The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort-pages

Page 286 of 376

Page 286 of 376
The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort-pages

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Consternation. Oshkosh. [p. 233] | think that some of us are likely to overdo our own superiority and the absurd fears of the Middle Ages-- People in the streets rushing in all directions--horses running away--women and children running into cellars--little modern touch after all: gas meters instead of images and relics of saints. This darkness, which lasted from eight to ten minutes, occurred in a day that had been "light but cloudy." It passed from west to east, and brightness followed: then came reports from towns to the west of Oshkosh: that the same phenomenon had already occurred there. A "wave of total darkness" had passed from west to east. Other instances are recorded in the Monthly Weather Review, but, as to all of them, we have a sense of being pretty well-eclipsed, ourselves, by the conventional explanation that the obscuring body was only avery dense mass of clouds. But some of the instances are interesting--intense darkness at Memphis, Tenn., for about fifteen minutes, at to A.M., Dec. 2, 1904--"We are told that in some quarters a panic prevailed, and that some were shouting and praying and imagining that the end of the world had come." (M.W.R., 32-522.) At Louisville, Ky., March 7, 1911, at about 8 A.M.: duration about half an hour; had been raining moderately, and then hail had fallen. "The intense blackness and general ominous appearance of the storm spread terror throughout the city." (M.W.R., 39-345.) However, this merger between possible eclipses by unknown dark bodies and commonplace terrestrial phenomena is formidable.