] neat capsules of cut and 
dried, tailor-made explanations that have sufficed you since the fifteenth 
century. Send your babies to school to learn that we know the earth is round 
because the hull of a ship leaving port disappears before the topsail. Go on 
adding two and two and getting four: this makes you better citizens and jurymen. 
Don't listen to Charles Fort. He is a maniac. It doesn't matter how many new 
"stars" appear in the sky just before great volcanic eruptions or disastrous 
earthquakes here at home. It is all coincidence. But before you decide he 
belongs in an asylum, make a list of historic maniacs. Begin thus: 
Bacon 
Columbus 
Bell 
Morse 
Pasteur 
Galileo 
Tycho Brahé 
Newton 
The Brothers Wright 
Go haphazardly through the ages and note what became of them; note how wrong 
they were at their rightest; and note what today's historians say about the 
general placidity and self-satisfaction that prevailed as each of these men 
reached intellectual maturity. Note especially that. Note how it was pointed out 
to us in our advancement that the common people of those dark ages were content 
in their ignorance. Then shudder that you have been asleep so long. Look with 
horror in your mirror at the eyes without curiosity; at the lips which never 
question. Read two hundred words in this book and return to your unquestioning, 
incurious smug and complacent shell if you can. If you can, for [7/8] the sake 
of decency go die. You are no more than half alive at best. If you can; pray to 
your God for forgiveness for learning to read. It was a waste of time to teach 
you. If you can; go back to sleep, go back to your dreams from which your alarm 
will summon you to another day at your desk or lathe or -- God forgive you -- 
your books. Go about your business. So long as Charles Fort lives -- and he has 
lived in every age -- pure knowledge will advance, creepingly, unsupported, 
unpatronized, scorned. So long as one man among all the millions of the earth is 
willing to forswear all that life offers and to blind himself by gruelling, 
nerve-racking, boresome and cruel daily toil over piles of newspapers for 
twenty-six years and more, without reward or hope of reward either here or in 
Heaven, just so long will knowledge advance without any support, without any 
brass bands, without any medals or crowns of laurel. 
But -- if you can not go back to sleep, and you finish all that Charles Fort has 
written, come, rejoice with us that he was born so constituted that he could 
give us this thing. Come, make merry about the cosmic May-pole he has erected. 
It was necessary that it be put up so that future Charles Forts will have 
something to tear down. 


TIFFANY THAYER. [8] 






PART ONE 
CHAPTER ONE 








[11] 
1





A NAKED man in a city street -- the track of a horse in volcanic mud -- the 
mystery of the reindeer's ears -- a huge, black form, like a whale, in the sky, 
and it drips red drops as if attacked by celestial swordfishes -- an appalling 
cherub appears in the sea -- 
Confusions. 
Showers of frogs and blizzards of snails -- gushes of periwinkles down from the 
sky -- 
The preposterous, the grotesque, the incredible -- and why, if I am going to 
tell of hundreds of these, is the quite ordinary so regarded? 
An unclothed man shocks a crowd -- a moment later, if nobody is generous with an 
overcoat, somebody is collecting handkerchiefs to knot around him. 
A naked fact startles a meeting of a scientific so- [1/12] ciety -- and whatever 
it has for loins is soon diapered with conventional explanations. 
Chaos and muck and filth -- the indeterminable and the unrecordable and the 
unknowable -- and all men are liars -- and yet -- 
Wigwams on an island -- sparks in their columns of smoke. 
Centuries later -- the uncertain columns are towers. What once were fluttering 
sparks are the motionless lights of windows. According to critics of Tammany 
Hall, there has been monstrous corruption upon this island: nevertheless, in the 
midst of it, this regularization has occurred. A woodland sprawl has sprung to 
stony attention. 
The Princess Cariboo tells, of herself, a story, in an unknown language, and 
persons who were themselves liars, have said that she lied, though nobody has 
ever known what she told. The story of Dorothy Arnold has been told thousands of 
times, but the story of Dorothy Arnold and the swan has not been told before. A 
city turns to a crater, and casts out eruptions, as lurid as fire, of living 
things -- and where Cagliostro came from, and where he went, are so mysterious 
that only historians say they know -- venomous snakes crawl on the sidewalks of 
London -- and a star twinkles -- 
But the underlying oneness in all confusions. 
An onion and a lump of ice -- and what have they in common? 
Traceries of ice, millions of years ago, forming on the surface of a pond -- 
later, with different materials, these same forms will express botanically. If 
something had examined primordial frost, it could have predicted jungles. Times 
when there was not a living thing on the face of this earth -- and, upon 
pyrolusite, there were etchings of forms that, after the appear- [12/13] ance of 
cellulose, would be trees. Dendritic sketches, in silver and copper, prefigured 
ferns and vines. 
Mineral specimens now in museums -- calcites that are piles of petals -- or that 
long ago were the rough notes of a rose. Scales, horns, quills, thorns, teeth, 
arrows, spears, bayonets -- long before they were the implements and weapons of 
living things they were mineral forms. I know of an ancient sketch that is today 
a specimen in a museum -- a colorful, little massacre that was composed of 
calcites ages before religion was dramatized -- pink forms impaled upon mauve 
spears, sprinkled with drops of magenta. I know of a composition of barytes that 
appeared ages before the Israelites made what is said to be history -- blue 
waves heaped high on each side of a drab streak of forms like the horns of 
cattle, heads of asses, humps of camels, turbans, and upheld hands. 
Underlying oneness -- 
A new star appears -- and just how remote is it from drops of water, of unknown 
origin, falling on a cotton-wood tree, in Oklahoma? Just what have the tree and 
the star to do with the girl of Swanton Novers, upon whom gushed streams of 
oils? And why was a clergyman equally greasy? Earthquakes and droughts and the 
sky turns black with spiders, and, near Trenton, New Jersey, something pegged 
stones at farmers.(1) If lights that have been seen in the sky were upon vessels 
of explorers from other worlds -- then living in New York City, perhaps, or in 
Washington, D.C., perhaps, there are inhabitants of Mars, who are secretly 
sending reports upon the ways of this world, to their Governments? 
A theory feels its way through surrounding ignorance -- the tendrils of a vine 
feel their way along a trellis -- a wagon train feels its way across a prairie 
-- 
Underlying oneness -- [13/14] 
Projections of limonite, in a suffusion of smoky quartz -- it will be ages 
before this little mineral sketch can develop into the chimneys and the smoke of 
Pittsburgh. But it reproduces when a volcano blasts the vegetation on a 
mountain, and smoke-forms hang around the stumps of trees. Broken shafts of an 
ancient city in a desert -- they are projections in the tattered gusts of a 
sandstorm. It's Napoleon Bonaparte's retreat from Moscow -- ragged bands, in the 
grimy snow, stumbling amidst abandoned cannon. 
Maybe it is only coincidence -- or what may there be to Napoleon's own belief 
that something was supervising him? Suppose it is that, in November, 1812, 
Napoleon's work, as a factor in European readjustments, was done. There was no 
military power upon this earth that could remove this one, whose work was done. 
There came coldness so intense that it destroyed the Grand Army. 
Human knowledge -- and its fakes and freaks. An astronomer, insulated by his 
vanity, seemingly remote from the flops and frailties of everybody else, may not 
be so far away as he thinks he is. He calculates where an undiscovered planet 
will be seen. "Lo!" -- as the astronomers like to say -- it is seen.(2) But, for 
some very distressing, if not delightful, particulars, see, later, an account of 
Lowell's planet. Stars are said to be trillions of miles away, but there are 
many alleged remotenesses that are not so far away as they are said to be. 
The Johnstown flood, and the smash of Peru, and the little nigger that was 
dragged to a police station -- 


* * *



Terrified horses, up on their hind legs, hoofing a storm of frogs. [14/15] 
Frenzied springboks, capering their exasperations against frogs that were 
tickling them. 
Storekeepers, in London, gaping at frogs that were tapping on their window 
panes. 
We shall pick up an existence by its frogs. 
Wise men have tried other ways. They have tried to understand our state of 
being, by grasping at its stars, or its arts, or its economics. But, if there is 
an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether 
with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One 
measures a circle, beginning anywhere. 
I have collected 294 records of showers of living things. 
Have I? 
Well, there's no accounting for the freaks of industry. 
It is the profound conviction of most of us that there never has been a shower 
of living things. But some of us have, at least in an elementary way, been 
educated by surprises out of much that we were "absolutely sure" of, and are 
suspicious of a thought, simply because it is a profound conviction. 
I got the story of the terrified horses in the storm of frogs from Mr. George C. 
Stoker, of Lovelock, Nevada. Mr. John Reid, of Lovelock, who is known to me as a 
writer upon geological subjects, vouches for Mr. Stoker, and I vouch for Mr. 
Reid. Mr. Stoker vouches for me. I have never heard of anything -- any 
pronouncement, dogma, enunciation, or pontification -- that was better 
substantiated. 
What is a straight line? A straight line is the shortest distance between two 
points. Well, then, what is the shortest distance between two points? That is a 
straight line. According to the test of ages, the definition that a straight 
line is a straight line cannot be im- [15/16] proved upon. I start with a logic 
as exacting as Euclid's. 
Mr. Stoker was driving along the Newark Valley, one of the most extensive of the 
desert regions of Nevada. Thunderstorm. Down came frogs. Up on their hind legs 
went the horses. 
The exasperated springboks. They were told of, in the Northern News (Vryburg, 
Transvaal) March 21, 1925, by Mr. C.J. Grewar, of Uitenhage.(3) Also I have a 
letter from Mr. Grewar. 
The Flats -- about 50 miles from Uitenhage -- springboks leaping and shaking 
themselves unaccountably. At a distance, Mr. Grewar could conceive of no 
explanation of such eccentricities. He investigated, and saw that a rain of 
little frogs and fishes had pelted the springboks. Mr. Grewar heard that some 
time before, at the same place, there had been a similar shower. 
Coffins have come down from the sky: also, as everybody knows, silk hats and 
horse collars and pajamas. But these things have come down at the time of a 
whirlwind. The two statements that I start with are that no shower exclusively 
of coffins, nor of marriage certificates, nor of alarm clocks has been recorded: 
but that showers exclusively of living things are common. And yet the 
explanation by orthodox scientists who accept that showers of living things have 
occurred is that the creatures were the products of whirlwinds. The explanation 
is that little frogs, for instance, fall from the sky, unmixed with anything 
else, because, in a whirlwind, the creatures were segregated, by differences in 
specific gravity. But when a whirlwind strikes a town, away go detachables in a 
monstrous mixture, and there's no findable record of washtubs coming down in one 
place, all the town's cats in one falling battle that lumps its infelicities in 
one place, and all the kit- [16/17] tens coming down together somewhere else, in 
a distant bunch that miaows for its lump of mothers. 
See London newspapers, August 18th and 19th, 1921 -- innumerable little frogs 
appeared, during a thunderstorm, upon the 17th, in streets of the northern part 
of London. 
I have searched in almost all London newspapers, and in many provincial 
newspapers, and in scientific publications. There is, findable by me, no mention 
of a whirlwind upon the 17th of August, and no mention of a fall from the sky of 
anything else that might be considered another segregated discharge from a 
whirlwind, if there had been a whirlwind. 
A whirlwind runs amok, and is filled with confusions: and yet to the 
incoherences of such a thing have been attributed the neatest of 
classifications. I do not say that no wind ever scientifically classifies 
objects. I have seen orderly, or logical, segregations by wind-action. I ask for 
records of whirlwinds that do this. There is no perceptible science by a 
whirlwind, in the delivery of its images. It rants trees, doors, frogs, and 
parts of cows. But living things have fallen from the sky, or in some unknown 
way have appeared, and have arrived homogeneously. If they have not been 
segregated by winds, something has selected them. 
There have been repetitions of these arrivals. The phenomenon of repetition, 
too, is irreconcilable with the known ways of whirlwinds. There is an account, 
in the London Daily News, Sept. 5, 1922, of little toads, which for two days had 
been dropping from the sky, at Chalon-sur-Saône, France.(4) 
Lies, yarns, hoaxes, mistakes -- what's the specific gravity of a lie, and how 
am I to segregate? 
That could be done only relatively to a standard, and I have never heard of any 
standard, in any religion, philosophy, science, or complication of house- 
[17/18] hold affairs that could not be made to fit any requirement. We fit 
standards to judgments, or break any law that it pleases us to break, and fit to 
the fracture some other alleged law that we say is higher or nobler. We have 
conclusions, which are the products of senility or incompetence or credulity, 
and then argue from them to premises. We forget this process, and then argue 
from the premises, thinking we began there. 
There are accounts of showering things that came from so far away that they were 
unknown in places where they arrived. 
If only horses and springboks express emotions in these matters, we'll be calm 
thinking that even living things may have been transported to this earth from 
other worlds. 
Philadelphia Public Ledger, Aug. 8, 1891 -- a great shower of fishes, at 
Seymour, Indiana.(5) They were unknown fishes. Public Ledger, Feb. 6, 1890 -- a 
shower of fishes, in Montgomery County, California.(6) "The fishes belong to a 
species altogether unknown here." New York Sun, May 29, 1892 -- a shower, at 
Coalburg, Alabama, of an enormous number of eels that were unknown in 
Alabama.(7) Somebody said that he knew of such eels, in the Pacific Ocean. Piles 
of them in the streets -- people alarmed -- farmers coming with carts, and 
taking them away for fertilizing material. 
Our subject has been treated scientifically, or too scientifically. There have 
been experiments. I have no more of an ill opinion of experimental science that 
I have of everything else, but I have been an experimenter, myself, and have 
impressions of the servile politeness of experiments. They have such an 
obliging, or ingratiating, way that there's no trusting the flatterers. In the 
Redruth (Cornwall, England) Independent, August 13 and following issues, 1886, 
correspondents tell of a shower of snails near Redruth.(8) [18/19] There were 
experiments. One correspondent, who believed that the creatures were sea snails, 
put some in salt water. They lived. Another correspondent, who believed that 
they were not sea snails, put some in salt water. They died. 
I do not know how to find out anything new without being offensive. To the 
ignorant, all things are pure: all knowledge is, or implies, the degradation of 
something. One who learns of metabolism, looks at a Venus, and realises she's 
partly rotten. However, she smiles at him, and he renews his ignorance. All 
things in the sky are pure to those who have no telescopes. But spots on the 
sun, and lumps on the planets -- and, being a person of learning, or, rather, 
erudition, myself, I've got to besmirch something, or nobody will believe I am 
-- and I replace the pure, blue sky with tthe wormy heavens -- 
London Evening Standard, Jan. 3, 1924 -- red objects falling with snow, at 
Halmstead, Sweden.(9) 
They were red worms, from one to four inches in length. Thousands of them 
streaking down with the snowflakes -- red ribbons in a shower of confetti -- a 
carnival scene that boosts my discovery that meteorology is a more picturesque 
science than most persons, including meteorologists, have suspected -- and I 
fear me that my attempt to besmirch has not been successful, because the worms 
of heaven seem to be a jolly lot. However, I cheer up at thought of chances to 
come, because largely I shall treat of human nature. 
But how am I to know whether these things fell from the sky in Sweden, or were 
imagined in Sweden? 
I shall be scientific about it. Said Sir Isaac Newton -- or virtually said he -- 
"If there is no change in the direction of a moving body, the direction of a 
moving body is not changed." "But," continued he, "if something be changed, it 
is changed as much as it is [19/20] changed." So red worms fell from the sky, in 
Sweden, because from the sky, in Sweden, red worms fell. How do geologists 
determine the age of rocks? By the fossils in them. And how do they determine 
the age of fossils? By the rocks they're in. Having started with the logic of 
Euclid, I go on with the wisdom of a Newton. 
New Orleans Daily Picayune, Feb. 4, 1892 -- enormous numbers of unknown brown 
worms that had fallen from the sky, near Clifton, Indiana.(10) San Francisco 
Chronicle, Feb. 14, 1892 -- myriads of unknown scarlet worms -- somewhere in 
Massachusetts -- not seen to fall from the sky, but found, covering several 
acres, after a snow storm.(11) 
It is as if with intelligence, or with the equivalence of intelligence, 
something has specialized upon transporting, or redistributing, immature and 
larval forms of life. If the gods send worms, that would be kind, if we were 
robins. 
In Insect Life, 1892, p. 335, the Editor, Prof. C.V. Riley, tells of four other 
mysterious appearances of worms, early in the year 1892.(12) Some of the 
specimens he could not definitely identify. It is said that at Lancaster, Pa., 
people in a snow storm caught falling worms on their umbrellas. 
The wise men of our tribes have tried to find God in a poem, or in whatever they 
think they mean by a moral sense in people, or in inscriptions in a book of 
stone, which by one of the strangest freaks of omission is not now upon 
exhibition in from fifteen to twenty synagogues in Asia Minor, and all up and 
down Italy -- 
Crabs and periwinkles -- 
Ordinary theologians have overlooked crabs and periwinkles -- 
Or mystery versus the fishmonger. [20/21] 
Upon May 28th, 1881, near the city of Worcester, England, a fishmonger, with a 
procession of carts, loaded with several kinds of crabs and periwinkles, and 
with a dozen energetic assistants, appeared at a time when nobody on a busy road 
was looking. The fishmonger and his assistants grabbed sacks of periwinkles, and 
ran in a frenzy, slinging the things into fields on both sides of the road. They 
raced to gardens, and some assistants, standing on the shoulders of other 
assistants, had sacks lifted to them, and dumped sacks over the high walls. 
Meanwhile other assistants, in a dozen carts, were furiously shovelling out 
periwinkles, about a mile along the road. Also, meanwhile, several boys were 
busily mixing in crabs. They were not advertising anything. Above all there was 
secrecy. The cost must have been hundreds of dollars. They appeared without 
having been seen on the way, and they melted away equally mysteriously. There 
were houses all around, but nobody saw them. 
Would I be so kind as to tell what, in the name of some slight approximation to 
sanity, I mean by telling such a story? 
But it is not my story. The details are mine, but I have put them in, strictly 
in accordance with the circumstances. There was, upon May 28th, 1881, an 
occurrence near Worcester, and the conventional explanation was that a 
fishmonger did it. Inasmuch as he did it unobserved, if he did it, and inasmuch 
as he did it with tons upon acres, if he did it, he did it as I have described, 
if he did it. 
In Land and Water, June 4, 1881, a correspondent writes that, in a violent 
thunderstorm, near Worcester, tons of periwinkles had come down from the sky, 
covering fields and a road, for about a mile.(13) In the issue of June 11th, the 
Editor of Land and Water writes that specimens had been sent to him.(14) He 
notes the mysteri- [21/22] ous circumstance, or the indication of a selection of 
living things, that appears in virtually all the accounts. He comments upon an 
enormous fall of sea creatures, unaccompanied by sand, pebbles, other shells, 
and sea weed. 
In the Worcester Daily Times, May 30, it is said that, upon the 28th, news had 
reached Worcester of a wonderful fall from the sky, of periwinkles on Cromer 
Gardens Road, and spread far around in fields and gardens.(15) Mostly, people of 
Worcester were incredulous, but some had gone to the place. Those who had faith 
returned with periwinkles. 
Two correspondents then wrote that they had seen the periwinkles upon the road 
before the storm, where probably a fishmonger had got rid of them.(16) So the 
occurrence conventionalised, and out of these surmises arose the story of the 
fishmonger, though it has never been told before, as I have told it. 
Mr. J. Lloyd Bozward, a writer whose notes on meteorological subjects are 
familiar to readers of scientific periodicals of this time, was investigating, 
and his findings were published in the Worcester Evening Post, June 9th.(17) As 
to the story of the fishmonger, note his statement that the value of periwinkles 
was 16 shillings a bushel. He says that a wide area on both sides of the road 
was strewn with periwinkles, hermit crabs, and small crabs of an unascertained 
species. Worcester is about 30 miles from the mouth of the River Severn, or say 
about 50 miles from the sea.(18) Probably no fishmonger in the world ever had, 
at one time, so many periwinkles, but as to anybody having got rid of a stock, 
because of a glutted market, for instance, Mr. Bozward says: "Neither upon 
Saturday, the 28th, nor Friday, the 27th, was there such a thing procurable in 
Worcester as a live periwinkle." Gardens as well as fields were strewn. There 
were high walls around these [22/23] gardens. Mr. Bozward tells of about 10 
sacks of periwinkles, of a value of about 20, in the markets of Worcester, that, 
to his knowledge, had been picked up. Crowds had filled pots and pans and bags 
and trunks before he got to the place. "In Mr. Maund's garden, two sacks were 
filled with them." It is his conclusion that the things fell from the sky during 
the thunderstorm. So his is the whirlwind-explanation. 
There are extraordinary occurrences and conventionalization cloaks them, and the 
more commonplace the cloakery, the more satisfactory. Periwinkles appear upon a 
tract of land, through which there is a road. A fishmonger did it. 
But the crabs and the fishmonger -- and if the fishmonger did the periwinkles, 
did he do the crabs, if he did it? 
Or the crabs and the whirlwind -- and, if the periwinkles were segregated from 
pebbles and seaweed, why not from the crabs, if segregation did it? 
The strongest point for the segregationists is in their own mental processes, 
which illustrate that segregations, whether by wind action, or not, do occur. If 
they have periwinkles and crabs to explain, and, say, that with a story of a 
fishmonger, or of a whirlwind, they can explain the periwinkles, though so they 
cannot explain the crabs, a separation of data occurs in their mentalities. They 
forget the crabs and tell of the periwinkles. [23] 





1. The pegging was at Trenton, New York, (not New Jersey). 
2. Robert Ball. The Story of the Heavens. New York: Cassell and Co.: 1905. Rev. 
ed., 230-1. 1901, Rev. ed., 330. 
3. "More frogs from the sky." Northern News (Vrysburg, Transval), March 21, 
1925. 
4. London Daily News, (September 5, 1922), (Not found here.) 
5. Philadelphia Public Ledger, (August 8, 1891), (Not found here.) 
6. "Varities." Philadelphia Public Ledger, February 6, 1890, p.5 c.9. 
7. "It rained strange eels." New York Sun, May 29, 1892, p.5 c.5. "A shower of 
eels." Philadelphia Times, May 22, 1892, p.14 c.6. 
8. "A shower of shells." Redruth Independent, August 13, 1886, p.3 c.3. 
Observer. "Shower of shells. Redruth Independent, August 20, 1886, p.4 c.5. 
According to Observer, the snails died when put in salt water. Nat. "Shower of 
shells." Redruth Independent, August, 27, 1886, p.4 c.3. According to Nat., some 
were put in salt water, and it did not appear to harm them. Helix. "Shower of 
shells." Redruth Independent, September 10, 1886, p.4 c.2. Nat. "Shower of 
shells." Redruth Independent, September 17, 1886, p.4 c.1. Helix. "Shower of 
shells." Redruth Independent, September 24, 1886, p.4 c.2. 
9. "Red snowfall." London Evening Standard, January 3, 1924, p.12 c.4. Correct 
location is Halmstad, Sweden, not Halmstead. 
10. "It rained worms." New Orleans Daily Picayune, February 4, 1892, p.4 c.4. 
11. "Colored snow." San Francisco Daily Chronicle, February 14, 1892, p.6 c.5. 
12. "Insects on the surface of snow." Insect Life, 4 (June 1892): 335-6. Falls 
of worms, or larvae, were reported at: West Park, New York, on February 11 and 
18; at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on March 2; and, Williamstown, Massachusetts, on 
February 27, 1892. 
13. "A shower of periwinkles." Land and Water, 31 (June 4, 1881): 422. 
14. "The shower of periwinkles near Worcester." Land and Water, 31 (June 11, 
1881): 449. 
15. "The storm in this district." Worcester Daily Times and Journal, May 30, 
1881, p.3 c.1. 
16. One correspondent, E.A. Hardman, claimed to see periwinkles confined upon 
the road before the rain commenced, "the same as if they had fallen or been 
thrown out at the back of a truck or cart as it went along." "Saturday's storm 
in Worcester." Worcester Daily Times and Journal, May 31, 1881, p.2 c.6. The 
second correspondent, John Stanton, claimed to have seen and walked over them, 
as they lay "from gutter to gutter," half an hour before the storm. John 
Stanton. "The storm at St. John's." Worcester Daily Times and Journal, June 2, 
1881, p.3 c.1. A third correspondent, Gibson, who twice passed through the 
roads, claimed not to have seen any periwinkles about 11:30 A.M. but found the 
road literally covered" sometime between 12 and 12:30 P.M., before the 
thunderstorm. A.A. Gibson. "The fall of periwinkles." Worcester Daily Times and 
Journal, June 11, 1881, p.3 c.1. 
17. J. Lloyd Bozward. "The case of the periwinkles." Worcester Daily Times and 
Journal, June 9, 1881, p.3 c.3-4. Bozward's article was not in the Worcester 
Evening Post; however, additional articles relating this incident are found in 
both newspapers as follows: "The storm at St. John's." Worcester Daily Times and 
Journal, June 1, 1881, p.3 c.4. "The fall of periwinkles." Worcester Daily Times 
and Journal, June 7, 1881, p.3 c.1-2. G.P. Yeats. "The fall of periwinkles." 
Worcester Daily Times and Journal, June 10, 1881, p.2 c.6. "Severe 
thunderstorm." Worcester Evening Post, May 30, 1881, p.3 c.1. W.E. Tucker. "The 
periwinkles again." Worcester Evening Post, June 13, 1881, p.2 c.5-6. Correct 
quotes: "Neither on Saturday, the 28th...," and, "Mr. Maund, market gardener, 
states that the quantity which fell in his garden is estimated at two sacks." 
There is no mention of high walls around the gardens, though Bozward mentions 
their being found in hedge-rows. 
18. Worcester is about 50 milesfrom the "mouth" of the Severn and the Bristol 
Channel. 












