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Oddities
The essays contained in this book were written to collect and digest the facts relating to a number of incidents which have not, at present, been satisfactorily explained, quoting extensively from original sources. Contents: Devil's hoof-marks; Vault at Barbados; Ships seen on the ice; Berbalangs of Cagayan Sulu; Orffyreus' wheel; Crosse's Acari; The Auroras, and other doubtful islands; Mersenne's numbers; Wizard of Mauritius; Planet Vulcan; Nostradamus.
301 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1928
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About the author
Rupert Gould
18 books2 followersRupert Thomas Gould (16 November 1890 – 5 October 1948) was a lieutenant-commander in the British Royal Navy noted for his contributions to horology (the science and study of timekeeping devices). He was also an author and radio personality.
Gould grew up in Southsea, near Portsmouth, where his father, William Monk Gould, was a music teacher, organist, and composer. He was educated at Eastman's Royal Naval Academy and then, from 15 January 1906 on, he attended the Royal Naval College, Osborne, and then the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, being part of the 'Greynville' term (group), and by Easter 1907, examinations placed him at the top of his class. He became a midshipman, and thereby a naval officer, on 15 May 1907. He initially served on HMS Formidable and HMS Queen (under Captain David Beatty) in the Mediterranean. Subsequently, he was posted to China (first aboard HMS Kinsha and then HMS Bramble). He chose the "navigation" career track and, after qualifying as a navigation officer, served on HMS King George V, and HMS Achates until near the outbreak of World War I, at which time he suffered a nervous breakdown and went on medical leave. During his lengthy recuperation, he was stationed at the Hydrographer's Department at the Admiralty, where he became an expert on various aspects of naval history, cartography, and expeditions of the polar regions. In 1919 he was promoted to Lieutenant-Commander (retired).
On 9 June 1917 he married Muriel Estall. That marriage ended by judicial separation in November 1927. They had two children, Cecil (born in 1918) and Jocelyne (born in 1920). His last years were spent at Barford St Martin near Salisbury, where he used his horological skills to repair and restore the defunct clock in the church tower.
He gained permission in 1920 to restore the marine chronometers of John Harrison, and this work was completed in 1933.
His horological book The Marine Chronometer, its history and development was first published in 1923 by J.D. Potter and was the first scholarly monograph on the subject. It was generally considered the authoritative text on marine timekeepers for at least half a century.
Gould had many other interests and activities. In spite of two more nervous breakdowns he wrote and published an eclectic series of books on topics ranging from horology to the Loch Ness Monster. He was a science educator, giving a series of talks for the BBC's Children's Hour starting in January 1934 under the name "The Stargazer", and these collected talks were later published. He was a member of the BBC radio panel The Brains Trust. He umpired tennis matches on the Centre Court at Wimbledon on many occasions during the 1930s. In 1947 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the British Horological Institute, its highest honour for contributions to horology.
Gould died on 5 October 1948 at Canterbury, Kent, from heart failure. He was 57 years of age.
Longitude, a television dramatisation of Dava Sobel's book Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, recounted in part Gould's work in restoring the Harrison chronometers. In the drama, Gould was played by Jeremy Irons.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_...
Gould grew up in Southsea, near Portsmouth, where his father, William Monk Gould, was a music teacher, organist, and composer. He was educated at Eastman's Royal Naval Academy and then, from 15 January 1906 on, he attended the Royal Naval College, Osborne, and then the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, being part of the 'Greynville' term (group), and by Easter 1907, examinations placed him at the top of his class. He became a midshipman, and thereby a naval officer, on 15 May 1907. He initially served on HMS Formidable and HMS Queen (under Captain David Beatty) in the Mediterranean. Subsequently, he was posted to China (first aboard HMS Kinsha and then HMS Bramble). He chose the "navigation" career track and, after qualifying as a navigation officer, served on HMS King George V, and HMS Achates until near the outbreak of World War I, at which time he suffered a nervous breakdown and went on medical leave. During his lengthy recuperation, he was stationed at the Hydrographer's Department at the Admiralty, where he became an expert on various aspects of naval history, cartography, and expeditions of the polar regions. In 1919 he was promoted to Lieutenant-Commander (retired).
