Feb. 7, 1922—an explosion “of startling intensity” in the sky of the
northwestern point of the London Triangle (_Nature_, Feb. 23, 1922).
Repeating phenomena in a local sky—in _L’Astronomie_, 36-201, it is said
that, at Orsay (Seine-et-Oise) Feb. 15, 1922, a detonation was heard in
the sky, and that 9 hours later a similar sound was heard, and that an
illumination was seen in the sky. It is said that, 10 nights later, at
Verneuil, in the adjoining province, Oise, a great, fiery mass was seen
falling from the sky.
March 12, 1922—rocks that had been falling “from the clouds,” for three
weeks, at Chico, a town in an “earthquake region” in California (New
York _Times_, March 12, 1922). Large, smooth rocks that “seemed to come
straight from the clouds.”
In the San Francisco _Chronicle_, in issues dating from the 12th to the
18th of March—clippings sent to me by Mr. Maynard Shipley, writer and
lecturer upon scientific subjects, if there be such subjects—the
accounts are of stones that, for four months, had been falling
intermittently from the sky, almost always upon the roofs of two
adjoining warehouses, in Chico, but, upon one occasion, falling three
blocks away: “a downpour of oval-shaped stones”; “a heavy shower of warm
rocks.” San Francisco _Call_, March 16—“warm rocks.” It is said that
crowds gathered, and that upon the 17th of March a “deluge” of rocks
fell upon a crowd, injuring one person. The police “combed” all
surroundings: the only explanation that they could think of was that
somebody was firing stones from a catapult. One person was suspected by
them, but, upon the 14th of March, a rock fell when he was known not to
be in the neighborhood.
The circumstances point to one origin of these stones, stationary in the
sky, above the town of Chico.
Upon the first of January, 1922, the attention of Marshal J. A. Peck, of
Chico, had been called to the phenomena. After investigating more than
two months, he said (San Francisco _Examiner_, March 14) “I could find
no one through my investigations who could explain the matter. At
various times I have heard and seen the stones. I think someone with a
machine is to blame.”
Prof. C. K. Studley, vice-president of the Teachers’ College, Chico, is
quoted in the _Examiner_:
“Some of the rocks are so large that they could not be thrown by any
ordinary means. One of the rocks weighs 16 ounces. They are not of
meteoric origin, as seems to have been hinted, because two of them show
signs of cementation, either natural or artificial, and no meteoric
factor was ever connected with a cement factory.”
Once upon a time, dogmatists supposed, asserted, angrily declared
sometimes, that all stones that fall from the sky must be of “true
meteoric material.” That time is now of the past. See _Nature_,
105-759—a description of two dissimilar stones, cemented together, seen
to fall from the sky, at Cumberland Falls, Ky., April 9, 1919.
Miriam Allen de Ford (P. O. Box 573, San Francisco, Cal.—or see the
_Readers’ Guide_) has sent me an account of her own observations. About
the middle of March, 1922, she was in Chico, and investigated. Went to
the scene of the falling rocks; discussed the subject with persons in
the crowd. “While I was discussing it with some bystanders, I looked up
at the cloudless sky, and suddenly saw a rock falling straight down, as
if becoming visible when it came near enough. This rock struck the roof
with a thud, and bounced off on the track beside the warehouse, and I
could not find it.” “I learned that the rocks had been falling since
July, 1921, though no publicity arose until November.”
There have been other phenomena at Chico. In the New York _Times_, Sept.
2, 1878, it is said that, upon the 20th of August, 1878, according to
the Chico _Record_, a great number of small fishes fell from the sky, at
Chico, covering the roof of a store, and falling in the streets, upon an
area of several acres. Perhaps the most important observation is that
they fell from a cloudless sky. Several occurrences are listed as
earthquakes, by Dr. Holden, in his Catalog; but the detonations that
were heard at Oroville, a town near Chico, Jan. 2, 1887, are said, in
the _Monthly Weather Review_, 1887-24, to have been in the sky. Upon the
night of March 5-6, 1885, according to the Chico _Chronicle_, a large
object, of very hard material, weighing several tons, fell from the sky,
near Chico (_Monthly Weather Review_, March, 1885). In the year 1893, an
iron object, said to be meteoritic, was found at Oroville (_Mems. Nat.
Acad. Sci._, 13-345).
My own idea is either that there is land over the town of Chico, and not
far away, inasmuch as objects from it fall with a very narrow
distribution, or that far away, and therefore invisible, there may be
land from which objects have been carried in a special current to one
very small part of this earth’s surface. If anyone would like to read an
account of stones that fell intermittently for several days, clearly
enough as if in a current, or in a field of special force, of some kind,
at Livet, near Clavaux, France, December, 1842, see the London _Times_,
Jan. 13, 1843. There have been other such occurrences. Absurdly, when
they were noticed at all, they were supposed to be psychic phenomena. I
conceive that there is no more of the psychic to these occurrences than
there is to the arrival of seeds from the West Indies upon the coast of
England. Stones that fell upon a house, near the Pantheon, Paris, for
three weeks, January, 1849—see Dr. Wallace’s _Miracles and Modern
Spiritualism_, p. 284. Several times, in the course of this book, I have
tried to be reasonable. I have asked what such repeating phenomena in
one local sky do indicate, if they do not indicate fixed origins in the
sky. And if such occurrences, supported by many data in other fields, do
not indicate the stationariness of this earth, with new lands not far
away—tell me what it is all about. The falling stones of Chico—new lands
in the sky—or what?
Boston _Transcript_, March 21, 1922—clipping sent to me by Mr. J. David
Stern, Editor and Publisher of the Camden (N. J.) _Daily Courier_—
“Geneva, March 21—During a heavy snow storm in the Alps recently
thousands of exotic insects resembling spiders, caterpillars, and huge
ants fell on the slopes and quickly died. Local naturalists are unable
to explain the phenomenon, but one theory is that the insects were blown
in on the wind from a warmer climate.”
The fall of unknown insects in a snow storm is not the circumstance that
I call most attention to. It is worth noting that I have records of half
a dozen similar occurrences in the Alps, usually about the last of
January, but the striking circumstance is that insects of different
species and of different specific gravities fell together. The
conventional explanation is that a wind, far away, raised a great
variety of small objects, and segregated them according to specific
gravity, so that twigs and grasses fell in one place, dust some other
place, pebbles somewhere else, and insects farther along somewhere. This
would be very fine segregation. There was no very fine segregation in
this occurrence. Something of a seasonal, or migratory, nature, from
some other world, localized in the sky, relatively to the Alps, is
suggested.
May 4, 1922—discovery, by F. Burnerd, of three long mounds in the lunar
crater Archimedes. See the _English Mechanic_, 115-194, 218, 268, 278.
It seems likely that these constructions had been recently built.
St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, May 18, 1922 (_Associated Press_)—particles
of matter falling continuously for several days. “The phenomenon is
supposed here to be of volcanic origin, but all the volcanoes of the
West Indies are reported as quiet.”
New York _Tribune_, July 3, 1922—that, for the fourth time in one month,
a great volume of water, or a “cloudburst,” had poured from one local
sky, near Carbondale, Pa.
Oct. 15, 1922—a large quantity of white substance that fell upon the
shores of Lake Michigan, near Chicago. It fell upon the clothes of
hundreds of persons, fell upon the campus of Northwestern University,
likely enough fell upon the astronomical observatory of the University.
It occurred to one of these hundreds, or thousands, of persons to
collect some of this substance. He is Mr. L. A. Hopkins, 111 West
Jackson Blvd., Chicago. He sent me a sample. I think that it is spider
web, because it is viscous: when burned it chars with the crinkled
effect of burned hair and feathers, and the odor is similar. But it is
strong, tough substance, of a cottony texture, when rolled up. The
interesting circumstance to me is that similar substance has fallen
frequently upon this earth, in October, but that, in terrestrial terms,
seasonal migrations of aëronautical spiders can not be thought of,
because in the tropics and in Australia, as well as in the United States
and in England, such showers have occurred in October. Then something
seasonal, but seasonal in an extra-mundane sense, is suggested. See the
_Scientific Australian_, Sept., 1916—that, from October 5 to 29, 1915,
an enormous fall of similar substance occurred upon a region of
thousands of square miles, in Australia.
Time after time, in data that I have only partly investigated, occur
declarations that, during devastations commonly known as “earthquakes,”
in Chile, the sky has flamed, or that “strange illuminations” in the sky
have been seen. In the _Bul. Seis. Soc. Amer._, for instance, some of
these descriptions have been noted, and have been hushed up with the
explanation that they were the reports of unscientific persons.
Latest of the great quakes in Chile—1,500 dead “recovered” in one of the
cities of the Province of Atacama. New York _Tribune_, Nov. 15,
1922—“Again, today, severe earthquakes shook the Province of Coquimbo
and other places, and strange illuminations were observed over the sea,
off La Serena and Copiapo.”
Back to Crater Mountain, Arizona, for an impression—but far more
impressive are similar data as to these places of Atacama and Copiapo,
in Chile. In the year 1845, M. Darlu, of Valparaiso, read, before the
French Academy, a paper, in which he asserted that, in the desert of
Atacama, which begins at Copiapo, meteorites are strewn upon the ground
in such numbers that they are met at every step. If these objects fell
all at one time in this earthquake region, we have another instance
conceivably of mere coincidence between the aërial and the seismic. If
they fell at different times, the indications are of a fixed
relationship between this part of Chile and a center somewhere in the
sky of falling objects commonly called “meteorites” and of cataclysms
that devastate this part of Chile with concussions commonly called
“earthquakes.” There is a paper upon this subject in _Science_, 14-434.
Here the extreme abundance asserted by M. Darlu is questioned: it is
said that only thirteen of these objects were known to science. But,
according to descriptions, four of them are stones, or stone-irons,
differing so that, in the opinion of the writer, and not merely so
interpreted by me, these four objects fell at different times. Then the
nine others are considered. They are nickel-irons. They, too, are
different, one from another. So then it is said that these thirteen
objects, all from one place, were, with reasonable certainty, the
products of different falls.
Behind concepts that sometimes seem delirious, I offer—a reasonable
certainty—
That, existing somewhere beyond this earth, perhaps beyond a revolving
shell in which the nearby stars are openings, there are stationary
regions, from which, upon many occasions, have emanated “meteors,”
sometimes exploding catastrophically over Atacama, Chile, for instance.
Coasts of South America have reeled, and the heavens have been afire.
Reverberations in the sky—the ocean has responded with islands. Between
sky and earth of Chile there have been flaming intimacies of destruction
and slaughter and woe—
Silence that is conspiracy to hide past ignorance; that is imbecility,
or that is the unawareness of profoundest hypnosis.