
A surprisingly (albeit relatively) long tenured Fortean.
Helen Knothe was born 23 February 1904 in New York. She was the second of three children. Her mother was Maria Obreen, a Danish artist. Her father was Frank Knothe, worked for a haberdashery, becoming a vice president. According to Helen’s recollections, her father was cold and distant, but her mother a source of quiet warmth. They lived a middle-class, urban life, living in New York City until Helen was three, when they moved to Ridgewood, New Jersey. Helen learned Dutch so much did she identify with that side of her family. Her family was vegetarian, and maintained an organic garden. They had generally progressive views, belong to a Unitarian Church and supporting various causes. In addition, Frank and Maria were Theosophists, and introduced their children to the mystical tradition.
Supposedly, Helen’s birth was interpreted in Theosophical terms. She was seen by her parents, and other Theosophists in their cohort, as the reincarnation of Piet Meuleman, an important Danish Theosophists whom her parents had known. Another’s biographer—from whom most of the above comes—Margaret O. Killinger, wrote in “The Good Life of Helen K. Nearing”: Helen “became the most devout follower of theosophy in her family and a lifelong spiritual seeker. By age thirteen, she learned to read people’s palms, studying the lengths of their fingers and the depths and position of the lines on their hands for insight into their character. She analyzed handwriting and collected autographs, believing both were likewise revealing. [She] later communed with fairies and would become a dowser who skillfully located water sources though a diving rod, as well as an inveterate practitioner of the Ouija board.”
Helen Knothe was born 23 February 1904 in New York. She was the second of three children. Her mother was Maria Obreen, a Danish artist. Her father was Frank Knothe, worked for a haberdashery, becoming a vice president. According to Helen’s recollections, her father was cold and distant, but her mother a source of quiet warmth. They lived a middle-class, urban life, living in New York City until Helen was three, when they moved to Ridgewood, New Jersey. Helen learned Dutch so much did she identify with that side of her family. Her family was vegetarian, and maintained an organic garden. They had generally progressive views, belong to a Unitarian Church and supporting various causes. In addition, Frank and Maria were Theosophists, and introduced their children to the mystical tradition.
Supposedly, Helen’s birth was interpreted in Theosophical terms. She was seen by her parents, and other Theosophists in their cohort, as the reincarnation of Piet Meuleman, an important Danish Theosophists whom her parents had known. Another’s biographer—from whom most of the above comes—Margaret O. Killinger, wrote in “The Good Life of Helen K. Nearing”: Helen “became the most devout follower of theosophy in her family and a lifelong spiritual seeker. By age thirteen, she learned to read people’s palms, studying the lengths of their fingers and the depths and position of the lines on their hands for insight into their character. She analyzed handwriting and collected autographs, believing both were likewise revealing. [She] later communed with fairies and would become a dowser who skillfully located water sources though a diving rod, as well as an inveterate practitioner of the Ouija board.”

In 1917—when she was thirteen—Helen went to Christian Science camp in New Hampshire, because her parents feared she was too bookish and solitary. Even so, she said she remained isolated during the summer. She graduated from Ridgewood High School in 1921. Afterwards, she went to Holland to study violin, where she stayed with another Theosophist. Unexpectedly, she moved very near the center of the (admittedly fragmenting) Theosophical world. Jiddu Krishnamurti, a British Indian, had been groomed to be the new world leader of Theosophy; in 1921, he visited Amsterdam—and fell in love with Helen. The romance would continue, in some form, for several years (she was also romantically entangled with his brother), as Helen became increasingly steeped in Theosophy, coming to know not only Krishnamurti, but also the head the Society Annie Besant. In 1923, she moved to Vienna for both educational and Theosophical reasons. In August of that year, she became the primary spiritual channel for Krishnamurti when he went into trances.
Helen returned to New York soon enough, but continued to travel in Krishnamurti’s circle, as it globe-trotted. During this time, she continued to move up through the Theosophical hierarchy and explore associated practices, such as yoga. In 1927, she finished studies in Australia, and also finally broke with Krishnamurti, who had been drifintg from her anyway, especially since his brother’s death, and would himself break from Theosophy in 1929. She returned to her family and in 1928 was asked by her father to have Scott Nearing speak at the local unitarian Church. Nearing was by this point well known for his pacifism, vegetarianism, and left-leaning politics. (He was associated with communism.) His own marriage was falling apart; he and Helen would become lovers. She was 24. He was 43. In Killinger’s account, Helen was not Scott’s only mistress: he was a frequent philanderer, and a neighbor who knew both Scott and his first wife said that Nellie refused torrent him a divorce because she did not want his next wife to suffer, as she had, his frequent adulteries. And, indeed, Helen was not pleased with Nearing’s bed-hopping, particularly when he became involved in paternity disputes.
Helen returned to New York soon enough, but continued to travel in Krishnamurti’s circle, as it globe-trotted. During this time, she continued to move up through the Theosophical hierarchy and explore associated practices, such as yoga. In 1927, she finished studies in Australia, and also finally broke with Krishnamurti, who had been drifintg from her anyway, especially since his brother’s death, and would himself break from Theosophy in 1929. She returned to her family and in 1928 was asked by her father to have Scott Nearing speak at the local unitarian Church. Nearing was by this point well known for his pacifism, vegetarianism, and left-leaning politics. (He was associated with communism.) His own marriage was falling apart; he and Helen would become lovers. She was 24. He was 43. In Killinger’s account, Helen was not Scott’s only mistress: he was a frequent philanderer, and a neighbor who knew both Scott and his first wife said that Nellie refused torrent him a divorce because she did not want his next wife to suffer, as she had, his frequent adulteries. And, indeed, Helen was not pleased with Nearing’s bed-hopping, particularly when he became involved in paternity disputes.

Nonetheless, they stayed together and in 1932 she moved with him to a farmhouse in Vermont, where they maintained organic gardens, built their own home, and lived simply—this was Scott’s mantra, and he could be harsh in assuring that Helen also followed it. They made a living selling maple syrup. The farm provided another Fortean connection: among those who attended was Yvette Szkely. At the time, she was having an affair of her own, with the Nearing’s oldest son, Johnny, but soon, aged only 17, she would become an object of lustful attraction to Theodore Dreiser, then about fifty. Dreiser, of course, helped discover, publish, and publicize Fort and the Fortean Society (at least at the beginning).
Helen and Scott produced pamphlets on simple living and left-politics. (Killinger had it that Helen was not always on board with Scott’s socialist-inflected politics: they were of different generations, after all.) In 1943, he started publishing a regular periodical “World Events,” and he came out against World War II. Finally, in 1947, they married, she becoming Helen K. Nearing. They continued writing, putting out books on modern homesteading. In 1952, they relocated to Maine, and built a new home. They traveled around the world and visited communist countries.
They lived very long lives, Scott died in 1983, aged 99. (He starved himself.) Through the years, Helen was important in maintaining the legend of the Nearings, which she did until her own death, in 1995, aged 91.
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The Nearings seem to have been invited into theFortean fold—accounting for their acquaintance wit Fort. It is possible, though, that Helen had come across Fort’s name independently, given the overlap between Forteans and Theosophists. Thayer made Nearing an Honorary Founder in 1944 (replacing Alexander Woollcott, who had just died) and advertised “World Events” on the back page of Doubt. Probably all of this enthusiasm for Nearing prompted some correspondence, and Helen’s joining of the Society. She got much less notice than her lover (and, later, husband), but she seems to have been the more committed Fortean. (Ain’t that the way?) I find no direct links between Scott and the Society—there’s Thayer’s enthusiasm for him, and some overlapping social networks, but he didn’t contribute anything.
Helen did.
Her name appears five times in four issues. More surprisingly, those issues cover a five year span—indicating that her interest in the Society was something more than a passing fad, and lasted longer than Thayer making Nearing an Honorary Founder. Probably, her Theosophical background had a lot to do with her Fortean interest, as a number of Theosophists found Fort accommodating, his collection of anomalous events able tone interpreted according to Theosophical doctrines, his “age of hyphens” able to be fitted to the Theosophical view that science and religion needed to be merged into a single thing—a kind of hyphen, though, of course, Theosophists were not skeptics and had firm views about the unfolding of history.
Knothe's first contribution appeared in issue 26 (October 1949) and was an excerpt from a letter she had written to Thayer or the Society. It concerned their food habits—food was of interest to Thayer, who worried about its adulteration by government regulation and industrial chicanery—as well as falls from the sky, a traditional Fortean topic. Thayer’s typographical choices makes it difficult to read the extract, or at least interpret it, as it is unclear which part was written by Nearing and which part was an excerpt from a book. At any rate, the thirst of the letter was that lichens were a good food source, often overlooked, and that in certain parts of the Near East was considered manna—from heaven. As there were reports of the lichen falling from the sky, like the Biblical foodstuff. At certain times, the lichen was able to be made into a bread by starving people. Science and religion—and Fortean phenomena—all united into a single narrative: perfectly Theosophical.
Helen’s second contribution is less easy to interpret, but is interesting nonetheless because it came some four years later, issue 42, October 1953—it would have been easy for her, like so many other members of the Society to drop out after the 1940s, but she continued. (It is of course possible she sent in material that never appeared.) The clipping is credited to “Knothe-Nearing” and appeared in Thayer’s mock contest for the best contribution since the last issue, among the runners up. It referred to a story in England about a horse rescued from a canal, which subsequently jumped back into the water. Rescued a second time, it bared its teeth and chased its saviors across a field.
