March 26, 2025 • 30 mins
In 1876, a bunch of meat rained down from the sky. From where? From whom? What is it?? One writer had answers: the sky itself was gelatinous. Obviously!
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
It's March third, eighteen seventy six in Bath County, Kentucky,
outside of Lexington Rule, really kind of the middle of nowhere.
But something very weird is about to happen. Between eleven
am and noon, a Kentucky newspaper, the Bath County News,
(00:43):
reported about it and the headline was flesh descending in
a shower? Say what flesh descending in a shower? Me
thinks we need more of an explanation.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Here's what it said.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
On Friday, a shower of meat fell near the house
of our in Crouch, a farmer. His wife, Missus Crouch,
was out in the yard at the time making soap
when meat, which looked like beef, began to fall around her.
The sky was perfectly clear at the time, and she
said it felt like large snowflakes. One piece fell near her,
(01:25):
which was three or four inches square. Now, let me
interrupt with the question that is on everyone's mind. How
big are the snowflakes in Kentucky If some of the
pieces of this mysterious meat were three or four inches square? Also, guys,
don't you hate it when you're making soap and just
(01:46):
meat falls on you from the sky?
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I hate it.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Anyway, The article continues, Mister Harrison gil whose veracity is unquestionable,
and from whom we attained the above facts. Hearing of
the occurrence, visited the locality the next day and said
he saw particles of meat sticking to the fences and
scattered over the ground. The meat, when it first fell,
(02:15):
appeared to be perfectly fresh. Two gentlemen who tasted the
meat expressed the opinion that it was either mutton or venison.
I mean, sometimes it rains cats and dogs, sometimes it
rains mutton and venison. Potato patato, you know, But isn't
(02:36):
this curious meat falling from the sky in Kentucky. The
facts are a woman was making soap innocently. It was
a clear day. She, along with other Bath County residents,
saw meat suddenly descend from the skies. Some people said
it lasted for about ten minutes, which seems like a
long time for meat to fall. What does one make
(02:59):
of this? Missus Crouch, who was making the soap, and
her farmer hus Been both believed this was an act
of God.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
And if it was God, what.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Is he trying to say with a meat shower that
heaven is a slaughterhouse that he wants you to go
to a hot pot restaurant and was healthfully providing some
meat to dip into the hot pot. Well, the question
of where this meat came from has been speculated on
for almost one hundred.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
And fifty years.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
What was the meat? Where did it come from? Was
it an omen for the end of the world?
Speaker 3 (03:39):
What was that?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
And as we all know, and there isn't a concrete
answer to something, people freak out and come up with
all sorts of crazy shit. One of the craziest theories
came from a writer and his name was Charles Fort.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Cue the theme song.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
This is American Philt and I Gabby Watts. Every week
I tell you a filthy story from American history. This
week's episode Gelatinous Skies in Kentucky. And don't worry everyone,
(04:31):
We're gonna get into the theories about where this freaking
meat shower came from. And we will also try to
solve another mystery, which is, if you saw some mysterious
meat that came from the sky, why the heck would
you put it in your mouth and taste it? Like
how those guys in the article did yuck. Writer Charles
(04:53):
Fort doesn't provide any insight into that particular question, but
he did investigate the myriad reasons why this might have
happened and showed why all these explanations or a pile
of donkey dung. Like most of us, Charles Fort was
(05:14):
a failure for most of his life and it wasn't
until he started investigating anomalist phenomena that he.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Made a name for himself.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
And what's an anomaloust phenomenon? Well, it's a phenomenon that's abnormal,
that's weird, something paranormal, unexplained by science, or things you
choose to be unexplained by science that science did explain.
But then you're like, actually, no, that's unexplained. Hence why
(05:48):
we have this new aging music for this episode. Are
you guys excited?
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Charles Fort he.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Was skeptical about the scientific establishment. He was a vaguely
conspiracy theorist, and he was like, yeah, we see the
evid that scientists publish, but we don't see the evidence
they don't publish. They are leaving things out. We can't
trust them. Well, some of his biographers and also myself
(06:19):
have posited that I think a lot of his skepticism
about science was because he himself was not very good
at it. Born in eighteen seventy four, two years before
that meat shower, Charles Ford grew up in Albany, New York,
and he was a very bad student at school.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
He got really bad grades.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
He was also known as the class clown. And maybe
he was clowning because he couldn't grasp the material, or
maybe he thought he was too good for school because
when he wasn't goofing off at school, at home he
would read a lot, and according to him, that's how
he learned everything he knew. Obviously, a stupid teacher couldn't
(07:01):
teach Charles Fort anything. He hated when people told him
what to do, and part of that was because he
had really extreme daddy issues. And by daddy issues, I
mean his dad was an abusive, bitch ass.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Charles had two other brothers.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Their mother died when they were all young, so they
were all left with this terrible dad. He would beat them,
even torture them, like there were times when he would
lock the boys in a dark room for days.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
At a time. Absolutely horrendous.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
So no wonder he got lost in his books. No
wonder he was like people who are supposed to be
in charge. Are dog shit? Nothing as real. Also, when
he was a kid, he started collecting stuff. He and
his brothers would find eggs, feathers, animal skeletons, collect animals
from nearby cricks. I assumed they had cricks and he
(07:59):
started writing. By the time he was seventeen, Charles had
been published in several newspapers. He was writing articles, short
stories and wanted to be a novelist. And finally, when
he had enough money saved up, he was like, I'm
freaking out of here Albany. I gotta go find myself.
