Find Fort’s Grave and Celebrate Sea Serpent Day on August 6th
Posted by: Loren Coleman on August 5th, 2011
What we’re looking for is an account of something satisfactorily monstrous, and not more or less in the distance: something that is not of palaeontologic memory that has been jogged so plasterfully. The sea is the best field for data.Charles Fort, Lo!
You can look it up on those “This Day” calendars and websites. For some reason, August 7 is generally designated as “Sea Serpent Day.”
By whom? Why? Where?
Could perhaps the greeting card companies, newspaper editors, or whomever decided on such things have been off by one day?
Those clued into what has actually happened on August 6th versus August 7th might have another take on which day should be picked, to wit:
August 6
On this date in the year 1817, a huge creature described as a sea-serpent was spotted in the ocean near Gloucester harbor in Massachusetts. Coincidentally, on this same date in the year [1848], a similar creature was seen by the crew of the British naval frigate Daedalus.
This day is sacred to the Cherokee Earth-Goddess Elihino and her sister Igaehindvo, the sacred goddess of the Sun.“Days of August,” Autumn’s Meadow, 2007.
I’ve corrected “Autumn’s Meadow,” which got the year off by 100 years, as the Daedalus event (see illustration below) occurred in 1848, not 1948.
A procession of the damned.
By the damned, I mean the excluded.
We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded.Charles Fort, Book of the Damned.
Of perhaps more importance is the fact that August 6th is the birthday of the great American intellectual who has given his name to the entire study of unexplained phenomena, Charles Hoy Fort (August 6, 1874 – May 3, 1932). Most people reading this are Forteans, even if they don’t know it.
We are not realists. We are not idealists. We are intermediatists — that nothing is real, but that nothing is unreal: that all phenomena are approximations one way or the other between realness and unrealness.Charles Fort, Book of the Damned.
Recall Charles Fort has been in the news again because he is Beasthunter Pat Spain’s Great Uncle. Fort was from Albany, New York. Spain grew up in nearby Troy, New York.
I’ve encouraged Albany-Troy visitors to the International Cryptozoology Museum to go visit Fort’s grave. Have you made the pilgrimage?
Charles Hoy Fort
Birth: Aug. 6, 1874
Death: May 3, 1932
Albany Rural Cemetery
Menands
Albany County
New York, USA
Plot: Lot 8, Section 28
Source.
Two photos above of Fort’s grave, by Andrew R. Pulsifer.
The gateway to Fort’s gravesite, by Stanley Weidenhammer.
The grave from a distance, by Dave Walsh. (Don’t get lost, as Dave did at first.)
For Boing Boing’s take on this special day, click here on David Pescovitz’s 2007 post about Charles Fort’s Birthday.
For the hypertext of all of Charles Fort’s books, see “The Fortean Web Site of Mr. X“.
And last but not least, Fortean writer Matt Bille pens this mysterious note to me: “I’ve always placed Sea Serpent Day on December 5.”
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I’d definitely buy and send Sea Serpent Day greeting cards…in fact, I may just make some of my own…since I doubt Hallmark is going to be on the ball…you’d think they’d take these things seriously.
I think I’ll walk into a hallmark store tomorrow and ask where the section is for Sea Serpent Day just to see what response I get…
I’m surprised my note was “mysterious.” Can anyone here guess my reasoning in picking 5 December?
Thank for this awesome post! WOW! Albany NY! Nice to see a famous Cryptozoolist from our area! And even cooler to hear Pat Spain is from Troy NY! LOL Troy is like right of the road from where I live!
August 6th is also American Homebrewers Association’s National Mead Day, so everyone should drink mead or brew mead tomorrow.
I didn’t really write December 5, did I Loren? I meant December 7.
August is the date of one of my favorite sightings…the Daedulus sighting…always stuck with me…
As for December 7th…there was the Valhalla sighting.