On 9 June 1917 he married Muriel Estall. That marriage ended by judicial separation in November 1927. They had two children, Cecil (born in 1918) and Jocelyne (born in 1920). His last years were spent at Barford St Martin near Salisbury, where he used his horological skills to repair and restore the defunct clock in the church tower.
He gained permission in 1920 to restore the marine chronometers of John Harrison, and this work was completed in 1933.
His horological book The Marine Chronometer, its history and development was first published in 1923 by J.D. Potter and was the first scholarly monograph on the subject. It was generally considered the authoritative text on marine timekeepers for at least half a century.
Gould had many other interests and activities. In spite of two more nervous breakdowns he wrote and published an eclectic series of books on topics ranging from horology to the Loch Ness Monster. He was a science educator, giving a series of talks for the BBC's Children's Hour starting in January 1934 under the name "The Stargazer", and these collected talks were later published. He was a member of the BBC radio panel The Brains Trust. He umpired tennis matches on the Centre Court at Wimbledon on many occasions during the 1930s. In 1947 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the British Horological Institute, its highest honour for contributions to horology.
Gould died on 5 October 1948 at Canterbury, Kent, from heart failure. He was 57 years of age.
Longitude, a television dramatisation of Dava Sobel's book Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, recounted in part Gould's work in restoring the Harrison chronometers. In the drama, Gould was played by Jeremy Irons.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_...
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 2, 2020
Trying to pick up the habit, again, of making my evening reading some of the various fortean and paranormal books of my youth, good & bad. In doing so, I'm more interested - as an adult - in looking at these as "books", and what the approach of the authors were, than just wondering in childish fervor over the supposed "mysteries". I've done quite a few of these, over the past few years, all in preparation for rereading some John Keel and Charles Fort when the time comes.
This an interesting example of the genre. Gould is neither a 70s paperback hack, nor a 70s paperback true believer, nor a 40s/50 newspaper "weird events" columnist looking to fill a word count, nor a skeptical scientist or pseudo-scientist (all previous examples I have encountered). Instead, what you have here is a British man with an archival background, a broad range of interests (he was a nautical and mechanical expert, worked for the Naval Hydrographic department and restored the four historic marine chronometers made by John Harrison in the 18th Century - which he wrote a book about - Marine Chronometer Its History and Developments) and extremely well read, who also had a respect for science and a fascination with "true mysteries" (he also wrote a book about the Loch Ness Monster, and a follow up to this collection called Enigmas: Another Book of Unexplained Facts). So here, from 1944, is ODDITIES...
It strikes me that Gould's approach shares something with Lewis Spence, in the sense that each of the entries here goes out of its way to clearly state the situation and then offers reproductions of pertinent texts from the time, before collating theories and reactions from over the years. Gould himself seems fairly level-headed (he generally sticks to real-world events, no hokum or ghost stories or "unproveable" psychic phenomena) - of the material I read, the most outre was a short piece about folkloric beliefs regarding ghoulish creatures in Indonesia, which is not presented so much as a mystery as an anthropological study. I chose not to read the chapters on "The Vault At Barbados" (the supposed "mystery" of the moving coffins, which I've wasted enough of my young reading life on), "Mersenne's Numbers" (mysteries of mathematics - which I couldn't follow and wasn't interested in) & "Nostradamus" (because, again, life is too short).
Of what is here, some is familiar (although the presentation of original texts is highly appreciated). "The Devil's Hoof-Marks" concerns the purported appearance, following a snowfall in 1855, of hoofprints proceeding in straight lines all over Devonshire. Were they made by an unknown animal, by hoaxers, by mis-identification or hysterical conflation by locals of known phenomena? (no one is actually arguing that Satan himself went for a walk in the cold night air). And the discussion Gould dredges up from the newspapers, with various zoologists trying to top each other, makes for interesting reading (I'd register my own vote for some small animal combined with exaggeration by the locals on particulars). "Crosse's Acari" concerns a British science boffin, in 1836, who claimed he was able to create silicate life through the application of electricity to dead matter. Not really a mystery now (the modern consensus seems to be that Crosse wasn't fully sterilizing his materials), but interesting in a Frankenstein-adjacent way. "The Auroras And Other Doubtful Islands" does an entertaining job of summing up the problem of islands that have appeared on maps but were later removed when they proved unfindable. It runs the gamut from cartographical errors and deliberate hoaxes ("I named an island after you, honey"), to sinking volcanic islands and floating "islands" of vegetation (or large icebergs), to real puzzlers which took a while to dismiss. A fun read. Finally, "The Planet Vulcan" regards the "discovery" of an intermercurial planet in 1860 - which then never reappeared as expected from its orbit. Again, more interesting for the details than the actual event (details like how hard it was to practice good astronomy at that time, and the "most detestable man in France" Urbain J.J. Leverrier, Director of the Observatory of Paris, who sounds like a real pill).
Of the unfamiliars, you get the previously mentioned anthropological report on folklore concerning "The Berbalangs of Cagayan Sulu"- a village of ghoulish sorcerers who can reportedly turn into fireflies, "Orffyreus' Wheel" (an 18th Century perpetual motion scam - which also serves as a nice potted history of perpetual motion scams in general), "The Ships Seen on The Ice" (regarding the eventual fate of the polar exploration ships EREBUS & TERROR, which were abandoned in the arctic after being frozen into the ice, but which MAY have drifted into sight on a large iceberg, long after their abandonment) and the very interesting (if mostly forgotten to history, even Wikipedia doesn't have a mention) career of the "Wizard of Mauritius" - a man in the late 18th century who practiced the self-invented art of "nauscopie" which purportedly allowed him to identify ships approaching land before they had even appeared over the horizon. Was he a fraud, or did he never exist and was a much-later hoax invention (if so, to little effect or memory) or did he in fact exist and do what he claimed, and if so, how? A very intriguing read, to say the least.
So, yeah, this was a pretty neat little book!
This an interesting example of the genre. Gould is neither a 70s paperback hack, nor a 70s paperback true believer, nor a 40s/50 newspaper "weird events" columnist looking to fill a word count, nor a skeptical scientist or pseudo-scientist (all previous examples I have encountered). Instead, what you have here is a British man with an archival background, a broad range of interests (he was a nautical and mechanical expert, worked for the Naval Hydrographic department and restored the four historic marine chronometers made by John Harrison in the 18th Century - which he wrote a book about - Marine Chronometer Its History and Developments) and extremely well read, who also had a respect for science and a fascination with "true mysteries" (he also wrote a book about the Loch Ness Monster, and a follow up to this collection called Enigmas: Another Book of Unexplained Facts). So here, from 1944, is ODDITIES...
It strikes me that Gould's approach shares something with Lewis Spence, in the sense that each of the entries here goes out of its way to clearly state the situation and then offers reproductions of pertinent texts from the time, before collating theories and reactions from over the years. Gould himself seems fairly level-headed (he generally sticks to real-world events, no hokum or ghost stories or "unproveable" psychic phenomena) - of the material I read, the most outre was a short piece about folkloric beliefs regarding ghoulish creatures in Indonesia, which is not presented so much as a mystery as an anthropological study. I chose not to read the chapters on "The Vault At Barbados" (the supposed "mystery" of the moving coffins, which I've wasted enough of my young reading life on), "Mersenne's Numbers" (mysteries of mathematics - which I couldn't follow and wasn't interested in) & "Nostradamus" (because, again, life is too short).
Of what is here, some is familiar (although the presentation of original texts is highly appreciated). "The Devil's Hoof-Marks" concerns the purported appearance, following a snowfall in 1855, of hoofprints proceeding in straight lines all over Devonshire. Were they made by an unknown animal, by hoaxers, by mis-identification or hysterical conflation by locals of known phenomena? (no one is actually arguing that Satan himself went for a walk in the cold night air). And the discussion Gould dredges up from the newspapers, with various zoologists trying to top each other, makes for interesting reading (I'd register my own vote for some small animal combined with exaggeration by the locals on particulars). "Crosse's Acari" concerns a British science boffin, in 1836, who claimed he was able to create silicate life through the application of electricity to dead matter. Not really a mystery now (the modern consensus seems to be that Crosse wasn't fully sterilizing his materials), but interesting in a Frankenstein-adjacent way. "The Auroras And Other Doubtful Islands" does an entertaining job of summing up the problem of islands that have appeared on maps but were later removed when they proved unfindable. It runs the gamut from cartographical errors and deliberate hoaxes ("I named an island after you, honey"), to sinking volcanic islands and floating "islands" of vegetation (or large icebergs), to real puzzlers which took a while to dismiss. A fun read. Finally, "The Planet Vulcan" regards the "discovery" of an intermercurial planet in 1860 - which then never reappeared as expected from its orbit. Again, more interesting for the details than the actual event (details like how hard it was to practice good astronomy at that time, and the "most detestable man in France" Urbain J.J. Leverrier, Director of the Observatory of Paris, who sounds like a real pill).
Of the unfamiliars, you get the previously mentioned anthropological report on folklore concerning "The Berbalangs of Cagayan Sulu"- a village of ghoulish sorcerers who can reportedly turn into fireflies, "Orffyreus' Wheel" (an 18th Century perpetual motion scam - which also serves as a nice potted history of perpetual motion scams in general), "The Ships Seen on The Ice" (regarding the eventual fate of the polar exploration ships EREBUS & TERROR, which were abandoned in the arctic after being frozen into the ice, but which MAY have drifted into sight on a large iceberg, long after their abandonment) and the very interesting (if mostly forgotten to history, even Wikipedia doesn't have a mention) career of the "Wizard of Mauritius" - a man in the late 18th century who practiced the self-invented art of "nauscopie" which purportedly allowed him to identify ships approaching land before they had even appeared over the horizon. Was he a fraud, or did he never exist and was a much-later hoax invention (if so, to little effect or memory) or did he in fact exist and do what he claimed, and if so, how? A very intriguing read, to say the least.
So, yeah, this was a pretty neat little book!
August 3, 2015
I first read this book years ago--and I have re-read it many times since then. And I rarely re-read a book.
While I love those books of strange-but-true events, Rupert Gould's accounts are among the most even-handed works I've ever read on the subject. He never falls into the gee-whiz approach, trying to convince you these strange and mysterious events are proof of the supernatural. But neither is he a naysayer, poo-pooing the subject. He presents the events in detail, analyzing the evidence and making comparisons. But in the end, he lets the reader make his own decision.
Curiously, his account of "The Ships Seen on the Ice" was recently disproved by the discovery of the wreck of the Erebus. Nonetheless, it's still a great book and well-worth the time of anyone interested in real-life mysteries.
While I love those books of strange-but-true events, Rupert Gould's accounts are among the most even-handed works I've ever read on the subject. He never falls into the gee-whiz approach, trying to convince you these strange and mysterious events are proof of the supernatural. But neither is he a naysayer, poo-pooing the subject. He presents the events in detail, analyzing the evidence and making comparisons. But in the end, he lets the reader make his own decision.
Curiously, his account of "The Ships Seen on the Ice" was recently disproved by the discovery of the wreck of the Erebus. Nonetheless, it's still a great book and well-worth the time of anyone interested in real-life mysteries.
February 15, 2022
Wow, I would have loved this book when I was about 12! I'd never heard of Rupert Gould until I encountered a mention of his works in the recent biography of Robert Aickman. I grew up on Charles Fort, Frank Edwards, and other collectors of weird "history," but I guess Gould's books stayed on the other side of the Atlantic. The topics here range from old favorites like the Barbados coffins to a long chapter on phantom islands. Erudite, witty, and mostly balanced, every chapter is a delight.
January 26, 2023
An old book about mysteries, no answers after all this time.
August 27, 2018
A compendium of strange-but-true (maybe) stories that the erudite Gould wrote appealed especially to his "weakness for marvels" (if I recall that phraseology correctly) that made him a literary fellow traveler of Charles Fort and Robert "Believe It Or Not" Ripley. Some of the stories have a supernatural/paranormal aspect (the "moving coffins" of Barbados), others less so, and some are just strange. The chapter about the "Ships in the Ice," the 19th-century Arctic-exploration vessels Erebus and Terror, lost at sea yet still sighted drifted and frozen in one iceberg, appears to have been discredited (if PBS-TV's "Nova" is to believed) but has inspired numerous works of fiction all by itself. Gould's research is the cornerstone for a lot of these extraordinary claims, so he might be guilty of spreading tall tales and misinformation, but his voice is ever civilized - Gould taught me the wonderful mock-Latin word "circumbendibus," which I so wanted to use in one of my own paranormal/weird history books.
January 9, 2014
Great stories of the real/unreal.
June 1, 2019
Some stories are a little more interesting than others. All in all very cool book !
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews