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Indrid Drood

Loitering with Ludic Intent
Joined
Nov 13, 2017
Messages
195
While I await delivery of Jack Hunter's Damned Facts: Fortean Essays on Religion, Folklore and the Paranormal, it would be nice to hear from my esteemed Fortean colleagues gathered here regarding their favourite pieces in the collection along with any observations they may have to share on either individual essays or on the volume as a whole.

Looking forward to your replies!
 
As far as I can tell, no one's posted on the forum about the book's contents (essays).

There was announcement of the call for contributions back in 2015:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...-deadline-for-abstracts-june-15th-2015.59290/

There was an announcement of the book's issuance in 2016:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/charles-fort-collection-damned-facts.60925/

FrKadash asked if anyone had read it last January (and noted a Rune Soup podcast featuring one of the contributors):

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/fortean-podcasts.26975/post-1821374

... And these seem to be the only mentions of the book here. :dunno:
 
As far as I can tell, no one's posted on the forum about the book's contents (essays).

There was announcement of the call for contributions back in 2015:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...-deadline-for-abstracts-june-15th-2015.59290/

There was an announcement of the book's issuance in 2016:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/charles-fort-collection-damned-facts.60925/

FrKadash asked if anyone had read it last January (and noted a Rune Soup podcast featuring one of the contributors):

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/fortean-podcasts.26975/post-1821374

... And these seem to be the only mentions of the book here. :dunno:
Thanks, yes, I was aware of those previous posts, but thought that surely someone – if not many here, on a message board hosted by forteana.org! – would have acquired the volume, even if they had not bothered to comment on it in the forum.

Damned Facts seems, ironically, to have itself been damned/excluded by the fortean community! :confused:
 
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This is a fascinating subject, and I have only just noticed its existence. In fact, I suspect a lot of the info I have contributed to the forum falls into this general class.

At present I wasn't even aware of Jack Hunter's book until I read this post. Tell me Indrid, what stood out in your reading of it, in particular, what were you unaware of prior to reading the book?
 
This is a fascinating subject, and I have only just noticed its existence. In fact, I suspect a lot of the info I have contributed to the forum falls into this general class.

At present I wasn't even aware of Jack Hunter's book until I read this post. Tell me Indrid, what stood out in your reading of it, in particular, what were you unaware of prior to reading the book?
As I stated at the top, I'm still waiting to receive the book, so I'm unable to comment on the contents; I was hoping to get some teasers here prior to getting the book in my hands!
 
I think one issue is that nobody ever posted a summary listing of the essays the book contains. I can't find an Amazon (etc.) entry that bothers to describe the items in the collection. As a result, I guess no one knows what's in it to begin with. The title indicates it may address religion, folklore and the paranormal. That's a helluva lot of ground to cover.
 
Ah I can see the contents page on Amazon for you, EG:
Foreword - Damned Comparisons and the Real (Jeffrey J Kripal).
c1 - Limestone in the Sky: the politics of damned facts (Amba J Sepie)
c2 - Methodologies of radical empiricism: the experiential worlds of William James and Charles Fort
c3 - Extraordinary Religious / Anomalous cases from Brazil and the Fortean approach (W Zangari, F R Machado, E de O Maraldi and L B Martins)
c4 A new demonology: John Keel and the Mothman prophecies (David Clarke)
c5 - UFO abductions as mystical encounter: Faerie folklore in W Y Evans-Wentz, Jacques Vallee and Whitley Strieber (Robin Jarrell)
c6 - Misunderstanding myth as history: the case of British Israelism (David V Barrett)
c7 - The Transmediumizers (Eden S French and Christopher Laursen)
c8 - The mirror maze: true reflections of the hyperprophets (James Harris)
c9 - Implications of a Paranormal Labyrinth (Roberta Harris Short)

I'm a big Jeffrey Kripal / David Clarke fan. And who doesn't like the connections between UFO abductions and fairy abductions? It sounds like a potentially fun book.
 
Here, as well, are some brief reviews:

'I have a confession to make. My secret inner reaction to claims of anomalous phenomena is usually this: we haven't yet converged to even a half-decent ontology to explain the ordinary, why bother with the extra-ordinary? What this fascinating book does, however, is to disrupt our attempts to draw neat and smooth boundaries around what we consider real. The damned facts discussed in it spoil our elegant tentative models. Frankly, it's damn annoying. But books like this are also crucially important to keep us honest, insofar as our pursuit is for the truth, not merely intellectual reassurance.' - Bernardo Kastrup, author of Why Materialism is Baloney and More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth and Belief. '

Jack Hunter's Damned Facts, a collection of well-researched and closely argued essays into all things anomalous, presents some delightful, fascinating, and eye-brow raising evidence that there are more things in heaven and earth-and anywhere in between-than are dreamed of in practically anyone's philosophy. Taking their cue from the original anomalist, Charles Fort, who argued that mystery begins everywhere, Hunter and his contributors plunge headfirst into some deep waters and drag up to the surface enough oddities to satisfy even the most discerning taste in the unusual. It's my bet that Fort himself would have been damned proud.' - Gary Lachman, author of Revolutionaries of the Soul and The Secret Teachers of the Western World.

Over the course of four ground-breaking books published between 1919-1932, Charles Fort gathered thousands of accounts of weird events and experiences that seemed to upset the established models of mainstream science and religion. In order to explore these events Fort developed the philosophy of Intermediatism, whereby all phenomena (from the most mundane to the most extraordinary), are understood to partake of a quasi-existence, neither real nor unreal. It is from this indeterminate vantage point that the chapters in this book begin their investigations...
 
I completely missed it as well, about which I'm a tad baffled. Anyway, it's on my list now.
 
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