(08:20):
I need to have some more experiences, interact with cultures
completely different from mine. So he went to some places
that are absolutely extremely different from Albany, New York, Scotland
and the American South exotic.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Well.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
He also went to South Africa and while he was
there he got really sick, so he had to come
back home. And back home he needed to be nursed
back to health. Back then, being a man getting nursed
back to health, that was basically a dating app because
needing a nurse is a great way to meet women.
(09:02):
That's how he became re acquainted with a childhood friend
named Anna, filling. She was his nurse, and she nursed
him back to health so good that they got married
in eighteen ninety six. I mean, and likewise, she might
have thought he was really hot when he was sick.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I don't know. Maybe she was a freak. So that's right.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
I'm suggesting that if hinge, bumble, tender grinder, if none
of that stuff is working, go get.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Nurse back to health. You'll find love.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Though there is a nursing shortage, so you might have
slimmer pickings, but stop being so picky. After they wed,
Charles and Anna moved to New York City. Charles was
still trying to make it as a writer, but unfortunately
no one liked his novels, so he continued writing newspaper
(09:55):
articles and worked in a kitchen to make money. He
and Anna were broke, but then, how convenient his uncle died,
not just any uncle, a rich uncle. He and his
brothers split the inheritance, and Charles was able to quit
his stupid kitchen and newspaper jobs and become a researcher
(10:18):
and writer full time. And then, even more conveniently, one
of his brothers died and he and the other brother
split the deceased brother's inheritance. Yes, this is one of
the ways to have a career as a creative writer
or artist. Lose the ones you love. We all know
what they say. Money doesn't grow on trees, but it
(10:41):
does come from your dead relatives. Now that Charles Fort
could devote all his time to his craft, people still
didn't like his novels, so he pivoted. As we know,
Charles Fort was an independent anti authority thinker who had
taught himself everything he needed to know, and what he
(11:01):
believed was that big science was not giving us the
whole pick.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Sure there were holes.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
In these devious scientists' work. They were excluding important information
and it was up to Charles Fort to expose these untruths.
So he started researching anomalies and unexplained phenomena. Oh yes,
he was going to depths that no one dared go before.
(11:30):
Some people thought he was pretty extreme, but he called
himself an intermediatist, someone who believes that quote nothing is real,
but nothing is unreal. All phenomena are approximations one way
or the other between realness and unrealness.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Duh.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
In nineteen nineteen, he finally put out the book that
would make his career. It was titled The Book of
the Damned. Yes, it sounded like an Ann Riis Band
Empire book or a textbook for Satanists, but no, to
Charles Fort, damned data was information and events he discovered
(12:14):
that scientists had not been able to explain, so it
had been rejected, ignored. And in that book, The Book
of the Damned, he tried to answer the question, what
the heck was up with the meat falling from the
sky in Kentucky, So let's see what the heck was up?
(12:36):
Right after these soothing advertisements, Charles Fort's book, The Book
of the Damned came out in nineteen nineteen seventy, two
years after that meat showered down upon Missus Crouch while
she was making soap or really the book was supposed.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
To come out in nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Many booksellers refuse used to sell it at first because
it was supposed to come out at the end of
the year and that's Christmas time. They can't sell a
book called the Book of the Damned while celebrating the
birth of Jesus for Christ's sake. But in nineteen twenty,
when the book did come out, it created quite a splash.
(13:27):
And the thing about splashes is often that's not a
good thing, like a splash on a light colored shirt
or heaven forbid, on your.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Crotch, so it looks like you pissed your pants.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
And the reviews, they weren't all bad. To summarize many
of them, Charles Fort doesn't understand the scientific method, but
he is amusing. One reviewer called the book unreadable, which
was true for several critics and also for people who
are illiterate. Another reviewer said, for every five people who
(14:07):
read this book, four will go insane, which crazy enough,
that is also the goal with American filth. Please send
me a message on Instagram if you're one of the
sane people who remains listening to this show, because I
need someone to do my taxes. Of course, a lot
(14:28):
of people loved it. One reviewer said it had strong
touches of sardonic humor and flashes of sheer poetic insight.
But blah, blah blah, Who cares what people felt about
a stupid old book.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Let's get to that.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Meat shower in Kentucky, because obviously, when this meat came
down from the sky, people were very concerned about what
was going on. There's a lot of speculation, a lot
of fear, a lot of scientific curiosity about what the
heck was happening.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
It was a lot of meat.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Local said that there was enough to fill a horse
wagon and then just multiply that by the ten minutes.
