Richard Dr Freeman

Tales of the Damned - An Anthology of Fortean Horror Richard Dr Freeman

Here we have a book unique in the annals of horror literature. This is a book where the stories are penned, mostly, by fortean researchers. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, 'fortean' refers to the works of Charles Hoy Fort (August 6, 1874 - May 3, 1932). Fort was an American writer and researcher into strange phenomena. Fort collected newspaper reports of sightings of strange creatures, weird light phenomena, falls of fish and other creatures, and poltergeist outbreaks to name but a few. Fort realized that mainstream science was acting somewhat like a fundamentalist religion and that any anomalous data that did not fit into the current scientific paradigm was simply swept under the carpet. Fort called this 'damned data'. He published his findings in four books: The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1932) and Wild Talents (1932), all of which are still in print today. Fort has influenced modern research with magazines like Fortean Times, which has been recording weird happenings since 1973, and the Centre for Fortean Zoology, the world's only full time mystery animal investigation organization. The publishing wing of the latter is responsible for this book.