CFI Blogs

One of the key services planned for the CFI is an online archive of Fortean periodicals (including , ufology, cryptozoology, psychical research and so on). Recently, I saw an example of how this could be done.

Inspired by the images of old news clippings posted by Mike Dash and Theo Paixmans in this forum, I'd like to share with you a recent little bonanza. Thanks to a tip from Brian Chapman on the forteana mail list - forteana@yahoogroups.com - these digitised clippings came from a recent and short-lived trial run of the long-anticipated digital archive of the Times, spanning 1785-1985. For a few days in mid-August 2007, the Thompson-Gale host site - see www.gale.com/ - made the entire 200-year archive freely available for genealogy researchers as part of National Family History Week.

Alas, I only discovered it one day before the free password expired and had only an hour or so to test it for Fortean data. The Times archive is now only available through their regular subscription procedure - www.gale.com/Times/  

As anyone who has used the rather eccentric indexes to ancient runs of the Times will know, they were made for a different era, one of gentlemen scholars with lots of time on their hands. They were indexed, usually, on the short headline so you also had to have a talent for coming at your subject obliquely; a ‘frog fall', for example, may have been indexed as ‘A Curious Phenomenon' or an SHC might be ‘Shocking Death in Putney'.

As a Christmas treat, I’m reposting this gem, composed by Paul Sieveking for Fortean Times 177 (October 2003), which celebrated the 30th year of publication. This list of curious titles and amusing author names was collected by Paul Sieveking and others (including me) while working on the last hard copy edition of the British Library Catalogue of Printed Books, (1979-1985).   

As someone who is constantly researching some Fortean topic or other, I really appreciate the notes by Mike Dash and Theo Paijmans in their blogs about research resources. I really hope they will continue and the notes build up into a series useful to any Fortean researcher ... and I fully expect to contribute to that series myself.

Here's my first shot, the point of which is that it is well worth monitoring auction catalogues for items of interest. Remember, not too long ago, the well publicised auction of the camera with which the notorious Cottingley fairy pictures were made? Sadly, such items themselves usually fall well beyond what most of us (even collectively?) could afford, but there are good literary gleanings too.

I must thank Phil Baker who, at a recent gathering at Paul Sieveking's home in North London to sort newsclippings, brought to our attention a notice from Christie's auction house of possibly the most famous of all photographs of a footprint of the manimal that westerners referred to as the Abominable Snowman, better known in the Himalayas as the yeti. Closer to the date of the sale, I began to monitor the Christie's website. I had the (daft?) idea of bidding for them myself, but when one newspaper (sorry, lost the clipping) announced that the photos were expected to fetch more than £2000. I wisely let that drop, but I saved the following details from their online catalogue in case they were not available after the auction.

It has seemed to me that one of the most important questions about our existence is what happens to us at or after death. It is a question with far-reaching implications. If some sort of sentience can have any detectable independence of the human body, either in life or after its death, the proof would affect the fundamentals of morality, psychology and neuroscience, and (I presume) the more obscure realms of physics that deal with multiple dimensions and mysterious quantum energy states.

Besides the challenges it would make to current scientific understanding, the affect on religion and culture in all its forms are almost beyond imagining as it impacts upon every single person alive at the time. The possibility of some sort of survival of death is not just a personal matter, but must extend to all those who have lived and died before us. In turn it would raise questions about the nature of consciousness, personality and society itself. We'd even have to redefine death and what we mean by the 'dead'.

Obviously, we have no idea what such a survival may entail or what form it might take. Yes, we have a wealth of literature purporting to be communications with the deceased, full of accounts of dying and the world beyond, but it is narrative not fact. The best you can say is that they are the experiences of those who think they are in contact with the deceased, for we have no practical way of distinguishing between the real and the imagined here, especially when it might be based upon misperception or misinterpretation.

Let me guess! You're either a long-time well-wisher of the CFI or simply curious. Either way, I'm glad you've found this blog site where you - all of you, and for whatever reason - are very welcome.

In its decade or more of slow gestation, the Charles Fort Institute (CFI) has been more of an idea than a reality. Progress has met many obstacles - shortage of funds, of time, tedious consultations on charities law, and so on - but the central idea and goals of the CFI have inspired a kind of dogged determination in those who know of it to see it through.

So, after detours and delays, here we are with something tangible ... and from this small step we hope to grow an institution that will benefit every fortean researcher, the general public and posterity.

There is so much to discuss - so many ideas, enthusiasms, projects, aims and goals - that mentioning them all here would clog this inaugural message. After all, our growing list of bloggers, their topics and the discussions they hope to provoke, is the main point of these pages.

Our ultimate aim, though, is to progress towards a thoroughly 21^st century resource, attracting whatever funding we can to function fully and professionally. The core will be an archive of materials on fortean and related topics, which will include both physical media (books, periodicals, video, etc) and digitised data, so that our holdings will be accessible from anywhere in the world via the Internet. We already have a few collections donated with more promised in wills; their storage and cataloguing, therefore, will be one of our first priorities.

Now that we have this site up and running - and work is going on in the background to overhaul the main CFI home site- the chief obstacle to dissemination knowledge of the CFI has been overcome. We can conduct our affairs openly and invite anyone who thinks our aims have merit to
join us.