What do you think?
Rate this book
Damned Facts: Fortean Essays on Religion, Folklore and the Paranormal
‘I have a confession to make. My secret inner reaction to claims of anomalous phenomena is usually this: we haven’t yet converged to even a half-decent ontology to explain the ordinary, why bother with the extra-ordinary? What this fascinating book does, however, is to disrupt our attempts to draw neat and smooth boundaries around what we consider real. The damned facts discussed in it spoil our elegant tentative models. Frankly, it’s damn annoying. But books like this are also crucially important to keep us honest, insofar as our pursuit is for the truth, not merely intellectual reassurance.’
- Bernardo Kastrup, author of Why Materialism is Baloney and More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth and Belief.
‘Jack Hunter’s Damned Facts, a collection of well-researched and closely argued essays into all things anomalous, presents some delightful, fascinating, and eye-brow raising evidence that there are more things in heaven and earth—and anywhere in between—than are dreamed of in practically anyone’s philosophy. Taking their cue from the original anomalist, Charles Fort, who argued that mystery begins everywhere, Hunter and his contributors plunge headfirst into some deep waters and drag up to the surface enough oddities to satisfy even the most discerning taste in the unusual. It's my bet that Fort himself would have been damned proud.’
- Gary Lachman, author of Revolutionaries of the Soul and The Secret Teachers of the Western World.
Over the course of four ground-breaking books published between 1919-1932, Charles Fort gathered thousands of accounts of weird events and experiences that seemed to upset the established models of mainstream science and religion. In order to explore these events Fort developed the philosophy of Intermediatism, whereby all phenomena (from the most mundane to the most extraordinary), are understood to partake of a quasi-existence, neither real nor unreal. It is from this indeterminate vantage point that the chapters in this book begin their investigations…
- Bernardo Kastrup, author of Why Materialism is Baloney and More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth and Belief.
‘Jack Hunter’s Damned Facts, a collection of well-researched and closely argued essays into all things anomalous, presents some delightful, fascinating, and eye-brow raising evidence that there are more things in heaven and earth—and anywhere in between—than are dreamed of in practically anyone’s philosophy. Taking their cue from the original anomalist, Charles Fort, who argued that mystery begins everywhere, Hunter and his contributors plunge headfirst into some deep waters and drag up to the surface enough oddities to satisfy even the most discerning taste in the unusual. It's my bet that Fort himself would have been damned proud.’
- Gary Lachman, author of Revolutionaries of the Soul and The Secret Teachers of the Western World.
Over the course of four ground-breaking books published between 1919-1932, Charles Fort gathered thousands of accounts of weird events and experiences that seemed to upset the established models of mainstream science and religion. In order to explore these events Fort developed the philosophy of Intermediatism, whereby all phenomena (from the most mundane to the most extraordinary), are understood to partake of a quasi-existence, neither real nor unreal. It is from this indeterminate vantage point that the chapters in this book begin their investigations…
225 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 13, 2016
16 people are currently reading
56 people want to read
About the author
Jack Hunter
9 books22 followersDr. Jack Hunter is an anthropologist exploring the borderlands of consciousness, religion and the paranormal, living in the hills of Mid-Wales. His doctoral research with the University of Bristol examined the experiences of spirit mediums and their influence on the development of self-concepts and models of consciousness, and is an effort towards a non-reductive anthropology of the paranormal. He is the founder and editor of Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal. He is the author of Why People Believe in Spirits, Gods and Magic (2012) and Engaging the Anomalous (2018), editor of Strange Dimensions: A Paranthropology Anthology (2015), Damned Facts: Fortean Essays on Religion, Folklore and the Paranormal (2016), and co-editor with Dr. David Luke of Talking With the Spirits: Ethnographies from Between the Worlds (2014).
To find out more about his research and publications visit http://www.jack-hunter.webstarts.com
To find out more about his research and publications visit http://www.jack-hunter.webstarts.com
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 13, 2017
A collection of essays that start out like a Fortean Times compilation before becoming increasingly bogged down in academic-ese, then end with what amounts to an "It Happened to Me" report. These act as glosses on Jeffrey Kripal's recent work: that the paranormal exists, that we get glimpses of it, though such anomalous reports are usually dismissed or--as Victoria Nelson would have it--repurposed into fiction.
The essays here try to take these events seriously, at least in the first few examples, and wonder what the extraordinary phenomena might indicate. There's an inflection point, of a sort, with an essay on British Israelism. It's mostly an overview of the movement, but the bigger point is that this ideology is wrong, based on myth, not history: and the unsaid implication is that other ideas discussed in this book are based on real things, however dismissed. But soon enough, the authors have to confront the fact that using Fort as their touchstone does not work so well, since Fort himself was loathe to accept any kind of overarching philosophy, whether it be religious, materialist, or paranormal. There's an unconvincing attempt to reconstruct a proper Forteanism, but it reads as the author's projecting their own views onto Fort.
The latter essays drift further and further from the thesis, until it's only a distant point: not a star, but a light bulb hanging against a black velvet curtain.
The essays here try to take these events seriously, at least in the first few examples, and wonder what the extraordinary phenomena might indicate. There's an inflection point, of a sort, with an essay on British Israelism. It's mostly an overview of the movement, but the bigger point is that this ideology is wrong, based on myth, not history: and the unsaid implication is that other ideas discussed in this book are based on real things, however dismissed. But soon enough, the authors have to confront the fact that using Fort as their touchstone does not work so well, since Fort himself was loathe to accept any kind of overarching philosophy, whether it be religious, materialist, or paranormal. There's an unconvincing attempt to reconstruct a proper Forteanism, but it reads as the author's projecting their own views onto Fort.
The latter essays drift further and further from the thesis, until it's only a distant point: not a star, but a light bulb hanging against a black velvet curtain.
November 1, 2022
Some of the main points include:
Science and religion only work by deciding what to ignore.
Paranormal activity is relatively suppressed or ignored by science.
Nothing is totally real or totally unreal.
There is an influence of consciousness and culture on the human body. Stigmata and psychosomatic problems are examples of this.
Belief and experience can be diametrically opposed. (me)
There are religoius references to the paranormal such as ghosts, witches (kill them), a sea parting, vimanas (flying craft/UFOs), sea beasts, etc.
Science and religion only work by deciding what to ignore.
Paranormal activity is relatively suppressed or ignored by science.
Nothing is totally real or totally unreal.
There is an influence of consciousness and culture on the human body. Stigmata and psychosomatic problems are examples of this.
Belief and experience can be diametrically opposed. (me)
There are religoius references to the paranormal such as ghosts, witches (kill them), a sea parting, vimanas (flying craft/UFOs), sea beasts, etc.
dnf
February 1, 2024DNF.
I would guess that this is probably what reading an academic paper feels like to the average readers. My brain just went dumb and wouldn't focus and sometimes I kept rereading the same sentences and still have trouble remembering what I read.
I would guess that this is probably what reading an academic paper feels like to the average readers. My brain just went dumb and wouldn't focus and sometimes I kept rereading the same sentences and still have trouble remembering what I read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews