The World's Most Incredible Stories: The Best of Fortean Times

by Adam Sisman

Contains brief accounts of strange coincidences, unexpected appearances and disappearances, unusual animals, odd behavior, and other unexplained phenomena

Genres: Nonfiction, Paranormal, History, Reference

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Adam Sisman is the author of various biographies, all well received by critics.

His first book, published in 1994, was a life of Trevor-Roper's colleague and rival, A.J.P. Taylor. In 2006, Sisman published a much-admired study of the friendship between Wordsworth and Coleridge. He has won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography/Autobiography

Reviews

[J]

I think I had been kind of forewarned about this book's disappointing content but sometimes that doesn't stop me from reading a book and giving it a chance. At this particular time I most definitely should have stayed away from its contents.

Just to make it clear for those who haven't heard about Charles Fort and his fortean studies. If you read the Oxford Dictionary's definition:

Fortean is Relating to or denoting paranormal phenomena.

And that is where my main beef comes in with this book and apparently the periodical that originally wrote the articles that were shared. How hard is it to stick to that definition?

Fortean events due to their very nature are very natural items that become unnatural due to mysterious circumstances that makes them act differently than normal standards dictate. These circumstance changes are usually unexplainable to science and as a result most are swept under the rug without any actual answers being found to explain the event off.

As a result stories of criminals doing dumb things, Guinness World records, a painting elephant, hypertrichosis and some other stuff although possibly interesting is definitely not Fortean.

Another problem I found with this book was the lack of organization. The book was a bit all over the place when it came to mentioning subjects. I would have suggested combining the entries together into similar subjects so all the animals whether ABCs, cryptids or even regular animals would have been in a section or all weather/natural events combined. True some entries could expand into more than one section but I am sure they would have figured it out.

Otherwise the stories were collectively combined so most of them showed up with others of their kind like those that related to electricity. The entries were noticeably removed from each other so that they didn't run into each other and sometimes the captioned spot was used to add another story.

There were also some photographs included but most of them didn't do justice to the actual stories. Of course some things can't be caught or otherwise some of these might not be considered Fortean.

In the end I wouldn't suggest this book for young audiences due to some adult content included. Otherwise it did provide some chuckles in some cases but otherwise I wouldn't recommend this as a good source for Fortean even to an amateur.

[Leonca]

Interesting enough for a reread, but too many urban legends to consider a great source of information.

[TrumanCoyote]

A vastly entertaining salmagundi...although how believable it all is is of course quite another story. And their not infrequent reliance upon (among other scandalous sources) the National Enquirer is more than a trifle daunting.

[C. J. Scurria]

Have this as well as other strange "oddity-type" books but this one is the most fascinating and as equally as disturbing. 'Nuff said.

There's a reason I keep this one cooped away in my basement. I choose to just not glance at it anymore...

[Kevinjwoods]

A nice summary of some of the weirdest stories of the 80s and earlier.