The following February, Knothe received two credits in issue 43—the very next issue. The first appeared on page 253, credited not only to Knothe (just Knothe, no Fortean hyphen), Eric Frank Russell, (another Brit) Graham, and an anonymous contributor. It’s interpretation is fairly easy, fitting in with the left-libertarianism and Pacifism that was common among a swathe of Forteans, including the Scott and Helen. An English girl was walking her sister in a pram when a plane flying above her exploded, blowing off the girls hand and riddling her body with shrapnel; her arm had to be amputated. Although both American and British air forces had nearby bases, both denied involvement.
The next page had another credit to Knothe (once more, just Knothe). She was the only member to receive credit for the story. This one, too, is easy enough to interpret both in terms of the Knothe’s leftist ideals—freedom of worship—and their pacifism. It dealt with a parson who was barred by a judge from interfering with any church in the Church of Wales. He continued, though, and so was hauled before another court. The judge wondered if he was sane. The plaintiff, by way of explanation, offered this: the parson was a pacifist: as though pacifism was prima facie evidence of insanity. Thayer was having a rueful chuckle over it—and one imagines Helen and Scott did, too, which is what probably prompted Helen to mail it in to the Society.
Her final contribution appeared in the very next issue (which does raise the question, I guess, if her connect to the Society was a kind of fad, just one that occurred twice, but did not indicate a continued interest in Forteanism). Interpreting this contribution is possible even though there is no way of knowing what Knothe (yes, just Knothe) mailed in to the Society. Her name was included in a paragraph of credits for flying saucer reports. Helen had a developed interest in flying saucers. She mentioned it, briefly, in her own autobiography, and a neighbor remembered books on the topic took up about 8-inches on the Nearing bookshelves. (A writer of the Chicago Tribune also remarked on her owning UFO books.) Scott devoted one issue of “World Events” to the topic—which surprised Thayer, who hated the subject, but probably reflected Helen’s interest.
I unfortunately have not found any of her writing discussing why flying saucers intrigued, and what she thought about them. It’s possible there was some connection to science fiction (she also owned sci-fi books). But I suspect there was something more going on. A number of Theosophists turned their attention to UFOs as flying saucers became increasingly prominent in American culture. Indeed, it can be argued that much of the early thought about flying saucers was stonily inflected by Theosophy—that UFO culture was an outgrowth of Theosophy, a looking for the Ascended Masters, not here on earth, but in space, who would come to impart their wisdom on our misbegotten race. My suspicion is that Knothe belonged to this tribe of Theosophical believers—that she thought flying saucers were, if not gods (or the models of gods), then possessors of some kind of advanced knowledge which might benefit humanity.
If this speculation is right, then it is also possible to get a handle on Knothe’s Forteanism. It would seem to have grown out of her own mystical inclinations and political commitments. There is no evidence that she had a strong interest in traditional Fortean phenomena, nor in the dogged skepticism evinced by Fort. Rather, she was one of those who was drawn in—rather than repulsed—by Thayer’s political transformation of Fort’s philosophy. She could see resemblances in it—elective affinities with—her own religious, economic, social, and political impulses, a left anarchism.
Helen and Scott produced pamphlets on simple living and left-politics. (Killinger had it that Helen was not always on board with Scott’s socialist-inflected politics: they were of different generations, after all.) In 1943, he started publishing a regular periodical “World Events,” and he came out against World War II. Finally, in 1947, they married, she becoming Helen K. Nearing. They continued writing, putting out books on modern homesteading. In 1952, they relocated to Maine, and built a new home. They traveled around the world and visited communist countries.
They lived very long lives, Scott died in 1983, aged 99. (He starved himself.) Through the years, Helen was important in maintaining the legend of the Nearings, which she did until her own death, in 1995, aged 91.
*******************
The Nearings seem to have been invited into theFortean fold—accounting for their acquaintance wit Fort. It is possible, though, that Helen had come across Fort’s name independently, given the overlap between Forteans and Theosophists. Thayer made Nearing an Honorary Founder in 1944 (replacing Alexander Woollcott, who had just died) and advertised “World Events” on the back page of Doubt. Probably all of this enthusiasm for Nearing prompted some correspondence, and Helen’s joining of the Society. She got much less notice than her lover (and, later, husband), but she seems to have been the more committed Fortean. (Ain’t that the way?) I find no direct links between Scott and the Society—there’s Thayer’s enthusiasm for him, and some overlapping social networks, but he didn’t contribute anything.
Helen did.
