CFI Blogs

Fancy owning a piece of Fortean history? Well I can't quite offer it I'm afraid but I can literally offer the next best thing! <Having checked a few things I take it all back - I can offer it - it is indeed number 31 the house of the Wrights that is for sale>

Cottingley is forever in our minds courtesy of Arthur Conan Doyle and the fairy photographs of Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths from 1917 and 1920. There are so many Fortean aspects and indeed cliches in this case that I shall not rehash them here. Cottingley is currently experiencing a bit of a building boom and new streets are being added, streets with names such as Oberon Way, Lysander Way and Goodfellow Close. There is already a Fairy Dell there. But Main Street survives. This is the street where the girls were staying at the time, specifcially in number 31.

Number 31 was sold in July of 2000, for £57 000. But it now appears that next door is up for sale.

Estate Agent advert

A mere snip at £154 995

The estate agent description inlcudes mention of the fairies:

It's always good to start the new year with a look back at things past - it's a chance for us to make sure we don't repeat the same mistakes if nothing else! And if we look back to Charles Fort we can see how much things have changed.

Whilst working on his collection of data of the damned Fort had to travel to major library collections and fortunately he had a bequest which meant he could devote the necessary time to his researches. Availability and ease of access were major issues for Fort and for many who followed in his footsteps, but look at the situation now in 2008. We have the internet - communication with fellow researchers of any of our Fortean interests is a lot quicker than good old snail mail - we can even carry out real time conversations through the net without the previously prohibitive phone call charges of the past. The net itself is a vast and ever changing resource - we can check and recheck facts to our hearts content. Ok anyone can put up a web page and say anything they want but looking at one source isn't research - it's plagarism! Cross checking of information is so much easier now, what would have taken months in the past can be accomplished in days if not hours.

Many reports of interest are originally published in newspapers and journals - many of which have online archives which are searchable. I popped the phrase "mermaid" into the online archive section of The Scotsman newspaper and produced a range of hits from 1817 onwards. And each one was accompanied by a pdf of the original article - how long would it have taken me to search all edtions of the paper - either paper copies (if I could get hold of them) or on microfiche? And how many mistakes would I have made? Being realistic the online search engine may have made mistakes but there are probably less than I would have made! This makes research of articles so much easier - it's a godsend, it really is.

Thanks to everyone who voted - here are the results of the CFI Seven Fortean Wonders of the World (in no particular order)

Bigfoot / Yeti	Shroud of Turin	Piri Reis Map
UFO's	Oak Island	Crop Circles
	Nazca

And that's it - that's our list of the Seven Fortean Wonders of the World. If you want to discuss any of these why not pop along to the forums area?

Well that's the second round now closed and the third starting. Some last minute rallying of groups led to a surge in numbers of votes cast for certain categories - nothing wrong with that - the important thing is that peoples voices are heard and that people vote. If you want to argue about the inclusion or non-inclusion of things from the list please feel free to use the forum area - that's what it's there for.

The final 20, which can be voted on on the right hand side of this page or on the round three dedicated page, are an interesting list. They've all earned their place - firstly one or more people took the time to nominate them and then they've successfully come through two rounds of voting. But what will make it? What will be in the final list of Seven Fortean Wonders? It's down to you - if you want something there vote for it and persuade others to do so via the forum. The final list will be available at the start of 2008 and it will be a list of seven with no rank or ordering - they're in the list or they're not, it's as simple as that.

The first round of voting for the Seven Fortean Wonders has now closed.

Thanks to everyone who took part we now have a smaller list for the second round. Again you will be able to nominate your choice and the twenty with the highest number of votes will go through to the next round and after the third round we’ll have our list of seven. You can vote from the side bar or at the Round Two web page.

You can see the final 38 here.

Don't forget, you can also discuss the candidates (and a few other things) over at the CFI Forums.

A project such as this relies on your participation so thank you very much for the voting so far and stick with it! Some people have announced that they were finding it too tough to vote in the first round as the choice was too wide – hopefully this will make it easier although I suspect not – it’s still a mighty impressive list of Forteana. If you know someone who didn’t vote first them round give them a shout – it’s definitely not too late. The more people who take part the more representative the poll will be.

Like you we here at the CFI have no idea who will win – we all have our favourites and we hope they’ll make it through to the end – but we’ll have to wait until January 1st 2008 for the announcement. If you don’t vote they might not be there and then you only have yourself to blame! One thing you can do to make sure your personal choice gets through is to use the forums and argue your case – we already have some discussion there from round one – lets have some more.