Some people claimed it lasted. The weird thing was that
this meat precipitation came down when there was nary a
cloud in the sky, The sun was shining, the birds
were singing, and yet here is a shower of meat.
(15:27):
You guys probably know the expression that you know when
it rains and is still sunny, people will say that
the devil's beating his wife. So what is he doing
to his wife when it rains?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Meat? Don't answer that.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Here's one mystery that we can solve right at the top.
Why did those men taste the meat? That seems like
a bad idea. Well, this was eighteen seventy six. They
didn't know about germ theory. There wasn't the US Department
of Agriculture. People didn't know that putting random meat in
your mouth was so bad. So back then people's main
(16:07):
method of testing unknown food was it just put it
in your mouth.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Duh.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
So why did people do that it was typical of
the times. Say, is that some meat let me put
in my mouth. The locals of Bath County gathered up
the mystery meat and sent it off to scientists across
the country. One scientist thought the meat was lung tissue,
possibly from a horse or from a human infant. Usually
(16:39):
I think of horses and babies as entirely different creatures,
but I guess I'm wrong. They apparently have some things
in common, like lung tissue, also pooping.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
And pea and wherever.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
And finally, babies and horses are unable to understand the
futility of life. No offense to horses or babies. Maybe
you have a smart infant. Another theory was that the
meat wasn't the lungs of infants or horses, but it
was chopped up pieces of grown ass men. Some people
(17:14):
thought that there was a big fight between two groups
of Kentuckians, and then the dead bodies were chopped up,
put into a cannon, and launched into the sky to
fall on Missus Crouch's soap. Other people thought that the
meat was extraterrestrial, a comet, a meteor, something came down
(17:35):
from space and dissolved into meat looking chunks. The theory
that caught on with most people was that the meat
chunks were the result of a group of vultures vomiting.
Vultures will vomit when they fly if they feel threatened
(17:56):
to lower their body weight in case they need to
escape quickly from a predator. They also do it because
they have body image issues. No one wants to talk
about that though. Basically, when a vulture flies, it's like
bar flap, bar flap, flap, bar flap. That's the life
of a vulture. And isn't that fun to think about
(18:18):
that those dudes who tried the meat were eating bird barf.
In the Book of the Damn Charles Fort took issue
with a lot of these theories. He pointed out many
times that if the shower was ten minutes, that would
be a lot of vulture vomit, That'd be a lot
(18:38):
of chopped up bodies, that would be a lot of
baby lungs. This seems impossible in terms of sheer quantity.
Another theory that Fort absolutely hated was some people thought
that this substance that came down wasn't meat but a
type of cyanobacteria. This bacteria could coagulate together and secrete
(19:02):
a gelatine like substance. The problem with this theory is
that the gelatine like substance, well, it only appears when
it rains. Now, as we said, it was a perfectly
clear day. Also, how would this shit come from the sky.
Some people were like, well, a whirlwind could have picked
(19:23):
it up somewhere and deposited it in Bath County. Fort
was like, this whirlwind hypothesis is so dumb. How would
a whirlwind pick up the cyanobacteria specifically and nothing else?
Wind isn't specific like that. So Fort he's poo poo,
(19:46):
and all of these scientific explanations, and not only that,
he provided a very long list of other phenomena where random,
gross crap fell out of the sky. The oldest record
was from sixteen sixty nine in France, and it said
that a reddish substance that was quote thick, viscous, and
(20:09):
putrid fell from the sky. In nineteenth century Tennessee, an
investigator was sent to a tobacco plantation to investigate a
substance that looked like quote clear blood and portions of
flesh that had also fallen from the sky. In eighteen nineteen,
another weird substance, this time in Amherst, Massachusetts. Fort said
(20:33):
quote it had an offensive odor and upon exposure to
the air, turned a vivid red. This thing was said
to have fallen with a brilliant light. Now we're eighteen
thirty six. In India, it was reported that a bunch
of fish fell from the sky.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
That were dead and dry.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Some people tried to eat them, but when the fish
were put into a pan, they dissolved into blood yum,
blood soup. Now we have eighteen forty six Lithuania. There
was a rain storm and along with the rain a
substance fell that was described as both resinous and gelatinous,
(21:13):
and it was odorless until it was burned. So that's
what they're doing in Lithuania burning stuff. In eighteen forty one,
eighteen forty six, a similar substance fell in Asia Minor,
and in eighteen ninety four in Bath, England. Not Bath County, Kentucky,
but Bath, England. There's baths everywhere. A newspaper claimed that
(21:33):
thousands of jellyfish about the size of a shilling had
fallen from the sky. I think you guys are getting
the hang of this. Just a lot of places have
had weird things fall from the sky that they couldn't explain.
