A great American crank, in the best sense of the word, Charles Hoy Fort (1874-1932) spent his life hunting down reports of "anomalous phenomena"—"damned" events such rains of frogs, cattle mutilations, and UFO sightings—and studying them from a true outsider's perspective, one that characterized even objective science as wearing blinders in its approach to them. In this modern classic of analytical biography, Colin Bennett examines not only the life of this one-man investigator of real-life X-Files but his work as well, likening him to such diverse figures that loom in the cultural imagination as Lee Harvey Oswald and Shakespeare's Hamlet. A must-read for fans of the strange, this riveting book explores why the 20th century, which gave rise to conspiracy-theory philosophies and widespread distrust of social authority, embraced Fort so wholly that his name has been immortalized in the adjective "Fortean."