Free Lo! by Charles Fort Page A

reasoning, and is nothing but logic and argument, and there have been billions of laughs that never turned into anything more satisfactory—though where do I get the idea that there is anything more satisfactory than a laugh?
    If, in other worlds, or in other parts of one relatively little existence, there be people who are far ahead of terrestrians, perhaps, teleportatively, beings from other places have come to this earth. And have seen nothing to detain them. Or perhaps some of the more degraded ones have felt at home here, and have hung around, or have stayed here. I’d think of these fellows as throw-backs: concealing their origin, of course; having perhaps only a slightly foreign appearance; having affinity with our barbarisms, which their own races had cast off. I’d think of a feeling for this earth, in other worlds, as corresponding to the desire of most of us, now and then, to go to a South Sea Island and be degraded. Throw-backs, translated to this earth, would not, unless intensely atavistic, take to what we regard as vices, but to what their own far-advanced people regard as perhaps unmentionable, or anyway, unprintable, degradations. They would join our churches, and wallow in pews. They’d lose all sense of decency and become college professors. Let a fall start, and the decline is swift. They’d end up as members of Congress.
    There is another view, for which I am now gathering material—
    New York Times, Dec. 6, 1930—“Scores die; 300 stricken by poison fog in Belgium; panic grips countryside. Origin complete mystery. War scenes recalled.” It may be that it was war.
    Mostly, explanations by the scientists were just about what one would expect, but, in the New York Telegram, December 6, Prof. H.H. Sheldon was quoted—“If there is a widespread, lethal fog in the Meuse Valley, the conclusion of science would be that it is being deliberately caused by men or women.”
    It may be that inhabitants of other worlds, or other parts of one, organic existence, have declared war upon this earth, and have discharged down here, sometimes under cover of fogs, volumes of poisonous gases. I have other records that may indicate something of this kind, but, reluctantly, I give up this interesting notion, as applied to the occurrence of Dec. 5, 1930, because it associates with another phenomenon, of which I shall tell later.
    Only two weeks after the tragedy in Belgium, appeared the fishmonger. The writer of an editorial, in the New York Herald Tribune, Dec. 19, 1930, started the conventionalizing and the minimizing and the obscurizing that always cloak events that are inconsistent with a main norm of supposed knowledge. “One may suspect that a sensational newspaper man, counting up the deaths, some dark day, in the smoky steel towns on the Allegheny River, could produce a story not far behind that from Belgium.”
    Seventy-seven men and women were struck dead in Belgium. Oh, there’s always some commonplace explanation for these occurrences, if we only use our common sense.

5
    Upon the 9th of January, 1907, Mr. McLaughlin, of the town of Magilligan, County Derry, Ireland, hadn’t a red light. Neither had his sister, nor his niece, nor his maidservant. They hadn’t a cabinet. But a show was staged at their house, as if they knew altogether too much about phosphorescent paint, and as if Mr. McLaughlin bought false whiskers. There were phenomena in sunlight, and there was an atmosphere as unmystical as pigs and neighbors. If any spiritualistic medium can do stunts, there is no more need for special conditions than there is for a chemist to turn down lights, start operations with a hymn, and ask whether there’s any chemical present that has affinity with something named Hydrogen.
    Mr. McLaughlin had cleaned soot from the chimney. I wonder what relation there may be. It is said that immediately afterward, phenomena began. There were flows of soot from undetectable sources, in rooms, and from room to room,