In Charles Fort’s books, Book of the Damned, Lo!, New Lands and Wild Talents, a particular thread often raises its anomalous head – the appearance of sundry articles upon our planet, appearing to have been disgorged by the heavens above. These descents are all a little acceptable and perhaps explicable when the objects are chunks of rock or ice, but what about objects which are obviously of an earthly nature? Blather 1.9, ‘Raining Toads‘ lists some of the objects and materials mentioned by Fort – and many more have been reported since – lizards, fish, shellfish, iron balls, turtles, china fragments, insects, blood, butter, fruit and other items and substances too numerous to list here. But clouds of dead crows? And Humans?
On Monday, I received email from Daniel Ko in Hong Kong, with an article from The Nation (Thailand) on Saturday, November 29, 1997, (ppA7) which told of a ‘Village stoned by crows’ in southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan on Thursday 27th. Between 200 and 300 crows flew overhead as a ‘black cloud’ before suddenly dropping dead into the village of Dujiangyan. The China News Service said that “Only a dozen got away, making desperate cries as they flew.” ‘Experts’ were quoted as saying that the crows could have been suddenly killed by poisoning, with which I suppose we are expected to be content.
On December 1st, in what was, ahem, probably an unconnected incident, Reuters told of a body discovered in a canefield in Palm Beach County, Florida. Police reckoned that it was a missing sky diver who plunged to his [er, apparent?] death a week ago.
“We believe it is the body of Omar Lozada but I can’t confirm it yet,” said Mark Phillips of Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. Lozada went missing after crashing into Victor Govone, 25, as they were free-falling from about 5,000 feet. Govone had only minor injuries. The Palm Beach Post of Friday 28th November that James Michael Darby had died while his ski board was hit by another sky diver and he crashed into a lake.
These deaths are hardly classifiable as forteana, until you read the news from Reuters on Wednesday 3rd of December, of the body of a woman in her 30s or 40s, dressed in black, which fell from *somewhere* on to a garden wall, resulting in massive fatal injuries. The Miami Herald reported her body was nearly ripped in half. Where did this happen? Miami, Florida. . .
Initially investigators reckoned that she had fallen from an aircraft, but have decided that this isn’t the case – they now feel that she fell from a nearby apartment balcony, due to the kind of injury, and the reasonably high temperature of the body – which supposedly means that she fell from a low altitude. They don’t seem to have considered a small, pressurised low-flying aircraft.
Reuters also mention that on May 23, 1996, ‘a teenage boy found in a Miami street the body of a man who apparently fell from the wheel well of an aircraft about to land at Miami International Airport. Police concluded the man, whose body was smudged with airplane grease, was a stowaway.’
Now I may be jumping to conclusions, but isn’t that an *awful* lot of people falling out of the sky in one state? Call me Chicken Licken, but consider these tales with the plethora of bizarre aircraft accidents in Florida this year, and you would be forgiven for sticking to surface travel for manoeuvring your way around that particular neck of the woods, and wearing a hard hat.
Perhaps Charles Fort’s wryly hypothetical Super Sargasso Sea previously mentioned in these pages, is currently hanging over Florida? That place which seems to divulges ships, cannonballs and vertically migrating eels? Bear in mind that I’m resorting to sheer whimsical conjecture here, not A Scientific Theory of The Severest Authority.
Brian Chapman, in Canada was quick to recall an article in Fortean Times 72:15 of December/January 1994, when a Parisian lady had her tree vandalised and her phone lines cut by a man who descended from above – without a parachute. He was quite dead, lightly dressed, ‘swarthy’ and carrying three obsolete Russian banknotes, amounting to 55 roubles.
He too was thought to have fallen from the undercarriage of an aircraft landing at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle. If this was the case, he would have had to survive several hours at 36,000 feet or so, at a temperature of minus 45 degrees. The ‘average’ person can live for 10 minutes in these conditions, according to FT. However, investigators claim that he was alive when he hit the ground. . .
VIRGIN BIRTHS, ABDUCTIONS, IMPLANTS
Blather notes with interest the continuing Gillane Murder Case taking place in the High Court here in Dublin, especially reports concerning the claims of one witness, a certain Mr. Christopher Bolger, who claims that he had a microchip implanted in his brain some 20 years ago, during an operation in the Mater Hospital, Dublin. This device apparently allows people to read his thought. Whether the witness truly believes this, or is playing at being ‘insane’ to avoid serious implication is open to speculation at this juncture…
UNREAL!
Blather notes that page 7 of the current ‘UFO Reality’ magazine mentions yours truly, a.k.a. Daev Walsh as having proposed that the ‘Boyle Crash’ was a ‘NATO Cock-up’. They failed to mention that I mentioned this in Blather, or to give any decent reference at all.
The article then goes on to question my idle theory, asking that, if the supposes incident was a mere NATO cockup, the why weren’t the public told about it.
Ironically enough, I already explain why in that particular Blather article ‘Passports for Aliens‘, which they didn’t bother referencing. Ireland is a neutral country and not part of NATO, therefore if we were seen to be ‘turning a blind eye’ to regular military activities by other countries, we *may* spawn a few more political scandals.
At this point, Blather is inclined to favourably compare the ‘Boyle Incident’ with the enjoyable practice of estimating the number of angels playing golf on the head of a pin.
