Feb. 24, 2025

Charles Fort: The Granddaddy of the Strange | 414

Show Notes

Before the X-Files, before Bigfoot reality shows, before your uncle went down a YouTube rabbit hole and now won’t shut up about lizard people—there was Charles Hoy Fort. A man who spent his life collecting the weirdest, wildest, and most WTF-worthy stories that science tried (and failed) to explain. From raining frogs to UFOs before they were even called UFOs, Fort cataloged it all and basically invented the field of Forteana—aka the study of all things bizarre,

spooky, and questionably sane. AKA our bread and butter!

But who was Fort? A misunderstood genius? A professional weirdo? The first-ever Reddit or 4 Chan mod? Join us as we dive into the life, work, and general badassery of the man who made the strange, well… stranger. Spoiler alert: he burned a lot of his own work: was it because even he couldn’t believe what he was writing? Or it was all true and the powers that be made him do it? That’s for you to decide...

Buckle up, because this week we’re getting Fortean as hell on Hysteria 51.

Special thanks to this week’s research sources:

Essays

Strange Gods: Charles Fort’s Book of the Damned (1919) - https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/charles-fort-and-the-book-of-the-damned/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Books

The Book of the Damned | Charles Fort (1919)

Websites

Skeptic’s Dictionary - https://skepdic.com/fortean.html

University of Florida - https://people.clas.ufl.edu/tharpold/

Washington University in St. Louis - https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=wushta_spr2018&utm_source=chatgpt.com

University of Chicago - https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/articles/showers-blood-cosmology-charles-fort-p-genesius-durica?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories: