Authors: Charles Fort
It is said that, except where women were concerned, where not much can be expected, anyway, Cagliostro had pretty good brains. Yet we are told that, having been identified as an Italian criminal, he went to Italy.
There are two accounts of the disappearance of Cagliostro. One is a matter of mere rumors: that he had been seen in Aix-les-Bains; that he had been seen in Turin. The other is a definite story that he went to Rome, where, as Joseph Balsamo, he was sent to prison. A few years later, when Napoleon’s forces were in Rome, somebody went to the prison and investigated. Cagliostro was not there. Perhaps he had died.
16
Here is the shortest story that I know of:
St. Louis Globe-Democrat,
Nov. 2, 1886—a girl stepped from her home, to go to a spring.
Still, though we shall have details and comments, I know of many occurrences of which, so far as definitely finding out anything is concerned, no more than that can be told.
After all, I can tell a shorter story:
He walked around the horses.
Upon Nov. 25, 1809, Benjamin Bathurst, returning from Vienna, where, at the Court of the Emperor Francis, he had been representing the British Government, was in the small town of Perleberg, Germany. In the presence of his valet and his secretary, he was examining horses, which were to carry his coach over more of his journey back to England. Under observation, he walked around to the other side of the horses. He vanished. For details, see the
Cornhill Magazine,
55-279.
I have not told much of the disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst, because so many accounts are easily available: but the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, in
Historic Oddities,
tells of a circumstance that is not findable in all other accounts that I have read. It is that, upon Jan. 23, 1810, in a Hamburg newspaper, appeared a paragraph, telling that Bathurst was safe and well, his friends having received a letter from him. But his friends had received no such letter. Wondering as to the origin of this paragraph, and the reason for it, Baring-Gould asks: “Was it inserted to make the authorities abandon the search?” Was it an inquiry-stopper? is the way I word this. Some writers have thought that, for political reasons, at the instigation of Napoleon Bonaparte, Bathurst was abducted. Bonaparte went to the trouble to deny that this was so.
In the
Literary Digest,
46-922, it is said that the police records of London show that 170,472 persons mysteriously disappeared in the years 1907-13, and that nothing had been found out in 3,260 of the cases. Anybody who has an impression of 167,212 cases, all explained ordinarily, may not think much of 3,260 cases left over. But some of us, now educated somewhat, or at least temporarily, by experience with pseudo-endings of mysteries, will question that the 167,212 cases were so satisfactorily explained, except relatively to not very exacting satisfactions. If it’s a matter of remarriage and collection of insurance, half a dozen bereft ones may “identify” a body found in a river, or cast up by the sea. They settle among themselves which shall marry again and collect. Naturally enough, wherever Cupid is, cupidity is not far away, and both haunt morgues. Whether our astronomical and geological and biological knowledge is almost final, or not, we know very little about ourselves. Some of us can’t, or apparently can’t, tell a husband or a wife from someone else’s husband or wife. About the year 1920, in New York City, a woman, whose husband was in an insane asylum, was visited by a man, who greeted her fondly, telling her that he was her husband. She made everything cheerful and home-like for him. Sometime later, she learned that her husband was still in the asylum. She seemed resentful about this, and had the other man arrested. Cynical persons will think of various explanations. I have notes upon another case. A man appeared and argued with a woman, whose husband was a sailor, that he was her husband. “Go away!” said she. “You are darker than my husband.” “Ah!” said he: “I have had yellow fever.” So she listened to reason, but something went wrong, and the case got into a police court.
Because of the flux and the variation of all supposed things, I typify all judgments in all matters—in trifles and in scientific questions that are thought to be of utmost importance—with this story of the woman and her uncertainties. If a husband, or a datum, would stay put, a mind, if that could be kept from varying, might be said to know him, or it, after a fashion.
There have been many mysterious disappearances of human beings. Here the situation is what it is in every other subject, or so-called subject, if there is no subject that has independent existence. Only those who know little of a matter can have a clear and definite opinion upon it. Whole civilizations have vanished. There are statistical reasons for doubting that five-sixths of the Tribes of Israel once upon a time disappeared, but that is tradition, anyway. Historians tell us what became of the Jamestown Colonists, but what becomes of historians? Persons as well-known as Bathurst have disappeared. As to the disappearance of Conant, one of the editors of
Harper’s Weekly,
see the New York newspapers beginning with Jan. 29, 1885. Nothing was found out. For other instances of well-known persons who have disappeared, see the
New York Tribune,
March 29, 1903, and
Harper’s Magazine,
38-504.
Chicago Tribune,
Jan. 5, 1900—“Sherman Church, a young man employed in the Augusta Mills (Battle Creek, Mich.) has disappeared. He was seated in the Company’s office, when he arose and ran into the mill. He has not been seen since. The mill has been almost taken to pieces by the searchers, and the river, woods, and country have been scoured, but to no avail. Nobody saw Church leave town, nor is there any known reason for his doing so.”
Because of the merging of everything—without entity, identity, or soul of its own—into everything else, anything, or what is called anything, can somewhat reasonably be argued any way. Anybody who feels so inclined will be as well-justified, as anybody can be, in arguing about all mysterious disappearances, in terms of Mrs. Christie’s mystery. In December, 1926, Mrs. Agatha Christie, a writer of detective stories, disappeared from her home in England. The newspapers, noting her occupation, commented good-naturedly, until it was reported that, in searching moors and forests and villages and towns, the police had spent £10,000. Then the frugal Englishmen became aware of the moral aspect of the affair, and they were severe. Mrs. Christie was found. But, according to a final estimate, the police had spent only £25. Then everybody forgot the moral aspect and was good-natured again. It was told that Mrs. Christie, in a hotel, somewhere else in England, having been keen about getting newspapers every morning, had appeared at the hotel, telling fictions about her identity. She was taken home by her husband. She remembered nobody, her friends said, but, thinking this over, they then said that she remembered nobody but her husband. Several weeks later, a new book by Mrs. Christie was published. It seems to have been a somewhat readable book, and was pleasantly reviewed by frugal Englishmen, who are very good-humored and tolerant, unless put to such expense as to make them severe and moral.
Late in the year 1913, Ambrose Bierce disappeared. It was explained. He had gone to Mexico, to join Villa, and had been killed at the Battle of Torreon.
New York Times,
April 3, 1915—mystery of Bierce’s disappearance solved—he was upon Lord Kitchener’s staff, in the recruiting service, in London.
New York Times,
April 7, 1915—no knowledge of Bierce, at the War Office, London. In March, 1920, newspapers published a dispatch from San Francisco, telling that Bierce had gone to Mexico, to fight against Villa, and had been shot. It would be a fitting climax to the life of this broad-minded writer to be widely at work in London, while in Mexico, and to be killed while fighting for and against Villa. But that is pretty active for one, who, as Joseph Lewis French points out, in
Pearson’s Magazine,
39-245, was incurably an invalid and was more than seventy years old. For the latest, at this writing, see the
New York Times,
Jan. 1, 1928. Here there is an understandable explanation of the disappearance. It is that Bierce had criticized Villa.
London
Daily Chronicle,
Sept. 29, 1920—a young man, evening of September 27th, walking in a street, in South London—
Magic—houses melting—meadows appearing—
Or there was a gap between perceptions.
However he got there, he was upon a road, with fields around. The young man was frightened. He
might be
far away, and unable to return. It was upon a road, near Dunstable, thirty miles from London, and a policeman finding him exclaiming, pacing back and forth, took him to the station house. Here he recovered sufficiently to tell that he was Leonard Wadham, of Walworth, South London, where he was employed by the Ministry of Health. As to how he got to this point near Dunstable, he could tell nothing. Of a swish, nobody could tell much.
Early in the year 1905, there were many mysterious disappearances in England. See back to the chapter upon the extraordinary phenomena of this period. Here we have an account of one of them, which was equally a mysterious appearance. I take it from the
Liverpool Echo,
February 8. Upon the 4th of February, a woman was found, lying unconscious, upon the shore, near Douglas, Isle of Man. No one had seen her before, but it was supposed that she had arrived by the boat from England, upon the 3rd of February. She died, without regaining consciousness. There were many residents of the island, who had, in their various callings, awaited the arrival of this boat, and had, in their various interests, looked more than casually at the passengers: but 200 Manxmen visited the mortuary, and not one of them could say that he had seen this woman arrive. The news was published, and then came an inquiry from Wigan, Lancashire. A woman had “mysteriously disappeared” in Wigan, and by her description the body found near Douglas was identified as that of Mrs. Alice Hilton, aged sixty-six of Wigan. As told, in the
Wigan Observer,
somebody said that Mrs. Hilton had been last seen, upon February 2nd, on her way to Ince, near Wigan, to visit a cousin. But nobody saw her leave Wigan, and she had no known troubles. According to the verdict, at the inquest, Mrs. Hilton had not been drowned, but had died of the effects of cold and exposure upon her heart.
I wonder whether Ambrose Bierce ever experimented with self-teleportation. Three of his short stories are of “mysterious disappearances.” He must have been uncommonly interested to repeat so.
Upon Sept. 4, 1905, London newspapers reported the disappearance, at Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, Ireland, of Prof. George A. Simcox, Senior Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford. Upon August 28th, Prof. Simcox had gone for a walk, and had not returned. There was a search, but nothing was learned.
Several times before, Prof. Simcox had attracted attention by disappearing. The disappearance at Ballycastle was final.
17
As interpreters of dreams, I can’t say that we have ambitions, but I think of one dream that many persons have had, repeatedly, and it may have relation to our present subject. One is snoring along, amidst the ordinary marvels of dreamland—and there one is, naked, in a public place, with no impression of how one got there. I’d like to know what underlies the prevalence of this dream, and its disagreeableness, which varies, I suppose, according to one’s opinion of oneself. I think that it is subconscious awareness of something that has often befallen human beings, and that in former times was commoner. It may be that occult transportations of human beings do occur, and that, because of their selectiveness, clothes are sometimes not included.
“Naked in the street—strange conduct by a strange man.” See the
Chatham
(Kent, England)
News,
Jan. 10, 1914. Early in the evening of January 6th—“weather bitterly cold”—a naked man appeared, from nowhere that could be found out, in High Street, Chatham.
The man ran up and down the street, until a policeman caught him. He could tell nothing about himself. “Insanity,” said the doctors, with their customary appearance of really saying something.
I accept that, relatively, there is insanity, though no definite lines can be drawn as to persons in asylums, persons not in asylums, and persons not yet in asylums. If by insanity is meant processes of thought that may be logical enough, but that are built upon false premises, what am I showing but the insanity of all of us? I accept that as extremes of the state that is common to all, some persons may be considered insane: but, according to my experience with false classifications, or the impossibility of making anything but false classifications, I suspect that many persons have been put away, as insane, simply because they were gifted with uncommon insights, or had been through uncommon experiences. It may be that, hidden under this cloakery, are the subject matters of astonishing, new inquiries. There may be stories that have been told by alleged lunatics that someday will be listened to, and investigated, leading to extraordinary disclosures. In this matter of insanity, the helplessness of science is notorious, though it is only of the helplessness of all science. Very likely the high-priced opinions of alienists are sometimes somewhat nearly honest: but, as in every other field of so-called human knowledge, there is no real standard to judge by: there is no such phenomenon as insanity, with the nominal quality of being distinct and real in itself. If it should ever be somewhat difficult to arrange with professional wisemen to testify either for or against any person’s sanity, I should have to think that inorganic science, in this field, may not be so indefinite.
This naked man of Chatham appeared suddenly. Nobody had seen him on his way to his appearing-point. His clothes were searched for, but could not be found. Nowhere near Chatham was anybody reported missing.
Little frogs, showers of stones, and falls of water—and they have repeated, indicating durations of transportory currents to persisting appearing-points, suggesting the existence of persisting disappearing-points somewhere else. There is an account, in the London
Times,
Jan. 30, 1874, of repeating disappearances of young men, in Paris. Very likely, as a development of feminism, there will be female Bluebeards, but I don’t think of them away back in the year 1874. “In every case, their relatives and friends declare that they were unaware of any reason for evasion, and the missing persons seem to have left their homes for their usual avocations.”
A field, somewhere near Salem, Va., in the year 1885—and that in this field there was a suction. In the
New York Sun,
April 25, 1885, it is said that Isaac Martin, a young farmer, living near Salem, Va., had gone into a field to work, and that he had disappeared. It is said that in this region there had been other mysterious disappearances. In Montreal, in July and August, 1892, there were so many unaccountable disappearances that, in the newspapers, the headline, “Another Missing Man”, became common. In July, 1883, there was a similar series, in Montreal. London
Evening Star.
