24 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], p. 1003 24 Our only important opposition is, not science, but a belief that we are in conflict with science. This is an old-fashioned belief. There is nothing told of in this book that is more of an affront to old-time dogmas than is the theory...
7 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 7 Rabid vampires--and froth on their bloody mouths. See the "New York Times", Sept. 5, 1931--rabies in vampire bats, reported from the island of Trinidad. Or a jungle at night--darkness and dankness, tangle and murk--and little white streaks that are...
29 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 29 Stunts of sideshows, and the miracles of pietists, and the phenomena of spiritualistic medium-- Or that the knack that tips a table may tilt an epoch. Or much of the "parlor magic" of times gone by, and now it is industrial chemistry. And Taboo, by...
20 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], p. 974 20 The importance of the invisible-- That I'd starve to death, in the midst of eatables, were it not for the invisible means of locomotion by which I go and get them, and the untouchable and unseeable processes by which I digest them-- That every...
3 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 3 In days of yore, when I was an especially bad young one, my punishment was having to go to the store, Saturdays, and work. I had to scrape off labels of other dealers' canned goods, and paste on my parent's label. Theoretically, I was so forced to lab...
Title Page : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], WILD TALENTS BY CHARLES FORT New York: Claude Kendall [1933] Scanned, proofed and formatted by John Bruno Hare , July 2008. This text is in the public domain in the US because it not renewed at the US Copyright Office in a timely fashion.
21 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], p. 981 21 I looked at a picture, and it fell from a wall. The diabolical thought of Usefulness rises in my mind. If ever I can make up my mind to declare myself the enemy of all mankind, then shall I turn altruist, and devote my life to being of use...
2 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 2 I am a collector of notes upon subjects that have diversity--such as deviations from concentricity in the lunar crater Copernicus, and a sudden appearance of purple Englishmen--stationary meteor-radiants, and a reported growth of hair on the bald head...
25 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 25 If I can bridge a gap-- Then that, in a moment of religious excitation, an inhabitant of Remiremont, focusing upon a point in the sky, transferred a pictorial representation from his mind to hailstones-- The turning, off Coventry Street--streets...
6 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 6 Conservatism is our opposition. But I am in considerable sympathy with conservatives. I am often lazy, myself. It's evenings, when I'm somewhat played out, when I'm likely to be most conservative. Everything that is highest and noblest in my compositi...
Untitled : * Girls at the front--and they are discussing their usual not very profound subjects. The alarm--the enemy is advancing. Command to the poltergeist girls to concentrate--and under their chairs they stick their wads of chewing gum.... A regiment bursts into flames, and the soldiers are torches...
31 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 31 In February, 1885, in an English prison, there was one of the dream-like occurrences that the materialists think are real. But every character concerned in it was fading away, so that now there is probably no survivor. From time to time repairs had...
8 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], p. 881 8 Some time in the year 1867, a fishing smack sailed from Boston. One of the sailors was a Portuguese, who called himself "James Brown." Two of the crew were missing, and were searched for. The captain went into the hold. He held up his lantern...
23 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 23 Dead men in a Harlem park--and houses are torn by explosions, of unknown origin--the sneak of an invisible clipper of hair--vampires and murder--theatrically a girl is stabbed, on a staircase, in the presence of a large audience--the internal organs...
4 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 4 Not a bottle of catsup can fall from a tenement-house fire-escape, in Harlem, without being noted--not only by the indignant people downstairs, but--even though infinitesimally--universally--maybe-- Affecting the price of pajamas, in Jersey City:...
27 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 27 The twitch of the legs of a frog--and Emma Piggott swiped a powder puff. The mysterious twitchings of electrified legs--and unutterable flutterings in the mind of Galvani. His travail of mental miscarriages--or ideas that could not be born properly...
11 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 11 Damn the particle, but there is salvation for the aggregate. A gust of wind is wild and free, but there are handcuffs on the storm. During the World War, no course of a single bullet could have been predicted absolutely, but any competent mathematici...
15 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 15 Now I have a theory that our existence is a hermaphrodite-- Or the unproductivity of it, in the sense that the beings, and seas, and houses, and trees, and the fruits of trees, its "immortal truths," and "rocks of ages" that it seems to produce are...
19 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], p. 970 19 The astronomers are issuing pronouncements upon what can't be seen with telescopes. The physicists are announcing discoveries that can't be seen with microscopes. I wonder whether anybody can see any meaning in an accusation that my stories are...
13 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 13 If a man was scorched, though upon his clothes there was no sign of fire, it could be that the woman of Whitley Bay, who told of having found her sister burned to death on an unscorched bed, reported accurately. If the woman confessed that she had lied...
17 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 17 London "Daily Chronicle", March 30, 1922--"It is incredible, but nothing has been heard of Holding." For three weeks a search had been going on--cyclists, police, farmers, people from villages. At half past ten o'clock, morning of the 7th of March...
16 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], p. 949 16 But why this everlasting attempt to solve something?--whereas it is our acceptance that, in a final sense, there is, in phenomenal affairs, nothing--or that there is only the state of something-nothing--so that all problems are only...
12 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 12 From the story of J. Temple Thurston, I pick up that this man, with his clothes on, was so scorched as to bring on death by heart failure, by a fire that did not affect his clothes. This body was fully clothed, when found, about three o'clock...
14 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], p. 931 14 The story of the "mad bats of Trinidad" is that the discoverer of them had solved a mystery of many deaths of human beings and cattle. "Dr. Pawan, a Trinidad scientist, had discovered that the infection had been caused by mad vampire bats...
10 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 10 Relatively to the principles of modern science, werewolves cannot be. But I know of no such principle that is other than tautology or approximation. It is myth-stuff. Then, if relatively to a group of phantoms, werewolves cannot be, there are at least...
18 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], p. 959 18 I record that, once upon a time, down from the sky came a shower of virgins. Of course they weren't really virgins. I can't accept the reality of anything, in such an indeterminate existence as ours. See the "English Mechanic", 87-436--a shower...
9 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 9 Upon April 16, 1922, a man was taken to Charing Cross Hospital, London, suffering from a wound in his neck. It was said that he would tell nothing about himself, except that, while walking along a turning, off Coventry Street, he had been stabbed. Hours...
30 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 30 It has been my expression that, for instance, African fakirs achieved the harmless impalement of children by a process that would ordinarily be called imposing the imaginary upon the physical, but that is called by me imposing the imaginary-physical...
5 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 5 "Good morning!" said the dog. He disappeared in a thin, greenish vapor. I have this record, upon newspaper authority. It can't be said--and therefore will be said--that I have a marvelous credulity for newspaper yarns. But I am so obviously offering...
26 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 26 Hates and malices--murderous radiations from human minds-- Or the flashes and roars of a thunderstorm-- And there has been the equivalence of picking strokes of lightning out of the sky, and harnessing them to a job. A house afire--or somebody boils...
1 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], p. 843 WILD TALENTS 1 You know, I can only surmise about this--but John Henry Sanders, of 75 Colville Street, Derby, England, was the proprietor of a fish store, and I think that it was a small business. His wife helped. When I read of helpful wives, I...
22 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], p. 993 22 Belief in God--in Nothing--in Einstein--a matter of fashion-- Or that college professors are mannequins, who doll up in the latest proper things to believe, and guide their young customers modishly. Fashions often revert, but to be popular they...
28 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], p. 1043 28 That everything that is desirable is not worth having--that happiness and unhappiness are emotional rhythms that are so nearly independent of one's circumstances that good news or bad news only stimulate the amplitude of these waves, without...
32 : * "Wild Talents", by Charles Fort, [1933], 32 It's the old controversy--the action of mind upon matter. But, in the philosophy of the hyphen, an uncrossable gap is disposed of, and the problem is rendered into thinkable terms, by asking whether mind-matter can act upon matter-mind. I am beginning...