May 3, 2024 • 50 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And you're here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Thanks for choosing the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast Day
and Paranormal Podcast Network. Your quest for podcasts of the paranormal, supernatural,
and the unexplained ends here. We invite you to enjoy
all our shows we have on this network, and right now,
let's start with Strange Things with Joshua P. Warren.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and
opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions
only and do not reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast
to Coast AM, employees of Premiere Networks, or their sponsors
and associates. We would like to encourage you to do
(00:45):
your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Ready to be amazed by the wizard of weird. This
is Strange Things with Joshua Warren. I am Joshua would
be Warren, and each week on this show, I'll be
bringing you brand new my blowing content, news exercises and
(01:33):
weird experiments you can do at home, and a lot
more on this edition of the show. The Book of
the Damned and Charles Fort I'm talking about a book
that was published in nineteen nineteen and here is what
inspired me to present this topic at this time. Right now,
(01:57):
as I speak, I have a fat gray rubber frog
in a clear display case with dramatic lights shining on
it here in my house.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
This frog is about twelve inches long. He's all stretched
out three or four inches thick around the middle. He
looks pretty ragged. He's had a rough day. And this
is a screen used prop from one of my favorite movies.
Can you guess what it is? I bet some of
(02:32):
you know immediately. I'm talking about a film that came
out in nineteen ninety nine called Magnolia. This was a drama, written, directed,
and co produced by Paul Thomas Anderson, the same guy
who made the movie Boogie Nights. And this movie has
just an all star ensemble cast, Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman,
(02:54):
William H. Macy, Julianne Moore. I mean, the list goes
on and on, and it's as an epic mosaic of
interrelated characters in search of happiness, forgiveness, and meaning in
the San Fernando Valley. I know that sounds really boring,
but the way it's put together is brilliant. So you
(03:14):
have all of these separate little adventures that you know
in sagas that people are having. And sorry, here's a
spoiler for you, but hey, the movie did come out
what twenty five years ago, so if you haven't seen
it by now, sorry, At the end, it's almost like
all the stories of these characters kind of converge on
this one night where there's a lot of drama happening,
and then out of the blue, the most unexpected thing
(03:36):
in the world happens. There is this rain of frogs
from the sky. It's extremely bizarre, it's very memorable. I
don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it in
any other movie. And that was apparently inspired by the
work of the American author Charles Fort, who are going
(03:58):
to talk about here momentarily. But you know, that whole
movie has kind of a bit of a paranormal and
synchronistic thread that runs through it. And so, I, even
though I loved the movie, I never I never thought
about getting one of those prop frogs, because I'm sure
(04:18):
they made thousands of them to drop on the set.
These are physical effects. Okay, this is not cgi. I
never thought about getting one of those until recently I
was watching online this Hollywood prop auction and one of
those things popped up and I was like, well, it
caught me off guard, so and it was gone so quickly,
(04:39):
I didn't even get a chance to bid on it.
But then I went out and I found another one
and I bought that one, And so I have this
four ten prop. Because work that is sort of inspired
by the books of Charles fort are called four ten.
It's spun off into a whole genre, and a lot
(05:01):
of people think of his work as being the core
of what guys like myself do today. A lot of
people consider him to be the godfather of paranormal researchers.
And you know, when I was growing up young, I
remember I would read the fourteen Times, which was a
(05:22):
publication out of England which was based upon just weird
stuff that they called forty and I actually got an
article of some kind published in there at one point
when I was young, and it was a big honor.
And then actually recently I think maybe like last year,
I won an award from the fourteen Film Festival in
(05:43):
England for a short film that I made, which you
can watch on YouTube called o UFOs. But anyway, back
to the Man of the hour. Here Charles Fort. This guy, Okay,
he was born. Let's see. He was born on August
six of eighteen seventy four in Albany, New York, and
(06:06):
he died on May third of nineteen thirty two at
the age of fifty seven. Now, this guy, I mean,
I'm getting ready to give you his bio of all
the weird things that he introduced the world to that
are commonplace now. But let me just tell you something
that gave me goosebumps. I started thinking about what I
wanted my next podcast to be, and I saw the
(06:27):
frog and I go, you know what, I've always wanted
to do a thing about Charles Fort, kind of explain
to people who he was and why he did and
why he did it best I can. And I didn't know,
you know, like a lot of the dates and stuff.
So I went and I looked him up, and I
saw that he died on May third of nineteen thirty two,
and it gave me goosebumps, because then I looked at
the calendar and I realized that this podcast was scheduled
(06:51):
to be released on May third of twenty twenty four,
ninety two years ago he died. He would approve of this.
That's what I knew. Like, oh, okay, I meant to
put this podcast out on this date, fifty seven years
old when he died in the Bronx. I'll tell you
later how he died. You know, if you look at
(07:12):
a picture of him, he looks a heck of a
lot like Teddy Roosevelt. He's got the spectacles of the
mustache and the well groomed, parted hair. And I mean
a lot of people who didn't know any better would
look at an old black and white picture of Charles
Fort and say, yeah, that's Teddy Roosevelt. And his books.
He published a bunch of different books, but his first
(07:36):
nonfiction book, the one that made him famous, was called
The Book of the Damned, and it's often considered the
original classic of paranormal exploration. And on the back of
it here it says, welcome to a record of the damned.
(07:57):
By damned, wrote Charles Fort and nineteen nineteen, I mean
the excluded, Okay, so that's what he's talking about. By damned,
I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of
the data that science has excluded. Fort's survey of the
Unknown was one of the first to expose modern people
(08:18):
to visitors from space, monsters, poultrygeist and floating islands. Frogs
fall from the sky, Mysterious airships take flight in an
age before the airplane, people disappear, reappear, and spontaneously combust.
This volume reintroduces the central and most influential work of
Fort's career, in which he pushed us to ask what
(08:42):
is out there. The blurb that they give about his
life says he made his life's work the study of
unexplained phenomena. And although his writing attracted controversy, Fort was
celebrated in The New York Times, et cetera. It says
his name was made into an adjective for tien to
describe range events a lasting influence on science fiction as
(09:03):
well as science. Let me give you a more a
little bit more of a thorough bio here from about
the author in this book I'm holding in my hands,
called the Book of the Damned. It says he made
his life's work the study of unexplained phenomena. After achieving
modest success as a short story writer and novelist, Fort
(09:25):
began studying a nomalist phenomena, and in nineteen nineteen he
published his landmark of paranormal exploration, The Book of the Damned,
which influenced generations of writers. Fort moved to London in
nineteen twenty four to consult the archives at the British Museum,
then returned to the United States in nineteen twenty six
(09:45):
at the New York Public Library. He continued his research
into spontaneous combustion, spaceships, poltergeist, and other experiences and events
that had been written off by science. Fort published three
additional books on the unexplained, what was called New Lands,
the other was called Low l and one was called
Wild Talents. So when we come back from our break,
(10:11):
I'm going to give you a more detailed overview of
how he lived his life. And then, perhaps more importantly,
I'm going to actually read to you some portions, some
very brief portions of his book, The Book of the Damned.
And it's a huge volume, really, it's four hundred pages.
(10:32):
And he had a very particular style of writing. He
wrote like a man truly obsessed, Okay, And I mean
we're talking about a guy, though, who was so innovative.
I mean, he coined the term teleportation. Okay, this came
from him, and you know, he used a lot of
(10:55):
the phrases that we now consider commonplace, and so it's
very interesting to go back and read some of his
actual words. So we're going to do that when we
come back, and I'll help you understand a little bit
more about, you know, not only sort of this godfather
of modern day paranormal research, but also sort of how
(11:19):
we are not actually perhaps as advanced as we think
we are. There were people like Ford thinking about these
same strange mysteries so long ago and doing it in
a very insightful and thoughtful way. I also want to
point out that this podcast usually comes out every Friday afternoon,
(11:39):
and the time may vary a little bit. But now
what I try to do is on Friday send out
my e newsletter and let everybody know, hey, here the
new podcast is out. But I don't always get a
chance to do that. Sometimes I'm too busy, or there's
been a technical snepho, or I mean I'm out of town.
(12:01):
So just because you don't get the email from me,
because some people say, hey, where's your show? I didn't
get your email, that doesn't mean that there isn't a
new show. So whether or not you get an email
from me always go to Strange thingsshow dot com and
you'll find a link to various places where you can
listen to the show. It's also in the menu there
(12:22):
at Coast to coastam dot com and it's basically on
all the major platforms out there. Strange Things Coast to
Coast AM Joshua P. Warren. But hey, you should be
signed up from my E newsletter. If you're not, you'll
get some free online digital goodies, some good luck charms.
If you go there and you haven't done it, and
you do it right now. Go to Joshua P. Warren
(12:44):
dot com and on the homepage you'll see where it
says enter your email address for Joshua's free E newsletter.
Takes you two seconds. Hit that subscribe button and you'll
get an automated email from me immediately Joshua P. Warren
dot com.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
That's me.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
You're listening to Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast
to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network, and I will be
right back. Welcome back to Strange Things on the iHeartRadio
(13:46):
and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. I am
your host, the Wizard of Weird Joshua P. Warren beaming
into your wormhole brain from my studio in Sin City,
Las Vegas, where every day is golden and every night
a silver. A Gietato Zume and I have a feeling
(14:09):
that Charles Fort was speaking to me from the grave,
from the spirit realm, and inspiring me to present this
podcast for you that is being released on the anniversary
of his death. Let me tell you a little bit
(14:29):
more about how he lived his life. Charles Hoy Fort
born in Albany, New York, eighteen seventy four of Dutch ancestry.
His father, a grocer, was an authoritarian, and in his
unpublished autobiography, Fort mentions the physical abuse that he endured
(14:50):
from his father. One of Fort's biographers suggested that his
distrust of authority began in his treatment as a child.
Fort devi out a strong sense of independence during his
early years. As a young adult, he wanted to be
a naturalist, collecting seashells, minerals, and birds, and although he
was described as curious and intelligent, he was not a
(15:12):
good student. He was self taught, but his knowledge was considerable,
and he did an enormous amount of extensive reading at
age eighteen, Fort left New York to embark on a
world tour to quote put some capital in the bank
of experience end quote. He traveled through the Western United States, Scotland,
(15:34):
and England until becoming ill in Southern Africa. When he
returned home, he was nursed by Anna Filing, whom he
had known since childhood. Well then he married her. They
were married on October twenty sixth of eighteen ninety six
at an Episcopal church. For a few years, the newly
married couple lived in poverty in the Bronx while Fort
(15:55):
tried to earn a living writing stories for newspapers and magazines,
and in nineteen oh six he began to collect accounts
of anomalies. His uncle, Frank died in nineteen sixteen, and
a modest inheritance gave Fort enough money to quit his
various day jobs in write full time. In nineteen seventeen,
(16:16):
his brother Clarence died and his portion of the same
inheritance was divided between Fort and his other brother, Raymond.
Fort's experience as a journalist, coupled with his wit and nature,
prepared him for his real life work ridiculing the pretentiousness
of scientific positivism. Positivism. So what that means is it's
(16:39):
a tendency of journalists and editors and you know, editors
of newspapers and science journals to rationalize things instead of
taking at face value what they have, what they've found,
the data. And so he, you know, he wrote a
few short stories and tried his hands at novels, and
then he actually would often get discouraged and burn his manuscripts.
(17:02):
But the book that changed his life, The Book of
the Damned, his first nonfiction book, came out in nineteen nineteen,
and after that he kept writing nonfiction. It was a
very successful book. Fort and Anna lived intermittently in London
between nineteen twenty and twenty eight so Fort could carry
(17:23):
out research in the reading room of the British Museum,
and although born in Albany, he lived most of his
life in the Bronx. He was, like his wife, fond
of movies, and often took her from their Ryer Avenue
apartment to a movie theater nearby, stopping at an adjacent
newsstand for an armful of various newspapers. He frequented the
(17:45):
parks near the Bronx, where he would sit and sift
through piles of clippings. He often wrote the subway down
to the main public library on Fifth Avenue, where he
spent many hours reading scientific journals, newspapers, and periodicals from
around the world. Ford also had literary friends who gathered
at various apartments, including his own, to drink and talk.
(18:08):
Here's how he died. Suffering from poor health and failing insight.
Fort was pleasantly surprised to find himself the subject of
a cult following people started sending him stories, but slowly
he started feeling worse and more ill. I don't know
exactly what his symptoms were, but he didn't trust doctors
(18:31):
and he did not seek medical help for his failing health.
Insaid He Around this time was focusing on writing his
book called Wild Tout Talents, and he finally collapsed on
May third of nineteen thirty two. Was rushed to the
Royal Hospital, and later that same day Fort's publisher visited
him to show him the advanced copies of Wild Talents.
(18:56):
Four hours later, Fort died, probably of leukemia. He was
interred in the Fort family plot in Albany, New York.
How about that the last thing you got to see
was this book that he worked himself to death. Over
for more than thirty years, Charles Fort visited libraries in
(19:20):
New York City in London, assidiously reading scientific journals, newspapers, magazines,
collecting notes on phenomena that were not explained well by
the accepted theories and beliefs of the time. He took
thousands and thousands of notes during his lifetime, and sometimes
in his note taking he would get depressed, discouraged, burn
(19:43):
his work, start all over again. And when you look
at his actual writing, and I have copies of all
of his books, but this is the first one, the
Book of the Damned, And again it's huge when you
read his books, and I'm going to read you some passages.
(20:05):
In my opinion, he wrote like a man, like I said,
he wrote like a man truly obsessed. Though his prolific
books are filled with a procession of specific citations of sources, names,
and dates, his writing style is also kind of rambling
(20:26):
and bloated. It's not necessarily the easiest thing to read.
But in his commentary he's digging as deep as he
can below the surface of reality and the psyche and
vast ancient cosmic mysteries and exploring the relationship between it all.
So he was obviously a kind of genius, and he
(20:47):
was talking about all these things that seemed impossible in
a time before anybody knew about quantum physics, which now
kind of states that, well, anything is possible. In his
book here, Book of the Damned, one of the things
he starts out by saying, is about one hundred years ago,
(21:10):
if anyone was so credulous as to think that stones
had ever fallen from the sky like meteorites, he was
reasoned with, in the first place, there are no stones
of the sky. Therefore no stones can fall from the sky,
or nothing more reasonable or scientific or logical than that
could be said upon any subject. The only trouble is
(21:33):
the universal trouble that the major premise is not real,
or is intermediate somewhere between realness and unrealness. Then he
goes on to talk about this scientist in seventeen seventy
two who was going out and studying stones that had
supposedly fallen from the sky hot stones, and said, look,
(21:56):
there are no stones of the sky, so there's no
way that stones can fall. Fort says, this man believed
that only lightning striking a stone and heating it and
melting it could be explained. The scientist named Levosier said, quote,
(22:18):
this absolutely proved the stone had not fallen, but had
been struck by lightning. So authoritatively, falling stones were damned,
and that's the way it was for many, many years.
And he uses this as an example of the problem
with a lot of scientific dogma. And he talks mainly
(22:41):
throughout this book about everything you can imagine falling from
the sky, and of course he starts with stones, but
he works into flesh and slime and coins, and just
like everything you can imagine. He says, the living things
that have come down to this earth and attempts to
(23:03):
preserve them. Small frogs and toads, for instance, never have
fallen from the sky. But we're on the ground in
the first place. But that there have been such falls
up from one place in a whirlwind and down in
another does not make complete sense. And he goes on
to talk about if there were just like water spouts
(23:27):
that were picking up, say, frogs, and then dumping them
down somewhere else out of the sky, how come there
would be no tadpoles. He says, there's not one report
of tadpoles, and he actually says there's not one report
of gigantic frogs either, just a very particular type of
frog gets picked up. And he's perplexed by this. Why
(23:50):
that you know you don't have tadpoles being picked up.
As he continues to go into this, I mean we're
already into page one ninety four, he writes, our antagonism
is not to science, but to the attitude of the
sciences that they have finally realized, or to belief instead
(24:11):
of acceptance, to the insufficiency, which, as we have seen
over and over amounts to paltriness of scientific dogmas and standards.