Nov. 2, 1926—“mysterious series of disappearances—eight persons missing, in a few days.” It was in and near Southend. First went Mrs. Kathleen Munn, and her two small children. Then a girl aged fifteen—girl aged sixteen, girl aged seventeen, another girl aged sixteen. Another girl, Alice Stevens, disappeared. “She was found in a state of collapse, and was taken to hospital.”
New York Sun,
Aug. 14, 1902—disappearances, in about a week, of five men, in Buffalo, N.Y.
Early in August, 1895, in the city of Belfast, Ireland, a little girl named Rooney disappeared. Detectives investigated. While they were investigating, a little boy named Webb, disappeared. Another child disappeared. September 10—disappearance of a boy, aged seven, named Watson. Two days later, a boy, named Brown, disappeared. See the
Irish News
(Belfast), September 20. In following issues of this newspaper, no more information is findable.
London
Daily Mirror,
Aug. 5, 1920—“Belfast police are in possession of the sensational news that eight girls, all under twelve years of age, are missing since last Monday, week, from the Newtownards-road, East Belfast.”
In August, 1869, English newspapers reported disappearances of thirteen children, in Cork, Ireland. I take from the
Tiverton Times,
August 31. It may be that the phenomenon cannot be explained in terms of local kidnapers because somewhere else, at the same time, children were disappearing. London
Daily News,
August 31—excitement in Brussels, where children were disappearing.
Five “wild men” and a “wild girl” appeared in Connecticut, about the first of January, 1888. See the
St. Louis Globe-Democrat,
January 5, and the
New York Times,
Jan. 9, 1888.
I have records of six persons, who, between Jan. 14, 1920, and Dec. 9, 1923, were found wandering in or near the small town of Romford, Essex, England, unable to tell how they got there, or anything else about themselves. I have satisfactorily come upon no case in which somebody has stated that he was walking, say, in a street in New York, and was suddenly seized upon and set down somewhere, say in Siberia, or Romford. I have come upon many cases like that of a man who told that he was walking along Euston Road, London, and—but nine months later—when next he was aware of where he was, found himself working on a farm, in Australia. If human beings ever have been teleported, and, if some mysterious appearances of human beings be considered otherwise unaccountable, an effect of the experience is effacement of memory.
There have been mysterious appearances of children in every land. In India, the explanation of appearances of children of an unknown past is that they had been brought up by she-wolves.
There have been strange fosterings: young rabbits adopted by cats, and young pigs welcomed to strangely foreign founts. But these cases are of maternal necessity, and of unlikely benevolence, and we’re asked to believe in benevolent she-wolves. I don’t deny that there is, to some degree, benevolence in wolves, cats, human beings, ants: but benevolence is erratic, and not long to be depended upon. Sometimes I am benevolent, myself, but pretty soon get over it. The helplessness of a human infant outlasts the suckling period of a wolf. How long do she-wolves, or any of the rest of us, keep on being unselfish, after nothing’s made by unselfishness?
For an account of one of the later of the “wolf children” of India (year 1914) see
Nature,
93-566. In the
Zoologist,
3-12-87, is an account of a number of them, up to the year 1852. In the
Field,
Nov. 9, 1895, the story of the “wolf child” of Oude is told by an Assistant Commissioner, who had seen it. It was a speechless, little animal, about four years old. Policemen said that, in a wolf’s den, they had found this child, almost devoid of human intelligence. The child grew up and became a policeman. In
Human Nature,
7-302, is a story of two “wolf children” that were found at different times, near Agra, Northern India. Each was seven or eight years old. For a recent case, see the London
Observer,
Dec. 5, 1926. Hindus had brought two “wolf children,” one aged two, and the other about eight years old, to the Midnapore Orphanage. The idea of abandonment of young idiots does not look so plausible, in cases of more than one child. Also, in a case of several children, a she-wolf would seem very graspingly unselfish. The children crawled about on all fours, ate only raw meat, growled, and avoided other inmates of the Orphanage. I suppose that they ate only raw meat, because to confirm a theory that was all they got.
London
Daily Mail,
April 6, 1927—another “wolf child”—boy aged seven—found in a cave, near Allahabad. For an instance that is the latest, at this writing, see the
New York Times,
July 16, 1927. Elephant youngsters and rhinoceros brats have still to be heard of, but, in the London
Morning Post,
Dec. 31, 1926, is a story of a “tiger child.” A “leopard boy” and a “monkey girl” are told of, in the London
Observer,
April 10, 1927.
Our data are upon events that have astonished horses and tickled springboks. They have shocked policemen. I have notes upon an outbreak of ten “wild men,” who appeared in different parts of England, in that period of extraordinary phenomena, the winter of 1904-5. One of them, of origin that could not be found out, appeared in a street in Cheadle. He was naked. An indignant policeman, trying to hang his overcoat about the man, tried to reason with him, but had the same old trouble that Euclid and Newton and Darwin had, and that everybody else has, when trying to be rational, or when trying, in the inorganic, or scientific, way, to find a base to argue upon. I suppose the argument was something like this—
Wasn’t he ashamed of himself?
Not at all. Some persons might have reasons for being ashamed of themselves, but he had no reason for being ashamed of himself. What’s wrong with nakedness? Don’t cats and horses and dogs go around without clothes on?
But they are clothed with natural, furry protections.
Well, Mexican dogs, then.
Let somebody else try—somebody who thinks that, as products of logic, the teachings of astronomy, biology, geology, or anything else are pretty nearly final, though with debatable minor points, to be sure. Try this simple, little problem to start with. Why shouldn’t the man walk around naked? One is driven to argue upon the basis of conventionality. But we are living in an existence, which itself may be base, but in which there are not bases. Argue upon the basis of conventionality, and one is open to well-known counterarguments. What is all progress but defiance of conventionality?
The policeman, in Euclid’s state of desperation, took it as self-evident disgracefulness. Euclid put theorems in bags. He solved problems by encasing some circumstances in an exclusion of whatever interfered with a solution. The policeman of Cheadle adopted the classical method. He dumped the “wild man” into a sack, which he dragged to the station house.
Another of these ten “wild men” spoke in a language that nobody had ever heard of before, and carried a book, in which were writings that could not be identified, at Scotland Yard. Like a traveler from far away, he had made sketches of things that he had seen along the roads. At Scotland Yard, it was said of the writings: “They are not French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Turkish. Neither are they Bohemian, Greek, Portuguese Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, nor Russian.” See London newspapers, and the
East Anglian Daily Times,
Jan. 12, 1905.
I have come upon fragments of a case, which I reconstruct:
Perhaps in the year 1910, and perhaps not in this year, a Hindu magician teleported a boy from somewhere in England, perhaps from Wimbledon, London, perhaps not. The effect of this treatment was of mental obliteration; of profound hypnosis, or amnesia. The boy could learn, as if starting life anew, but mostly his memory was a void. Later the magician was dying. He repented, and his problem was to restore the boy, perhaps not to his home, but to his native land. He could not tell of the occult transportation, but at first it seemed to him that nobody would believe a story of ordinary kidnaping. It would be a most improbable story: that, in London, a Hindu had kidnaped a boy, and on the way to India had spent weeks aboard a vessel with this boy, without exciting inquiry, and with ability to keep the boy from appealing to other passengers. Still, a story of kidnaping is a story in commonplace terms. No story of ordinary kidnaping could account for the boy’s lapsed memory, but at the most some persons would think that some of the circumstances were queer, and would then forget the matter.
For fragments of this story, see
Lloyd’s Sunday News
(London), Oct. 17, 1920. Sometime in the year 1917, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, in Nepal, India, received a message from a native priest, who was dying, and wanted to tell something. With the priest was a well-grown boy. The priest told that, about the year 1910, in a street in Wimbledon (South London) he had kidnaped this boy. Details of a voyage to India not given. The boy was taken to Gorakapur, and was given employment in a railway workshop. He could speak a little English, but had no recollection of ever having been in England.
This is the account that the Society sent to its London representative, Mrs. Sanderson, Earl’s Court, London. A confirmation of the story, by Judge Muir, of Gorakapur, was sent. Mrs. Sanderson communicated with Scotland Yard.
Lloyd’s Sunday News,
October 24—“boy not yet identified by Scotland Yard. An even more extraordinary development of the story is that quite a number of boys disappeared in Wimbledon, ten years ago.” It is said that the police had no way of tracing the boy, because, in Scotland Yard, all records of missing children were destroyed after a few years. I have gone through the
Wimbledon News,
for the year 1910, without finding mention of any missing child. Someone else may take a fancy to the job, for 1909, or 1911. In
Thomson’s Weekly News,
Oct. 23, 1920, there are additional details. It is said that without doubt the boy was an English boy: as told by the priest, his Christian name was Albert.