In some places there was red rain, some places there
was black rain. Some people claimed that tadpoles and frogs
were falling from the sky. For Charles Fort, he was
(21:58):
presenting evidence that he said the scientific establishment was unwilling
to present because they had no explanations for what was
going on. And you might be thinking, well, was he
just criticizing other scientists. Mostly yes, but he did draw
some conclusions. This is a conclusion that he wrote. He said,
(22:22):
I shall have to accept that gelatinous substances have often
fallen from the sky. He included the Kentucky phenomenon, as
he called it, in this gelatinous category because while it
was described as meat initially, Fort found some reports where
scientists had described the chunks as gelatine like. And you
(22:47):
would think that a man who has dedicated his life
to exposing the damned data of science might try to
draw a reasonable conclusion about where these gelatinous substances came from.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
But what he came up with was.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
A little crazy town. He was like, well, if gelatinous
substances fall from the sky, then that means the sky
itself is gelatinous. But don't worry. He's also skeptical of
his own theory. He fat checks himself. He wrote, I
think myself that it would be absurd to say the
(23:25):
whole sky is gelatinous. It seems more acceptable that only
certain areas are. Yes, there are just patches of gelatinous sky.
And now it gets even crazier because in the Book
of the Damned, that's where he first presents a theory
(23:48):
that he fleshes out in his subsequent books on anomalist phenomena.
It's called the theory of the super Sargasso c And
you gotta hold onto your bootstraps for this one. It's
pretty cuckoo bananas. What he proposed is that quote somewhere
(24:12):
above the Earth's surface in which gravitation is inoperative. I
think things raised from this Earth's surface to that region
have been held there until shaken down by storms.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Did you guys get that?
Speaker 2 (24:33):
What he's suggesting is that there's a layer of the
sky high enough to escape gravity, but low enough that
objects scooped up by weather events could.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Get stuck in it.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
But then those objects could return to the Earth's surface
due to another weather event like if we think about
Kentucky again, which I know we don't want to think
about Kentucky too much, but it is the location of
this episode. What he's saying is like, let's say a
bunch of meat chunks were just sitting outside during a storm.
(25:10):
According to Fort, these meat chunks, they could have gotten
sucked up by a tornado into the sky and shoved
into this Super Sargasso Sea, and then they were stuck
there until there was another storm that got them and
threw them down onto Missus Crouch's soap. And Fort also
(25:33):
posited that the reason so many of these substances were
gelatinous was that they had been in the sky sea,
the Super Sargasso Sea for decades or for hundreds, possibly
thousands of years. These objects, animals, meat chunks, they could
(25:54):
have been sucked up there from ancient Egypt, ancient Greece
and then just stuck there decomposing into gelatine until they
fell back down again into the soap. I'm sure all
of you are super convinced by this theory, but let
(26:18):
me know what do.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
You guys think? Was it God? Was it vultures? Was
it baby lungs? Was it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Because the sky is gelatinous? Where is everyone's head at?
And even though this was cuckoo bananas, Fort had finally
found his niche and found success. He wrote several other
books about oddities, the paranormal, unexplained stuff, the Jello Sky.
(26:48):
He also developed a cult following, which he kind of resented,
and the reason he disliked his fans was because he
didn't even believe his own theories. Charles Fort wrote, I
believe nothing of my own that I have ever written,
and his fans were annoying to him. He said, admirers
(27:12):
and my good works write to me and try to
convert me into believing the things that I say. How
rude of them to believe the thing that you wrote
in your book? So the super Sargasso c Charles Fort
didn't even really believe in that, So why did he
(27:35):
write it? Was he just having fun writing some satire
commenting on how the scientific method was as useless as
imagination in knowing.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
The truth about the world.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Hmmm. But unfortunately, Charles Fort only had twelve years of
success exploring the unknown, because in the early nineteen thirties
his health started failing, and in nineteen thirty two he died,
likely of leukemia. And now you're probably like, Gabby, I
(28:16):
don't care about this guy, Charles Fort. I just want
to know about the Kentucky meat shower. What's the freaking answer?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
What was it?
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I imagine you're all screaming this question right now. Well,
sadly we don't actually have an official answer to what
it was and how it happened. Oh no, inconclusive. If
you're upset about this that there isn't an answer, how
(28:49):
about you learn how to relax in the face of
the unknown like a freaking adult. Every episode of American
Filth we learn a lesson, and I think the lesson
we learned today's episode is don't believe anything you read
in books. It could just be a joke. Stay vigilant.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Cue the credits.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
American Field is a production of School of Humans and
iHeart Podcast.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
This episode was hosted produced.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
All That Jazz by me Gabby Watts. The theme song
is by Jesse Niswanger, and our executive producers are Elsie Crowley,
Virginia Prescott, and Brandon Barr. You can follow along with
the pod on Instagram at American Field Pod and you
can leave us a review, leave us some stars, leave
us some hate, leave us some love, and make all
of your relatives listen to this frickin' podcast.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
And I hope no meat falls on you this week.