Or if several persons start out to Chicago and get
the Buffalo and one be under the delusion that Buffalo
is Chicago, that one will be a resistance to the
(24:34):
progress of the others. Very important point of view there
and again he writes in a weird way, at least
reading it all these years later, but he says, the
problem is not science, but the attitude of sciences that
have become beliefs or dogmas. Okay, we come back. We're
(24:58):
going to get into some very weird footprints. Giants and
that kind of thing which has a special connection to
where I am right now here in Nevada. As a
matter of fact, as we explore some of the thoughts
and the ways of thinking of the great Charles Fort.
(25:21):
I'm Joshua P. Warren. You're listening to Strange Things on
the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network,
and I will be back after these important messages. Welcome
(26:04):
back to Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast.
I am Paranormal Podcast Network. I'm your host, Joshua P. Warren,
And this is the show where the unusual becomes usual. Yeah,
it's not easy to read the prolific works of Charles Fort.
(26:28):
As a matter of fact, one of his critics named Wilson,
called Fort's writing style quote atrocious and almost unreadable, and
yet despite his objections to Fort's prose, he allowed that
quote the facts are certainly astonishing enough, though end quote
(26:51):
also said, there's the feeling that no matter how honest
scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various
unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. So
Fort's principle goes something like people with a psychological need
to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible
(27:12):
than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.
And sure enough, I mean, that's what saves Charles Fort's
work is just this incredible sourcing in citation, and the
things that he was writing about, most of them turned
out to be legitimate stuff. I mean, we've verified frogs
(27:36):
do rain, and we still don't know exactly why that happens,
side to say, probably water spouts or you know, something
like that, but it still doesn't explain the tadpole thing.
Examples of the stuff that Fort referred to as would
be considered you know, occult, supernatural, paranormal. Again, he invented
(27:56):
the word teleportation. He talked about falls of all kinds
of things, organic and inorganic, spontaneous human combustion, ball lightning,
that's a term that he used a lot. He talked
about poultergeists, levitation, UFOs unexplained disappearances, the extraterrestrial hypothesis. And
(28:22):
this is really interesting going back to his book, listen
to what he says, this guy had he had the
wherewithal to write this back in those days, after he's
been talking for almost two hundred pages about weird stuff.
He says, quote, I think we are property. I should
(28:46):
say we belong to something that once upon a time
this earth was no man's land, that other worlds explored
and colonized here and fought among themselves for possession, but
then now owned by something, That something owns this earth.
All others warned off. I suspect that, after all we
(29:10):
are useful, that among contesting claimants, adjustment has occurred, or
that something now has a legal right to us by
force or by having paid out analogs of beads for
us to former more primitive owners of us. All others
off that all this has been known, perhaps for ages
(29:34):
to certain ones upon this earth, accult or order, members
of which function like bellweathers to the rest of us,
or as superiors or overseers, directing us in accordance with
instructions received from somewhere else in our mysterious usefulness. But
(29:54):
I accepted, in the past, before proprietorship was established, inhabitants
of a host of other worlds have dropped here, hopped here, wafted, sailed, flown, motored,
walked here, for all I know, been pulled here, been pushed,
have come singly, have come in enormous numbers, have visited occasionally,
have visited periodically for hunting, trading, replenishing, harems, mining, have
(30:17):
been unable to stay here, have established colonies here, have
been lost here far advanced peoples or things and primitive
peoples or whatever they were. Well, then he brings this up.
He's talking about some of the weird, you know, fossils,
and he says, how about the footprints and the sandstone
(30:39):
near Carson, Nevada. Each print eighteen to twenty inches long.
That's according to the American Journal of Science. He gives
a citation. He says, these footprints are very clear and
well defined. Reproduction of them in the journal blah blah blah.
The size of the size of these foot Prince, and
(31:00):
especially the width between the right and left series, are
strong evidence they were not made by men, as has
been so generally supposed. That's interesting because just recently there
was an article in the New York Post a follow
up on that story. Hopefully I'll have time to read
that to you. Moving round along, he.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
Talks about, Oh goodness, he gets into poltergeists and stones
being thrown thrown around.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
This is really weird. He actually, I think I need
to read this whole thing. He's got a report in
here from the Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, and
this goes back to eighteen seventy. This is an official
report by Captain F. W. Banner, and he says, this
(31:57):
is quote now, upon the twenty second of March eighteen
at such and such latitude and longitude, the sailors of
the Lady of the Lake, that's the name of a
ship saw a remarkable object or quote cloud in the sky,
and they reported it to the captain. According to Captain Banner,
it was a cloud of circular form with an included
semicircle divided into four parts, the central dividing shaft beginning
(32:21):
at the center of the circle and extending far outward
curving backward. Don't worry if that didn't makes sense to you,
because I'm going to explain in a second. There's an illustration.
So there's this big, weird gray thing. It says geometricity
and complexity and stability, and the small likelihood of a
cloud maintaining such diversity of features, to say nothing of
(32:44):
appearance of organic form. The thing traveled from a point
at about twenty degrees above the horizon to a point
about eighty degrees above. Then it settled down to the northeast.
It was light gray in color, much lower than the clouds.
Whatever it was, it traveled against the wind. It came
(33:04):
up obliquely against the wind, and finally settled down right
in the wind's eye. For half an hour the form
was visible, and when it finally disappeared, that was not
because it disintegrated like a cloud, but because it was
lost to sight in the evening darkness. And Captain Banner
drew this picture of it, and honestly, it looks this thing.
(33:26):
It looks kind of like a stingray. There's a circle
and then there's sort of a hooked tail. You could
almost use your imagination and say it reminds you a
bit of the starship Enterprise. But it definitely has this
very weird circular shape that you know, you could describe
(33:46):
as being like a saucer with an antenna or something.
But you know, that's going back to when I say,
eighteen seventy so in conclusion of this massive, massive book,
I think this is one of the most significant lines
that he wrote. It's just one sentence if a single
(34:12):
instance of anything be disregarded by a system. Our own
attitude is that a single instance is a powerless thing.
So he's saying, if if just one instance of this
stuff is true, but we just blow it off because
(34:36):
we you know, well we can't explain it. Well, then
our attitude is that a single instances has no power. Well,
that doesn't make sense, does it. And this shows you
the incredibly complex mindset that this guy had back then
regarding how to understand, how to understand I guess the
(35:04):
flaws and the limitations of the scientific method. And just
last month in the New York Post, there was this
article here that fort would would love to have read,
and it says scientists still baffled from giant human skeletons
up to ten feet tall decades after initial discovery. This
(35:25):
was written by Snajana Farbarov, published April fourth of twenty
twenty four. A series of mysterious giant skeletons up to
ten feet tall, reportedly discovered in and around the Vatic
Caves last century, dubbed the Giants of Lovelock, are still
baffling scientists decades later. The claims about supersized humans who
(35:47):
roam the area around Lovelock, a remote town ninety miles
northeast of Reno, thousands of years ago are rooted in
Native American lore, which tells a fierce, redheaded, pale skinned
giant to arrive from Central America by boat and attack
local tribes. And of course it talks about how that
(36:09):
these were cannibals, they were eating the natives, so they
were all going to war. And finally, one day, all
of these these Native Americans, they were able to surround
this cave and burn them all to death inside that cave,
says The first foray into the Lovelock Cave was made
(36:30):
in nineteen eleven, when a pair of miners searching for
guano or bat excrement allegedly unearthed sixty human skeletons, some
between seven and eight feet tall, but nobody knows what
happened to these remains. However, two subsequent excavations were carried
(36:51):
out in nineteen twelve and nineteen twenty four and brought
to light thousands of ancient artifacts, among them a well
worn sandal measuring and astonishing fifteen inches in length, which
is the equivalent of a modern day size twenty nine shoe.
For comparison. NBA star Shaquille O'Neill, who stands seven feet
(37:15):
one wears size twenty two shoes. So Shaquille O'Neill wears
twenty two and they were pulling shoes out of there
twenty nine inches long. They actually have these on display
in the museum. Radio carbon dating has placed some of
(37:36):
these bone fragments and material back to twenty thirty and VC.
When we come back, I want to tell you about
an experiment you can participate in. I'm Joshua Pee Warren.
You're listening to Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast
to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. I'll be right back.
