Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):
For lurkers unfamiliar with this Americanism,
| Charles Fort (1874 – 1932) was an American writer and researcher who specialized in anomalous phenomena. | The terms Fortean and Forteana are sometimes used to characterize various such phenomena.
Further to what I said a few minutes ago: Although Charles Fort was indeed an American writer and researcher, the Fortean... pursuit? passion? is an international phenomenon. I was Secretary (and Board of Directors member) and then Chair of the organisation Bay Area Skeptics for many long decades, and was (and am) not alone among participants in the skeptic movement (organisations favouring scientific scrutiny of fringe-science and fringe-medical claims of fact) in having decidedly warm regard for Forteans. They publish accounts of odd happenings, then metaphorically cackle madly and say 'How are you going to explain _that_, then?' Despite a reputation for being killjoys, we skeptics find the Forteans' sprit difficult to resist, and reply 'Maybe we can't. Weird stuff happens. We're fascinated by it, same as you.'