Wild Talents (7 page)
Authors: Charles Fort
The standardized way of telling of such a scare is to elaborate upon the extremities at the climax of the excitement, and to ignore, or slightingly to touch upon, the incidents that preceded. There was a panic, or a mania, in China. Perhaps there was. I have no Chinaman’s account. For all I know, some Chinaman may have sent an account to his newspaper, of us, beating gongs, during the parrot-disease scare, of the year 1929, having seen a janitor knocking off dust from the cover of an ash can. There was probably considerable excitement that was the product of delusions: nevertheless it does seem acceptable that there were cases of mysterious hair-clipping.
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Rabid vampires—and froth on their bloody mouths. See the
New York Times,
Sept. 5, 1931—rabies in vampire bats, reported from the island of Trinidad. Or a jungle at night—darkness and dankness, tangle and murk—and little white streaks that are purities in the dark—pure, white froths on the bloody mouths of flying bats—or that there is nothing that is beautiful and white, aglow against tangle and dark, that is not symbolized by froth on a vampire’s mouth.
I note that it is ten minutes past nine in the morning. At ten minutes past nine, tonight, if I think of this matter—and can reach a pencil, without having to get up from my chair—though sometimes I can scrawl a little with the burnt end of a match—I shall probably make a note to strike out those rabid bats, with froth on their bloody mouths. I shall be prim and austere, all played out, after my labors of the day, and with my horse powers stabled for the night. My better self is ascendant when my energy is low. The best literary standards are affronted by those sensational bats.
I now have a theory that our existence, as a whole, is an organism that is very old—a globular thing within a starry shell, afloat in a super-existence in which there may be countless other organisms—and that we, as cells in its composition, partake of, and are ruled by, its permeating senility. The theologians have recognized that the ideal is the imitation of God. If we be a part of such an organic thing, this thing is God to us, as I am God to the cells that compose me. When I see myself, and cats, and dogs losing irregularities of conduct, and approaching the irreproachable, with advancing age, I see that what is ennobling us is senility. I conclude that the virtues, the austerities, the proprieties are ideal in our existence, because they are imitations of the state of a whole existence, which is very old, good, and beyond reproach. The ideal state is meekness, or humility, or the semi-invalid state of the old. Year after year I am becoming nobler and nobler. If I can live to be decrepit enough, I shall be a saint.
It may be that there are vampires other than vampire bats. I have wondered at the specialization of appetite in the traditional stories of vampires. If blood be desired, why not the blood of cattle and sheep? According to many stories there have been unexplained attacks upon human beings; also there have been countless outrages upon other animals.
Possibly the remote ancestors of human beings were apes, though no evolutionist has made clear to me reasons for doubting the equally plausible theory that apes have either ascended, or descended, from humans. Still, I think that humans may have evolved from apes, because the simians openly imitate humans, as if conscious of a higher state, whereas the humans who act like apes are likely to deny it when criticized. Slashers and rippers of cattle may be throw-backs to the ape-era. But, though it is said that, in the Kenya Colony, Africa, baboons sometimes mutilate cattle, I’d not say that the case against them has been made out. London
Daily Mail,
May 18, 1925—that, for some years, an alarming epidemic of sheep-slashing and cattle-ripping had been breaking out, in the month of April, on Kenya stock ranches. Natives were blamed, but then it was learned that their cattle, too, had been attacked. Then it was said to be proved that chacma baboons were the marauders. Possibly the baboons, too, were unjustly blamed. Then what? The wounds were long, deep cuts, as if vicious slashes with a knife; but it was explained that baboons kill by ripping with their thumbnails.
The most widely known case of cattle-mutilation is that in which was involved a young lawyer, George Edalji, son of a Hindu, who was a clergyman in the village of Wyrley, Staffordshire, England. The first of a series of outrages occurred upon the night of Feb. 2, 1903. A valuable horse was ripped. Then, at intervals, up to August 27th, there were mutilations of horses, cows, and sheep.