(38:28):
Welcome back to the final segment of this edition of
Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM
Paranormal Podcast Network. I am your host, Joshua P. Larren.
And what do you think about Charles fort saying that
he thinks we are owned, that we are property? Sure
(38:55):
feels that way to me a lot. How about you?
I would explain a lot. And how funny it is
to think of, you know, all those years ago when
he was writing that studying this stuff in the eighteen hundreds.
I mean, this is long before we had even thought
about going to the Moon or getting satellites out there,
(39:15):
and he felt that way even then. Is a lot
of what we just see an illusion. You know, I
have this story, and I've probably told you this before.
Just forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but I just
it always seems so appropriate to bring this up when
I talk about these weird four tea and phenomena. Years ago,
(39:41):
I was hired to be a consultant for a Warner
Brothers major motion picture called The Apparition, and as part
of that, I shot a bunch of DVD extras and
like Blu Ray extras, and at one point this was
a horror movie. So they flew me to Los Angeles
(40:01):
where they were filming in that area, and they wanted
me to be on the actual movie set, and then
they were going to interview me about the non fiction
part of ghosts and apparitions while you could see the
fictional movie being filmed in the background. So I'm just
off on the side of the set kind of watching things,
(40:23):
and I had let's see, there was Ashley Green in it,
and Sebastians stand and they were running around screaming and stuff.
But anyway, so at one point here I am out
in sort of this country area in you know, southern California,
and they had apparently gone out and rented somebody's house
(40:44):
for this shoot. And it's in the middle of a
really big yard at the end of a long driveway.
And at one point I'm watching this giant crew. There's
hundreds of people milling around on this crew. It's at
night time and they're setting up all this complex life.
And at one point, this woman who I guess was
a lighting lady. She she comes walking up and she
(41:06):
looks down at this rock on the ground and she
gets very she looks very perplexed, and she says to
this grip, do you know if that's a real rock
or a prop rock? Because if that's a real rock,
then I want to move it. But if it's a
prop rock, well I don't want to touch it. And
the rip says, geez, I don't know. Let me go
(41:29):
get the set supervisor. Okay, So we wait around and
then so the set supervisor comes back. Is this a
real rock or a prop rock?
Speaker 4 (41:36):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Good, question, says to set supervis. So then they go
and get the prop master, or they're trying to and
they can't find the prop master, And so finally they
get ahold of the third a D and he doesn't
know if it's real. And then they get the second
AD and he doesn't know if it's real. So finally
they just give up on it and they just work
(41:58):
around it. And to this day, I imagine nobody knows
whether there is a real rock or a prop rock
sitting in the yard outside this house. And that's why
people in show business are so often out of touch
with reality. That is a very good example though, of
(42:21):
how can you know how confused we can get about
what's real and what's not living in this day and age,
especially with we you know, we have cyber tech and
AI and holograms, and you know how much of this
is real? How much of this is just some big
matrix that we're wandering around in. I think that may
(42:43):
be the key, of course, to how manifestation works. And
so I've been teasing this for a little while. Those
of you who bought an electrom ring are going to
be invited, and I'm inviting you right now to participate
in an experiment with me. This is only for those
of you who have an electron ring. Because if you
bought an electron ring, it's not only a physical thing,
(43:05):
it also makes you a member of a club which
we call the electron ring. So if you have an
electron ring, you are a member of the electron ring.
And here is what I would like for you to
do on Thursday of May thirtieth of twenty twenty four,
and you write this down somewhere, okay, on Thursday of
(43:26):
May thirtieth, Thursday, May thirtieth of twenty twenty four, at
five pm New York time. That's just a reference point
for you, okay, So whatever the time is for you,
Like for me, it'll be was that two pm? Yeah,
so that'll be two pm for me and five pm
(43:48):
in New York. If you have an electron ring, put
it on, make a fist. Sit there, close your eyes,
and I want you to think about their UFOs appearing
all around the world. Over the next three days, we're
going to try this as an experiment. We're going to
work our chops here and see if we the electroum
(44:11):
ring can create a lot of UFO sidings when we
all focus together on our rings. So here's what you
have to do again, Thursday May thirtieth, twenty twenty four,
five pm. Take a moment, you know, a couple of minutes.
Put on your ring and sit there and envision it
and meditate on it, and then let's see what happens
the next few days. If you forget about it and
(44:34):
you're like, oh man, I missed it, it's not five pm,
that's okay, just do it sometime that day if you
can't do it at five, But five is our center
point that we're working with. Okay, we'll see what happens.
Why I put this out there, the whole world's going
to be able to see. And I'll send you an
e newsletter and remind you about this as well. But
(44:56):
if this works out for us, then we're going to
do bigger and better things. I'll read you an email.
I got real quick when it comes to manifestation. This
came to me from a woman named Gloria. She says,
Dear Joshua, I was so excited to learn of you
on the Jeff Mara podcast. I was so happy to
see your sacred geometry manifesting sigils, and how generous you
(45:18):
were to let us copy them. So after I looked
at them On Monday, a cheese truck turned over near
our town of one hundred and twenty one people, and
people were telling us they were giving away free cheese,
(45:39):
so we got some and took some around to our friends.
The next day, someone ran into a takeito truck and
spilled some on the highway, so they got some of
those for free. Then my husband found a one hundred
dollars bill on the floor, and let's see, told the
(46:01):
boss she dropped it, and she gave it to him
and told told him to give it to me for
helping her. Okay, she says, Then I got paid for
painting some windows. Blah blah blah. She goes on to say,
now she's gotten this other amazing job to build out
(46:22):
a garden. She's saying, you are right, Blessings can come
in so many different forms. I thought about putting the
sigils on an abandoned building so the people can see
them as they pass us and be blessed too. And
I haven't forgot about what you said about sharing either.
Need a little more time. Your friend Glorious and I
(46:44):
wrote her Gloria and I wrote her back, and I said, well,
I'm glad that you know all this good stuff's happening
and you're getting free cheese and takitos. But I hope
the folks on the truck were okay. You know what
a scary people like one of those you know, monkey
paw things. Well they all died on the truck, but
(47:05):
we got free cheese. No, no, I'm sure everybody was fine.
So you see, that's the attitude. That's what I try
to tell people. When you get into this manifestation stuff,
don't fix eight too strongly on exactly how you think
things are going to manifest, because if you do that,
you limit the options the universe can give you to
(47:29):
bring things to you, often in ways that you could
have never imagined on your own. And if you want
to experiment with different ways to manifest, that's why the
best thing you can do is just go to Joshua
Pwarren dot com and just start clicking around. You'll find
free siguls there that you can experiment with. Go to
the Curiosity Shop. Even if you're not going to buy anything,
(47:51):
it's interesting. Sometimes you can just look at these inventions
in the Curiosity Shop and that will inspire you, and
that will actually make you want to that'll give you ideas,
and sometimes you can start manifesting things just because you
start thinking about the objects in the Curiosity Shop. People
write me and tell me about that kind of stuff
all the time, and of course if you do buy
(48:14):
something from there, you're supporting the show and you're keeping
us in business. So here's something that I always like
to do if I have time to end the show
on a positive note. It's a free show. And this
is a free vibration that I created in my laboratory
years ago and it has done a lot of good
(48:35):
for a lot of people around the world. It's called
the Good Fortune Tone. And you know what, you can
just close your eyes and take a deep breath and
relax and listen to it. It's like twenty seconds long.
Or if you have a beverage, you might want to
put the beverage next to your speaker and then when
you drink the beverage, maybe you'll drink in the good vibes.
(48:57):
So here it is, my friends, the Good Fortune Tone.
(49:25):
That's it for this edition of the show. Follow me
on Twitter at Joshua P. Warren Plus visit Joshua pwarren
dot com to sign up for my free e newsletter
to receive a free instant gift and check out the
cool stuff in the Curiosity Shop all at Joshuapwarren dot com.
(49:46):
I have a fun one lined up for you next time,
I promise, so please tell all your friends to subscribe
to this show and to always remember the Golden Rule.
