Fort turned his attention to examinations of more unique creatures, such as the Jersey Devil (a naturalistic but demonic beast reported from 19th century New Jersey). Fort examined sightings of large winged creatures in Chile and great antlered animals seen in New Zealand. Fort dealt with Lake Monsters in Argentina and South Africa. He was indeed Ivan T. Sanderson?s, and mine, and many later cryptozoologists? inspiration because of his intriguing framing of the whole problem and his complete data collection, with a serious but light hand.
After discussing accounts of a thirty-foot animal off Australia, Fort wrote, in his unique challenging and humorous style: ?I don?t know what will be thought of zoologists of Melbourne, but whatever will be thought of me, can?t be altogether focussed upon me, because there were scientists in Melbourne who were as enlightened as I am, or as preposterous and sensational as I am. Officials of the Melbourne Zoological Gardens thought that, whether this story was nonsense or not, it should be looked into.?
Charles Fort detailed the ?blonde beast of Patagonia,? which was ?supposed to be a huge ground sloth,? an unknown animal that seekers from Bernard Heuvelmans to Ivan T. Sanderson, from naturalist David Oren to artists Alexis Rockman, Mark Dion, and Bob Braine would chronicle in print and paintings.
Fort was happy to understand that he did not realize the number of unknown animals out there. Or as he put it in the midst of his discussion of such early cryptozoology: ?So, like everybody else, I don?t know what to think, but, rather uncommonly, I know that.? And we must not forget this classic quotation of his: ?When we come upon assurances that a mystery has been solved, we go on investigating.? If Sanderson and Heuvelmans are the fathers of cryptozoology, then surely Fort must be the midwife.
The above is a sample of commentary from the forthcoming book, Cryptozoology: Out of Time Space Place, due out in September 2006, being published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name opening on June 24, 2006. Copyright Loren Coleman 2006.
Source: http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/fortcz/
