What do you think?
Rate this book
Handbook of Unusual Natural Phenomena
Collects more than five hundred eyewitness accounts of nature's greatest mysteries, which have been documented in the most reputable & distinguished scientific journals, from cloudless rain & colored snow to multiple rainbows & rocket lightning.
423 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1977
5 people are currently reading
290 people want to read
About the author
William R. Corliss
108 books18 followersWilliam Roger Corliss was an American physicist and writer who was known for his interest in collecting data regarding anomalous phenomena.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 11, 2016
Sort of like a 'greatest hits' of Corliss's (unfunded!) project to catalog all the reputable reports of the world's mysteries, from St. Elmo's fire to rainfalls of frogs to animals' predictions of earthquakes. While the catalogs are valuable resources to any scientist or person curious about less-studied (because ephemeral, usually) phenomena, they are so thorough as to be dry to the lay reader. Otoh, this Handbook is worth a thorough skim for the reports on the subjects that interest you.
Of special interest to me was Earthquake Weather, as reported by Richard A. Proctor for Living Age in 1884: ... "There is an ominous hush in the air, with a corresponding lull in the conversation for a few seconds, and then somebody says with a yawn, 'It feels to me very much like earthquake weather.' Next minute you notice the piazza gently raised from its underpropping woodwork by some unseen power, observe the teapot quietly deposited in the hostess's lap..."
(Well, to clarify, not all passages are so evocative... and the rest of the report is worth reading for the graceful style, too. Most are earnestly objective, too, the majority are written by scientists and other trained observers.)
I'm also interested in the evidence that domestic animals behave oddly just before earthquakes, as if they are predicting them. Corliss included some reports, but not enough to do more for me than re-invigorate my curiosity.
Corliss doesn't add many of his own ideas, or a narrative, but he did make an interesting observation in his preface to 'Fish, Frogs and other Living Creatures' within the section of "Falling Material." He points out that, of all the anecdotes and reports he has collected in his extensive research, the noteworthy thing about Raining Fish, etc, is how "fastidious" and selective the 'rains' are. Generally the fall is just a certain size, or even a certain species, without the accompanying debris, without other kinds of critters from the same habitat.
J.R. Norman, in the Natural History Magazine of 1928, theorizes that some of these Falls can be explained: "in the case of frogs it possible that numbers of tadpoles may undergo metamorphosis simultaneously, hide if the weather is at all dry and come out into the open with the first rain so suddenly that the appear to have fallen from the sky."
I hope your nearest archival or university library has a copy of this, so you can spelunk for gems for yourself.
*I looked over Lightning, Auroras, Nocturnal Lights, And Related Luminous Phenomena: A Catalog Of Geophysical Anomalies
Of special interest to me was Earthquake Weather, as reported by Richard A. Proctor for Living Age in 1884: ... "There is an ominous hush in the air, with a corresponding lull in the conversation for a few seconds, and then somebody says with a yawn, 'It feels to me very much like earthquake weather.' Next minute you notice the piazza gently raised from its underpropping woodwork by some unseen power, observe the teapot quietly deposited in the hostess's lap..."
(Well, to clarify, not all passages are so evocative... and the rest of the report is worth reading for the graceful style, too. Most are earnestly objective, too, the majority are written by scientists and other trained observers.)
I'm also interested in the evidence that domestic animals behave oddly just before earthquakes, as if they are predicting them. Corliss included some reports, but not enough to do more for me than re-invigorate my curiosity.
Corliss doesn't add many of his own ideas, or a narrative, but he did make an interesting observation in his preface to 'Fish, Frogs and other Living Creatures' within the section of "Falling Material." He points out that, of all the anecdotes and reports he has collected in his extensive research, the noteworthy thing about Raining Fish, etc, is how "fastidious" and selective the 'rains' are. Generally the fall is just a certain size, or even a certain species, without the accompanying debris, without other kinds of critters from the same habitat.
J.R. Norman, in the Natural History Magazine of 1928, theorizes that some of these Falls can be explained: "in the case of frogs it possible that numbers of tadpoles may undergo metamorphosis simultaneously, hide if the weather is at all dry and come out into the open with the first rain so suddenly that the appear to have fallen from the sky."
I hope your nearest archival or university library has a copy of this, so you can spelunk for gems for yourself.
*I looked over Lightning, Auroras, Nocturnal Lights, And Related Luminous Phenomena: A Catalog Of Geophysical Anomalies
April 13, 2017
As I've been using my bedtime reading to re-read some of the various paranormal and Fortean type books that shaped my worldview as a kid, and as I just went through a spate of "High Weirdness" reads (Loren Coleman, with John Keel and such yet to come) - that period in the 70s when the "establishment" writers on paranormal topics began to see their field expanded to include some of the mind-bending/occultism/questioning-reality-itself that got injected into the popular culture by the counterculture - I thought it might be nice to take a quick 180 and return to a book that I really loved when I was younger and which I often thought back on.
