A behind-the-scenes Fortean.

William Milligan Sloane was born 15 August 1906, in Plymouth, Massachusetts. This was the year that Charles Fort started collecting reports of anomalous events, and so he was born into a Fortean universe. His mother was the former Julia L. Moss; his father Joseph C. Sloane. (In some documents, the surname was also spelled Sloan, with the E.) In 1910, according to the census, the family lived in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where Joseph taught at The Hill School, a boarding school. Julia had only recently given birth to a second son, Joseph Jr. They rented their house, living with two servants as well as Joseph Senior’s sister, Hannah Spare.

The family continued peripatetic. At some point they moved to Illinois—Julia had family in the state; it was there, in 19115, that Julia drew up a will. They then continued westward, landing in the Los Angeles area toward the end of the decade. There were six of them, Julia in a book about their California life, “The Smiling Hill-Top”: Joseph and her, the two boys (Billie and Joe), and their twin Yorkshire terriers, Rags and Tags. The plan was to tay only a year, in a remote house overlooking the ocean once owned by own of Julia’s aunts, but they settled, and eventually found their way into Pasadena. That first part, when they lived on the hilltop, Joseph worked in town, apparently still teaching, and, because of the commute, only returning home on the weekends.

​Yet another mysterious Fortean.

This write-up is a revised and (slightly) updated version of a series of posts I first did back in 2009 (!) and 2010. It seems to be the un-cited source for much of the wikipedia entry on the man.

Robert Barbour Johnson was born on 19 August.  That much we can say with some certainty.  It's the date given on his application for a social security number and on his death certificate.  Beyond that, well, there's a range of possible answers.  His World War II enlistment card says 1905.  His application for social security says 1906. Obviously, there are incentives for making one's self older to get social security earlier. There are also incentives for making oneself younger and some suggestion Johnson relished the idea of being a wunderkind.  When his story "Far Below" was chosen as the best yarn ever published in Weird Tales, he was noted as one of the magazine's younger writer.  He said that he harassed his writer friends with that for month, pointing out that lots of people say they are young, but he had written proof.  His death certificate says 1907 (as does the SSDI).  His recollections for The Weird Tales Story suggests that he was born in 1909.  Edan Hughes's “Artists in California” has him born in that year as well.

A hard driving Fortean.

Arturo (Arthur) Castillo was born 3 November 1930 in Chicago. (Some reports have it as 30 November, but that is incorrect.) His mother was the former Dorothy Ada Rice, an artist an art teacher who attended the Art Institute of Chicago. His father was Servillano “Bill” Castillo, a postal worker who was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States in 1920, via Seattle, somehow ending up in the Midwest. (He studied at the University of Minnesota.) Bill had just turned 30 when Art was born; Dorothy was 26. They had been married just over a year. Art was their only child.

He attended Taft High School in Chicago, Illinois. I do not know if he had any more formal education, but he followed his mother’s interest and became an artist. His work was showcased in science fiction ‘zines, for he was also a devoted reader of science fiction, a member of fandom, where he promulgated his social and political ideas: generally speaking, leftist and anarchist. He had illustrations in “the Journal of Science-Fiction” no later than Fall 1952, which was based in Chicago, and probably other artwork in other ‘zines around the same time. In 1951, at least, he seems to have been living with William Donaho, who would go on to form the Berkeley ‘zine Habakkuk. (He gave Donaho’s address as his own in a letter to Eric Frank Russell.)

​

​An Australian Fortean.

Voltaire Molesworth was born, according to biographical remembrances, 18 October 1924 in Sydney, Australia. I know virtually nothing about his early life. Supposedly, his father was a journalist as well as a politician. Apparently, though, he was a fan of science fiction and weird literature, particularly that of H.P. Lovecraft. He married in 1946, Laura, a librarian. Both were active in the Sydney Futurians—an Australian science fiction fan group modeled on the Futurians on New York. Vol, as he was called, was the fifth member; Laura was a librarian and active in the “Femme Fan Group,” which produced its own ‘zine. I have seen a few of the Sydney Futurians magazine. It started in the late 1940s as a way to share science fiction publications among members. (Laura ran the library.) Vol started editing the ‘zine in the second half of 1948 and ended a few months later. As of October that year, he owned 40 Arkham House books, 15 others, 8 pocketbooks, 42 or so fanzines, six “Weird Tale” issues, six “Startling” issues, and 29 issues of “Astounding.” His latest acquisition was latest acquisitions was Clark Ashton Smith’s “Lost Worlds” (1944).

Inspired by Fort to dismiss the germ theory.

Guy Fred Rogers died in the summer of 1952. At the time, he was living in Gainesville, Florida, with his wife, Nell Rogers. He had lived throughout the Southeast corner of the United States for most of his life, moving often. Rogers had been involved in radical politics and developing alternative theories of medicine. He is recorded several times in the pages of Doubt, the Fortean Society magazine, throughout the late 1940s and into the early 1950s.