Talk to you guys next time.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Bye, School of Humans M.
School of Humans.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
It's March third, eighteen seventy six in Bath County, Kentucky,
outside of Lexington Rule, really kind of the middle of nowhere.
But something very weird is about to happen. Between eleven
am and noon, a Kentucky newspaper, the Bath County News,
(00:43):
reported about it and the headline was flesh descending in
a shower? Say what flesh descending in a shower? Me
thinks we need more of an explanation.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Here's what it said.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
On Friday, a shower of meat fell near the house
of our in Crouch, a farmer. His wife, Missus Crouch,
was out in the yard at the time making soap
when meat, which looked like beef, began to fall around her.
The sky was perfectly clear at the time, and she
said it felt like large snowflakes. One piece fell near her,
(01:25):
which was three or four inches square. Now, let me
interrupt with the question that is on everyone's mind. How
big are the snowflakes in Kentucky If some of the
pieces of this mysterious meat were three or four inches square? Also, guys,
don't you hate it when you're making soap and just
(01:46):
meat falls on you from the sky?
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I hate it.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Anyway, The article continues, Mister Harrison gil whose veracity is unquestionable,
and from whom we attained the above facts. Hearing of
the occurrence, visited the locality the next day and said
he saw particles of meat sticking to the fences and
scattered over the ground. The meat, when it first fell,
(02:15):
appeared to be perfectly fresh. Two gentlemen who tasted the
meat expressed the opinion that it was either mutton or venison.
I mean, sometimes it rains cats and dogs, sometimes it
rains mutton and venison. Potato patato, you know, But isn't
(02:36):
this curious meat falling from the sky in Kentucky. The
facts are a woman was making soap innocently. It was
a clear day. She, along with other Bath County residents,
saw meat suddenly descend from the skies. Some people said
it lasted for about ten minutes, which seems like a
long time for meat to fall. What does one make
(02:59):
of this? Missus Crouch, who was making the soap, and
her farmer hus Been both believed this was an act
of God.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
And if it was God, what.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Is he trying to say with a meat shower that
heaven is a slaughterhouse that he wants you to go
to a hot pot restaurant and was healthfully providing some
meat to dip into the hot pot. Well, the question
of where this meat came from has been speculated on
for almost one hundred.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
And fifty years.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
What was the meat? Where did it come from? Was
it an omen for the end of the world?
Speaker 3 (03:39):
What was that?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
And as we all know, and there isn't a concrete
answer to something, people freak out and come up with
all sorts of crazy shit. One of the craziest theories
came from a writer and his name was Charles Fort.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Cue the theme song.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
This is American Philt and I Gabby Watts. Every week
I tell you a filthy story from American history. This
week's episode Gelatinous Skies in Kentucky. And don't worry everyone,
(04:31):
We're gonna get into the theories about where this freaking
meat shower came from. And we will also try to
solve another mystery, which is, if you saw some mysterious
meat that came from the sky, why the heck would
you put it in your mouth and taste it? Like
how those guys in the article did yuck. Writer Charles
(04:53):
Fort doesn't provide any insight into that particular question, but
he did investigate the myriad reasons why this might have
happened and showed why all these explanations or a pile
of donkey dung. Like most of us, Charles Fort was
(05:14):
a failure for most of his life and it wasn't
until he started investigating anomalist phenomena that he.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Made a name for himself.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
And what's an anomaloust phenomenon? Well, it's a phenomenon that's abnormal,
that's weird, something paranormal, unexplained by science, or things you
choose to be unexplained by science that science did explain.
But then you're like, actually, no, that's unexplained. Hence why
(05:48):
we have this new aging music for this episode. Are
you guys excited?
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Charles Fort he.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Was skeptical about the scientific establishment. He was a vaguely
conspiracy theorist, and he was like, yeah, we see the
evid that scientists publish, but we don't see the evidence
they don't publish. They are leaving things out. We can't
trust them. Well, some of his biographers and also myself
(06:19):
have posited that I think a lot of his skepticism
about science was because he himself was not very good
at it. Born in eighteen seventy four, two years before
that meat shower, Charles Ford grew up in Albany, New York,
and he was a very bad student at school.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
He got really bad grades.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
He was also known as the class clown. And maybe
he was clowning because he couldn't grasp the material, or
maybe he thought he was too good for school because
when he wasn't goofing off at school, at home he
would read a lot, and according to him, that's how
he learned everything he knew. Obviously, a stupid teacher couldn't
(07:01):
teach Charles Fort anything. He hated when people told him
what to do, and part of that was because he
had really extreme daddy issues. And by daddy issues, I
mean his dad was an abusive, bitch ass.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Charles had two other brothers.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Their mother died when they were all young, so they
were all left with this terrible dad. He would beat them,
even torture them, like there were times when he would
lock the boys in a dark room for days.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
At a time. Absolutely horrendous.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
So no wonder he got lost in his books. No
wonder he was like people who are supposed to be
in charge. Are dog shit? Nothing as real. Also, when
he was a kid, he started collecting stuff. He and
his brothers would find eggs, feathers, animal skeletons, collect animals
from nearby cricks. I assumed they had cricks and he
(07:59):
started writing. By the time he was seventeen, Charles had
been published in several newspapers. He was writing articles, short
stories and wanted to be a novelist. And finally, when
he had enough money saved up, he was like, I'm
freaking out of here Albany. I gotta go find myself.