Thank you for listening, thank you for your interest and support,
Thank you for staying curious, and I will talk to
you again soon. You've been listening to Strange Things on
(50:11):
the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Thanks for listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast
AM Paranormal Podcast Network. Make sure and check out all
our shows on the iHeartRadio app or by going to
iHeartRadio dot com
And you're here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Thanks for choosing the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast Day
and Paranormal Podcast Network. Your quest for podcasts of the paranormal, supernatural,
and the unexplained ends here. We invite you to enjoy
all our shows we have on this network, and right now,
let's start with Strange Things with Joshua P. Warren.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and
opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions
only and do not reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast
to Coast AM, employees of Premiere Networks, or their sponsors
and associates. We would like to encourage you to do
(00:45):
your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Ready to be amazed by the wizard of weird. This
is Strange Things with Joshua Warren. I am Joshua would
be Warren, and each week on this show, I'll be
bringing you brand new my blowing content, news exercises and
(01:33):
weird experiments you can do at home, and a lot
more on this edition of the show. The Book of
the Damned and Charles Fort I'm talking about a book
that was published in nineteen nineteen and here is what
inspired me to present this topic at this time. Right now,
(01:57):
as I speak, I have a fat gray rubber frog
in a clear display case with dramatic lights shining on
it here in my house.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
This frog is about twelve inches long. He's all stretched
out three or four inches thick around the middle. He
looks pretty ragged. He's had a rough day. And this
is a screen used prop from one of my favorite movies.
Can you guess what it is? I bet some of
(02:32):
you know immediately. I'm talking about a film that came
out in nineteen ninety nine called Magnolia. This was a drama, written, directed,
and co produced by Paul Thomas Anderson, the same guy
who made the movie Boogie Nights. And this movie has
just an all star ensemble cast, Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman,
(02:54):
William H. Macy, Julianne Moore. I mean, the list goes
on and on, and it's as an epic mosaic of
interrelated characters in search of happiness, forgiveness, and meaning in
the San Fernando Valley. I know that sounds really boring,
but the way it's put together is brilliant. So you
(03:14):
have all of these separate little adventures that you know
in sagas that people are having. And sorry, here's a
spoiler for you, but hey, the movie did come out
what twenty five years ago, so if you haven't seen
it by now, sorry, At the end, it's almost like
all the stories of these characters kind of converge on
this one night where there's a lot of drama happening,
and then out of the blue, the most unexpected thing
(03:36):
in the world happens. There is this rain of frogs
from the sky. It's extremely bizarre, it's very memorable. I
don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it in
any other movie. And that was apparently inspired by the
work of the American author Charles Fort, who are going
(03:58):
to talk about here momentarily. But you know, that whole
movie has kind of a bit of a paranormal and
synchronistic thread that runs through it. And so, I, even
though I loved the movie, I never I never thought
about getting one of those prop frogs, because I'm sure
(04:18):
they made thousands of them to drop on the set.
These are physical effects. Okay, this is not cgi. I
never thought about getting one of those until recently I
was watching online this Hollywood prop auction and one of
those things popped up and I was like, well, it
caught me off guard, so and it was gone so quickly,
(04:39):
I didn't even get a chance to bid on it.
But then I went out and I found another one
and I bought that one, And so I have this
four ten prop. Because work that is sort of inspired
by the books of Charles fort are called four ten.
It's spun off into a whole genre, and a lot
(05:01):
of people think of his work as being the core
of what guys like myself do today. A lot of
people consider him to be the godfather of paranormal researchers.
And you know, when I was growing up young, I
remember I would read the fourteen Times, which was a
(05:22):
publication out of England which was based upon just weird
stuff that they called forty and I actually got an
article of some kind published in there at one point
when I was young, and it was a big honor.
And then actually recently I think maybe like last year,
I won an award from the fourteen Film Festival in
(05:43):
England for a short film that I made, which you
can watch on YouTube called o UFOs. But anyway, back
to the Man of the hour. Here Charles Fort. This guy, Okay,
he was born. Let's see. He was born on August
six of eighteen seventy four in Albany, New York, and
(06:06):
he died on May third of nineteen thirty two at
the age of fifty seven. Now, this guy, I mean,
I'm getting ready to give you his bio of all
the weird things that he introduced the world to that
are commonplace now. But let me just tell you something
that gave me goosebumps. I started thinking about what I
wanted my next podcast to be, and I saw the
(06:27):
frog and I go, you know what, I've always wanted
to do a thing about Charles Fort, kind of explain
to people who he was and why he did and
why he did it best I can. And I didn't know,
you know, like a lot of the dates and stuff.
So I went and I looked him up, and I
saw that he died on May third of nineteen thirty two,
and it gave me goosebumps, because then I looked at
the calendar and I realized that this podcast was scheduled
(06:51):
to be released on May third of twenty twenty four,
ninety two years ago he died. He would approve of this.
That's what I knew. Like, oh, okay, I meant to
put this podcast out on this date, fifty seven years
old when he died in the Bronx. I'll tell you
later how he died. You know, if you look at
(07:12):
a picture of him, he looks a heck of a
lot like Teddy Roosevelt. He's got the spectacles of the
mustache and the well groomed, parted hair. And I mean
a lot of people who didn't know any better would
look at an old black and white picture of Charles
Fort and say, yeah, that's Teddy Roosevelt. And his books.
He published a bunch of different books, but his first
(07:36):
nonfiction book, the one that made him famous, was called
The Book of the Damned, and it's often considered the
original classic of paranormal exploration. And on the back of
it here it says, welcome to a record of the damned.
(07:57):
By damned, wrote Charles Fort and nineteen nineteen, I mean
the excluded, Okay, so that's what he's talking about. By damned,
I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of
the data that science has excluded. Fort's survey of the
Unknown was one of the first to expose modern people
(08:18):
to visitors from space, monsters, poultrygeist and floating islands. Frogs
fall from the sky, Mysterious airships take flight in an
age before the airplane, people disappear, reappear, and spontaneously combust.
This volume reintroduces the central and most influential work of
Fort's career, in which he pushed us to ask what
(08:42):
is out there. The blurb that they give about his
life says he made his life's work the study of
unexplained phenomena. And although his writing attracted controversy, Fort was
celebrated in The New York Times, et cetera. It says
his name was made into an adjective for tien to
describe range events a lasting influence on science fiction as
(09:03):
well as science. Let me give you a more a
little bit more of a thorough bio here from about
the author in this book I'm holding in my hands,
called the Book of the Damned. It says he made
his life's work the study of unexplained phenomena. After achieving
modest success as a short story writer and novelist, Fort
(09:25):
began studying a nomalist phenomena, and in nineteen nineteen he
published his landmark of paranormal exploration, The Book of the Damned,
which influenced generations of writers. Fort moved to London in
nineteen twenty four to consult the archives at the British Museum,
then returned to the United States in nineteen twenty six
(09:45):
at the New York Public Library. He continued his research
into spontaneous combustion, spaceships, poltergeist, and other experiences and events
that had been written off by science. Fort published three
additional books on the unexplained, what was called New Lands,
the other was called Low l and one was called
Wild Talents. So when we come back from our break,
(10:11):
I'm going to give you a more detailed overview of
how he lived his life. And then, perhaps more importantly,
I'm going to actually read to you some portions, some
very brief portions of his book, The Book of the Damned.
And it's a huge volume, really, it's four hundred pages.
(10:32):
And he had a very particular style of writing. He
wrote like a man truly obsessed, Okay, And I mean
we're talking about a guy, though, who was so innovative.
I mean, he coined the term teleportation. Okay, this came
from him, and you know, he used a lot of
(10:55):
the phrases that we now consider commonplace, and so it's
very interesting to go back and read some of his
actual words. So we're going to do that when we
come back, and I'll help you understand a little bit
more about, you know, not only sort of this godfather
of modern day paranormal research, but also sort of how
(11:19):
we are not actually perhaps as advanced as we think
we are. There were people like Ford thinking about these
same strange mysteries so long ago and doing it in
a very insightful and thoughtful way. I also want to
point out that this podcast usually comes out every Friday afternoon,
(11:39):
and the time may vary a little bit. But now
what I try to do is on Friday send out
my e newsletter and let everybody know, hey, here the
new podcast is out. But I don't always get a
chance to do that. Sometimes I'm too busy, or there's
been a technical snepho, or I mean I'm out of town.
(12:01):
So just because you don't get the email from me,
because some people say, hey, where's your show? I didn't
get your email, that doesn't mean that there isn't a
new show. So whether or not you get an email
from me always go to Strange thingsshow dot com and
you'll find a link to various places where you can
listen to the show. It's also in the menu there
(12:22):
at Coast to coastam dot com and it's basically on
all the major platforms out there. Strange Things Coast to
Coast AM Joshua P. Warren. But hey, you should be
signed up from my E newsletter. If you're not, you'll
get some free online digital goodies, some good luck charms.
If you go there and you haven't done it, and
you do it right now. Go to Joshua P. Warren
(12:44):
dot com and on the homepage you'll see where it
says enter your email address for Joshua's free E newsletter.
Takes you two seconds. Hit that subscribe button and you'll
get an automated email from me immediately Joshua P. Warren
dot com.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
That's me.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
You're listening to Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast
to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network, and I will be
right back. Welcome back to Strange Things on the iHeartRadio
(13:46):
and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. I am
your host, the Wizard of Weird Joshua P. Warren beaming
into your wormhole brain from my studio in Sin City,
Las Vegas, where every day is golden and every night
a silver. A Gietato Zume and I have a feeling
(14:09):
that Charles Fort was speaking to me from the grave,
from the spirit realm, and inspiring me to present this
podcast for you that is being released on the anniversary
of his death. Let me tell you a little bit
(14:29):
more about how he lived his life. Charles Hoy Fort
born in Albany, New York, eighteen seventy four of Dutch ancestry.
His father, a grocer, was an authoritarian, and in his
unpublished autobiography, Fort mentions the physical abuse that he endured
(14:50):
from his father. One of Fort's biographers suggested that his
distrust of authority began in his treatment as a child.
Fort devi out a strong sense of independence during his
early years. As a young adult, he wanted to be
a naturalist, collecting seashells, minerals, and birds, and although he
was described as curious and intelligent, he was not a
(15:12):
good student. He was self taught, but his knowledge was considerable,
and he did an enormous amount of extensive reading at
age eighteen, Fort left New York to embark on a
world tour to quote put some capital in the bank
of experience end quote. He traveled through the Western United States, Scotland,
(15:34):
and England until becoming ill in Southern Africa. When he
returned home, he was nursed by Anna Filing, whom he
had known since childhood. Well then he married her. They
were married on October twenty sixth of eighteen ninety six
at an Episcopal church. For a few years, the newly
married couple lived in poverty in the Bronx while Fort
(15:55):
tried to earn a living writing stories for newspapers and magazines,
and in nineteen oh six he began to collect accounts
of anomalies. His uncle, Frank died in nineteen sixteen, and
a modest inheritance gave Fort enough money to quit his
various day jobs in write full time. In nineteen seventeen,
(16:16):
his brother Clarence died and his portion of the same
inheritance was divided between Fort and his other brother, Raymond.
Fort's experience as a journalist, coupled with his wit and nature,
prepared him for his real life work ridiculing the pretentiousness
of scientific positivism. Positivism. So what that means is it's
(16:39):
a tendency of journalists and editors and you know, editors
of newspapers and science journals to rationalize things instead of
taking at face value what they have, what they've found,
the data. And so he, you know, he wrote a
few short stories and tried his hands at novels, and
then he actually would often get discouraged and burn his manuscripts.
(17:02):
But the book that changed his life, The Book of
the Damned, his first nonfiction book, came out in nineteen nineteen,
and after that he kept writing nonfiction. It was a
very successful book. Fort and Anna lived intermittently in London
between nineteen twenty and twenty eight so Fort could carry
(17:23):
out research in the reading room of the British Museum,
and although born in Albany, he lived most of his
life in the Bronx. He was, like his wife, fond
of movies, and often took her from their Ryer Avenue
apartment to a movie theater nearby, stopping at an adjacent
newsstand for an armful of various newspapers. He frequented the
(17:45):
parks near the Bronx, where he would sit and sift
through piles of clippings. He often wrote the subway down
to the main public library on Fifth Avenue, where he
spent many hours reading scientific journals, newspapers, and periodicals from
around the world. Ford also had literary friends who gathered
at various apartments, including his own, to drink and talk.
(18:08):
Here's how he died. Suffering from poor health and failing insight.
Fort was pleasantly surprised to find himself the subject of
a cult following people started sending him stories, but slowly
he started feeling worse and more ill. I don't know
exactly what his symptoms were, but he didn't trust doctors
(18:31):
and he did not seek medical help for his failing health.
Insaid He Around this time was focusing on writing his
book called Wild Tout Talents, and he finally collapsed on
May third of nineteen thirty two. Was rushed to the
Royal Hospital, and later that same day Fort's publisher visited
him to show him the advanced copies of Wild Talents.
(18:56):
Four hours later, Fort died, probably of leukemia. He was
interred in the Fort family plot in Albany, New York.
How about that the last thing you got to see
was this book that he worked himself to death. Over
for more than thirty years, Charles Fort visited libraries in
(19:20):
New York City in London, assidiously reading scientific journals, newspapers, magazines,
collecting notes on phenomena that were not explained well by
the accepted theories and beliefs of the time. He took
thousands and thousands of notes during his lifetime, and sometimes
in his note taking he would get depressed, discouraged, burn
(19:43):
his work, start all over again. And when you look
at his actual writing, and I have copies of all
of his books, but this is the first one, the
Book of the Damned, And again it's huge when you
read his books, and I'm going to read you some passages.
(20:05):
In my opinion, he wrote like a man, like I said,
he wrote like a man truly obsessed. Though his prolific
books are filled with a procession of specific citations of sources, names,
and dates, his writing style is also kind of rambling
(20:26):
and bloated. It's not necessarily the easiest thing to read.
But in his commentary he's digging as deep as he
can below the surface of reality and the psyche and
vast ancient cosmic mysteries and exploring the relationship between it all.
So he was obviously a kind of genius, and he
(20:47):
was talking about all these things that seemed impossible in
a time before anybody knew about quantum physics, which now
kind of states that, well, anything is possible. In his
book here, Book of the Damned, one of the things
he starts out by saying, is about one hundred years ago,
(21:10):
if anyone was so credulous as to think that stones
had ever fallen from the sky like meteorites, he was
reasoned with, in the first place, there are no stones
of the sky. Therefore no stones can fall from the sky,
or nothing more reasonable or scientific or logical than that
could be said upon any subject. The only trouble is
(21:33):
the universal trouble that the major premise is not real,
or is intermediate somewhere between realness and unrealness. Then he
goes on to talk about this scientist in seventeen seventy
two who was going out and studying stones that had
supposedly fallen from the sky hot stones, and said, look,
(21:56):
there are no stones of the sky, so there's no
way that stones can fall. Fort says, this man believed
that only lightning striking a stone and heating it and
melting it could be explained. The scientist named Levosier said, quote,
(22:18):
this absolutely proved the stone had not fallen, but had
been struck by lightning. So authoritatively, falling stones were damned,
and that's the way it was for many, many years.
And he uses this as an example of the problem
with a lot of scientific dogma. And he talks mainly
(22:41):
throughout this book about everything you can imagine falling from
the sky, and of course he starts with stones, but
he works into flesh and slime and coins, and just
like everything you can imagine. He says, the living things
that have come down to this earth and attempts to
(23:03):
preserve them. Small frogs and toads, for instance, never have
fallen from the sky. But we're on the ground in
the first place. But that there have been such falls
up from one place in a whirlwind and down in
another does not make complete sense. And he goes on
to talk about if there were just like water spouts
(23:27):
that were picking up, say, frogs, and then dumping them
down somewhere else out of the sky, how come there
would be no tadpoles. He says, there's not one report
of tadpoles, and he actually says there's not one report
of gigantic frogs either, just a very particular type of
frog gets picked up. And he's perplexed by this. Why
(23:50):
that you know you don't have tadpoles being picked up.
As he continues to go into this, I mean we're
already into page one ninety four, he writes, our antagonism
is not to science, but to the attitude of the
sciences that they have finally realized, or to belief instead
(24:11):
of acceptance, to the insufficiency, which, as we have seen
over and over amounts to paltriness of scientific dogmas and standards.
Or if several persons start out to Chicago and get
the Buffalo and one be under the delusion that Buffalo
is Chicago, that one will be a resistance to the
(24:34):
progress of the others. Very important point of view there
and again he writes in a weird way, at least
reading it all these years later, but he says, the
problem is not science, but the attitude of sciences that
have become beliefs or dogmas. Okay, we come back. We're
(24:58):
going to get into some very weird footprints. Giants and
that kind of thing which has a special connection to
where I am right now here in Nevada. As a
matter of fact, as we explore some of the thoughts
and the ways of thinking of the great Charles Fort.
(25:21):
I'm Joshua P. Warren. You're listening to Strange Things on
the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network,
and I will be back after these important messages. Welcome
(26:04):
back to Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast.
I am Paranormal Podcast Network. I'm your host, Joshua P. Warren,
And this is the show where the unusual becomes usual. Yeah,
it's not easy to read the prolific works of Charles Fort.
(26:28):
As a matter of fact, one of his critics named Wilson,
called Fort's writing style quote atrocious and almost unreadable, and
yet despite his objections to Fort's prose, he allowed that
quote the facts are certainly astonishing enough, though end quote
(26:51):
also said, there's the feeling that no matter how honest
scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various
unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. So
Fort's principle goes something like people with a psychological need
to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible
(27:12):
than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.
And sure enough, I mean, that's what saves Charles Fort's
work is just this incredible sourcing in citation, and the
things that he was writing about, most of them turned
out to be legitimate stuff. I mean, we've verified frogs
(27:36):
do rain, and we still don't know exactly why that happens,
side to say, probably water spouts or you know, something
like that, but it still doesn't explain the tadpole thing.
Examples of the stuff that Fort referred to as would
be considered you know, occult, supernatural, paranormal. Again, he invented
(27:56):
the word teleportation. He talked about falls of all kinds
of things, organic and inorganic, spontaneous human combustion, ball lightning,
that's a term that he used a lot. He talked
about poultergeists, levitation, UFOs unexplained disappearances, the extraterrestrial hypothesis. And
(28:22):
this is really interesting going back to his book, listen
to what he says, this guy had he had the
wherewithal to write this back in those days, after he's
been talking for almost two hundred pages about weird stuff.
He says, quote, I think we are property. I should
(28:46):
say we belong to something that once upon a time
this earth was no man's land, that other worlds explored
and colonized here and fought among themselves for possession, but
then now owned by something, That something owns this earth.
All others warned off. I suspect that, after all we
(29:10):
are useful, that among contesting claimants, adjustment has occurred, or
that something now has a legal right to us by
force or by having paid out analogs of beads for
us to former more primitive owners of us. All others
off that all this has been known, perhaps for ages
(29:34):
to certain ones upon this earth, accult or order, members
of which function like bellweathers to the rest of us,
or as superiors or overseers, directing us in accordance with
instructions received from somewhere else in our mysterious usefulness. But
(29:54):
I accepted, in the past, before proprietorship was established, inhabitants
of a host of other worlds have dropped here, hopped here, wafted, sailed, flown, motored,
walked here, for all I know, been pulled here, been pushed,
have come singly, have come in enormous numbers, have visited occasionally,
have visited periodically for hunting, trading, replenishing, harems, mining, have
(30:17):
been unable to stay here, have established colonies here, have
been lost here far advanced peoples or things and primitive
peoples or whatever they were. Well, then he brings this up.
He's talking about some of the weird, you know, fossils,
and he says, how about the footprints and the sandstone
(30:39):
near Carson, Nevada. Each print eighteen to twenty inches long.
That's according to the American Journal of Science. He gives
a citation. He says, these footprints are very clear and
well defined. Reproduction of them in the journal blah blah blah.
The size of the size of these foot Prince, and
(31:00):
especially the width between the right and left series, are
strong evidence they were not made by men, as has
been so generally supposed. That's interesting because just recently there
was an article in the New York Post a follow
up on that story. Hopefully I'll have time to read
that to you. Moving round along, he.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
Talks about, Oh goodness, he gets into poltergeists and stones
being thrown thrown around.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
This is really weird. He actually, I think I need
to read this whole thing. He's got a report in
here from the Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, and
this goes back to eighteen seventy. This is an official
report by Captain F. W. Banner, and he says, this
(31:57):
is quote now, upon the twenty second of March eighteen
at such and such latitude and longitude, the sailors of
the Lady of the Lake, that's the name of a
ship saw a remarkable object or quote cloud in the sky,
and they reported it to the captain. According to Captain Banner,
it was a cloud of circular form with an included
semicircle divided into four parts, the central dividing shaft beginning
(32:21):
at the center of the circle and extending far outward
curving backward. Don't worry if that didn't makes sense to you,
because I'm going to explain in a second. There's an illustration.
So there's this big, weird gray thing. It says geometricity
and complexity and stability, and the small likelihood of a
cloud maintaining such diversity of features, to say nothing of
(32:44):
appearance of organic form. The thing traveled from a point
at about twenty degrees above the horizon to a point
about eighty degrees above. Then it settled down to the northeast.
It was light gray in color, much lower than the clouds.
Whatever it was, it traveled against the wind. It came
(33:04):
up obliquely against the wind, and finally settled down right
in the wind's eye. For half an hour the form
was visible, and when it finally disappeared, that was not
because it disintegrated like a cloud, but because it was
lost to sight in the evening darkness. And Captain Banner
drew this picture of it, and honestly, it looks this thing.
(33:26):
It looks kind of like a stingray. There's a circle
and then there's sort of a hooked tail. You could
almost use your imagination and say it reminds you a
bit of the starship Enterprise. But it definitely has this
very weird circular shape that you know, you could describe
(33:46):
as being like a saucer with an antenna or something.
But you know, that's going back to when I say,
eighteen seventy so in conclusion of this massive, massive book,
I think this is one of the most significant lines
that he wrote. It's just one sentence if a single
(34:12):
instance of anything be disregarded by a system. Our own
attitude is that a single instance is a powerless thing.
So he's saying, if if just one instance of this
stuff is true, but we just blow it off because
(34:36):
we you know, well we can't explain it. Well, then
our attitude is that a single instances has no power. Well,
that doesn't make sense, does it. And this shows you
the incredibly complex mindset that this guy had back then
regarding how to understand, how to understand I guess the
(35:04):
flaws and the limitations of the scientific method. And just
last month in the New York Post, there was this
article here that fort would would love to have read,
and it says scientists still baffled from giant human skeletons
up to ten feet tall decades after initial discovery. This
(35:25):
was written by Snajana Farbarov, published April fourth of twenty
twenty four. A series of mysterious giant skeletons up to
ten feet tall, reportedly discovered in and around the Vatic
Caves last century, dubbed the Giants of Lovelock, are still
baffling scientists decades later. The claims about supersized humans who
(35:47):
roam the area around Lovelock, a remote town ninety miles
northeast of Reno, thousands of years ago are rooted in
Native American lore, which tells a fierce, redheaded, pale skinned
giant to arrive from Central America by boat and attack
local tribes. And of course it talks about how that
(36:09):
these were cannibals, they were eating the natives, so they
were all going to war. And finally, one day, all
of these these Native Americans, they were able to surround
this cave and burn them all to death inside that cave,
says The first foray into the Lovelock Cave was made
(36:30):
in nineteen eleven, when a pair of miners searching for
guano or bat excrement allegedly unearthed sixty human skeletons, some
between seven and eight feet tall, but nobody knows what
happened to these remains. However, two subsequent excavations were carried
(36:51):
out in nineteen twelve and nineteen twenty four and brought
to light thousands of ancient artifacts, among them a well
worn sandal measuring and astonishing fifteen inches in length, which
is the equivalent of a modern day size twenty nine shoe.
For comparison. NBA star Shaquille O'Neill, who stands seven feet
(37:15):
one wears size twenty two shoes. So Shaquille O'Neill wears
twenty two and they were pulling shoes out of there
twenty nine inches long. They actually have these on display
in the museum. Radio carbon dating has placed some of
(37:36):
these bone fragments and material back to twenty thirty and VC.
When we come back, I want to tell you about
an experiment you can participate in. I'm Joshua Pee Warren.
You're listening to Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast
to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. I'll be right back.