I know some people have expressed some dissatisfaction with the voting system – well I’m sorry about that but a system had to be chosen and whatever method we went for there would always be some dissent. This is the system we’ve got and this is what we’re going with – if you have any views you’d like to express again please feel free to use the forums as an area of debate we can then take on board ideas for future polls.

In conclusion – many thanks for everyone who has voted so far and thanks in advance for the votes that are about to come in in the future rounds. I know the final list of seven will be a strong guide for some future holidays for me – I hope it will inspire you too. Many thanks.

After a slightly longer than anticipated gestation period (computer problems which took the CFI blogs down) the voting for the Charles Fort Institute Seven Fortean Wonders of the World is finally here.

On the Seven Wonders web page you can see a list of all 79 nominations. Each is linked to a paragraph giving more details and there are further links to more information so you can find out as much as you like about each candidate before you vote. We've also set up a forum for discussion - just log in and champion your favourites.

The voting is split into three rounds, initially from 79 down to 40, then 40 to 20 and finally 20 to the all important 7. The final result will be anounced on the 1st of January 2008 - be sure to log onto the Blogs to check how you favourites have done, the result will also be on the original voting page.

Thanks to everyone who has taken the trouble to put forward their nominations, thanks to everyone who votes, thanks to Dino for setting things up, thanks to Loren Coleman and all at The Anomalist and thanks for all who have helped to spread the word including the Russian UFO magazine (click image for big version).

and a fantastic two page spread in The Sunday Sport!
(click image for big version)

We want this poll to be as representative as possible so the more voting we have the better - spread the word, tell all your friends, get them to vote and get them to tell their friends as well. vote. Vote. VOTE

If you've been to the CFI homepage or read the editorial section of issue 226 of Fortean Times you'll notice one of our projects is now up and running: the Seven Fortean Wonders of the World.

A recent large scale project 07.07.07 involved the public voting for a list of modern day Seven Wonders of the World. And basically we would like to do the same.

The first stage of the Seven Fortean Wonders of the World is to collect nominations and this stage is open until the end of September 2007. There are two categories, merely to help focus the mind as there are so many things that could be nominated. The two categories are Fortean places and Fortean artefacts. The only thing excluded are people, so Charles Fort is out. However artefacts relating to people are allowable so the two skulls of John the Baptist would be allowable.

The nominations have to be emailed to the CFI address.

Most Haunted has a lot to answer for.

All around the UK paranormal groups are popping up. It seems all you need to do paranormal investigations nowadays is a camera with infrared facilities and you can call yourself a paranormal investigator. From personal experience some groups are there for the right reasons - they see a mystery and they want to try to solve it. Others are there merely because they want to become famous. And some of these latter groups are the ones with the loudest voices. They get noticed by the press and usually held up to ridicule, thus ridiculing the whole field of Fortean research. It's a sad state of affairs but true. I've recently been out with an excellent group and I've been to some locations with them.

I've always had an interest in evp ever since issue 1 of The Unexplained (a weekly part work from Orbis publications) gave a free flexi disc of evp voices. I've tried it myself a number of times with very little success it must be said. I've listened to the Ghost Orchid CD until my brain has melted and I even have a copy of Konstatin Raudives original book, in German no less.

But now I'm about to take it one stage further with the purchase of a dictaphone specifically for evp. Previously I've just made do with what tape or minidisc recorder I have happened to have to hand at the time. But now I'm buying a recommended dictaphone - the Sony i300 as recommended by Ghost Finders and the American Association of EVP. Can't be bad.

After some excellent work from Dino we're up and running. Many thanks to the guinea pigs Tim Chapman and Dave McMann who gave valuable feedback during the testing phase of the blog. Now that we're up and running it's up to you all to let us know what you think.

Enjoy!

Gordon

Bob has welcomed everyone and said a bit about the reason for the CFI being here, so I'd just like to make a personal addition to that.

After seeing the CFI through it's birth and first stages Bob decided to step aside and asked me if I would be interested in taking over the reigns as head of the CFI. I said yes and instantly gave myself lots of headaches. Thankfully they are now gone and the future of the CFI looks exciting. We've had and continue to have a lot of people working away in the background and they have all done excellent jobs. I'd just like to quickly publicly thank three of them - Dino, Craig and Paul. Thanks guys.

Creative energies have been channeled into the website and blog area that you see before you, now that this is up and running Stew and I will get back to the next newsletter - we still aim to keep that going, just another way to join in the fun that is the CFI!

Thanks everyone.