PART ONE 
CHAPTER TWO 








[24] 
2





FROGS and fishes and worms -- and these are the materials of our expression upon 
all things. 
Hops and flops and squirms -- and these are the motions. 
But we have been considering more than matter and motion, to start with: we have 
been considering attempts by scientists to explain them. By explanation, I mean 
organization. There is more than matter and motion in our existence: there is 
organization of matter and motion. 
Nobody takes a little clot that is central in a disease germ, as Absolute Truth; 
and the latest scientific discovery is only something for ideas to systematize 
around. But there is this systemization, or organization, and we shall have to 
consider it. [24/25] 
There is no more meaning -- though that may be utmost meaning -- to arrangements 
of observations, than there is to arrangements of protoplasm in a microbe, but 
it must be noted that scientific explanations do often work out rather well -- 
but say in medical treatments, if ailments are mostly fancied; or in 
stock-market transactions, except in a crisis; or in expert testimony in the 
courts, except when set aside by other expert testimony -- 
But they are based upon definitions -- 
And in phenomenal existence there is nothing that is independent of everything 
else. Given that there is Continuity, everything is a degree or aspect of 
whatever everything else is. Consequently there is no way of defining anything, 
except in terms of itself. Try any alleged definition. What is an island? An 
island is a body of land completely surrounded by water. And what is a body of 
land that is completely surrounded by water? 
Among savage tribesmen, there is a special care for, or even respectfulness for, 
the mentally afflicted. They are regarded as in some obscure way representing 
God's chosen. We recognize the defining of a thing in terms of itself, as a sign 
of feeble-mindedness. All scientists begin their works with just such 
definitions, implied, if not stated. And among our tribes there is a special 
care for, or even respectfulness for, scientists. 
It will be an expression of mine that there is a goodness in this idiocy. But, 
no matter what sometimes my opinion may be, I am not now writing that God is an 
Idiot. Maybe he, or it, drools comets and gibbers earthquakes, but the scale 
would have to be considered at least super-idiocy. 
I conceive, or tell myself that I conceive, that if we could have a concept of 
our existence as a whole, we could have a kind of understanding of it, rather 
akin to [25/26] what, say, cells in an animal organism could have of what is a 
whole to them, if they should not be mere scientists, trying to find out what a 
bone is, or the flow of blood in a vein is, in itself; but if they could 
comprehend what the structures and functions of the Organism are, in terms of 
Itself. 
The attempted idea of Existence as Organism is one of the oldest of the 
pseudo-thoughts of philosophy. But the idea in this book is not metaphysical. 
Metaphysical speculation are attempts to think unthinkably, and it is quite hard 
enough to think thinkably. There can be nothing but bafflement for anybody who 
tries to think of Existence as Organism: our attempt will be to think of an 
existence as an organism. Having a childish liking for a little rhetoric, now 
and then, I shall call it God. 
Our expressions are in terms of Continuity. If all things merge away into one 
another, or transmute into one another, so that nothing can be defined, they are 
of a oneness, which may be the oneness of one existence. I state that, though I 
accept that there is continuity, I accept that also there is discontinuity. But 
there is no need, in this book, to go into the subject of 
continuity-discontinuity, because no statement that I shall make, as a monist, 
will be set aside by my pluralism. There is a Oneness that both submerges and 
individualizes. 
By the continuity of all things we have, with a hop and a flop and a squirm, 
jumped from frogs toward finality. We have rejected whirlwinds and the 
fishmonger, and have incipient notions upon a selectiveness and an intelligent, 
or purposeful, distribution of living things. 
What is selecting and what is distributing? 
The old-fashioned theologian thinks of a being, with the looks of himself, 
standing aside somewhere and directing operations. [26/27] 
What, in any organism, is selecting and distributing -- say, oxygen in lungs, 
and materials in stomachs? 
The organism itself. 
If we can think of our existence as a conceivable-sized formation -- perhaps one 
of countless things, beings, or formations in the cosmos -- we have 
graspableness, or we have the outlines and the limits within which to think. 
We look up at the stars. The look is of a revolving shell that is not far away. 
And against such a view there is no opposition except by an authoritative 
feeblemindedness, which most of us treat respectfully, because such is the 
custom in all more or less savage tribes. 
Mostly in this book I shall specialize upon indications that there exists a 
transportory force that I shall call Teleportation. I shall be accused of having 
assembled lies, yarns, hoaxes, and superstitions. To some degree I think so, 
myself. To some degree I do not. I offer the data. [27] 









PART ONE 
CHAPTER THREE 








[28] 
3





THE subject of reported falls from the sky, of an edible substance, in Asia 
Minor, is confused, because reports have been upon two kinds of substances. It 
seems that the sugar-like kind cannot be accepted. In July, 1927, the Hebrew 
University of Jerusalem sent an expedition to the Sinai Peninsula to investigate 
reported showers of "manna." See the New York Times, Dec. 4, 1927.(1) Members of 
the expedition found what they called "manna" upon leaves of tamarisk tress, and 
on the ground underneath, and explained that it was secreted by insects. But the 
observations of this expedition have nothing to do with data, or stories, of 
falls from the sky of fibrous, convoluted lumps of a substance that can be 
ground into an edible flour. A dozen times, since early in the 19th century -- 
and I have no definitely dated [28/29] data upon still earlier occurrence -- 
have been reported showers of "manna" in Asia Minor. 
An early stage within the shell of an egg -- and a protoplasmic line of growth 
feels out through the surrounding substance -- and of itself it has no means of 
subsistence, or of itself it is lost. Nourishment and protection and guidance 
come to it from the whole. 
Or, in wider existence -- several thousand years ago -- a line of fugitives 
feels out in a desert. It will be of use to coming social organizations. But in 
the desert, it is unprovided for and is withering. Food falls from the sky. 
It is one of the most commonplace of miracles. Within any womb an embryonic 
thing in unable to provide for itself, but "manna" is sent to it. Given an 
organic view of an existence, we think of the supervision of a whole upon its 
parts. 
Or that once upon a time, a whole responded to the need of a part, and then kept 
on occasionally showering "manna" thousands of years after a special need for it 
had ceased. This looks like stupidity. It is in one of my moments of piety that 
I say this, because, though in our neo-theology there is no worship, I note that 
in this conception of what we may call godness, I supply grounds for devotions. 
Let a god change anything, and there will be reactions of evil as much as of 
good. Only stupidity can be divine. 
Or occasional falls of "manna," to this day, in Asia Minor, may be only one 
factor in a wider continuance. It may be that an Organism, having once showered 
a merely edible substance upon its chosen phenomena, has been keeping this up, 
as a symbol of favouritism, by which said chosen phenomena have been receiving 
abundances of "manna" in many forms, ever since. 
The substance that occasionally falls from the sky, in Asia Minor, comes from 
far away. The occurrences [29/30] are far apart, in time, and always the 
substance is unknown where it falls, and its edibleness is sometimes found out 
by the sight of sheep eating it. Then it is gathered and sold in the markets. We 
are told that it has been identified as a terrestrial product. We are told that 
these showers are aggregations of Lecanora esculenta, a lichen that grows 
plentifully in Algeria. We are told that whirlwinds catch up these lichens, 
lying loose, or easily detachable, on the ground. But note this: 
There have been no such reported showers in Algeria. 
There have been no such reported showers in places between Algeria and Asia 
Minor. 
The nearest similarity that I can think of is of tumble weeds, in the Western 
States, though tumble weeds are much larger. Well, then, new growths of them, 
when they're not much larger. But I have never heard of a shower of tumble 
weeds. Probably the things are often carried far by whirlwinds, but only scoot 
along the ground. A story that would be similar to stories of lichens, from 
Algeria, falling in Asia Minor, would be of tumble weeds, never falling in 
showers, in Western States, but repeatedly showering in Ontario, Canada, having 
been carried there by whirlwinds. 
Out of a dozen records, I mention that, in Nature, 43-255, and in La Nature, 
36-82, are accounts of one of the showers, in Asia Minor.(2) The Director of the 
Central Dispensary of Bagdad had sent to France specimens of an edible substance 
that had fallen from the sky, at Meridin, and at Diarbekis (Turkey in Asia) in a 
heavy rain, the last of May, 1890. They were convoluted lumps, yellow outside 
and white inside. They were ground into flour from which excellent bread was 
made. According to the ready-made convention, botanists said that the objects 
were speci- [30/31] mens of Lecanora esculenta, lichens that had been carried in 
a whirlwind. 
London Daily Mail, Aug. 13, 1913 -- that streets in the town of Kirkmanshaws, 
Persia, had been covered with seeds, which the people thought were the manna of 
biblical times.(3) The Royal Botanical Society had been communicated with, and 
had explained that the objects had been carried from some other part of this 
earth's surface, by a whirlwind. "They were white in substance, and of a 
consistency of Indian corn." 
I believe nothing. I have shut myself away from the rocks and wisdoms of ages, 
and from the so-called great teachers of all time, and perhaps because of that 
isolation I am given to bizarre hospitalities. I shut the front door upon Christ 
and Einstein, and at the back door hold out a welcoming hand to little frogs and 
periwinkles. I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written. I cannot 
accept that the products of minds are subject-matter for beliefs. But I accept, 
with reservations that give me freedom to ridicule the statement at any other 
time, that showers of an edible substance that has not been traced to an origin 
upon this earth, have fallen from the sky, in Asia Minor. 
There have been suggestions that unknown creatures and unknown substances have 
been transported to this earth from other fertile worlds, or from other parts of 
one system, or organism, a composition of distances that are small relatively to 
the unthinkable spans that astronomers think they can think of. There have been 
suggestions of a purposeful distribution in this existence. Purpose in Nature is 
thinkable, without conventional theological interpretations, if we can conceive 
of our existence, or the so-called solar system, and the stars around, as one 
organic state, formation, or being. I can make no demarcation between the 
organic, or the functional, and the purposeful. When, in an animal- [31/32] 
organism, osteoblasts appear and mend a broken bone, they represent purpose, 
whether they know what they're doing or not. Any adaptation may be considered an 
expression of purpose, if by purpose we mean nothing but intent upon adaptation. 
If we can think of our whole existence, perhaps one of countless organisms in 
the cosmos, as one organism, we can call its functions and distributions either 
organic or purposeful, or mechanically purposeful. [32] 





1. "Sinai yields secret of manna." New York Times, December 4, 1927, s. 11 p. 4. 

2. "Notes." Nature, 43 (January 15, 1891): 254-6, at 255. Gaston Tissandier. 
"Pluie de manne en Turquie d'Asie." Nature (Paris), 1891, 1 (January 10): 82. 
Nature states that this fall of manna occurred in August of 1890; and, the 
locations are now identified as Mardin and Diyarbakir, both in Turkey. 
3. "Modern fall of manna." London Daily Mail, August 13, 1913, p.3 c.6. The 
location was Kermanshan, Persia, (Iran), not Kirkmanshaws. Correct quote: 
"...substance and of the consistency of Indian corn." 