(08:20):
I need to have some more experiences, interact with cultures
completely different from mine. So he went to some places
that are absolutely extremely different from Albany, New York, Scotland
and the American South exotic.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Well.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
He also went to South Africa and while he was
there he got really sick, so he had to come
back home. And back home he needed to be nursed
back to health. Back then, being a man getting nursed
back to health, that was basically a dating app because
needing a nurse is a great way to meet women.
(09:02):
That's how he became re acquainted with a childhood friend
named Anna, filling. She was his nurse, and she nursed
him back to health so good that they got married
in eighteen ninety six. I mean, and likewise, she might
have thought he was really hot when he was sick.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I don't know. Maybe she was a freak. So that's right.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
I'm suggesting that if hinge, bumble, tender grinder, if none
of that stuff is working, go get.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Nurse back to health. You'll find love.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Though there is a nursing shortage, so you might have
slimmer pickings, but stop being so picky. After they wed,
Charles and Anna moved to New York City. Charles was
still trying to make it as a writer, but unfortunately
no one liked his novels, so he continued writing newspaper
(09:55):
articles and worked in a kitchen to make money. He
and Anna were broke, but then, how convenient his uncle died,
not just any uncle, a rich uncle. He and his
brothers split the inheritance, and Charles was able to quit
his stupid kitchen and newspaper jobs and become a researcher
(10:18):
and writer full time. And then, even more conveniently, one
of his brothers died and he and the other brother
split the deceased brother's inheritance. Yes, this is one of
the ways to have a career as a creative writer
or artist. Lose the ones you love. We all know
what they say. Money doesn't grow on trees, but it
(10:41):
does come from your dead relatives. Now that Charles Fort
could devote all his time to his craft, people still
didn't like his novels, so he pivoted. As we know,
Charles Fort was an independent anti authority thinker who had
taught himself everything he needed to know, and what he
(11:01):
believed was that big science was not giving us the
whole pick.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Sure there were holes.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
In these devious scientists' work. They were excluding important information
and it was up to Charles Fort to expose these untruths.
So he started researching anomalies and unexplained phenomena. Oh yes,
he was going to depths that no one dared go before.
(11:30):
Some people thought he was pretty extreme, but he called
himself an intermediatist, someone who believes that quote nothing is real,
but nothing is unreal. All phenomena are approximations one way
or the other between realness and unrealness.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Duh.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
In nineteen nineteen, he finally put out the book that
would make his career. It was titled The Book of
the Damned. Yes, it sounded like an Ann Riis Band
Empire book or a textbook for Satanists, but no, to
Charles Fort, damned data was information and events he discovered
(12:14):
that scientists had not been able to explain, so it
had been rejected, ignored. And in that book, The Book
of the Damned, he tried to answer the question, what
the heck was up with the meat falling from the
sky in Kentucky, So let's see what the heck was up?
(12:36):
Right after these soothing advertisements, Charles Fort's book, The Book
of the Damned came out in nineteen nineteen seventy, two
years after that meat showered down upon Missus Crouch while
she was making soap or really the book was supposed.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
To come out in nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Many booksellers refuse used to sell it at first because
it was supposed to come out at the end of
the year and that's Christmas time. They can't sell a
book called the Book of the Damned while celebrating the
birth of Jesus for Christ's sake. But in nineteen twenty,
when the book did come out, it created quite a splash.
(13:27):
And the thing about splashes is often that's not a
good thing, like a splash on a light colored shirt
or heaven forbid, on your.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Crotch, so it looks like you pissed your pants.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
And the reviews, they weren't all bad. To summarize many
of them, Charles Fort doesn't understand the scientific method, but
he is amusing. One reviewer called the book unreadable, which
was true for several critics and also for people who
are illiterate. Another reviewer said, for every five people who
(14:07):
read this book, four will go insane, which crazy enough,
that is also the goal with American filth. Please send
me a message on Instagram if you're one of the
sane people who remains listening to this show, because I
need someone to do my taxes. Of course, a lot
(14:28):
of people loved it. One reviewer said it had strong
touches of sardonic humor and flashes of sheer poetic insight.
But blah, blah blah, Who cares what people felt about
a stupid old book.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Let's get to that.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Meat shower in Kentucky, because obviously, when this meat came
down from the sky, people were very concerned about what
was going on. There's a lot of speculation, a lot
of fear, a lot of scientific curiosity about what the
heck was happening.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
It was a lot of meat.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Local said that there was enough to fill a horse
wagon and then just multiply that by the ten minutes.
Some people claimed it lasted. The weird thing was that
this meat precipitation came down when there was nary a
cloud in the sky, The sun was shining, the birds
were singing, and yet here is a shower of meat.
(15:27):
You guys probably know the expression that you know when
it rains and is still sunny, people will say that
the devil's beating his wife. So what is he doing
to his wife when it rains?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Meat? Don't answer that.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Here's one mystery that we can solve right at the top.
Why did those men taste the meat? That seems like
a bad idea. Well, this was eighteen seventy six. They
didn't know about germ theory. There wasn't the US Department
of Agriculture. People didn't know that putting random meat in
your mouth was so bad. So back then people's main
(16:07):
method of testing unknown food was it just put it
in your mouth.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Duh.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
So why did people do that it was typical of
the times. Say, is that some meat let me put
in my mouth. The locals of Bath County gathered up
the mystery meat and sent it off to scientists across
the country. One scientist thought the meat was lung tissue,
possibly from a horse or from a human infant. Usually
(16:39):
I think of horses and babies as entirely different creatures,
but I guess I'm wrong. They apparently have some things
in common, like lung tissue, also pooping.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
And pea and wherever.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
And finally, babies and horses are unable to understand the
futility of life. No offense to horses or babies. Maybe
you have a smart infant. Another theory was that the
meat wasn't the lungs of infants or horses, but it
was chopped up pieces of grown ass men. Some people
(17:14):
thought that there was a big fight between two groups
of Kentuckians, and then the dead bodies were chopped up,
put into a cannon, and launched into the sky to
fall on Missus Crouch's soap. Other people thought that the
meat was extraterrestrial, a comet, a meteor, something came down
(17:35):
from space and dissolved into meat looking chunks. The theory
that caught on with most people was that the meat
chunks were the result of a group of vultures vomiting.
Vultures will vomit when they fly if they feel threatened
(17:56):
to lower their body weight in case they need to
escape quickly from a predator. They also do it because
they have body image issues. No one wants to talk
about that though. Basically, when a vulture flies, it's like
bar flap, bar flap, flap, bar flap. That's the life
of a vulture. And isn't that fun to think about
(18:18):
that those dudes who tried the meat were eating bird barf.
In the Book of the Damn Charles Fort took issue
with a lot of these theories. He pointed out many
times that if the shower was ten minutes, that would
be a lot of vulture vomit, That'd be a lot
(18:38):
of chopped up bodies, that would be a lot of
baby lungs. This seems impossible in terms of sheer quantity.
Another theory that Fort absolutely hated was some people thought
that this substance that came down wasn't meat but a
type of cyanobacteria. This bacteria could coagulate together and secrete
(19:02):
a gelatine like substance. The problem with this theory is
that the gelatine like substance, well, it only appears when
it rains. Now, as we said, it was a perfectly
clear day. Also, how would this shit come from the sky.
Some people were like, well, a whirlwind could have picked
(19:23):
it up somewhere and deposited it in Bath County. Fort
was like, this whirlwind hypothesis is so dumb. How would
a whirlwind pick up the cyanobacteria specifically and nothing else?
Wind isn't specific like that. So Fort he's poo poo,
(19:46):
and all of these scientific explanations, and not only that,
he provided a very long list of other phenomena where random,
gross crap fell out of the sky. The oldest record
was from sixteen sixty nine in France, and it said
that a reddish substance that was quote thick, viscous, and
(20:09):
putrid fell from the sky. In nineteenth century Tennessee, an
investigator was sent to a tobacco plantation to investigate a
substance that looked like quote clear blood and portions of
flesh that had also fallen from the sky. In eighteen nineteen,
another weird substance, this time in Amherst, Massachusetts. Fort said
(20:33):
quote it had an offensive odor and upon exposure to
the air, turned a vivid red. This thing was said
to have fallen with a brilliant light. Now we're eighteen
thirty six. In India, it was reported that a bunch
of fish fell from the sky.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
That were dead and dry.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Some people tried to eat them, but when the fish
were put into a pan, they dissolved into blood yum,
blood soup. Now we have eighteen forty six Lithuania. There
was a rain storm and along with the rain a
substance fell that was described as both resinous and gelatinous,
(21:13):
and it was odorless until it was burned. So that's
what they're doing in Lithuania burning stuff. In eighteen forty one,
eighteen forty six, a similar substance fell in Asia Minor,
and in eighteen ninety four in Bath, England. Not Bath County, Kentucky,
but Bath, England. There's baths everywhere. A newspaper claimed that
(21:33):
thousands of jellyfish about the size of a shilling had
fallen from the sky. I think you guys are getting
the hang of this. Just a lot of places have
had weird things fall from the sky that they couldn't explain.
