Wild Talents

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Book: Read Wild Talents for Free Online
Authors: Charles Fort
emerging into data that seem to be of physical attacks. There will be more emerging. One can’t, unless one be hopelessly, if not brutally, a scientist, or a logician, tie to any classification. The story is told in the Daily Messenger (Paris) Sept. 13, 1903.
    In a coal mine, near Coalbridge, Scotland, miners came upon the bodies of three men. There was no coal gas. There was no sign of violence of any kind. Two of these men were dead, but one of them revived. He could tell, enlighteningly, no more than could any other survivor in the stories of this group. He told that his name was Robert Bell, and that, with his two cousins, he had been walking in the mine when he felt what he described as a “shock.” No disturbance had been felt by anyone else in the mine. Though other parts of this mine were lighted by electricity, there was not a wire in this part. There was, at this point, a deadly discharge of an unknown force, just when, by coincidence, three men happened to be passing, or something more purposeful is suggested.
    Down in the dark of a coal mine—and there is a seeming of the congruous between mysterious attacks and surroundings. Now I have a story of a similar occurrence at a point that was one of this earth’s most crowded thoroughfares. See the New York Herald, Jan. 23, 1909. John Harding, who was the head of a department in John Wanamaker’s store, was crossing Fifth Avenue, at 33 Street when he felt a stinging sensation upon his chest. There was no sign of a missile of any kind. Then he saw, nearby, a man, who was rubbing his arm, looking around angrily. The other man told Harding that something unseen had struck him.
    If this occurrence had been late at night, and, if only two persons were crossing Fifth Avenue at 33rd Street; and if a force of intensity enough to kill had struck them, the explanation, upon the finding of the bodies, would probably be that two men had, by coincidence, died in one place, of heart failure. At any rate, see back to the case of the bodies on benches of a Harlem park. No reporter of the finding of these bodies questioned the explanation that two men, sitting near each other, had died, virtually simultaneously, of heart failure, by coincidence.
    We emerge from seeming attacks upon more than one person at a time, into seemingly definitely directed attacks upon single persons. New York Herald Tribune, Dec. 4, 1931—Ann Harding, film actress, accompanied by her secretary, on her way, by train, to Venice, Florida. There came an intense pain in her shoulder. Miss Harding could not continue traveling, and left the train, at Jacksonville. A physician examined her, and found that her shoulder was dislocated. The secretary was mystified, because she had seen the occurrence of nothing by which to explain, and Miss Harding could offer no explanation of her injury.
    Upon Dec. 7, 1931—see the New York Times, Dec. 8, 1931—the German steamship Brechsee arrived at Horsens, Jutland. Captain Ahrenkield told of one of his sailors who had been unaccountably wounded. The man had been injured during a storm, but he seemed to have been singled out by something other than stormy conditions. The captain had seen him, wounded by nothing that was visible, falling to the deck, unconscious. It was a serious wound, four inches long, that had appeared upon the sailor’s head, and the captain had sewed it with ordinary needle and thread.
    In this case, unaccountable wounds did not appear upon several other sailors. Suppose, later, I tell of instances in which a number of persons were so injured. Mass psychology?

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    Not a bottle of catsup can fall from a tenement house fire-escape, in Harlem, without being noted—not only by the indignant people downstairs, but—even though infinitesimally—universally—maybe—
    Affecting the price of pajamas in Jersey City: the temper of somebody’s mother-in-law, in Greenland; the demand, in China, for rhinoceros horns for the cure of

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