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Charles Fort Memorial Online Library

harlequin2005

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Online Resource for Oddities

Posting elsewhere, I suddenly remembered one of the main influences of my teenage years in the 80s - Omni Magazine. It had a column called anti-matter which usually contained some pretty high Forteana. I lost touch with the magazine when it went over to the internet fully a few years ago. After a bit (a few minutes) of searching

http://www.omnimag.com/antimatter/index.html

Take a look. The High Strangeness links off here are pretty good too

Enjoy

8¬)
 
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....................... Pop !
 
Solomon's Key? Glad to comply!

the most famous and influential handbook of magic. Mathers' edition.

The Key of Solomon

( Don't have too much fun with the invisiblity spell, you little trouble makers. )

A Sixteenth-Century English translation of the Key of Solomon.

The Key of Knowledge

have fun.

by the way, i have a BUNCH of links to full text of renaissance and medieval grimoires. So if you want another extremly long post. All you have to do is ask! =D
 
It's quite simple. Let's build a library right here.

Thanks to such excellent resources as Project Gutenberg it is possible to access such rare and out of copyright works of Fortean fiction and non-fiction as:

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World

Sir James George Frazer,The Golden Bough

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Most of the files are zipped and in the form of plain text, or, occasionally, HTML.

That's a start. Find more. They should be connected to Fortean pursuits.

This could be really handy if you've got a laptop, or a PDA.
 
You don't just have to rely on Project Gutenberg, either. There are other resources out there, ripe for the plundering.

They don't come come much riper than this:

With a sudden rush that could not be foreseen -- with a strange howling cry that was enough to awaken terror in every breast, the figure seized the long tresses of her hair, and twining them round his bony hands he held her to the bed. Then she screamed -- Heaven granted her then power to scream. Shriek followed shriek in rapid succession. The bed-clothes fell in a heap by the side of the bed -- she was dragged by her long silken hair completely on to it again. Her beautifully rounded limbs quivered with the agony of her soul. The glassy, horrible eyes of the figure ran over that angelic form with a hideous satisfaction -- horrible profanation. He drags her head to the bed's edge. He forces it back by the long hair still entwined in his grasp. With a plunge he seizes her neck in his fang-like teeth -- a gush of blood, and a hideous sucking noise follows. The girl has swooned, and the vampyre is at his hideous repast!

From one of the most influential Penny Dreadfuls ever to chill the Victorian public's blood, Varney The Vampire; or The Feast Of Blood.

This was originally done as a serial, in penny parts, there are many, many episodes.
 
ginoide said:
what's fortean in machiavelli's <the prince>??????????????????
The Prince was such a hot potato, when it was first published, that Machiavelli became a name synonymous with the devil's around Europe. He was condemened by the Pope and The Prince was put on the banned and forbidden list by the Vatican and several kingdoms in Europe.

IMO. It was the book of the renaissance that first laid out how power was acquired and kept, without any bullshit, or pretence. It was to political science, what the theories of Copernicus were to Astronomy.

His worst crime may have been to emphasise that God did not make rulers, rulers made rulers and by any means necessary. Even today, when the bullshit, get's too thick and obscures the truth, it's always good to go back to Machiavelli and see what the motivations of our rulers really are.

A short biography of Niccolo Machiavelli.

What's not Fortean about The Prince?
 
the reaction may be fortean, the book is not, IMHHHHO. the coldest rational theory of power you may find, but, ok, it has to do with conspiracy theoriues...
 
Hello all,
Here's some more stuff from PG.
First of all, Charles MacKay's Memoir of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. Is a Fortean library complete without it?
The Lock and Key Library is good. The second part ('True Stories of Modern Magic') contains a selection from Robert-Houdin's memoirs, and a couple of debunkings of Spiritualism.
Harry Houdini's Miracle Mongers has great histories and explanations of Fire Walking, Stone Eating, etc.
H. Stanley Redgrove's Bygone Beliefs is a 1919 book on Alchemy, Platonism, etc.
The Earth-oriented might be interested in The Marquis de Nadaillac's Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples.
Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance is also around, for those who want to get back to the modernist mythological revival.
And finally, a fictional favourite: Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan.