Late in 1951, he and Nell published what would stand as their magnum opus: The Medical Mischief, You Say!: Degerminating the Germ Theory. It was a relatively short pamphlet, supplemented with excerpts from other writers, such as Bernar MacFadden—the physical culturalist who influenced Fortean Scott Nearing to take up vegetarianism, and the Naturopath and Fortean George S. White. The book dismissed the germ theory of disease, and embraced, instead, a naturopathic emphasis on food and healthy habits. But the germ theory was only the starting point of a critique that encompassed medicine, science, American society, war, commercialism, and capitalism. These were issues that had consumed them for decades and fit them easily into the left-libertarian tradition that supported so much of the Fortean Society.

So astounding a Fortean life, even her admirers cannot believe it all. This one is massively long.

Lilith Lorraine went by many names, so many it is not even easy to identify her birth name. The conventional sources have her born 19 March 1894 and give her name then as Mary Maud Dunn. None of this information, though—as far as I can tell—come from contemporary documents: birth certificates, newspaper announcements, etc. Her birthdate is given on her death certificate and, while she was alive, she did say that her birth name was “Mary Maud.” Probably this is true, but in the 1900 and 1910 censuses she went only by Maud or Maude.

She was the only child of John Beamon Dunn and Lelia Nias. Maud descended from what amounts to royalty in Corpus Christi, Texas; her paternal grandfather had been one of the first settlers, of the area, having migrated from Ireland, and her father was a Texas Ranger and cattleman. In 1932, Lilith—lets call her that for simplicity—would edit his memoirs, Perilous Trails of Texas. “Red” Dunn, as her father was nicknamed, collected Corpus Christi memorabilia, which he donated to a local museum, after he had spent years displaying it.

A Fortean associated with the Society seemingly to pay science fiction’s—and late 20th century fantastic fiction’s, generally—debt to Charles Fort. And perhaps to find more customers. 

August Derleth is well known to aficionados of weird and fantastic literature, almost too well known to warrant much biographical information. Almost. He was born 24 February 1909 to William Julius and Rose Louise Volk Derleth and grew up in Sauk City, Wisconsin, making him a generational and regional peer of Thayer, and more than forty years Fort’s junior. Three of his grandparents and both of his parents had been born in Wisconsin; the fourth grandparent, his mother’s father, came from Germany. He was named after his father’s father. William and Rose married in 1907; William worked as a blacksmith, repairing agricultural machinery, and in a wagon shop. The family did well enough that they owned their home by 1920, free and clear. August had one sister, Hildred, born two years after him.

An unappreciated Fortean.

Janet Miriam Taylor Holland Caldwell was born 7 September 1900 in Manchester England. She seems to have been a natural-born story-teller: at age 6, she won an award for an essay on Charles Dickens; at 8, she wrote her first story; at 12, she finished her first novel—on Atlantis, which already points to her interest in the paranormal and occult. Her father, Arthur, was an artist for the Manchester Guardian when she was born, and, in 1907, moved the family (mother, Anne; Janet; and brother Arthur Jr.) to Buffalo, NY, for another newspaper job. The family was never well-off—Caldwell blamed her parents’s lack of ambition—and they struggled, much to Caldwell’s chagrin. Caldwell would later remember that she didn't have a childhood, or an adolescence: all was work. But she did have a dream. She met Mark Twain when he was visiting Buffalo, and told him she was a writer, too. He said that one day she would be famous.

Update of an earlier post:

Another name that was mentioned but with no sign of active membership: Claire P. Beck. Only the context makes it possible to figure out who this was.

Beck was noted in The Fortean Society Magazine number 7 (before the name switched to Doubt). This was from June 1943. On page 5, Thayer was proclaiming the rising prominence of science fiction--or scientifiction, as it was then sometimes styled:

“Before Fort, any fiction making more or less free with ‘Science’ was classified always, as of the Jules Verne school. And there wasn’t a great deal of it, but in the past twenty years, what its exponents and admirers call Scientifiction, has grown like something in a dream. Millions of fans prefer these tales to either whodunits or horror, and the number of publications devoted to the imaginative extension of ‘scientific laws’ and the enlargement of human attributes (Wild Talents, so to speak) has become legion.

“The band is almost unanimously Fortean and some of our most prized members come from its ranks, all whooping up Charles Fort’s fame.”

Among those Thayer name-checked was Claire P. Beck. Presumably, he means Claire P. Beck the science fiction fan. (The ‘P,’ by the way, was pseudonymous, standing for poor.)

Beck was born in California in 1919. His father, a contractor, died when he was very young, and his mother was left to raise four children. Life had to have been hard for the family. (In 1930, Claire’s eldest brother William was the only breadwinner in the family, working as a newspaper printer.) Within a few years, while still a teenager, Beck became involved with science fiction fandom—he especially liked Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith—and took over publication of The Science Fiction Review, renaming it The Science Fiction Critic. By 1940, his mother had become a tax collector, and had enough money to own her home; that year, Claire attended a year of college while also working as a census taker. His education was interrupted World War II—he joined the army in 1941.

Claire Beck died in Lakeport, California, where he had lived most of his life, in March 1999.

Beck was affiliated with other science fiction groups, too, notably San Francisco’s Science Fiction Advancement Association and Sam Moskowitz’s New Fandom.