(38:28):
Welcome back to the final segment of this edition of
Strange Things on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM
Paranormal Podcast Network. I am your host, Joshua P. Larren.
And what do you think about Charles fort saying that
he thinks we are owned, that we are property? Sure
(38:55):
feels that way to me a lot. How about you?
I would explain a lot. And how funny it is
to think of, you know, all those years ago when
he was writing that studying this stuff in the eighteen hundreds.
I mean, this is long before we had even thought
about going to the Moon or getting satellites out there,
(39:15):
and he felt that way even then. Is a lot
of what we just see an illusion. You know, I
have this story, and I've probably told you this before.
Just forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but I just
it always seems so appropriate to bring this up when
I talk about these weird four tea and phenomena. Years ago,
(39:41):
I was hired to be a consultant for a Warner
Brothers major motion picture called The Apparition, and as part
of that, I shot a bunch of DVD extras and
like Blu Ray extras, and at one point this was
a horror movie. So they flew me to Los Angeles
(40:01):
where they were filming in that area, and they wanted
me to be on the actual movie set, and then
they were going to interview me about the non fiction
part of ghosts and apparitions while you could see the
fictional movie being filmed in the background. So I'm just
off on the side of the set kind of watching things,
(40:23):
and I had let's see, there was Ashley Green in it,
and Sebastians stand and they were running around screaming and stuff.
But anyway, so at one point here I am out
in sort of this country area in you know, southern California,
and they had apparently gone out and rented somebody's house
(40:44):
for this shoot. And it's in the middle of a
really big yard at the end of a long driveway.
And at one point I'm watching this giant crew. There's
hundreds of people milling around on this crew. It's at
night time and they're setting up all this complex life.
And at one point, this woman who I guess was
a lighting lady. She she comes walking up and she
(41:06):
looks down at this rock on the ground and she
gets very she looks very perplexed, and she says to
this grip, do you know if that's a real rock
or a prop rock? Because if that's a real rock,
then I want to move it. But if it's a
prop rock, well I don't want to touch it. And
the rip says, geez, I don't know. Let me go
(41:29):
get the set supervisor. Okay, So we wait around and
then so the set supervisor comes back. Is this a
real rock or a prop rock?
Speaker 4 (41:36):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Good, question, says to set supervis. So then they go
and get the prop master, or they're trying to and
they can't find the prop master, And so finally they
get ahold of the third a D and he doesn't
know if it's real. And then they get the second
AD and he doesn't know if it's real. So finally
they just give up on it and they just work
(41:58):
around it. And to this day, I imagine nobody knows
whether there is a real rock or a prop rock
sitting in the yard outside this house. And that's why
people in show business are so often out of touch
with reality. That is a very good example though, of
(42:21):
how can you know how confused we can get about
what's real and what's not living in this day and age,
especially with we you know, we have cyber tech and
AI and holograms, and you know how much of this
is real? How much of this is just some big
matrix that we're wandering around in. I think that may
(42:43):
be the key, of course, to how manifestation works. And
so I've been teasing this for a little while. Those
of you who bought an electrom ring are going to
be invited, and I'm inviting you right now to participate
in an experiment with me. This is only for those
of you who have an electron ring. Because if you
bought an electron ring, it's not only a physical thing,
(43:05):
it also makes you a member of a club which
we call the electron ring. So if you have an
electron ring, you are a member of the electron ring.
And here is what I would like for you to
do on Thursday of May thirtieth of twenty twenty four,
and you write this down somewhere, okay, on Thursday of
(43:26):
May thirtieth, Thursday, May thirtieth of twenty twenty four, at
five pm New York time. That's just a reference point
for you, okay, So whatever the time is for you,
Like for me, it'll be was that two pm? Yeah,
so that'll be two pm for me and five pm
(43:48):
in New York. If you have an electron ring, put
it on, make a fist. Sit there, close your eyes,
and I want you to think about their UFOs appearing
all around the world. Over the next three days, we're
going to try this as an experiment. We're going to
work our chops here and see if we the electroum
(44:11):
ring can create a lot of UFO sidings when we
all focus together on our rings. So here's what you
have to do again, Thursday May thirtieth, twenty twenty four,
five pm. Take a moment, you know, a couple of minutes.
Put on your ring and sit there and envision it
and meditate on it, and then let's see what happens
the next few days. If you forget about it and
(44:34):
you're like, oh man, I missed it, it's not five pm,
that's okay, just do it sometime that day if you
can't do it at five, But five is our center
point that we're working with. Okay, we'll see what happens.
Why I put this out there, the whole world's going
to be able to see. And I'll send you an
e newsletter and remind you about this as well. But
(44:56):
if this works out for us, then we're going to
do bigger and better things. I'll read you an email.
I got real quick when it comes to manifestation. This
came to me from a woman named Gloria. She says,
Dear Joshua, I was so excited to learn of you
on the Jeff Mara podcast. I was so happy to
see your sacred geometry manifesting sigils, and how generous you
(45:18):
were to let us copy them. So after I looked
at them On Monday, a cheese truck turned over near
our town of one hundred and twenty one people, and
people were telling us they were giving away free cheese,
(45:39):
so we got some and took some around to our friends.
The next day, someone ran into a takeito truck and
spilled some on the highway, so they got some of
those for free. Then my husband found a one hundred
dollars bill on the floor, and let's see, told the
(46:01):
boss she dropped it, and she gave it to him
and told told him to give it to me for
helping her. Okay, she says, Then I got paid for
painting some windows. Blah blah blah. She goes on to say,
now she's gotten this other amazing job to build out
(46:22):
a garden. She's saying, you are right, Blessings can come
in so many different forms. I thought about putting the
sigils on an abandoned building so the people can see
them as they pass us and be blessed too. And
I haven't forgot about what you said about sharing either.
Need a little more time. Your friend Glorious and I
(46:44):
wrote her Gloria and I wrote her back, and I said, well,
I'm glad that you know all this good stuff's happening
and you're getting free cheese and takitos. But I hope
the folks on the truck were okay. You know what
a scary people like one of those you know, monkey
paw things. Well they all died on the truck, but
(47:05):
we got free cheese. No, no, I'm sure everybody was fine.
So you see, that's the attitude. That's what I try
to tell people. When you get into this manifestation stuff,
don't fix eight too strongly on exactly how you think
things are going to manifest, because if you do that,
you limit the options the universe can give you to
(47:29):
bring things to you, often in ways that you could
have never imagined on your own. And if you want
to experiment with different ways to manifest, that's why the
best thing you can do is just go to Joshua
Pwarren dot com and just start clicking around. You'll find
free siguls there that you can experiment with. Go to
the Curiosity Shop. Even if you're not going to buy anything,
(47:51):
it's interesting. Sometimes you can just look at these inventions
in the Curiosity Shop and that will inspire you, and
that will actually make you want to that'll give you ideas,
and sometimes you can start manifesting things just because you
start thinking about the objects in the Curiosity Shop. People
write me and tell me about that kind of stuff
all the time, and of course if you do buy
(48:14):
something from there, you're supporting the show and you're keeping
us in business. So here's something that I always like
to do if I have time to end the show
on a positive note. It's a free show. And this
is a free vibration that I created in my laboratory
years ago and it has done a lot of good
(48:35):
for a lot of people around the world. It's called
the Good Fortune Tone. And you know what, you can
just close your eyes and take a deep breath and
relax and listen to it. It's like twenty seconds long.
Or if you have a beverage, you might want to
put the beverage next to your speaker and then when
you drink the beverage, maybe you'll drink in the good vibes.
(48:57):
So here it is, my friends, the Good Fortune Tone.
(49:25):
That's it for this edition of the show. Follow me
on Twitter at Joshua P. Warren Plus visit Joshua pwarren
dot com to sign up for my free e newsletter
to receive a free instant gift and check out the
cool stuff in the Curiosity Shop all at Joshuapwarren dot com.
(49:46):
I have a fun one lined up for you next time,
I promise, so please tell all your friends to subscribe
to this show and to always remember the Golden Rule.
Thank you for listening, thank you for your interest and support,
Thank you for staying curious, and I will talk to
you again soon. You've been listening to Strange Things on
(50:11):
the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Thanks for listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast
AM Paranormal Podcast Network. Make sure and check out all
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