Sean
 
"Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occu

Arch-skeptic James "the Amazing Randi" Randi's 1995 encyclopedia can now be perused online in its entirety here.
 
Aaarrrggghhhhh, once again, fate craps on me, I went and brought it a couple of weeks ago.........damn, damn, bugger, damn, I could have spent that money on wine...
 
I agree, but I could have been reading the book while drinking wine.................
 
len fishers "how to dunk a doughnut (the science of everyday life)?

will this qualify?
 
Virtual Fortean Library

Try Black Mask at

http://www.blackmask.com/page.php

Among stuff downloadable in various formats are

The Secret Common-Wealth of Elves, Fairies and Fauns by Robert Kirk (classic study of the otherworld and its inhabitants.

Mars - Percivall Lowell (long before the Face there were canals and sand-drowned cities)

The Book of Enoch (the bit of the Bible that tells the story of the fall of the Watchers and got censored out)

A Dweller on Two worlds, by Phylos (no idea, but sounds barking)

Malleus Maleficarum (the Which Guide to Witches)

Atlantis the Antediluvian World - Ignatius Donnelly.

There's also Book of the Dammed, a couple of creepy Crowley's efforts and in other sections quite a bit of old SF (circa Jules Verne), mythology, and most of the big sacred texts.
 
This site has a few free texts by R.J. Stewart, including The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies with edited modern English Text and original commentary, notes, and appendices.
 
Heavens above there are several different online editions of Maria
Monk's "Awful disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal"!


Maria Monk
Author: Robert P. Lockwood
Title: Maria Monk
Larger Work: Catholic Heritage
Pages: 19-21
Publisher & Date: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., November/December 1996
Description: A short article about Maria Monk whose dishonest "disclosures" have fueled the flames of Anti-Catholicism in the United States since 1836.
Maria Monk
Anti-Catholic newspapers were flourishing in the United States by the mid-1830s thanks to the wide appeal of a new genre: convent horror stories.
Topping the charts was "Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal," or, as it was more popularly known then —and now: "The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk."
First published in 1836, the "Awful Disclosures" would sell hundreds of thou- sometime sands of copies in an America barely 50 years old It would become the most famous anti-Catholic work ever written in the United States.
Mistrust—and downright hatred—of Catholics and Catholicism, was widespread in colonial America. The American Revolution helped calm much of it, primarily through the young nation's alliance with Catholic France. After the Revolution, a Catholic community numbering barely 30,000 souls would generally be left alone.
But in the 1820s, anti-Catholicism began to resurface. There was a reawakening of a fundamentalist Protestantism that replaced the more tolerant attitude popular among American leaders at the time of the Revolution. Coupled with it was a growing resentment against the poor immigrants who were starting to crowd Eastern cities, many of them coming from Catholic Ireland. The ever-increasing public presence of Catholics was helping re-ignite anti Catholic sentiments.
The time was ripe for Maria Monk's anti-Catholic blockbuster.
Born in Canada, Monk claimed in her "Awful Disclosures" that she was raised a good Protestant girl and entered the convent school at the Hotel Dieu in Montreal for her education. Impressed by the appearance of holiness of the sisters, she decided to convert to Catholicism and become a nun.
(Her mother told a different story, claiming Monk's problems began when her daughter stuck a pencil into her head as a child. By the time Monk was a teen, her mother could no longer control her wild daughter and had her committed to a Catholic asylum in Montreal. She said the girl had never been a Catholic and had never been inside the Hotel Dieu.)
According to Maria Monk's version of her biography, after making her vows she was forcibly introduced to her main responsibilities as a nun: serving the perverse sexual needs of Catholic priests. She alleged that babies created by these unions were killed, and she said she had discovered a gruesome cemetery in the convent's basement where the tiny bodies were buried, along with the young nuns who refused to take part in the perversion.
Monk claimed a "Father Phelan" had gotten her pregnant and, fearing the murder of her own child, she fled the convent.
That was where the first edition of the "Awful Disclosures" ended. It was an immediate sensation and was followed by a second edition.
In that one, Monk picked up her tale of escape from the convent. She wrote of her attempts at suicide and, finally, her arrival in the United States. She told how, pregnant and near starvation, she was rescued by hunters at the outskirts of New York, and how when she told her terrible story to a Protestant clergyman, he encouraged her to write her autobiography.
All great stuff for anti-Catholic readers.
In reality, it appears Monk had taken off from a Catholic asylum with the help of her former lover, who was the likely father of her child. In New York, she hooked up with a few clergymen who saw the opportunity to make an anti-Catholic statement —and a few bucks. It appears that the Rev. J. J. Slocum of New York was the actual author of the "Awful Disclosures."
These ministers approached the publishing house of Harper Brothers with Monk's story. It set up a dummy corporation to actually publish the book, unwilling perhaps to have its reputation sullied with a salacious tale not for polite ears. The book was released in January 1836.
It created an immediate storm. Hugely successful, it received rave reviews in the contemporary Protestant press and was cited as an accurate picture of convent life. The small Catholic community protested loudly, claiming the whole story was a hoax.
As the controversy grew over Monk's veracity, two Protestant clergymen went to Canada to inspect the Hotel Dieu convent. When they reported that the convent was nothing like Monk's description, they were accused of being Jesuits in disguise. When another prominent Protestant journalist also investigated the convent and denounced Monk as a fraud, he was charged with taking Jesuit money.
Monk's behavior did not help her cause. She disappeared in August 1837 and resurfaced in Philadelphia, claiming she had been kidnapped by priests. She had actually taken off under an assumed name with another man.
While this indiscretion seemed to discredit her with some, there were many Americans still willing to accept her tale. In 1837, she published another book claiming that pregnant nuns from the United States and Canada lived on an island in the St. Lawrence River.
That book marked the end of Maria Monk's literary career. Her popularity began to fade, while lawsuits to attempt to recover some of the profits from her earlier books publicly revealed much of the corruption behind the whole story.
In 1838, she became pregnant again and most discarded her charge that it was a Catholic plot to discredit her. She married, but her drinking and carousing forced her husband to abandon her. In 1849, she was arrested for pickpocketing at a house of prostitution, and she died in prison a short time later.
In 1874, Mrs. L. St. John Eckel published a book in which she claimed to be Monk's daughter from her last liaison. It told of Eckel's conversion to Catholicism. While the book included a little bit about Monk's final days, the work was primarily a vigorous defense of the author's Catholic faith.
Then, as now, Monk's anti-Catholic classic was still in print. In fact, there has scarcely been a time since its first publication when "Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal" hasn't been available. Pornographic versions have been published, as well as toned-down efforts for more sensitive eyes. It's quite likely the book has sold millions of copies in the United States.
Small-time anti-Catholic publishers still have active editions of the "Awful Disclosures" on their lists. These days a hardcover edition sells for $35.95.
Robert P. Lockwood is the president of Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., and the publisher of Catholic Heritage.
This article was taken from the November/December 1996 issue of "Catholic Heritage". To subscribe write Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 200 Noll Plaza, Huntington, IN 46750-9957 or call 1-800-348-2440. Published bimonthly at a charge of $18.00 per year.


Personally I believe every word of the Awful Disclosures! :p
 
Bump! 3 threads merged (and edited)
 
Super Jumbo Archive Of Endangered Species

Rare and endangered species. New info site at:
www.arkive.org
Sir David Attenborough CH FRS
"Over the past few decades a vast treasury of wildlife images has been steadily accumulating, yet no one has known its full extent - or its gaps - and no one has had a comprehensive way of getting access to it. ARKive will put that right. It will become an invaluable tool for all concerned with the well-being of the natural world."
 
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