In some places there was red rain, some places there
was black rain. Some people claimed that tadpoles and frogs
were falling from the sky. For Charles Fort, he was
(21:58):
presenting evidence that he said the scientific establishment was unwilling
to present because they had no explanations for what was
going on. And you might be thinking, well, was he
just criticizing other scientists. Mostly yes, but he did draw
some conclusions. This is a conclusion that he wrote. He said,
(22:22):
I shall have to accept that gelatinous substances have often
fallen from the sky. He included the Kentucky phenomenon, as
he called it, in this gelatinous category because while it
was described as meat initially, Fort found some reports where
scientists had described the chunks as gelatine like. And you
(22:47):
would think that a man who has dedicated his life
to exposing the damned data of science might try to
draw a reasonable conclusion about where these gelatinous substances came from.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
But what he came up with was.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
A little crazy town. He was like, well, if gelatinous
substances fall from the sky, then that means the sky
itself is gelatinous. But don't worry. He's also skeptical of
his own theory. He fat checks himself. He wrote, I
think myself that it would be absurd to say the
(23:25):
whole sky is gelatinous. It seems more acceptable that only
certain areas are. Yes, there are just patches of gelatinous sky.
And now it gets even crazier because in the Book
of the Damned, that's where he first presents a theory
(23:48):
that he fleshes out in his subsequent books on anomalist phenomena.
It's called the theory of the super Sargasso c And
you gotta hold onto your bootstraps for this one. It's
pretty cuckoo bananas. What he proposed is that quote somewhere
(24:12):
above the Earth's surface in which gravitation is inoperative. I
think things raised from this Earth's surface to that region
have been held there until shaken down by storms.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Did you guys get that?
Speaker 2 (24:33):
What he's suggesting is that there's a layer of the
sky high enough to escape gravity, but low enough that
objects scooped up by weather events could.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Get stuck in it.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
But then those objects could return to the Earth's surface
due to another weather event like if we think about
Kentucky again, which I know we don't want to think
about Kentucky too much, but it is the location of
this episode. What he's saying is like, let's say a
bunch of meat chunks were just sitting outside during a storm.
(25:10):
According to Fort, these meat chunks, they could have gotten
sucked up by a tornado into the sky and shoved
into this Super Sargasso Sea, and then they were stuck
there until there was another storm that got them and
threw them down onto Missus Crouch's soap. And Fort also
(25:33):
posited that the reason so many of these substances were
gelatinous was that they had been in the sky sea,
the Super Sargasso Sea for decades or for hundreds, possibly
thousands of years. These objects, animals, meat chunks, they could
(25:54):
have been sucked up there from ancient Egypt, ancient Greece
and then just stuck there decomposing into gelatine until they
fell back down again into the soap. I'm sure all
of you are super convinced by this theory, but let
(26:18):
me know what do.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
You guys think? Was it God? Was it vultures? Was
it baby lungs? Was it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Because the sky is gelatinous? Where is everyone's head at?
And even though this was cuckoo bananas, Fort had finally
found his niche and found success. He wrote several other
books about oddities, the paranormal, unexplained stuff, the Jello Sky.
(26:48):
He also developed a cult following, which he kind of resented,
and the reason he disliked his fans was because he
didn't even believe his own theories. Charles Fort wrote, I
believe nothing of my own that I have ever written,
and his fans were annoying to him. He said, admirers
(27:12):
and my good works write to me and try to
convert me into believing the things that I say. How
rude of them to believe the thing that you wrote
in your book? So the super Sargasso c Charles Fort
didn't even really believe in that, So why did he
(27:35):
write it? Was he just having fun writing some satire
commenting on how the scientific method was as useless as
imagination in knowing.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
The truth about the world.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Hmmm. But unfortunately, Charles Fort only had twelve years of
success exploring the unknown, because in the early nineteen thirties
his health started failing, and in nineteen thirty two he died,
likely of leukemia. And now you're probably like, Gabby, I
(28:16):
don't care about this guy, Charles Fort. I just want
to know about the Kentucky meat shower. What's the freaking answer?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
What was it?
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I imagine you're all screaming this question right now. Well,
sadly we don't actually have an official answer to what
it was and how it happened. Oh no, inconclusive. If
you're upset about this that there isn't an answer, how
(28:49):
about you learn how to relax in the face of
the unknown like a freaking adult. Every episode of American
Filth we learn a lesson, and I think the lesson
we learned today's episode is don't believe anything you read
in books. It could just be a joke. Stay vigilant.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Cue the credits.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
American Field is a production of School of Humans and
iHeart Podcast.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
This episode was hosted produced.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
All That Jazz by me Gabby Watts. The theme song
is by Jesse Niswanger, and our executive producers are Elsie Crowley,
Virginia Prescott, and Brandon Barr. You can follow along with
the pod on Instagram at American Field Pod and you
can leave us a review, leave us some stars, leave
us some hate, leave us some love, and make all
of your relatives listen to this frickin' podcast.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
And I hope no meat falls on you this week.
Talk to you guys next time.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Bye, School of Humans M.
Host
Gabbie Watts
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