There is nothing paranormal, mystical, occultic or otherworldly about this book. Instead, this is part of scientist William R. Corliss' attempt to catalogue, as best he could, the strange, unexplained, but still thoroughly "rooted in science" events of the natural world. It collects reports from established scientific journals (mostly, some newspaper accounts) of events usually observed by trained scientists or skilled experts in their fields. All of these events (with a select few more outré examples) are assumed to plausibly be explainable by science, but the mechanics behind them have either been little studied or their rarity has made them hard to pin down (so, essentially, unexplained but, one hopes, not eventually inexplicable). There were similar collections focused on enigmas of Geology, Astronomy, Biology, The Human Mind, and Ancient Artifacts - but this book concerns events of the natural world and is broken down into chapters on Luminous Phenomena, Optics and Radio anomalies, Unusual Weather Events, Falling Material, Strange Phenomena of Earthquakes, Phenomena of the Hydrosphere, Unusual Natural Sounds and Magnetic Anomalies.
This was really a thrilling book to me as a child. One can sense, from the presentation and the tone, that we are not in the realm of hack writing found in a lot of exploitation paperbacks - none of the vagueness and endless credulity. As much as any book in the "unexplained phenomena" genre may present its reportage as "things that really happened", even as a kid I could tell that the things in this book not only "really happened" but were "more likely to have really happened," given the details found in the reports. Also, much as I continue to note that the books by Charles Fort and John Keel and Loren Coleman of my youth helped preserve in me a sense of the marvelous, of a world where incredible things might happen, this book helped inculcate in me a love of science and the amazing complexity of the natural world. It made me realize that even things which we understood and experienced every day, like thunderstorms and rainbows, very well might have hidden mysteries and odd manifestations if one paid attention - thus, reinforcing a sense of the wondrous.
You'll find the usual subjects here - ball lightning, dark days, falls of ice and animals from the sky, rotating wheels of light seen in the oceans, etc. But you'll also get spotlights on such interesting, and long reported phenomena like Earthquake Lights and Earthquake Weather, mountain glows, odd and enormous hail, the freakish behavior of tornadoes and waterspouts, an enormous selection of strange optical effects of halos, rainbows, mirages, moonbows, sundogs and the like, exploding hail, crackling electrical rain, the weird actions of auroras (including some that seem to occur at ground level, or which emit noise), all kinds of strange distant booms and cracks reported near bodies of water the world over, the odd and inexplicable sounds in Yellowstone park, ghost lights and weird anomalies associated with lightning, earthquakes, and meteors, the singularly strange phenomena of "star jelly" (which is reportedly found after sightings of luminous meteors), thunder stones, singing sands, and on and on and on. As a special note to writers of weird tales - here is a great resource for odd events to weave into the background of stories, events that are unnatural but have a ring of authenticity, because they have been reported as having happened.
Truly a fascinating book - in truth, only the sections on radio anomalies and magnetic disturbances failed to entrance (being abstract and mathematical, lacking the sensorial "hook" with which one could project the event in the imagination). Track down a copy and give it to a budding young scientist - they may grow up to unlock some heretofore unknown secret of the natural world.
There is nothing paranormal, mystical, occultic or otherworldly about this book. Instead, this is part of scientist William R. Corliss' attempt to catalogue, as best he could, the strange, unexplained, but still thoroughly "rooted in science" events of the natural world. It collects reports from established scientific journals (mostly, some newspaper accounts) of events usually observed by trained scientists or skilled experts in their fields. All of these events (with a select few more outré examples) are assumed to plausibly be explainable by science, but the mechanics behind them have either been little studied or their rarity has made them hard to pin down (so, essentially, unexplained but, one hopes, not eventually inexplicable). There were similar collections focused on enigmas of Geology, Astronomy, Biology, The Human Mind, and Ancient Artifacts - but this book concerns events of the natural world and is broken down into chapters on Luminous Phenomena, Optics and Radio anomalies, Unusual Weather Events, Falling Material, Strange Phenomena of Earthquakes, Phenomena of the Hydrosphere, Unusual Natural Sounds and Magnetic Anomalies.
This was really a thrilling book to me as a child. One can sense, from the presentation and the tone, that we are not in the realm of hack writing found in a lot of exploitation paperbacks - none of the vagueness and endless credulity. As much as any book in the "unexplained phenomena" genre may present its reportage as "things that really happened", even as a kid I could tell that the things in this book not only "really happened" but were "more likely to have really happened," given the details found in the reports. Also, much as I continue to note that the books by Charles Fort and John Keel and Loren Coleman of my youth helped preserve in me a sense of the marvelous, of a world where incredible things might happen, this book helped inculcate in me a love of science and the amazing complexity of the natural world. It made me realize that even things which we understood and experienced every day, like thunderstorms and rainbows, very well might have hidden mysteries and odd manifestations if one paid attention - thus, reinforcing a sense of the wondrous.
You'll find the usual subjects here - ball lightning, dark days, falls of ice and animals from the sky, rotating wheels of light seen in the oceans, etc. But you'll also get spotlights on such interesting, and long reported phenomena like Earthquake Lights and Earthquake Weather, mountain glows, odd and enormous hail, the freakish behavior of tornadoes and waterspouts, an enormous selection of strange optical effects of halos, rainbows, mirages, moonbows, sundogs and the like, exploding hail, crackling electrical rain, the weird actions of auroras (including some that seem to occur at ground level, or which emit noise), all kinds of strange distant booms and cracks reported near bodies of water the world over, the odd and inexplicable sounds in Yellowstone park, ghost lights and weird anomalies associated with lightning, earthquakes, and meteors, the singularly strange phenomena of "star jelly" (which is reportedly found after sightings of luminous meteors), thunder stones, singing sands, and on and on and on. As a special note to writers of weird tales - here is a great resource for odd events to weave into the background of stories, events that are unnatural but have a ring of authenticity, because they have been reported as having happened.
Truly a fascinating book - in truth, only the sections on radio anomalies and magnetic disturbances failed to entrance (being abstract and mathematical, lacking the sensorial "hook" with which one could project the event in the imagination). Track down a copy and give it to a budding young scientist - they may grow up to unlock some heretofore unknown secret of the natural world.
February 2, 2017
This book is reminiscent of Charles Fort, but with a more scientific bent--i.e. no appeals to alien intelligences or supernatural causation. Like Fort, it consists of accounts arranged by category, rubrics like radio anomalies, unusual weather, unusual sounds, falling materials, etc. I read it owing to my long standing interest in UFO reports, thinking they'd be addressed (and indeed the Condon report is cited more than once), and because of a peculiar natural phenomenon I once witnessed and have ever since sought some explanation for. What follows is that event, unaddressed in this book.
Some few years ago I was up in NW Wisconsin, on a hill overlooking Hungry Lake, sitting around a firepit with my roommate and with siblings Hanna and Cole Gregory, then both teenagers. We'd built a big fire which had been going since sundown and was now adequately established to handle an approximately 3'x3' old tree trunk that I'd wanted to dispose of.
The trunk still had it bark, some of it moss covered, all of it rather moist. It took a while to catch, but when that started small eruptions occurred from its sides, looking much like 4th of July sparklers hissing and phfsting. That, while new to us, was remarkable, but, we thought, explicable in terms of gasses and salts on and in the wood. What happened later, when the sparking had mostly ended and the wood had dried enough to support flame, however, was, to us, remarkable and inexplicable: a blue, heatless column of light, almost as wide as the trunk itself, appeared, a column rising, like a searchlight beam, from the wood up into the dark sky, a column which lasted for quite a while before ultimately fading away.
This book is filled with inexplicable unusual, but generally well documented, natural phenomena, many of which described in the words of the original witnesses. Like my account, they're mostly pretty boring.
Some few years ago I was up in NW Wisconsin, on a hill overlooking Hungry Lake, sitting around a firepit with my roommate and with siblings Hanna and Cole Gregory, then both teenagers. We'd built a big fire which had been going since sundown and was now adequately established to handle an approximately 3'x3' old tree trunk that I'd wanted to dispose of.
The trunk still had it bark, some of it moss covered, all of it rather moist. It took a while to catch, but when that started small eruptions occurred from its sides, looking much like 4th of July sparklers hissing and phfsting. That, while new to us, was remarkable, but, we thought, explicable in terms of gasses and salts on and in the wood. What happened later, when the sparking had mostly ended and the wood had dried enough to support flame, however, was, to us, remarkable and inexplicable: a blue, heatless column of light, almost as wide as the trunk itself, appeared, a column rising, like a searchlight beam, from the wood up into the dark sky, a column which lasted for quite a while before ultimately fading away.
This book is filled with inexplicable unusual, but generally well documented, natural phenomena, many of which described in the words of the original witnesses. Like my account, they're mostly pretty boring.
February 26, 2015
Now preoccupied almost solely with major breakthroughs in theory and the intersection of science and technology, the journals Nature and Science once lent their attention to observed anomalies. This book is a wonderful compendium of those accounts, free from all crackpot attempts to justify them. This book is the sort of gem that, in a just world, would lurk within the confines of every used bookstore.
May 1, 2015
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11754563
going to give it to the pastors wife as she is a school teacher.
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11754563
going to give it to the pastors wife as she is a school teacher.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews