Charles Fort.
documentedsource_actorFortean / Mothman / MIB
American writer (1874–1932) who catalogued anomalous 'damned' data science excludes; The Book of the Damned (1919) founded the 'Fortean' tradition Keel and Vallée write inside of.
Coiner-namesake of 'Fortean'/'Forteana.' The Book of the Damned (1919, Boni & Liveright, on Dreiser's recommendation) catalogued falls of fish/frogs/unknown matter, thunderstones, UFO-like sightings (pre-1947), disappearances, poltergeists, and proposed tongue-in-cheek 'super-Sargasso'/'lands in the sky' cosmologies. Title = data 'damned'/excluded by orthodox science. Followed by New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), Wild Talents (1932). Jerome Clark calls him a skeptical satirist; Martin Gardner dismissed him as a crank. Influenced PKD, Heinlein, Robert Anton Wilson; the Fortean Times continues the franchise.