
(Which is to say, yet another Fortean who could not cross that pale line between the 1940s and 1950s as an MFS.)
Vora May Sowers—and, yes, it is Vora, née Storey—was born 21 August 1887 in Lakeview, Oregon, down in the southeast corner of the state, near the borders with California and Nevada. Her father, Allen Storey, was from Ohio, the child of Irish immigrants; he was a barber. Her mother, the former Edna Baker, was also from Ohio. Vora was the middle child, with an older sister and a younger one. She became a teacher the Medford area, still in southern Oregon, but west, and nearer the main routes from California. Supposedly, her father knew well the local Native Americans and was friendly with them.
On 13 March 1910—not quite a fortnight after Tiffany Thayer turned eight; when Charles Fort was only a couple of years into his investigations of anomalies—Vora married Russell Howard Sowers. He was a transplanted Iowan. The couple proceeded to produce a large family, quickly. Vora gave birth to four daughters by 1914. But Vora seems to have been committed to her career, too. In 1920, according to the census, she continued teaching, but in private homes rather than at a school. The family also had a boarder—an 18 year woman—who may have done housework for them. They lived in Portland, where Robert worked for the city. The family seems to have been Christian Scientists. In 1924, Robert “with contributions from Vora” wrote “Words Cannot Express My Gratitude,” for the March 22 issue of the “Christian Science Sentinel.” I have only seen an excerpt. The article begins,
I mostly lose track of the family after this. Robert appears in the 1930 census, living with one of his daughters. He is listed as married, but I am not sure where Vora was at the time. He appears in the 1940 census, too, living with the family of another daughter (her husband, two sons, a daughter, and a boarder) in Portland. He is listed as widow. But Vora was also in the 1940 census, living in Portland, by herself, listed as divorced. She had joined the women’s police force, where she eventually became a sergeant. She made just under $2,000 for the year, which was respectable, though not great—about $34,000 in contemporary dollars. She was renting her home. Reading between the lines, it seems she may not have had great relations with her daughters, but that is highly speculative.
Vora seems to have taken her duties seriously. She is cited in a couple of newspaper reports and legal proceedings. In 1942, when the country was at war, she graduated from the seventh class of War Department Civilian Protection School. There were two such schools on the West Coast, one at Stanford and, the one she attended, at the University of Washington. I can find reports of her police work as late as 1951.
In addition, she seems to have had an amateur interest in Civil War history and genealogy.
Tragedy seems to have followed some time in the next decade. I next find mention of Vora in a 1962 newspaper report that her home caught fire, possibly from faulty wiring. Her boarder escaped unharmed. Vora needed to be rescued by firemen, though. Not only was she elderly at this point—74—but both of her legs had been amputated. I do not know why, nor why she was mostly living alone. The fire occurred at the end of February.
Vora May Sowers died later that year, 20 July 1962. She was 74.
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I do not know how or when Vora came to Forteanism. Her past in Christian Science gives one possible clue. Christian Science was one of a number of 19th century metaphysical religions associated with the more secular line of New Thought—Mormonism, revivals of sex magic, Theosophy—and some of these traditions, particularly Theosophy, fed into Forteanism. But, again, that is speculative—there’s a lot of speculation. Others with religious backgrounds found their way to Forteanism after rejecting religion, or at least strong forms of it—one thinks of the various secular humanists and skeptics associated with the Society—and so it is just as easy to imagine her attraction to Fort or the Society was after rejecting Christian Science (even if she maintained an interest in ‘metaphysics’ and ‘spirituality’).
She appeared in Doubt magazine three times; otherwise, I find no evidence for her interest in Fort or her ideas about Forteanism. All three times were in the late 1940s, just like F. Fredrick Clouser. And like Clouser, to of the mentions were (excerpts of?) letters that Thayer printed. She seemed to have a strong interest in flying saucers—which were closely connected to America’s metaphysical religions—and a distrust of any authority beyond personal experience (which bearing also is an area of overlap between Forteanism and religion).