PART ONE 
CHAPTER FOUR 








[33] 
4





OVER the town of Noirfontaine, France, one day in April, 1842, there was a 
cloudless sky, but drops of water were falling. See back to data upon 
repetitions. The water was falling, as if from a fixed appearing-point, 
somewhere above the ground, to a definite area beneath. The next day water was 
still falling upon this one small area, as mysteriously as if a ghost aloft were 
holding the nozzle of an invisible hose. 
I take this account from the journal of the French Academy of Sciences (Comptes 
Rendus) vol. 14, p. 664.(1) 
What do I mean by that? 
I don't mean anything by that. At the same time, I do mean something by the 
meaninglessness of that. I mean that we are in the helpless state of a standard- 
[33/34] less existence, and that the appeal to authority is as much of a wobble 
as any other of our insecurities. 
Nevertheless, though I know of no standards by which to judge anything, I 
conceive -- or accept the idea -- of something that is The Standard, if I can 
think of our existence as an Organism. If human thought is a growth, like all 
other growths, its logic is without foundation of its own, and is only the 
adjusting constructiveness of all other growing things. A tree can not find out, 
as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot 
find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time. For whatever 
is supposed to be meant by progress, there is no need in human minds for 
standards of their own: this is in the sense that no part of a growing plant 
needs guidance of its own devising, nor special knowledge of its own as to how 
to become a leaf or a root. It needs no base of its own, because the relative 
wholeness of the plant is relative baseness to its parts. At the same time, in 
the midst of this theory of submergence, I do not accept that human minds are 
absolute nonentities, just as I do not accept that a leaf, or a root, of a 
plant, though so dependent upon a main body, and so clearly only a part, is 
absolutely without something of an individualizing touch of its own. 
It is the problem of continuity-discontinuity, which perhaps I shall have to 
take up sometime. 
However -- 
London Times, April 26, 1821 -- that the inhabitants of Truro, Cornwall, were 
amused, astonished, or alarmed, "according to nerve and judgment," by arrivals 
of stones, from an unfindable source, upon a house in Carlow Street.(2) The 
mayor of the town visited the place, and was made so nervous by the rattling 
stones that he called out a military guard. He investigated, and the soldiers 
investigated, and the clatter [34/35] of theorists increased the noise. Times, 
May 1 -- stones still rattling, theorists still clattering, but nothing found 
out.(3) 
Flows of frogs -- flows of worms -- flows of water -- flows of stones -- just 
where do we expect to draw a line? Why not go on to thinking that there have 
been mysterious transportations of human beings? 
We'll go on. 
A great deal of the opposition to our data is connotative. Most likely when Dr. 
Gilbert rubbed a rod and made bits of paper jump on a table, the opposition to 
his magic was directed not so much against what he was doing as against what it 
might lead to. Witchcraft always has a hard time, until it becomes established 
and changes its name. 
We hear much of the conflict between science and religion, but our conflict is 
with both of these. Science and religion always have agreed in opposing and 
suppressing the various witchcrafts. Now that religion is inglorious, one of the 
most fantastic of transferences of worships is that of glorifying science, as a 
beneficent being. It is the attributing of all that is of development, or of 
possible betterment to science. But no scientist has ever upheld a new idea, 
without bringing upon himself abuse from other scientists. Science has done its 
utmost to prevent whatever science has done. 
There are cynics who deny the existence of human gratitude. But it seems that I 
am no cynic. So convinced am I of the existence of gratitude that I see in it 
one of our strongest oppositions. There are millions of persons who receive 
favors that they forget: but gratitude does exist, and they've got to express it 
somewhere. They take it out by being grateful to science for all that science 
has done for them, a gratitude, which, according to their dull perceptions won't 
cost them anything. So there is economic indignation against any- [35/36] body 
who is disagreeable to science. He is trying to rob the people of a cheap 
gratitude. 
I like a bargain as well as does anybody else, but I can't save expenses by 
being grateful to Science, if for every scientist who has perhaps been of 
benefit to me, there have been many other scientists who have tried to strangle 
that possible benefit. Also, if I'm dead broke, I don't get benefits to be 
grateful for. 
Resistance to notions in this book come from persons who identify industrial 
science, and the good of it, with the pure, or academic, or aristocratic 
sciences that are living on the repute of industrial science. In my own mind 
there is distinguishment between a good watchdog and the fleas on him. If the 
fleas, too, could be taught to bark, there'd be a little chorus that would be of 
some tiny value. But fleas are aristocrats. 
London Times, Jan. 13, 1843 -- that, according to the Courrier de l'Isére, two 
little girls, last of December, 1842, were picking leaves from the ground, near 
Clavaux (Livet), France, when they saw stones falling around them.(4) The stones 
fell with uncanny slowness. The children ran to their homes, and told of the 
phenomenon, and returned with their parents. Again stones fell, and with the 
same uncanny slowness. It is said that relatively to these falls the children 
were attractive agents. There was another phenomenon, an upward current, into 
which the children were dragged, as if into a vortex. We might have had data of 
mysterious disappearances of children, but the parents, who were unaffected by 
the current, pulled them back. 
In the Toronto Globe, Sept. 9, 1880, a correspondent writes that he had heard 
reports of most improbable occurrences upon a farm, near the township of 
Wellesley, Ontario.(5) He went to the place, to interview the farmer, Mr. 
Manser. As he approached the farmhouse, he saw that all the windows were boarded 
up. [36/37] He learned that, about the end of July, windows had begun to break, 
though no missiles had been seen. The explanation by the incredulous was that 
the old house was settling. It was a good explanation, except for what it 
overlooked. To have any opinion, one must overlook something. The disregard was 
that, quite as authentic as the stories of breaking windows, were stories of 
falls of water in the rooms, having passed through walls, showing no trace of 
such passage. It is said that water had fallen in such volumes, from 
appearing-points in rooms, that the furniture of the house had been moved to a 
shed. In all our records openness of phenomena is notable. The story is that 
showers fell in rooms, when the farmhouse was crowded with people. For more 
details see the Halifax Citizen, Sept. 13, 1880.(6) 
I omit about sixty instances of seeming teleportations of stones and water, of 
which I have records. Numerousness hasn't any meaning, as a standard to judge 
by. 
The simplest cases of seeming teleportations are flows of stones, into open 
fields, doing no damage, not especially annoying anybody, and in places where 
there were no means of concealment for mischievous or malicious persons. There 
is a story of this kind, in the New York Sun, June 22, 1884.(7) June 16th -- a 
farm near Trenton, N.J. -- two young men, George and Albert Sanford, hoeing in a 
field -- stones falling. There was no building anywhere near, and there was not 
even a fence behind which anybody could hide. The next day stones fell again. 
The young men dropped their hoes and ran to Trenton, where they told of their 
experiences. They returned with forty or fifty amateur detectives, who spread 
out and tried to observe something, or more philosophically sat down and arrived 
at conclusions without observing anything. Crowds [37/38] came to the cornfield. 
In the presence of crowds, stones continued to fall from a point overhead. 
Nothing more was found out. 
A pig and his swill -- 
Or Science and data -- 
Or that the way of a brain is only the way of a belly -- 
We can call the process that occurs in them either assimilative or digestive. 
The mind-worshipper might as well take guts for his god. 
For many strange occurrences there are conventional explanations. In the mind of 
a conventionalist, reported phenomena assimilate with conventional explanations. 
There must be disregards. The mind must reject some data. This process, too, is 
both alimentary and mental. 
The conventional explanation of mysterious flows of stones is that they are 
peggings by neighbors. I have given data as I have found them. Maybe they are 
indigestible. The conventional explanation of mysterious flows of water is that 
they are exudations from insects. If so there must sometimes be torrential bugs. 

New York Sun, Oct. 30, 1892 -- that, day after day, in Oklahoma, where for weeks 
there had been a drought, water was falling upon a large cottonwood tree, near 
Stillwater.(8) A conventionalist visited this tree. He found insects. In Insect 
Life, 5-204, it is said that the Stillwater mystery had been solved.(9) Dr. 
Neel, Director of the Agricultural Experimental Station, at Stillwater had gone 
to the tree, and had captured some of the insects that were causing the 
precipitation. They were Proconia undata Fab. 
And how am I going to prove that this was a senseless, or brutal, or anyway 
mechanical, assimilation? 
We don't have proofs. We have expressions. 
Our expression is that this precipitation in Okla- [38/39] homa was only one of 
perhaps many. We find three other recorded instances, at this time, and if they 
be not attributable to exudations from insects -- but we'll not prove anything. 
There is a theorem that Euclid never attempted. That is to take Q.E.D. as a 
proposition. 
In Science, 21-94, Mr. H. Chaplin, of Ohio University, writes that, in the town 
of Akron, Ohio -- about while water was falling upon a tree in Oklahoma -- there 
had been a continuous fall of water, during a succession of clear days.(10) 
Members of the faculty of Ohio University investigated, but had been unable to 
solve the problem. There was a definite and persistent appearing-point from 
which to a small area near a brickyard, water was falling. Mr. Chaplin, who had 
probably never heard of similar occurrences far from damp places, thought that 
vapors from this brickyard were rising, and condensing, and falling back. If so 
there would often be such precipitations over ponds and other bodies of water. 
About the same time, water was mysteriously appearing at Martinsville, Ohio, 
according to the Philadelphia Public Ledger, Oct. 19, 1892.(11) Behind a house, 
a mist was falling upon an area not more than a dozen feet square. St. Louis 
Globe-Democrat, Nov. 19 -- that, in Water Street, Brownsville, Pa., there was a 
garden, in which was a peach tree, upon which water was falling.(12) As to the 
insect-explanation, we note that statement that the water "seemed to fall from 
some height above the tree, and covered an area about 14 feet square." 
For all I know, some trees may have occult powers. Perhaps some especially 
gifted trees have power to transport water, from far away, in times of need. I 
noted a drought in Oklahoma, and then I looked up conditions in Ohio and 
Pennsylvania. Rainfall was [39/40] below normal. In Ohio, according to the 
Monthly Weather Review, of November, there was a drought.(13) A watery manna 
came to chosen trees. 
There is no sense in trying to prove anything, if all things are continuous, so 
that there isn't anything, except the inclusive of all, which may be Something. 
But æsthetically, if not scientifically, there may be value in expressions, and 
we'll have variations of our theme. There were, in places far apart, 
simultaneous flows of water from stationary appearing-points, in and around 
Charleston, S.C., in the period of the long series of earthquake shocks there. 
Later I shall touch more upon an idea that will be an organic interpretation of 
falls of water in places that have been desolated by catastrophes. About the 
middle of September, 1886, falling water from "a cloudless sky," never falling 
outside a spot 25 feet wide, was reported from Dawson, Georgia. This shower was 
not intermittent. Of course the frequently mentioned circumstance of the 
"cloudless sky" has no significance. Water falling all the way from the sky, 
even at time of slight breezes, cannot be thought of as localizing strictly upon 
an area a few yards in diameter. We think of appearing-points a short distance 
above the ground. Then showers upon a space 10 feet square were reported from 
Aiken, S.C. There were similar falls of water at Cheraw, S.C. For particulars, 
see the Charleston News and Courier, Oct. 8, 21, 25, 26.(14) For an account of 
falls of water, "from a cloudless sky," strictly to one point, in Charlotte, 
N.C., according to investigations by a meteorologist, see Monthly Weather 
Review, Oct., 1886.(15) In the New York Sun, Oct. 24, it is said that, for 14 
days, water had been falling from "a cloudless sky," to a point in Chesterfield 
County, S.C., falling so heavily that streams of it had gushed from roof 
pipes.(16) [40/41] 
Then came news that water was falling from a point in Charleston. 
Several days before, in the News and Courier, had been published the 
insect-explanation of falls of water. In the News and Courier, Nov. 5, a 
reporter tells that he had visited the place in Charleston, where it is said 
that water was falling, and that he had seen a fall of water. He climbed a tree 
to investigate. He had seen insects.(17) 
But there are limits to what can be attributed, except by the most desperate 
explainers, to insects. 
In the Monthly Weather Review, Aug., 1886, it is said that, in Charleston, Sept. 
4th, three showers of hot stones had been reported.(18) 
"An examination of these stones, shortly after they had fallen, forced the 
conviction that the public was being made the victim of a practical joke." 
How an examination of stones could demonstrate whether they had been slung 
humorously or not, is more than whatever brains I have can make out. Upon Sept. 
4th, Charleston was desolated. The great earthquake had occurred upon Aug. 31st, 
and continuing shocks were terrorizing the people. Still, I'd go far from my 
impressions of what we call existence, if I'd think that terror, or anything 
else, was ever homogeneous at Charleston, or anywhere else. Battles and 
shipwrecks, and especially diseases, are materials for humorists, and the fun of 
funerals never will be exhausted. I don't argue that in the midst of desolation 
and woe, at Charleston, there were no jokers. I tell a story as I found it 
recorded in the Charleston News and Courier, Sept. 6, and mention my own 
conclusion, which is that wherever jocular survivors of the catastrophe may have 
been cutting up capers, they were not concerned in this series of 
occurrences.(19) 
At 2.30 o'clock, morning of Sept. 4th, stones, which [41/42] were found to be 
"warm," fell near the News and Courier building, some of them bounding into the 
press room. Five hours later, when there was no darkness to hide mischievous 
survivors, more stones fell. It was a strictly localized repetition, as if one 
persisting current of force. At 1.30 o'clock in the afternoon again stones fell, 
and these were seen, coming straight down from a point overhead. If any 
conviction was forced, it was forced in the same old way as that in which for 
ages convictions have been forced, and that is by forcing agreements with prior 
convictions. Other details were published in the Richmond Whig: it is told that 
the stones, which were flint pebbles, ranging from the size of a grape to the 
size of a hen's egg, had fallen upon an area of 75 square feet, and that about a 
gallon of them had been picked up.(20) In A Descriptive Narrative of the 
Earthquake of August 31, 1886, Carl McKinley, an editor of the News and Courier, 
tells of two of these showers of stones, which, according to him, "undoubtedly 
fell."(21) 
The localized repetitions of showers of stones are so much like the localized 
repetitions of showers of water, that one, inclusive explanation, or expression, 
is called for. Insects did them? Or the fishmonger of Worcester had moved to 
South Carolina? 
A complication has been developing. Little frogs fell upon Mr. Stoker and his 
horses, but we had no reason to think that either Mr. Stoker or his horses had 
anything to do with bringing about the precipitation. But the children of 
Clavaux did seem to have something to do with showers of stones, and trees did 
seem to have something to do with the precipitations of water. 
Rand Daily Mail, May 29, 1922 -- that Mr. D. Neaves, living near Roodeport, 
employed as a chemist in Johannesburg, having for several months endured [42/43] 
showers of stones, had finally reported to the police.(22) Five constables, 
having been sent to the place, after dark, had hardly taken positions around the 
house, when a stone crashed on the roof. Phenomena were thought to associate 
with the housemaid, a Hottentot girl. She was sent into the garden, and stones 
fell vertically around her. This is said to have been one of the most mysterious 
of the circumstances: stones fell vertically, so that there was no tracing them 
to an origin. Mr. Neaves' home was an isolated building, except for outhouses. 
These outhouses were searched, but nothing to suspect was found. The stones 
continued to fall from an unknown source. 
Police Inspector Cummings took charge. He ordered all members of the family, 
servants, and newspaper men to remain in the house for a while: so everybody was 
under inspection. Outside were constables, and all around were open fields, with 
no means of concealment. Stones fell on the roof. Watched by the police, the 
Hottentot girl went to the well. A large stone fell near her. She ran back to 
the house, and a stone fell on the roof. It is said that everything that could 
be done was done, and that the cordon of police was complete. More stones fell. 
Convinced that in some way the girl was implicated, the Inspector tied her 
hands. A stone fell on the roof.(23) 
Then everything was explained. A "civilian," concealed in one of the outhouses, 
had been caught throwing a stone. If so, whoever wrote this account did not 
mention the name of the culprit, and it is not said that the police made any 
trouble for him for having made them work.(24) 
Then everything is explained again. It was said that the girl, Sara, had been 
taken to the police station, where she had confessed. "It is understood that 
Sara admits being a party to all the stone-throwing, [43/44] and has implicated 
two other children and a grown native. So ends the Roodeport ghost story, shorn 
of all its alleged supernatural trappings."(25) 
Though usually we do not think piously of the police, their stations are 
confessionals. But they're confessionals more in the scientific than in the 
religious sense. When a confessor holds a club over a conscience, he can bully 
statements with the success of any scientist who slugs data with a theory. There 
is much brutality in police stations and in laboratories, but I can't say that 
we're trying to reform anything; and if there never has been a Newton, or a 
Darwin, or an Einstein -- or a Moses, or a Christ, or a St. Augustine -- who has 
practised other than the third degree upon circumstances, I fear me that 
sometimes we are not innocent of one or two degrees, ourselves. 
However, the story reads more as if the girl had been taken to a barber shop. 
Her story was shorn, we read. It was clipped bald of all details, such as the 
cordon of police, search of the outhouses, and the taking of precautions, such 
as will not fit in with this yarn of the tricky kids. In this book we shall note 
much shearing.(26) 
The writer, in the Monthly Weather Review, is not the only clipper who forces a 
conviction, when he can. There was a case, in another part of South Africa, not 
long before the bombardments at Roodeport began. In the Klerksdorp Record, Nov. 
18, 1921, it is said that for several weeks there had been "mysterious 
stonethrowing by invisible agencies" at the houses of Mr. Gibbon Joseph and Mr. 
H.J. Minnair, in North Street.(27) A detective was put upon the case. He was a 
logician. It was a ghost story, or it was a case of malicious mischief. He could 
not pinch a ghost. So he accused two Negroes, and arrested them. The Negroes 
were tried upon testimony given by two boys [44/45] of their race. But the boys 
contradicted each other, and it was brought out that they were lying. They 
admitted that the logical detective had promised them five shillings to 
substantiate his syllogisms. 
In the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 12-260, is published a 
letter from Mr. W.G. Grottendieck, telling that, about one o'clock, one morning 
in September, 1903, at Dortrecht, Sumatra, he was awakened by hearing something 
fall on the floor of his room.(28) Sounds of falling objects went on. He found 
that little, black stones were falling, with uncanny slowness, from the ceiling, 
or the roof, which was made of large, overlapping, dried leaves. Mr. 
Grottendieck writes that these stones were appearing near the inside of the 
roof, not puncturing the material, if through this material they were passing. 
He tried to catch them at the appearing point, but, though they moved with 
extraordinary slowness, they evaded him. There was a coolie boy, asleep in the 
house, at the time. "The boy certainly did not do it, because at the time that I 
bent over him, while he was sleeping on the floor, there fell a couple of 
stones." There was no police station handy, and this story was not finished off 
with a neat and fashionable cut. 
I point out that these stories of flows of stones are not conventional stories, 
and are not well known. Their details are not standardized, like "clanking 
chains" in ghost stories, and "eyes the size of saucers," in sea serpent yarns. 
Somebody in France, in the year 1842, told of slow-moving stones, and somebody 
in Sumatra, in the year 1903, told of slow-moving stones. It would be strange, 
if two liars should invent this circumstance -- 
And that is where I get, when I reason. 
If strangeness be a standard for unfavorable judgment, I damn at a swipe most of 
this book. [45/46] 
But damnation is nothing to me. I offer the data. Suit yourself. 
Nobody can investigate the reported phenomena that we're taking up, without 
noticing the number of cases in which boys and girls, but a great preponderance 
of girls, appear. An explanation by those who disregard a great deal -- or 
disregard normally -- is that youngsters are concerned so much, because it is 
their own mischief. Poltergeist-phenomena, or teleportation of objects, in the 
home of Mr. Frost, 8 Ferrostone Road, London, for several months, early in the 
year 1921, can not be so explained. There were three children. Phenomena so 
frightened one of them that, in a nervous breakdown, she died (London Daily 
Express, April 2, 1921).(29) Another, in a similar condition, was taken to the 
Lewisham (London) Hospital (London Daily News, April 30, 1921).(30) 
In attempting to rationalize various details that we have come upon, or to 
assimilate them, or to digest them, the toughest meal is swallowing statements 
upon mysterious appearances in closed rooms, or passages of objects and 
substances through walls of houses, without disturbing the material of the 
walls. Oh, yes, I have heard of the "fourth dimension," but I am going to do 
myself some credit by not lugging in that particular way of showing that I don't 
know what I'm writing about. There's a story in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 
Jan. 27, 1888 -- large stones that were appearing and "falling slowly" in closed 
rooms in the home of Mr. P.C. Martin, Caldwell County, North Carolina.(31) 
Madras (India) Mail, March 5, 1888 -- pieces of brick that, in the presence of 
many investigators, were falling in a schoolroom, in Pondicherry.(32) 
I can understand this phenomenon, or alleged phenomenon, of appearances in 
closed rooms, no more than I can understand the passage of a magnetic field 
[46/47] of force through the wall of a house, without disturbing the material. 
But lines of this force do not transport objects through a dense material. Then 
I think of X-rays, which do something like this, if it be accepted that X-rays 
are aggregations of very small objects, or particles. X-rays do, or sometimes 
do, disturb materials penetrated by them, but this disturbance is not evident 
until after long continuance. 
If there is Teleportation, it is in two orders, or fields: electric and 
non-electric -- or phenomena that occur during thunderstorms, and phenomena that 
occur under a "cloudless sky," and in houses. In the hosts of stories that I 
have gathered -- but with which I have not swamped this book -- of showers of 
living things, the rarest of all statements is of injury to the falling 
creatures. Then, from impressions that have arisen from other data, we think 
that the creatures may not have fallen all the way from the sky, but may have 
fallen from appearing points not high above the ground -- or may have fallen a 
considerable distance under a counter-gravitational influence. 
I think that there may be a counter-gravitational influence upon transported 
objects, because of the many agreeing accounts -- more than I have told of -- of 
slow-falling stones, by persons who had probably never heard of other stories of 
slow-falling stones, and because I have come upon records of similar magic, or 
witchcraft, in what will be accepted as sane and sober meteorological 
observations. 
See the Annual Register, 1859-70 -- an account by Mr. E.J. Lowe, a meteorologist 
and an astronomer, of a fall of hailstones, at Nottingham, England, May 29, 
1859.(33) Though the objects were more than an inch across, they fell slowly. In 
September, 1873, near Clermont-Ferrand, France, according to La Nature, 7-289, 
hailstones, measuring from an inch to an inch [47/48] and a half across 
fell.(34) They were under an unknown influence. Notwithstanding their size, they 
fell so slowly that they did no damage. Some fell upon roofs, and rebounded, and 
it was as if these shook off the influence. Those that rebounded then fell 
faster than fell those that came down in an unbroken fall. For other records of 
this phenomenon, see Nature, 36-445; Illustrated London News, 34-546; and, Bull. 
Soc. Astro. de France, June 19, 1900.(35) 
If in the general conditions of a thunderstorm there be sometimes a 
counter-gravitational effect upon objects, somebody might find out how 
counter-gravitationally to electrify aircraft and aviators. If all work is 
opposition to gravitation, somebody may make a big discovery of benefit to 
general laziness. Elevators in skyscrapers might be run with half the power now 
needed. Here is an idea that may revolutionize industry, but just now I am too 
busy revolutionizing everything else, and I give this idea to the world, with 
the generosity of somebody who bestows something that isn't any good to him. 
But mysterious disappearances? 
Our data have been upon mysterious appearances. 
If I could appeal to what used to be supposed to be known as common sense, I'd 
ask whether something that mysteriously appears somewhere had not mysteriously 
disappeared somewhere else. 
Annals of Electricity, 6-499 -- Liverpool, May 11th, 1842 -- "not a breath of 
air."(36) Suddenly clothes on lines on a common shot upward. They moved away 
slowly. Smoke from chimneys indicated that above ground there was a southward 
wind, but the clothes moved away northward. 
There was another instance, a few weeks later. London Times, July 5th, 1842 -- a 
bright, clear day, at Cupar, Scotland, June 30th -- women hanging out clothes on 
[48/49] a common.(37) There was a sharp detonation, and the clothes on lines 
shot upward. Some fell to the ground, but others went on and vanished. There was 
a seeming of selection, which, because of possible bearing upon various 
observations of ours interests me. Though this was a powerful force, nothing but 
the clothes it seized was affected. I wonder about the detonation, largely 
because it is in agreement with a detail of still another story. 
The closeness in time of these two occurrences attracts my attention. They were 
a few weeks apart, and I have no other such record, until seventy-seven years 
later. A sensible suggestion is that somebody, in Cupar, having read the 
Liverpool story, had faked a similar story from his town. A suggestion that is 
not so sensible is that, in this year 1842, somebody had learned the secrets of 
teleportation, and to avoid attracting much attention in any one place was 
experimenting in places far apart. It seems likely enough to me that, if there 
be teleportation, human beings may have come upon knowledge of it, and may have 
used it. 
"Likely enough?" a spiritualist would say. "Has he never heard of apports?" 
But whether it's narrowness and bigotry, upon my part, or not, I do not go to 
séances for data. I have collected notes upon "mysterious robberies," wondering 
whether a teleportative power has ever been used criminally. As to apports, if a 
medium could transport sea shells from the sea to his cabinet, he could abstract 
funds from a bank to his pocket. If he could, but would not, how account for his 
being a medium? Looking through newspapers, I have had a searching eye for 
something like an account of a medium, who had become mysteriously rich, in a 
town where there had been shortages of funds: clerks accused of embezzlement, 
and convicted, but upon evidence that was not al- [49/50] together satisfactory. 
Although usually I can find data to "prove" anything that I want to "prove," I 
have come upon no such account, and I am sceptical as to apports, and think that 
mediums are like most of the rest of us, who are not criminals, having no 
exceptional abilities. However, there may be criminal adepts who are not known 
mediums. 
There was, in June, 1919, at Islip, Northampton, England, an occurrence like the 
occurrences at Liverpool and Cupar. London Daily Express, June 12, 1919 -- a 
loud detonation -- basketful of clothes shooting into the air.(38) Then the 
clothes came down. There may be ineffective teleportative seizures. 
London Daily Mail, May 6, 1910 -- phenomenon near Cantillana, Spain.(39) From 
ten o'clock in the morning until noon, May 4th, stones shot up from a spot in 
the ground. Loud detonations were heard. "Traces of an extinct volcano are 
visible at the spot, and it is believed that a new crater is being formed." But 
there is no findable record of volcanic activity in Spain, at this time -- nor 
at any other time. I am reminded of the loud noises that often accompany 
poltergeist disturbances. 
In Niles' Weekly Register, Nov. 4, 1815, there is an account of stones that had 
been watched rising in a field, near Marbleton, Ulster County, New York -- that 
these stones had been seen to rise three or four feet from the ground, then 
moving horizontally, from thirty to sixty feet.(40) 
Out in open fields, there have been showers of water, strictly localized, and of 
unknown origin. A Dr. Neel will be heard from.(41) He has captured, not 
indefinitely alluded to insects, but Proconia undata Fab. Every mystery has its 
fishmonger. Considered figuratively, he need not be a seller of fish. His name 
may be Smith, or O'Brien, or it may be Proconia Undata Fab. [50/51] 
But presumably in the winter-time, in England, members of the Proconia family 
are not busy and available for explanations. In the Chorley (Lancashire) 
Standard, Feb. 15, 1873, is a story of excitement in the town of Eccleston.(42) 
At Bank House, occupied by two elderly women and their niece, streams of water 
started falling, about the first of February, seemingly from ceilings. Furniture 
was soaked, and the occupants of the house were alarmed. The falls seemed to 
come from the ceiling, but "probably the most singular feature of the affair is 
that ceilings were apparently quite dry." See back to Mr. Grottendieck's story 
of objects that were appearing near a ceiling, or roof, with no signs of 
penetrating the material. Workmen had been called to the house, and had 
investigated, but were unable to explain. Openness again. House packed with 
neighbors, watching the showers. These data would make trouble for 
spiritualistic mediums and their requirements for special, or closed, 
conditions, and at least semi-darkness, if mediums were bothered by more than 
unquestioning or, occasionally politely questioning, faith. If some of them have 
been knocked about a bit, they were relatively few. Nobody in this house sat in 
a cabinet. Nobody was a logician. Nobody reasonably argued that chemists, for 
instance, must have special conditions, or their reactions will not work out. 
"For instance," said nobody, "how could you develop a photograph, except in the 
special conditions of darkness, or semi-darkness?" 
The look to me is that, throughout what is loosely called Nature, teleportation 
exists, as a means of distribution of things and materials, and that sometimes 
human beings have command, mostly unconsciously, though perhaps sometimes as a 
development from research and experiment, of this force. It is said that in 
savage tribes there are "rain makers," and it may be [51/52] that among savages 
there are teleportationists. Some years ago, I'd have looked superior, if 
anybody had said this to me but a good many of us are not so given to the 
"tut-tut!" as we used to be. It may be that in civilized communities, because of 
their storages, a power to attract flows of water, being no longer needed, has 
virtually died out, still appearing occasionally, however. 
It could be that, in reading what most persons think are foolish little yarns of 
falling stones, we are, visionarily, in the presence of cosmic constructiveness 
-- or that once upon a time this whole earrth was built up by streams of rocks, 
teleported from other parts of an existence. The crash of falling islands -- the 
humps of piling continents -- and then the cosmic humour of it all -- or utmost 
spectacularlity functioning, then declining, and surviving only as a vestige -- 
or that the force that once heaped the peaks of the Rocky Mountains now slings 
pebbles at a couple of farmers, near Trenton, N.J.(43) 
So I'd conceive of the existence of a force, and the use of it, unconsciously 
mostly, by human beings. It may be that, if somebody, gifted with what we think 
we mean by "agency," fiercely hates somebody else, he can, out of intense 
visualizations, direct, by teleportation, bombardments of stones upon his enemy. 

Water falls on a tree, in Oklahoma. It is told of in an entomological magazine. 
Water falls in a house in Eccleston. I read that in a spiritualists' periodical, 
though I went to a newspaper for the data. These are the isolations, or the 
specializations, of conventional treatments. I tell of water falling upon a 
tree, in Oklahoma, and of water falling in a house in Eccleston, and think that 
both phenomena are manifestations of one force.(44) It is my attempt to smash 
false demarcations: to take data away from narrow and exclusive [52/53] 
treatments by spiritualists, astronomers, meteorologists, entomologists: also 
denying the validity of usurpations of words and ideas by metaphysicians and 
theologians. But my interest is not only that of a unifier: it is in bringing 
together seeming incongruities, and finding that they have affinity. I am very 
much aware of the invigoration of products of ideas that are foreign to each 
other, if they mate. This is exogamy, practiced with thoughts -- to fertilize a 
volcanic eruption with a storm of frogs -- or to mingle the fall of an edible 
substance from the sky with the unexplained appearance of Cagliostro. But I am a 
pioneer and no purist, and some of these stud-stunts of introducing vagabond 
ideas to each other may have about the eugenic value of some of the romances in 
houses of ill fame. I can not expect to be both promiscuous and respectable. 
Later, most likely, some of these unions will be properly licensed. 
Sometimes, in what I call "teleportations," there seems to be "agency" and 
sometimes not. That the "agency" is not exclusively human, and has nothing to do 
with "spirits of the departed" is indicated, I suppose, if we accept that 
sometimes there are "occult powers" of trees. Some other time I may be able more 
clearly to think out an expression upon flows of pigeons to their homes, and 
flows of migratory birds, as teleportative, or quasi-teleportative. My 
suggestion as to the frequently reported "agency" of children, is that "occult 
forces" were, in earlier times of human affairs, far more prevalent, and far 
more necessary to the help and maintenance of human communities than they are 
now, with political and economic mechanisms somewhat well-established, or 
working, after a fashion; and that, wherein children are atavistic, they may be 
in rapport with forces that mostly human beings have outgrown. 
Though just at present I am no darling of the popes, [53/54] I expect to end up 
holy, some other time, with a general expression that all stories of miracles 
are not lies, or are not altogether lies; and that in the primitive conditions 
of the middle ages there were hosts of occurrences that now, considerably, 
though not altogether, have been outgrown. Anybody who broadly accepts the 
doctrine of relativity should accept that there are phenomena that exist 
relatively to one age, that do not, or do not so pronouncedly, exist in another 
age. I more or less accept a great deal that religionists piously believe. As I 
see myself, I represent a modernization of the old-fashioned atheist, who so 
sweepingly denied everything that seemed to interfere with his disbeliefs. 
There are of course other explanations of the "occult powers" of children. One 
is that children, instead of being atavistic, may occasionally be far in advance 
of adults, foreshadowing coming human powers, because their minds are not 
stifled by conventions. After that, they go to school and lose their 
superiority. Few boy-prodigies have survived an education. 
The outstanding suggestion, which, however, like many other suggestions, I 
cannot now develop, is that, if Teleportation exists, it may be used. It may be 
criminally used, or it may be used commercially. Cargoes, without ships, and 
freights, without trains, may be of traffics of the future. There may be 
teleportative voyages from planet to planet. 
Altogether, so many of our data are bound up with jokes, hoaxes, and flippant 
treatments that I think of the toy and play genesis of many practical 
inventions. Billions of dollars are to-day seriously drawing dividends from toys 
and games that were put to work. Billions of laughs and jeers have preceded 
solemn expressions of satisfaction with fat bank accounts. But this is only 
reasoning, and is nothing but logic and argu- [54/55] ment, and there have been 
billions of laughs that never turned into anything more satisfactory -- though 
where do I get the idea that there is anything more satisfactory than a laugh? 
If, in other worlds, or in other parts of one relatively little existence, there 
be people who are far ahead of terrestrians, perhaps, teleportatively, beings 
from other places have come to this earth. And have seen nothing to detain them. 
Or perhaps some of the more degraded ones have felt at home here, and have hung 
around, or have stayed here. I'd think of these fellows as throw-backs: 
concealing their origin, of course; having perhaps only a slightly foreign 
appearance; having affinity with our barbarisms, which their own races had cast 
off. I'd think of a feeling for this earth, in other worlds, as corresponding to 
the desire of most of us, now and then, to go to a South Sea Island and be 
degraded. Throw-backs, translated to this earth, would not, unless intensely 
atavistic, take to what we regard as vices, but to what their own far-advanced 
people regard as perhaps unmentionable, or anyway, unprintable, degradations. 
They would join our churches, and wallow in pews. They'd lose all sense of 
decency and become college professors. Let a fall start, and the decline is 
swift. They'd end up as members of Congress. 
There is another view, for which I am now gathering material -- 
New York Times, Dec. 6, 1930 -- "Scores die; 300 stricken by poison fog in 
Belgium; panic grips countryside. Origin complete mystery. War scenes 
recalled."(45) It may be that it was war. 
Mostly, explanations by the scientists were just about what one would expect, 
but, in the New York Telegram, Dec. 6, Prof. H.H. Sheldon was quoted -- "If 
there is a widespread, lethal fog in the Meuse [55/56] Valley, the conclusion of 
science would be that it is being deliberately caused by men or women."(46) 
It may be that inhabitants of other worlds, or other parts of one, organic 
existence, have declared war upon this earth, and have discharged down here, 
sometimes under cover of fogs, volumes of poisonous gases. I have other records 
that may indicate something of this kind, but, reluctantly, I give up this 
interesting notion, as applied to the occurrence of Dec. 5, 1930, because it 
associates with another phenomenon, of which I shall tell later. 
Only two weeks after the tragedy in Belgium, appeared the fishmonger. The writer 
of an editorial, in the New York Herald Tribune, Dec. 19, 1930, started the 
conventionalizing and the minimizing and the obscurizing that always cloak 
events that are inconsistent with a main norm of supposed knowledge.(47) "One 
may suspect that a sensational newspaper man, counting up the deaths, some dark 
day, in the smoky steel towns on the Allegheny River, could produce a story not 
far behind that from Belgium." 
Seventy-seven men and women were struck dead in Belgium. Oh, there's always some 
commonplace explanation for these occurrences, if we only use our common sense. 
[56] 





1. Bodson De Noirfontaine. "Note sur de la pluie observée par un ciel 
complétement serein." Comptes Rendus, 14 (1842): 663-4. The first rain was on 
April 21, 1842, for two-and-a-half hours; and, on the next day, at the same 
time, it fell again. It was a repetition and not a continuous fall for two days. 

2. "Ghost." London Times, April 26, 1821, p. 3 c. 1. The location of the house 
was near Carclew-street, (not Carlow Street). Correct quote: "...according to 
the different degrees of nerve and judgment...." 
3. "The ghost whose vagaries we noticed...." London Times, May 1, 1821, p. 3 c. 
3. Fort's account errs considerably, as it was the military which suffered the 
depredations and which called upon the civil authorities for assistance. The 
local newspaper source, (cited by the London Times), did report upon the 
confession of one of the soldiers' children, in the last of the following 
articles: "Ghost." West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser, (Truro), April 20, 1821, 
p. 2 c. 6, and, p. 3 c. 1. "The ghost whose vagaries...." West Briton and 
Cornwall Advertiser, April 27, 1821, p. 3 c. 1. "A reward has been offered...." 
West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser, May 4, 1821, p. 3 c. 1. L.H. Potts. 
"Discovery of the Truro ghost." West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser, May 11, 
1821, p. 2 c. 5-6. 
4. "Aerolites." London Times, January 13, 1843, p. 3 c. 3. Livet is the commune 
where the phenomenon was reported, and it was said to be "near Clavaux." There 
is no report of an "upward current" in the article, as Fort suggests; rather 
people who held the hand of a child "found themselves, to their great surprise, 
drawn within the sphere of attraction, and perceived the stones just above their 
heads, which, the moment after, fell on them, and rolled to the ground." 
5. "Remarkable phenomena." Toronto Globe, September 9, 1880, p.7 c.2. 
6. "The Crosshill mystery." Halifax Citizen and Evening Chronicle, (Nova 
Scotia), September 13, 1880, p.2 c.4-5. For additional articles: "The Crosshill 
mystery." Toronto Globe, September 10, 1880, p.12 c.1-2. The farmer's name was 
George Manser. 
7. "Mysterious stone throwing." New York Sun, June 22, 1884, p. 1 c. 6. The 
location of the farm was about half a mile north of Trenton, New York, (not New 
Jersey). 
8. "Rain tree." New York Sun, October 30, 1892, p. 4 c. 6. 
9. "Another weeping tree." Insect Life, 5 (January 1893): 204. J.C. Neal, (not 
Neel), examined two "weeping trees," one being a Cottonwood and the other being 
a Box-elder. For earlier articles on this subject: "The weeping tree mystery." 
Insect Life, 2 (November 1889): 160-1. "The weeping tree phenomenon." Insect 
Life, 3 (June 1891): 415. 
10. H.E. Chapin. "Continuous rain." Science, o.s., 21 (February 17, 1893): 94. 
The phenomenon was observed at Athens, Ohio, (not Akron). 
11. "Varities." Philadelphia Public Ledger, October 19, 1892, p.5 c.9. The 
location was Martinsburg, Ohio, not Martinsville. 
12. Fort's citation appears to be erroneous. However, there is such an article 
in the previous issue, though not for the incident related by Fort: "Rained 
continuously on one spot." St. Louis Globe-Democrat, November 18, 1892, p. 4 c. 
6. A dispatch from Magnolia, Arkansas, dated November 17, told of rains that had 
fallen in the front yard of a preacher's house, located in Hempstead County, 
"every day for more than three months" during a drought. 
13. "State weather services." Monthly Weather Review, 20 (November 1892): 307-9, 
at 308, (c.v. "Ohio"). 
14. "A very strange phenomenon." Charleston News and Courier, October 8, 1886, 
p. 2 c. 1. "A phenomenal rainfall." Charleston News and Courier, October 24, 
1886, p. 1 c. 1. "The telegrams of Saturday." Charleston News and Courier, 
October 25, 1886, p. 2 c. 1. "More rain from a cloudless sky." Charleston News 
and Courier, October 26, 1886, p. 6 c. 2. 
15. "Rain from cloudless sky." Monthly Weather Review, 14 (October 1886): 287. 
The original report in Charlotte Chronicle, of October 21, 1886, is no longer 
extant. 
16. "Earthquake phenomena." New York Sun, October 24, 1886, p. 1 c. 5. The rain 
was reported to have been falling for "ten or twelve days," (not fourteen). 
17. Charleston News and Courier, Nov. 5, 1886. 
18. T.C. Mendenhall. "Report on the Charleston earthquake." Monthly Weather 
Review, 14 (August 1886): 233-5, at 234. Correct quote: "An examination of some 
of these shortly after they had fallen forced...." 
19. "Shower of pebbles." Charleston News and Courier, September 6, 1886, p. 5 c. 
2. "Some of them bounding into the press room" refers to the second shower of 
stones at 7:30 A.M.; but, press men seeking mischievious pranksters found no 
one. The initial fall at 2:30 A.M. occurred across the street in a vacant lot; 
and, the third fall at 1:30 P.M. covered a large area encompassing the two 
earlier falls and the space between them. Stones from all three falls were said 
to be "warm." 
20. "A strange phenomena." Richmond Whig, September 5, 1886, p. 2 c. 2. Also: 
"The earthquake's work." Richmond Whig, September 5, 1886, p. 1 c. 5-6. These 
"water-stones" were said to be "from a half to an inch thick," (with no mention 
of grapes or eggs). 
21. Carl McKinley. A Descriptive Narrative of the Earthquake of August 31, 1886. 
Charleston, S.C.: Walker, Evans & Cogswell Co., 1887, 16. 
22. "Strange story of spirit rapping." Rand Daily Mail, May 29, 1922, p. 7 c. 
7-8. The location of the Neaves' home was at Roodepoort, South Africa, (not 
Roodeport); and, it was not said that the outhouses were searched, in these 
articles. 
23. "Mystery incidents at Roodepoort." Rand Daily Mail, May 30, 1922, p.7 c.7-8. 

24. "Police look for the ghost." Rand Daily Mail, May 31, 1922, p.8 c.5. 
25. For additional articles on this incident: "Stones thrown from the air." Rand 
Daily Mail, June 1, 1922, p.8 c.5. "The ghost makes a confession." Johannesburg 
Star, June 2, 1922, p. c.3. 
26. D. Neaves. "Haunted house again." Rand Daily Mail, June 6, 1922, p.3 c.8. 
Neaves did believe that "Sara" was partly responsible for the disturbances but 
protested the claims that the mystery had been solved, as claimed by the 
Johannesburg Star. He wrote: "That the Hottentot girl in my employ has been at 
the bottom of the whole trouble both the police and myself have known for some 
time; but who does the stone-throwing when her wrists are tied together and she 
is under observation? This is the one who has never been seen or heard, despite 
the utmost vigilance." 
27. "Mysterious missiles." The Record of Klerksdrop and the Western Transvaal, 
November 18, 1921, p. 2 c. 6. Correct quote: "...stories of stone throwing by 
invisible agencies...." 
28. "A poltergeist case." Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 12 (May 
1906): 260-6. Correct quote: "...at the same time...on the floor, to awake him, 
there fell...." 
29. "Ghosts cause a child's death." London Daily Express, April 2, 1921, p.5 
c.2. The child was Muriel Parker, the five-year-old niece of Mr. Frost. 
30. "Agitated milk can at Hornsey." London Daily News, April 30, 1921, p.5 c.3. 
For additional reports from local newspapers: "Hornsey house of flying tables." 
Bowes Park Weekly News, (Enfield, London), February 19, 1921, p.5 c.4. 
"Hornsey's house of mystery." Bowes Park Weekly News, (Enfield, London), March 
5, 1921, p.3 c.1-4. "A haunted house at Hornsey." Hornsey Journal, February 18, 
1921, p.8 c.5. "The haunted house at Hornsey." Hornsey Journal, March 11, 1921, 
p.8 c.4. J. Lockart. "The haunted house at Hornsey." Hornsey Journal, March 25, 
1921, p.3 c.2. "The haunted house at Hornsey." Hornsey Journal, April 8, 1921, 
p.8 c.3. "The haunted house at Hornsey." Hornsey Journal, April 15, 1921, p.8 
c.3. "The haunted house at Hornsey." Hornsey Journal, May 13, 1921, p.7 c.1-2): 
"The haunted house at Hornsey." Hornsey Journal, May 20, 1921, p.8 c.5. "Haunted 
coal." North Middlesex Chronicle, February 12, 1921, p.3 c.2. "Hornsey house of 
flying tables." North Middlesex Chronicle, February 19, 1921, p.4 c.5. 
"Hornsey's house of mystery." North Middlesex Chronicle, February 26, 1921, p.3 
c.5. "Hornsey's house of mystery." North Middlesex Chronicle, March 12, 1921, 
p.4 c.5. "Hornsey's house of mystery." North Middlesex Chronicle, March 19, 
1921, p.4 c.4. "The haunted house at Hornsey." North Middlesex Chronicle, March 
26, 1921, p.4 c.5. "Death at haunted house." North Middlesex Chronicle, April 2, 
1921, p.4 c.4. "Hornsey's haunted house." North Middlesex Chronicle, April 16, 
1921, p.3 c.6. "Hornsey's haunted house." North Middlesex Chronicle, May 14, 
1921, p.3 c.5. 
31. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, January 27, 1888, (Not found here). 
32. "A mystery at Pondicherry." Madras Mail, March 5, 1888, p.4 c.5. 
33. "Extraordinary hailstorm." Annual Register, 1859, pt.2, 70-1. The hailstones 
were said to have fallen "gently," (not "slowly"). 
34. "Grelons extraordinaire." Nature (Paris), 1876, 2 (October 7): 296-8. The 
fall of hail occurred at Gazeries, Puy-de-Dôme, France. No reference is made to 
the size of the hail in this article. 
35. "Remarkable hailstorm." Illustrated London News, 34 (June 4, 1859): 546. 
"Remarkable hailstones." Nature, 36 (May 12, 1887): 44-5. "Une curieuse grêle." 
Bulletin de la Société Astronomique de France, 14 (June 1900): 285. 
36. "Whirlwind in Liverpool." Annals of Electricity, 8, 499. 
37. "Singular phenomenon." London Times, July 5, 1842, p.5 c.6. The occurrence 
was said, by the Fife Herald, to take place on Wednesday, and was later copied 
by the Times; thus, the date was not June 30, 1842, but more probably June 15, 
22, or 29, 1842. No mention is made of clothes-lines, but clothes along "a belt, 
as it were, running across the green"; and, "at the moment of the report," 
cattle in a nearby field were frightened and "continued cowering together in 
evident terror" afterwards. 
38. "Laundry in the air." London Daily Express, June 12, 1919, p.1 c.3. Islip is 
near Northampton, but not part of it. 
39. "Dead volcano's freak." London Daily Mail, May 6, 1910, p.7 c.6. 
40. "Unprecedented phenomenon." Niles' Weekly Register, (Baltimore), 9 (n.10; 
November 4, 1815): 171-2. 
41. Dr. Neal, (not Neel). 
42. "A singular affair at Eccleston." Chorley Standard and District Advertiser, 
(Chorley), February 15, 1873, p.3 c.5. 
43. Trenton, New York, (not New Jersey). 
44. Fort marked "X" in the margin next to this line. 
45. "Scores die, 300 stricken by poison fog in Belgium, panic grips 
countryside." New York Times, December 6, 1930, p. 1 c.1-2, and, p. 11 c. 1-2. 
Correct quote: "War scenes are recalled." 
46. "Scientist thinks some one has losed poison gas." New York Telegram, 
December 6, 1930, p.2 c.2-3. 
47. "Poison fogs and foggy minds." New York Herald Tribune, December 19, 1930, 
p.22 c.2. 












PART ONE 
CHAPTER FIVE 








[57] 
5





UPON the 9th of January, 1907, Mr. McLaughlin, of the town of Magilligan, County 
Derry, Ireland, hadn't a red light, Neither had his sister, nor his niece, nor 
his maidservant. They hadn't a cabinet. But a show was staged at their house, as 
if they knew altogether too much about phosphorescent paint, and as if Mr. 
McLaughlin bought false whiskers. There were phenomena in sunlight, and there 
was an atmosphere as unmystical as pigs and neighbors. If any spiritualistic 
medium can do stunts, there is no more need for special conditions than there is 
for a chemist to turn down lights, start operations with a hymn, and ask whether 
there's any chemical present that has affinity with something named Hydrogen. 
Mr. McLaughlin had cleaned soot from the chimney. I wonder what relation there 
may be. It is said that [57/58] immediately afterward, phenomena began. There 
were flows of soot from undetectable sources, in rooms, and from room to room, 
independent of draughts, sometimes moving against draughts. Also there were 
flows of stones, or bombardments. About thirty panes of glass were broken by 
stones, in the daytime, some of them in the presence of neighbors. This is the 
story, as it was told by reporters of the Derry Journal and the Coleraine 
Constitution, who had been sent to investigate.(1) Probably there was a girl, 
aged 14 or 15, in this house, but as to the ages of Mr. McLaughlin's niece and 
maid servant, I could not learn particulars. 
The conventionally scientific, or fishmongerish, thing to do would be to think 
of some commonplace explanation of the soot, and forget the stones. There would 
not be so much science, if people had good memories. The flows of stones can be 
explained as peggings by neighbors, if the soot be forgotten. 
Our data have been bullied by two tyrannies. On one side, the spiritualists have 
arbitrarily taken over strange occurrences, as manifestations of "the departed." 
On the other side, conventional science has pronounced against everything that 
does not harmonize with its systemizations. The scientists goes investigating, 
about as, to match ribbons, a woman goes shopping. The spiritualist stuffs the 
maws of his emotions. One is too dainty, and the other is too gross. Perhaps, 
between these two, we shall some day be considered models of well-bred behavior. 

Showers of frogs and worms and periwinkles -- and now it's showers of nails. St. 
Louis Globe-Democrat, Oct. 16, 1888 -- dispatch from Brownsville, Texas -- that, 
on the night of the 12th, the lighthouse, at Point Isabel, occupied by Mrs. 
Schreiber, widow of the keeper, who had departed not long before, had been 
struck by a rain of nails.(2) The next night, about dark, [58/59] came another 
shower of nails. More variety -- also down pelted clods of earth and oyster 
shells. Bombardments continued. People gathered and saw showers, mostly of 
nails, but could not find out where they were coming from. 
In Human Nature, March 1871, is a story of flows of corn that were passing from 
a locked crib, in Buchanan, Virginia.(3) But, in this case, it was said that 
apparitions were seen, and mostly, at least so far as apparitions are concerned, 
our accounts are not ghost stories. 
There have been mysterious showers of money, in public places. I have gravely 
copied accounts from newspapers, but there must have been something the matter 
with my gravity, because I put the notes away, without indexing them, and just 
now can't find them, among about 60,000. One of the stories was of coins that, 
for several days, a few years ago, fell intermittently into Trafalgar Square, 
London. Traffic was so interfered with by scramblers that the police 
investigated, but could trace nothing to the buildings around the Square. Every 
now and then there was a jingle of coins, and a scramble, and the annoyance of 
the police was increased. They investigated. 
Maybe there are experimenters who have learned to do such things, 
teleportatively. I'd see some sport in it, myself, if it wouldn't cost too much. 

There was a piker with pennies, in London, several years ago. New York Evening 
World, Jan. 18, 1928 -- flows of copper coins and chunks of coal, in a house in 
Battersea, London, occupied by a family named Robinson.(4) "The Robinsons are 
educated people, and scout the idea of a supernatural agency. However they are 
completely baffled, and declare the phenomena take place in closed rooms, thus 
precluding the possibility of objects being thrown from outside." [59/60] 
There's small chance of such phenomena being understood, just at present, 
because everybody's a logician. Almost everybody reasons: "There are not 
supernatural occurrences: therefore these alleged phenomena did not occur." 
However through some closed skulls, mostly independently of eyes and ears and 
noses, which tell mostly only what they should tell, is penetrating the idea 
that flows of coins and chunks of coal may be as natural as the flows of rivers. 
Those of us who have taken this degree of our initiation may now go on to a more 
advanced stage of whatever may be the matter with us. 
August 30th, 1919 -- Swanton Novers Rectory, near Melton Constable, Norfolk, 
England -- oil "spurting" from walls and ceilings. It was thought that the house 
was over an oil well, the liquid percolating and precipitating, but it was not 
crude oil that was falling: the liquids were paraffin and petrol. Then came 
showers of water. Oil was falling from one of the appearing points, at a rate of 
a quart in ten minutes. Methylated spirits and sandalwood oil were falling. In 
an account, dated Sept. 2nd, it is said that receptacles had been placed under 
appearing-points, and that about 50 gallons of oil had been caught. Of thirteen 
showers, upon Sept. 1st, two were of water. 
The circumstance that is of most importance in this story is that such 
quantities of oils and water appeared here that the Rector, the Rev. Hugh Guy, 
had been driven out, and had moved his furniture to another house. 
London Times, Sept. 9 -- "Norfolk Mystery Solved."(5) We are told that Mr. 
Oswald Williams, the "illusionist," or the stage magician, and his wife, who 
were investigating, had seen the housemaid, aged 15, enter the house, which for 
several days had been unoccupied, and throw a glass of water, which they had 
[60/61] salted, to a ceiling, then crying that another shower had occurred. They 
had shut off the water supply, in the house, and had placed around glasses and 
pails of water, salted so that it could be identified. 
As Mr. and Mrs. Williams told it, they, in hiding, saw the girl throw the salted 
water, and rushed out of their hiding place and accused her. Conceivably all for 
the sake of science, and conceivably with not a thought of publicity-values, Mr. 
Williams told newspaper reporters of his successful stratagem, and put 
completeness into his triumph, by telling that the girl had confessed. "She 
admitted that she had done it, and finally she broke down and made a clean 
breast of it." 
Times, Sept. 12 -- girl interviewed by a representative of a Norwich newspaper 
-- denied that she had confessed -- deniedd that she had played tricks of any 
kind -- denied that the Williamses had been in hiding -- told that she had gone 
to the house, with Mr. and Mrs. Williams, and that a wet spot had appeared on a 
ceiling, and that she had been wrongfully accused of having thrown water.(6) 
"According to the little girl's statement, she was at no time alone in the 
kitchen" (London Daily News, Sept. 10).(7) "She insists that she was the victim 
of a trick, and that great pressure was put upon her to admit that she had 
thrown salted water to the ceiling. `I was told,' she said, `that I would be 
given one minute to say I had done it, or go to prison. I said that I didn't do 
it.'" 
Having an interest in ways in which data are suppressed, I have picked up some 
information upon how little girls are "pressed." No details of the "pressure" 
were published in the London newspapers. Norfolk News, Nov. 8 -- that, in the 
Holt Petty Sessions had come up the case of the girl, Mabel Louisa Phillipo -- 
spelled Phillips, in the other accounts -- complainant [61/62] against Mrs. 
Oswald Williams, who was charged with having assaulted her.(8) The girl said 
that Mrs. Williams had time after time struck her in the face, and had called 
attention to her face, reddened by blows, as evidence of her guilt. Mrs. 
Phillipo testified that, when she arrived at the Rectory, her daughter's first 
words were that she had been beaten. The Rev. Hugh Guy testified, but he did not 
testify that he was in the house, at the time. According to details picked up 
from other accounts, he was not in the house, at the time. 
It is said that legal procedure in Great Britain is superior to whatever goes 
under that name in the United States. I can't accept that legal procedure 
anywhere is superior to anything. Mr. Guy, who had not been present, testified 
that he had not seen the girl struck, and I found no record of any objection by 
the girl's attorney to such testimony. The case was dismissed. 
And then a document closed investigation. It was a letter from Mr. Guy, 
published in the Times, Sept. 13.(9) Mr. Guy wrote that he had tasted the water, 
upon the ceiling, and had tasted salt in it: so he gave his opinion that the 
girl had thrown the water. Most likely there is considerable salt, reminders of 
long successions of hams and bacons, on every kitchen ceiling. 
According to Mr. and Mrs. Williams, the girl had confessed. But see Mr. Guy's 
letter to the Times -- that the girl had not confessed. 
So, because of Mr. Guy's letter, the Williamses can not be depended upon. But 
we're going to find that Mr. Guy can not be depended upon. To be sure, I am 
going to end up with something about photographs, but photographs can not be 
depended upon. I can't see that out of our own reasoning, we can get anywhere, 
if there isn't anything phenomenal that can be depended upon. It is my 
expression that, if we are entering upon [62/63] an era of a revised view of 
many formerly despised and ridiculed data, there will be a simultaneous 
variation of many minds, more favourably to them, and that what is called 
reasoning in those minds will be only supplementary to a general mental tropism. 

The investigation was stopped by Mr. Guy. The inquiry-shearer, or the 
mystery-bobber, was this statement, in his letter -- "It would have taken only a 
small quantity to create the mess." 
The meaning of this statement is that, whereas gallons, or barrels, of oils, at 
a cost of hundreds of dollars, could not be attributed to a mischievous girl, 
"only a small quantity" could be. 
Flows of frogs -- flows of worms -- flows of lies -- read this: 
London Daily Express, Aug. 30 -- "The Rector, in response to a request from the 
Daily Express, for the latest news, reported as follows:(10) 
"`To the Editor of the Daily Express: 
"`Expert engineer arriving Monday. Drippings ascribed to exudations, on August 
8, of petrol, methylated spirits, and paraffin. House evacuated; vapor 
dangerous; every room affected; downpour rather than dripping -- Guy.'" 
In the Daily Express, Sept. 2, is published Mr. Guy's statement that he had been 
compelled to move his furniture from the house.(11) 
According to other accounts, the quantities were great. In the London Daily News 
were published reports by an architect, a geologist, and a chemist, telling of 
observations upon profuse flows.(12) In the Norwich newspapers, the accounts are 
similar. For instance, the foreman of an oil company, having been asked to give 
an opinion, had visited the house, and had caught in a tub, two gallons of oil, 
which had dripped, in four hours, from one of the appearing-points. Just how, as 
[63/64] a matter of tricks, a girl could have been concerned in these 
occurrences is not picturable to me. The house was crowded, while the 
oil-expert, for instance, was investigating. But it does seem that unconsciously 
she was concerned. The first of the showers occurred in her room. Ceilings were 
bored and ripped off, but nothing by which to explain was found. Then another 
stage magician, Mr. N. Maskelyne, went to Swanton Novers, with the idea of 
exposing trickery. Possibly this competition made the Williamses hasty. But Mr. 
Maskelyne could find nothing by which to explain the mystery. According to him 
(Daily Mail, Sept. 10) "barrels of it" had appeared, during the time of his 
observations.(13) 
Just how effective, as an inquiry-stopper, was the story of the girl and the 
"small quantity," is shown by the way the Society for Psychical Research was 
influenced by it. See the Journal S.P.R., Oct., 1919.(14) Mr. Guy's letter to 
the Times is taken as final. No knowledge of conflicting statements by him is 
shown. The Society did not investigate. "A small quantity" can be explained, as 
it should be explained, but "barrels of it" must be forgotten. Case dismissed. 
If the Rev. Hugh Guy described at one time a "downpour," which had driven out 
him and his tables, chairs, beds, rugs, all those things that I think of 
seriously, because I have recently done some moving, myself, and then told of "a 
small quantity," why have I not an explanation of this contradiction? 
I wrote to Mr. Guy, asking him to explain, having the letter registered for the 
sake of a record. I have received no answer. 
In the London Daily Mail, Sept. 3, 1919, are reproduced two photographs of oil 
dripping from different ceilings.(15) Large drops of oil are clearly visible. 
[64] 





1. "Mysterious occurrences at Magilligan." Coleraine Constitution, January 26, 
1907, p. 5 c. 2-3. "Extraordinary occurrence near Limavady." Derry Journal 
(Londonderry), January 23, 1907, p. 4 c. 6. "County Derry mystery." Derry 
Journal, January 25, 1907, p. 5 c. 1-2. "Mysterious occurrences at Magilligan." 
Derry Journal, January 30, 1907, p. 6 c. 1-2. 
2. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, (October 16, 1888). 
3. "Another `ghost story'." Human Nature, 5 (March 1871): 141-2. The Rev. G.C. 
Thrasher, whose residence was the center of the depredations, only once watched 
"something like a thin shadow, bearing resemblance to a human form" pass by him 
swiftly and disappear; otherwise, "not a track nor trace" was found, and nothing 
else was observed. 
4. "Coin-tossing ghost batters residents of Battersea house." New York Evening 
World, January 18, 1928, p. 3 c. 1. Correct quote: "The Robinsons, who are 
educated people, scout the idea of a supernatural agency. They are completely 
baffled, however, and declare the phenomena takes place in closed rooms, thus 
precluding the possibility of the objects being thrown from outside." More 
details are available in a local newspaper: "Driven from home by ghostly 
pranks." London Daily Sketch, January 17, 1922, p. 9 c. 1. "Shower of coal and 
soda." London Daily Sketch, January 18, 1922, p. 2 c. 1. "Very shy spook." 
London Daily Sketch, January 19, 1922, p. 3 c. 3. "Spook tricks of a spook," 
and, "Gas-lighter riddle." London Daily Sketch, January 20, 1922, p. 3 c. 4. 
"Spook riddle new turn." London Daily Sketch, January 21, 1922, p. 1 
(photograph). "Spook mystery development." London Daily Sketch, January 21, 
1922, p. 2 c. 3. "Haunted house hopes." London Daily Sketch, January 22, 1922, 
p. 2 c. 1. 
5. "Norfolk mystery solved." London Times, September 9, 1919, p. 7 c. 2. This 
article indicates that Mrs. Williams, (not Mabel Phillipo, the housemaid), "at 
once raised the alarm," after seeing a glass of water thrown up to the kitchen 
ceiling. Only Mrs. Williams had been spying through the floorboards, from the 
room above the kitchen. Correct quote: "...finally the girl, after first denying 
her hoax, made a clean breast of the matter in the presence of the whole party, 
and burst into tears." "Rectory oil mystery solved." London Daily News, 
September 9, 1919, p. 1 c. 4. 
6. "Oil in Norfolk rectory." London Times, September 12, 1919, p.7 c.4. 
7. "The rectory oil mystery." London Daily News and Leader, September 10, 1919, 
p.1 c.3. Correct quotes: "...statement, she was not once out of the presence of 
Mr. and Mrs. Oswald Williams, and was at no time alone in the kitchen...she is 
the victim...to admit she had been throwing salted water up to the ceiling...`I 
said I didn't do it.'" 
8. "Swanton Novers oil mystery." Norfolk News and Weekly Press, (Norwich), 
November 8, 1919, p.7 c.4-5. Guy testified that he was present "the whole time," 
on September 8, and that he had not seen Miss Phillipo slapped nor dragged down 
the stairs by Mrs. Williams. "In his further evidence Mr. Guy repeatedly 
emphatically to the Clerk his denial that the girl's face was slapped. If it had 
happened he must have seen it, for he was standing close by all the time." 
According to the local newspaper account of the events of September 8, Hugh Guy, 
his wife Emily, Oswald Williams and his wife Rae, and Arthur Browning were in 
the house, when the trap was laid for the servant girl. "The Swanton Novers 
mystery." Norfolk News and Weekly Press, September 13, 1919, p.6 c.1-2. For an 
earlier report of the phenomena: "A Norfolk oil mystery." Norfolk News and 
Weekly Press, September 6, 1919, p.5 c.3-4. 
9. "Swanton Novers Rectory." London Times, September 13, 1919, p.6 c.4. Guy 
writes: "After the girl was caught I fetched both her parents, who were very 
upset at first, and refused to believe that the girl was guilty; but in face of 
the evidence, and in spite of the girl's denials, they agreed with our views -- 
expressing great regret, and offering to do all in their power to make good the 
damage." Correct quote: "It would only take a small quantity to create the mess 
that was caused." 
10. "Oil well in a rectory." London Daily Express, August 30, 1919, p.1 c.6. 
Correct quotes: "...replied as follows...," and "...exudation...." 
11. "Oil haunted rectory." London Daily Express, September 2, 1919, p.5 c.2. For 
additional reports: "Pure paraffin now." London Daily Express, September 1, 
1919, p.5 c.7. "Rectory well of many odours." London Daily Express, September 3, 
1919, p.5 c.5. "Oily rectory to be pulled down." London Daily Express, September 
5, 1919, p.1 c.4. 
12. "Oil puzzle." London Daily News and Leader, September 2, 1919, p.5 c.5. 
"Rectory oil riddle." London Daily News and Leader, September 3, 1919, p.5 c.3. 
"Rectory oil mystery solved." London Daily News and Leader, September 9, 1919, 
p.1 c.4. 
13. "Oily rectory." London Daily Mail, September 10, 1919, p.3 c.3. 
14. "A supposed poltergeist case and its explanation." Journal of the Society 
for Psychical Research, 19 (October 1919): 95-9. 
15. "The oil rectory." London Daily Mail, September 3, 1919, p.3 c.3-4. 









PART ONE 
CHAPTER SIX 








[65] 
6 





FLOWS of blood from "holy images" -- 
I take for a proposition that, though nothing can be proved -- because, if all 
phenomenal things are continuous, there is, in a final sense, nothing phenomenal 
-- anything can be said to be proved -- beecause, if all phenomenal things are 
continuous, the most preposterous nonsense must somewhere be linked with 
well-established beliefs. If I had the time for an extra job, I'd ask readers to 
think up loony theories, and send them to me, I'd pick out the looniest of all, 
and engage to find abundant data to make it reasonable to anybody who wanted to 
think it reasonable. 
Once upon a time I thought that stories of flows of blood from "holy images" 
were as ridiculous as anything that I had ever read in any astronomical, or 
[65/66] geological textbook, or in any treatise upon economics or mechanics. 
Well, then, what happened? 
It occurred to me that stories of flows of blood from "holy images" are 
assimilable with our general expressions upon teleportations. Whereupon, 
automatically, the formerly despised became the somewhat reasonable. Though now 
and then I am ill-natured with scientific methods, it is no pose of mine that I 
am other than scientific, myself, in our expressions. I am tied down like any 
college professor or Zulu wise man. 
As a start-off, I suggest that if we accept that flows of water ever have 
appeared at points in objects, called "houses," a jolt is softened, and we pass 
easily into thinking that other fluids may have appeared at points in other 
objects, called "holy images." The jolt is softened still more, if we argue that 
other fluids did appear at points in the object, called a "house," at 
Swanton-Novers. 
There may be Teleportation, and maybe for ages the secret of it has been known 
by esoteric ones. It may be that priests, especially in the past, when, 
sociologically, they were of some possible use, have known how to teleport a red 
fluid, or blood, to points upon images. They may have been "agents," able to do 
this, without knowing how they got their effects. If I can accept that our whole 
existence is an organism, I can accept that, if by so-called miracles, its 
masses of social growths can best be organized and kept co-ordinated, then 
appear so-called miracles. The only flaw that I note in this argument is that it 
overlooks that there is no need for miracles. If there is a need for belief in 
miracles, miracles can be said to have occurred. 
We shall have an expression in terms of some of the other of our expressions. If 
we arrange the ideas of [66/67] it neatly, if not nattily, no more will be 
required to impress anybody who would like to be impressed. 
Out in open fields there have been mysterious, or miraculous, showers of water. 
Then has appeared the seeming "agency" of human beings, and similar showers have 
occurred in houses -- 
Out in open places, there are electrical manifestations, and they are known as 
"lightning." The general specializes, and human beings use electricity, in their 
houses, or in images that are called "machines." Or we'd say that electricians 
are trained "agents" in the uses of lightning. 
Out in open places there have been flows of a red liquid. 
In La Nature, Sept. 25, 1880, Prof. J. Brun, of the University of Geneva, writes 
that, near Djebel-Sekra, Morocco, he had heard rumors of a fall of blood from 
the sky.(1) He visited the place of the reported phenomenon. He says that, to 
his stupefication, he found rocks and vegetation covered with scales of a red, 
shining material. Examining specimens under a microscope, he found them composed 
of minute organisms, which he tells us were Protococcus fluvialis. 
The identification may be doubted. I don't like it. The ease with which any 
writer can pick to pieces any statement made by anybody who is not present to 
bandy delusions with him is becoming tiresome, but if I will write a book, I 
will write it triumphantly. 
So this identification may be