Fortean Phenomena : strange naturally occurring phenomena that science cannot yet define or explain. The Fortean Times is a magazine that is dedicated to this type of phenomena and presents some strange and unusual happenings in a lively easy to read manner. An extract that appears in each issue helps to define the term Fortean: "The Fortean Times is a monthly magazine, of news, reviews and research on strange phenomena and curiosities, prodigies and portents. It was founded in 1973 to continue the work of Charles Fort.

Throughout his life, Fort was sceptical about scientific explanations, observing how scientists argued according to their own beliefs rather than the rules of evidence and that inconvenient data was ignored, suppressed, discredited or explained away (which is quite different from explaining a thing). Fort born of Dutch stock in Albany, New York, spent many years researching scientific literature, in the New York Public Library and the British museum Library.

He marshalled his evidence and set forth his philosophy in the: Book of the Dammed (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931) and Wild Talents (1932). His dictum "One measures a circle beginning anywhere" expresses his philosophy of Continuity in which everything is in an intermediate state between extremes. He has ideas of the universe-as-organism and the transient nature of all apparent phenomena. He coined the term 'teleportation' and was perhaps the first to speculate that mysterious lights seen in the sky might be craft from outer space.

However he cut at the roots of credulity: "I conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while"