Suspicion was directed to Edalji, because of anonymous letters, accusing him.
After the mutilation of a horse, August 27th, Edalji was arrested. The police searched his house, and, according to them, found an old coat, upon which were bloodstains. In the presence of Edalji’s parents and his sister, the police said that there were horse hairs upon this coat. The coat was taken to the police station, where Dr. Butler, the police surgeon, examined it, reporting that upon it he had found twenty-nine horse hairs. The police said that shoes worn by Edalji exactly fitted tracks in the field, where the horse had been mutilated. They learned that the young man had been away from home, that night, “taking a walk,” as told by him. The case against Edalji convinced a jury, which found him guilty, and he was sentenced to seven years, penal servitude.
I now have a theory that our existence is a phantom—that it died, long ago, probably of old age—that the thing is a ghost. So the unreality of its composition—its phantom justice and make-believe juries and incredible judges. There seems to be a ghostly justice surviving in the old spook, having the ghost’s liking for public appearances, at times. Let there be publicity enough, and Justice prevails. In a Dreyfus case, when the attention of the world is attracted, Justice, after much delay, and after a fashion, appears. Probably in the prison with Edalji were other prisoners who had been sent there, about as he had been sent. They stayed there. But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, with much publicity, took up Edalji’s case. In his account, in
Great Stories of Real Life,
Doyle says that when the police inspector found the old coat, upon which, according to him, there were horse hairs, Mrs. Edalji and Miss Edalji examined it and denied that there was a horse hair upon it: that Edalji’s father said: “You can take the coat. I am satisfied that there is no horse hair on it.” Doyle’s statements imply that somewhere near the police station was a stable. As to the statement that Edalji’s shoes exactly fitted tracks in the field, where the horse was ripped, Doyle says that the outrage occurred just outside a large colliery, and that hundreds of excited miners had swarmed over the place, making it impossible to pick out any one track. Because of Doyle’s disclosures—so it is said—or because of the publicity, the government appointed a committee to investigate, and the report of this committee was that Edalji had been wrongfully convicted.
Sometimes slashers of cattle have been caught, and, when called upon to explain, have said that they had obeyed an “irresistible impulse.” The better-educated of these unresisting ones transform the rude word “slasher” into “vivisectionist,” and, instead of sneaking into fields at night, work at regular hours, in their laboratories. There are persons who wonder at the state of mind of the people in general, back in times when the torture of humans was sanctioned. The guts of a man were dragged out for the glory of God. “Abdominal exploration” of a dog is for the glory of Science. The state of mind that was, and the state of mind that is, are about the same, and the unpleasant features of anything are glossed over, so long as mainly anything is glorious.
According to a reconsideration, by the English government, in the Edalji case, the slasher of cattle, of Wyrley, remained uncaught. In the summer of 1907, in the same region, again there was slashing.
Aug. 22, 1907—a horse mutilated, near Wyrley. It was said that blood had been found on the horns of a cow, and that the horse had been gored. Five nights later, two horses, in another field, were slashed so that they died. September 8—horse slashed, at Breenwood, Staffordshire. A young butcher, named Morgan, was accused, but he was able to show that he had been in his home, at the time. For about a month injuries to horses continued to be reported. They had been injured “by barbed wires,” or “by nails projecting from fences.”
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Sometime in the year 1867, a fishing smack sailed from Boston. One of the sailors was a Portuguese, who called himself “James Brown.” Two of the crew were missing, and were searched for. The captain went into the hold. He held up his lantern, and saw the body of one of these men, in the clutches of “Brown,” who was sucking blood from it. Nearby was the body of the other sailor. It was bloodless. “Brown” was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged, but President Johnson commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. In October, 1892, the vampire was transferred from the Ohio Penitentiary to the National Asylum, Washington, D.C, and his story was re-told in the newspapers. See the
Brooklyn Eagle,
Nov. 4, 1892.
Ottawa Free Press,
Sept. 17, 1910—that, near the town of Galazanna, Portugal, a child had been found dead, in a field. The corpse was bloodless. The child had been seen last with a man named Salvarrey. He was arrested, and confessed that he was a vampire.
See the
New York Sun,
April 14, 1931, for an account of the murders of nine persons, all but one of them females, which in the year 1929 terrorized the people of Düsseldorf, Germany. The murderer, Peter Kurten, was caught. At his trial, he made no defense, and described himself as a vampire.
I have a collection of stories of children, upon whom, at night, small wounds appeared. Rather to my own wonderment, considering that I am a theorist, I have not jumped to the conclusion that these stories are data of vampires, but have thought the explanation of rat bites satisfactory enough. But, in the
Yorkshire Evening Argus,
March 13, 1924, I came upon a rat story that seems queer. Inquest upon the death of Martha Senior, aged sixty-eight, of New Street, Batley. “On the toes and fingers were a lot of wounds that rather suggested rat bites.” It was said that these little wounds could have had nothing to do with the woman’s death, which, according to the coroner, was from valvular heart disease. The only explanation acceptable to the coroner was that, before the police took charge of the body, the woman must have been dead considerable time, during which rats mutilated the corpse. But Mrs. Elizabeth Lake, a neighbor, testified that she had found Mrs. Senior lying on the floor, and that Mrs. Senior had told her that she was dying. This statement meant that the woman had been attacked by something, before dying. The coroner disposed of it by saying that the woman must have been dead considerable time, before the body was found, and that Mrs. Lake was mistaken in thinking that Mrs. Senior had spoken to her.
The fun of everything, in our existence of comedy-tragedy—and I was suspicious of the story of terrorized Chinamen, as told by English reporters, because it was a story of panic that omitted the jokes—mania without the smile. Every fiendish occurrence that gnashes its circumstances, and sinks its particulars into a victim, wags a joke. In June, 1899, there was, in many parts of the U.S.A., much amusement. Something, in New York City, Washington, and Chicago, was sending people to hospitals. I don’t recommend the beating of a gong to drive away a hellish thing: but I think that that treatment is as enlightened as is giving to it a funny name. Hospitals of Ann Arbor, Mich.; Toledo, Ohio; Rochester, N.Y.; Reading, Pa.—
“The kissing bug,” it was called.
The story of the origin of the “kissing bug” scare-joke is that, upon the 19th of June, 1899, a Washington newspaper man, hearing of an unusual number of persons, who, at the Emergency Hospital, had applied for treatment for “bug bites,” investigated, learning of “a very noticeable number of patients,” who were suffering with swellings, mostly upon their lips, “apparently the result of insect bites.” According to Dr. L.O. Howard, writing in
Popular Science Monthly,
56-31, there were six insects, in the United States, that could inflict dangerous bites, or punctures, but all of them were of uncommon occurrence. So Dr. Howard rejected the insect-explanation. In his opinion there had arisen a senseless scare, like those of former times, in southern Europe, when hosts of hysterical persons imagined that tarantulas had bitten them.
This is “mass psychology” again—or the Taboo explanation. To the regret of my contrariness, it is impossible for me utterly to disagree with anybody. I think with Dr. Howard that the “kissing bug” scare was like the tarantula scares. But it could be that some of those people of southern Europe did not merely imagine that something was biting them. If somebody should like to write a book, but is like millions of persons who would like to write books, but fortunately don’t know just what to write books about, I suggest a study of scares, with the idea of showing that they were not altogether hysteria and mass psychology, and that there may have been something to be scared about.
New York Herald,
July 9—names and addresses of eleven persons, who upon one day (8th of July) had either scared their bodies into producing swellings, or had been bitten by something that the scientists refused to believe existed. And people who were bitten captured insects.
Entomological News,
September, 1899;—some of these insects, which were sent to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, were house flies, bees, beetles, and even a butterfly. There are wings of vampires that lull with scientific articles. See Taboo, as represented by Dr. E. Murray-Aaron, writing in the
Scientific American,
July 22, 1899—nothing but sensation-mongering from Richmond, Va., to Augusta, Me.
There was a sensational horse, in Cincinnati. His jaw swelled. Would a child, aged four, be too young for “mass psychology”? I suppose not. I am not denying that there was much mass psychology in this. Cedar Falls, Iowa—a four-year-old child bitten. Trenton, N.J.—Helen Lersch, two years old, bitten—died. Bay Shore, L.I.—a child, aged two, bitten.
Later, I shall give instances of sizeable wounds that have appeared upon people: but, in this chapter, I am considering tiny punctures that may not have been either rat bites or insect stings. An account, in the
Chicago Tribune,
July 11, 1899, is suggestive of traditional vampire stories. A woman had been bitten. “The marks of two small incisors could be seen.”
I don’t know whether I am of a cruel and bloodthirsty disposition, or not. Most likely I am, but not more so than any other historian. Or, conforming to the conditions of our existence, I am amiable-bloodthirsty. In my desire for vampires, which is not in the least a queer desire, inasmuch as I have a theory that there are vampires, I was not satisfied with the “kissing bug”: what I wanted was an account of hospital cases, not in the summer time. The insect-explanation, even though it was not upheld by Taboo, is too much at home, in the summer time. I needed an account, not in the summer time, to fill out my collection of data. Any collector will understand how pleased I was to come upon—London
Daily Mail,
April 20, 1920—an account of human suffering. “A number of people in country places have been bitten by some mysterious creature with a very poisonous fang. It is rare for any sort of poisonous bite or sting to occur before summer, and as a rule the culprit is known. This spring doctors have attended case after case, where the swellings have been sudden and severe, though there is little sign of the bite, itself.” I have record of several winter time cases. See
La Nature,
(Supplement) Jan. 16, 1897—that while filling a stove with coal, in a house in the Rue de la Tour, Paris, a concierge had felt a stinging sensation upon his arm, which swelled. He was taken to a hospital, where he died. People in the house said that they had seen gigantic wasps entering the house by way of stovepipes.
But the most mysterious of cases of insect bites, or alleged insect bites, is that of the small wound that led to the death of Lord Carnarvon, if be accepted that his death, and the deaths of fourteen other persons, were in any especial way related to the opening, or the violation, of the tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen. Lord Carnarvon was stung by what was supposed to be an insect. What was said to be blood poisoning set in. What was said to be septic pneumonia followed.
The stories of the “kissing bug” differ from vampire stories, in that victims were painfully wounded. But there was an occurrence in Upper Broadway, New York City, May 7, 1909, that may be more in agreement. It seems possible that a woman could, in a street crowd, viciously jab several persons with a hat pin, without being detected: but it does seem unlikely that she could enjoy such a stroll, jabbing at least five men and a woman, before being interfered with. A Broadway policeman learned that upon somebody a small wound, as if made by a hat pin, had appeared. Four other men and a woman joined the crowd and showed that they had been similarly wounded. The policeman arrested, as the cause of the excitement, a woman, who told that her name was Mary Maloney, and gave a false address.
Perhaps she had no address. She may have been guilty, but perhaps she was shabby. If somebody must be arrested, it is wise to pick out one who does not look very self-defensive. “Plead guilty and you’ll get off with a light sentence.” It is dangerous to be anywhere near any scene of crime, considering the way detectives pick up “suspects,” even an hour or so later, obviously arguing that when somebody commits a crime, he hangs around to be suspected.
I have never been jabbed with a hat pin, but I have sat on pointed things, and my responses were so energetic that I suspect that at least six persons were not jabbed with a hat pin, before the jabber was caught. See data to come, that indicate that people may be—by some means at present not understood—wounded, and not know it until later. Also that a woman was accused makes me doubt that the marauder was caught. Women don’t do such things. I have a long list of
Jack’s,
ranging from the rippers and stranglers to the egg throwers and the ink squirters: but Mary Maloney is the only alleged
Jill
in my collection. Women don’t do such things. They have their own deviltries.
Upon Dec. 4, 1913, Mrs. Wesley Graff, who sat in a box, in the Lyric Theatre, New York City, felt something scratching her hand. She felt a pain like the sting of a wasp, and, staggering from her chair, fainted, first accusing a young man near her. The manager of the theater held the young man, and called the police. Policemen searched, and found, on the floor, a common darning needle. It was their theory that the young man was a white slaver, who by means of a hypodermic injection, had sought to render a victim insensible, probably having waiting outside, a cab, to which he, explaining that he was her companion, would carry her. There were marks upon Mrs. Graff’s arm, but it seems that they were not made by a darning needle.
With the idea that the needle might be tipped with a drug, the police sent it to a chemist. To my astonishment, I record that he reported that he had found neither drug, nor poison, on it. A strange circumstance is that, at this place, where a woman was wounded somewhat as if by a darning needle, was found this darning needle, which was suggestive of a commonplace explanation.
Then arose the story that a gang of white slavers was operating in the city. But in the newspapers were published interviews with physicians, who stated that they knew of no drug by which women could be affected so as to make them easily abductable, because the pain of an injection would give minutes of warning, before a victim could be rendered helpless. But it may be that something, or somebody, was abroad, mysteriously wounding women. In the
Brooklyn Eagle,
December 6, it was said that, in a period of two weeks, the Committee of Fourteen, of New York City, had heard a dozen complaints of mysterious, minor attacks upon women, and had investigated, but had been unable to learn anything definite in any case.
See back to the story of the Chicago woman, and “marks of two small incisors.” Upon Mrs. Graff’s arm were two little punctures. December 29—girl named Marian Brindle said that something had stung her. Upon her arm were two little punctures.
It may be that, in the period of the scare in New York City, the first occurrence of which was in November, 1913, a vampire was abroad. It could be that we pick up the trail more than a year before this time. In October, 1912, Miss Jean Milne, aged sixty-seven, was living alone in her home, in West Ferry, Dundee, Scotland. London
Times,
Nov. 5, 1912—the finding of her body. The woman had been beaten, presumably with a poker, which was found, according to the account in the
Times:
but it was said that, though she had been struck on the head, her skull was not fractured: so her death was not altogether accounted for. There was more of this story, in the London
Weekly Dispatch,
Nov. 24, 1912. Upon this body were found perforations, as if having been made by a fork.
Late at night, Feb. 2, 1913, the body of a woman was found on the tracks of the London Underground Railway, near the Kensington Highstreet station. The body had been run over, and the head had been cut off. The body was identified as that of Miss Maud Frances Davies, who, alone, had been traveling around the world, and, earlier in the day, had, upon a ship train, arrived in London. She had friends and relatives in South Kensington, and presumably she was on her way to visit them. But the explanation at the inquest (London
Times,
Feb. 6, 1913) was that she had probably committed suicide by placing her neck upon a rail.
“Dr. Townsend said that over the heart he found a number of small, punctured wounds, over a dozen of which had penetrated the muscles; and one had entered the ventricle cavity of the heart. These punctures had been caused in life, with a sharp instrument, such as a hat pin. They were not enough to cause death, but had been made a few hours previously.”
Upon December 29th, of this year, 1913, a woman, known as “Scotch Dolly,” was found dead in her room, 18 Etham Street, S.E., London. A man, who had lived with her, was arrested, but was released, because he was able to show that, before the time of her death, he had left the woman. Her face was bruised, but she had seldom been sober, and the man, Williams, before leaving her, had struck her. The verdict was that she had died of heart failure, “from shock.”