Psience Quest

Full Version: Redemption of the Damned
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.

Chris

A new book, "Redemption of the Damned: Volume 1: Aerial Phenomena", by Martin Shough and Wim Van Utrecht, reevaluates the strange things in the sky reported by Charles Fort in "The Book of the Damned":
https://www.anomalistbooks.com/book.cfm?id=105

From the website of the publisher, Anomalist Books:
Charles Fort published his first and most influential book, The Book of the Damned, a century ago in 1919, collecting together many historical reports of strange aerial phenomena.
Since the birth of the UFO controversy in 1947 Fort’s writings have been cited in countless books and web pages. Yet this is the first time in a hundred years that researchers have systematically verified the sources and content of every one of these oft-recycled stories, correcting many errors, placing each case in its historical context, and submitting it to a careful scientific investigation in an attempt to find a conventional answer.

What were these reported phenomena? Is it possible to find non-exotic explanations? With the advantage of modern knowledge, methods, and resources, in most cases the answer proves to be yes. Some of the solutions found may shock the general reader and surprise even specialists. Yet, in the end, a few well-documented events remain unexplained.

Chris

(2019-05-13, 07:10 AM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]A new book, "Redemption of the Damned: Volume 1: Aerial Phenomena", by Martin Shough and Wim Van Utrecht, reevaluates the strange things in the sky reported by Charles Fort in "The Book of the Damned":
https://www.anomalistbooks.com/book.cfm?id=105

From the website of the publisher, Anomalist Books:
Charles Fort published his first and most influential book, The Book of the Damned, a century ago in 1919, collecting together many historical reports of strange aerial phenomena.
Since the birth of the UFO controversy in 1947 Fort’s writings have been cited in countless books and web pages. Yet this is the first time in a hundred years that researchers have systematically verified the sources and content of every one of these oft-recycled stories, correcting many errors, placing each case in its historical context, and submitting it to a careful scientific investigation in an attempt to find a conventional answer.

What were these reported phenomena? Is it possible to find non-exotic explanations? With the advantage of modern knowledge, methods, and resources, in most cases the answer proves to be yes. Some of the solutions found may shock the general reader and surprise even specialists. Yet, in the end, a few well-documented events remain unexplained.

Magonia Review has an enthusiastic review of the volume by John Rimmer:
"This is a remarkable achievement of not just Fortean study, but more general historical study, and I am eager to see their next title, which will look at anomalous reports from the sea and from space."
http://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2020/01/d...earch.html

He reckons that of 82 examples of atmospheric or near-atmospheric phenomena from Fort's Book of the Damned, the authors are able to give "almost certainly" correct conventional explanations for the overwhelming majority, and plausible suggestions for nearly all the others. Only in a very few cases were they left scratching their heads.