Her first appearance in Doubt was trivial. She was included in a long list of people who had sent in clippings about flying saucers on page 349 pf Doubt 23 (December 1948). Buy this point, she would have been a police officer for at least 18 years, perhaps longer, and one wonders if she didn’t use the cachet of being a trained observer in her correspondence with Thayer. For there does seem to have been a correspondence. The letter that was printed in Doubt 24 (April 1949) only makes sense as part of a longer correspondence. It starts mid-thought: “I am unable to find a copy of the older booklet describing Crater Lake, and perhaps I should be vey glad of that fact, because of all the fantastic stories of its origin anyone could possibly imagine, that contained the limit.” What book was she talking about? Why was she referencing this lost book? It’s all unclear.
What is clear is that she was started thinking about Crater Lake—not far from her childhood home and where she started teaching—was reading Fort’s description of Arizona at the beginning of Chapter 33 of New Lands (though from her pagination reference it was clear she was reading the collected works). Fort described—and speculated about—the origin of Crater Mountain, perhaps by meteorites, perhaps by a blast from a nearby “land,” or what others would call a planet. Sowers went on then to describe the alternative theories of Crater Lake’s origin: that is was drained by the Rogue River—for which evidence was the fact that the river had no source, the lake no outlet. (“Nuf said, Explanations,” she wrote, dismissing the theorizing.) Or that the pumice soil had something to do with it. She knew better: pumice was not porous, the Rogue River had a definite origin she could trace, if it had drained the Lake, there would be no lake left. And then she went on a tangent that’s hard to explain, telling of her father’s friendship with the local Native Americans, who trusted him a great deal but refused, for reasons of their own, to ever visit Crater Lake. She draws know conclusion from this fact—at least not in the letter as Thayer published it—but seems to suggest that there was something ominous about the place, whatever the ridiculous statements of the unnamed book. But then she concluded,
“By all means, go at such a time that you can arrive at the Lake before sun rise, and see it until about 10 p.m. No other experience on earth is quite like that.”
It is very hard to parse the meaning of all of this—that some have written wrongly about the area, that some are scared of the area, but that the lake is beautiful—perhaps more. “No other experience is quite like that” suggests a number of interpretations, some mutually exclusive. Is the experience one of terror? One of beauty? One of the uncanny? Is there a reason some have invented ridiculous origins? Is there cause for the Native Americans’s reluctance to visit? Or is it all prejudice? After all, she is inviting people to come visit? One could go around and around and never quite make definitive meaning out of this excerpt.
Her final appearance in Doubt is easier to understand—though it, too, confounds. A letter from her was dropped in the middle of a long column on flying saucers and other sky objects, Doubt 27 (winter 1949). The column was titled “If It’s in the Sky It’s a Saucer,” which not only mocked the craze for saucers—even known objects became UFOs to unobservant observers—but also expressed Thayer’s frustration that all kinds of aerial anomalies were now being understood as flying saucers, making a hash of attempts by Forteans to organize the different anomalies. The specific case that caught the attention of Sowers was the report of an unidentified aircraft dropping flares above Portland on the night of 30 July. Official explanation was that the lights were from fireworks on Mt. Hood. Thayer introduced her as such: “MFS Vora Sowers, a woman police sergeant of Portland, was an eye-witness of the above, and when the local wipers attempted to explain the lights by reference to” fireworks launched half an hour later, she wrote the Society, irritated.
“We are asked to gulp down the facts (?) that it was only fares on Mt. Hood,” she began. But she had good reason to add a question mark to those facts. She’s been in Portland for 30 years and never once been able to see Mt. Hood from where she sat that night. Indeed, the paper had been full of talks about rocket launches from Mt. Hood in the days leading up the event, and put the kibosh on those hoping to see them by noting the haze would be too thick. (I have looked through Portland papers from July and August of 1949. I did not see any mention of haze, though there were articles about the fireworks to come—which doesn’t mean Sowers was wrong, only I haven’t found confirmation. The articles after the fact were certainly condescending towards those who thought the explanation was wrong.) The only way to square what she had seen and what was reported was to imagine that “fellows 14,000 feet up on top of Mt. Hood were 75 miles nearer, and got up on top of the airport by mistake.” She sent clippings and insisted “am I more of a Fortean than ever!”
The last statement made sense in light of her previous letter: she took Forteanism to be the privileging of experience over the explanations of experts. This interpretation of Forteanism was not hers alone. But the statement is none the less frustrating. Because after she made it, Vora Sowers never again appeared in Doubt magazine. Did she stop sending in material? Did Thayer stop publishing it? What happened?
But that is another Fortean anomaly: a mysterious disappearance.