Her name appears five times in four issues. More surprisingly, those issues cover a five year span—indicating that her interest in the Society was something more than a passing fad, and lasted longer than Thayer making Nearing an Honorary Founder. Probably, her Theosophical background had a lot to do with her Fortean interest, as a number of Theosophists found Fort accommodating, his collection of anomalous events able tone interpreted according to Theosophical doctrines, his “age of hyphens” able to be fitted to the Theosophical view that science and religion needed to be merged into a single thing—a kind of hyphen, though, of course, Theosophists were not skeptics and had firm views about the unfolding of history.
Knothe's first contribution appeared in issue 26 (October 1949) and was an excerpt from a letter she had written to Thayer or the Society. It concerned their food habits—food was of interest to Thayer, who worried about its adulteration by government regulation and industrial chicanery—as well as falls from the sky, a traditional Fortean topic. Thayer’s typographical choices makes it difficult to read the extract, or at least interpret it, as it is unclear which part was written by Nearing and which part was an excerpt from a book. At any rate, the thirst of the letter was that lichens were a good food source, often overlooked, and that in certain parts of the Near East was considered manna—from heaven. As there were reports of the lichen falling from the sky, like the Biblical foodstuff. At certain times, the lichen was able to be made into a bread by starving people. Science and religion—and Fortean phenomena—all united into a single narrative: perfectly Theosophical.
Helen’s second contribution is less easy to interpret, but is interesting nonetheless because it came some four years later, issue 42, October 1953—it would have been easy for her, like so many other members of the Society to drop out after the 1940s, but she continued. (It is of course possible she sent in material that never appeared.) The clipping is credited to “Knothe-Nearing” and appeared in Thayer’s mock contest for the best contribution since the last issue, among the runners up. It referred to a story in England about a horse rescued from a canal, which subsequently jumped back into the water. Rescued a second time, it bared its teeth and chased its saviors across a field.
The following February, Knothe received two credits in issue 43—the very next issue. The first appeared on page 253, credited not only to Knothe (just Knothe, no Fortean hyphen), Eric Frank Russell, (another Brit) Graham, and an anonymous contributor. It’s interpretation is fairly easy, fitting in with the left-libertarianism and Pacifism that was common among a swathe of Forteans, including the Scott and Helen. An English girl was walking her sister in a pram when a plane flying above her exploded, blowing off the girls hand and riddling her body with shrapnel; her arm had to be amputated. Although both American and British air forces had nearby bases, both denied involvement.
The next page had another credit to Knothe (once more, just Knothe). She was the only member to receive credit for the story. This one, too, is easy enough to interpret both in terms of the Knothe’s leftist ideals—freedom of worship—and their pacifism. It dealt with a parson who was barred by a judge from interfering with any church in the Church of Wales. He continued, though, and so was hauled before another court. The judge wondered if he was sane. The plaintiff, by way of explanation, offered this: the parson was a pacifist: as though pacifism was prima facie evidence of insanity. Thayer was having a rueful chuckle over it—and one imagines Helen and Scott did, too, which is what probably prompted Helen to mail it in to the Society.
Her final contribution appeared in the very next issue (which does raise the question, I guess, if her connect to the Society was a kind of fad, just one that occurred twice, but did not indicate a continued interest in Forteanism). Interpreting this contribution is possible even though there is no way of knowing what Knothe (yes, just Knothe) mailed in to the Society. Her name was included in a paragraph of credits for flying saucer reports. Helen had a developed interest in flying saucers. She mentioned it, briefly, in her own autobiography, and a neighbor remembered books on the topic took up about 8-inches on the Nearing bookshelves. (A writer of the Chicago Tribune also remarked on her owning UFO books.) Scott devoted one issue of “World Events” to the topic—which surprised Thayer, who hated the subject, but probably reflected Helen’s interest.
I unfortunately have not found any of her writing discussing why flying saucers intrigued, and what she thought about them. It’s possible there was some connection to science fiction (she also owned sci-fi books). But I suspect there was something more going on. A number of Theosophists turned their attention to UFOs as flying saucers became increasingly prominent in American culture. Indeed, it can be argued that much of the early thought about flying saucers was stonily inflected by Theosophy—that UFO culture was an outgrowth of Theosophy, a looking for the Ascended Masters, not here on earth, but in space, who would come to impart their wisdom on our misbegotten race. My suspicion is that Knothe belonged to this tribe of Theosophical believers—that she thought flying saucers were, if not gods (or the models of gods), then possessors of some kind of advanced knowledge which might benefit humanity.
If this speculation is right, then it is also possible to get a handle on Knothe’s Forteanism. It would seem to have grown out of her own mystical inclinations and political commitments. There is no evidence that she had a strong interest in traditional Fortean phenomena, nor in the dogged skepticism evinced by Fort. Rather, she was one of those who was drawn in—rather than repulsed—by Thayer’s political transformation of Fort’s philosophy. She could see resemblances in it—elective affinities with—her own religious, economic, social, and political impulses, a left anarchism.