THE PARANORMAL PHENOMENON.

Paranormal phenomenon describes anything that is above, beyond, or contrary to the bounds of the established world around us. It includes extrasensory perception (ESP), telekinesis, ghosts, life after death, reincarnation, faith healing, human auras, and so forth. The explanation of these phenomena sometimes are phrased in terms of psychic forces, human energy fields, and so on. It also covers several sub-disciplines, including Ufology, Crypto-zoology, and Para-psychology.
The term itself was coined in 1973 by Drew University anthropologist Roger W. Wescott, who defined it as being the serious and systematic study of all phenomena that fail to fit the picture of reality provided for us by common sense or by the established science.
Wescott credited journalist and researcher Charles Fort (August 6, 1874 - May 3, 1932) as being the creator of the paranormal phenomenon as a field of research, and Wescott named biologist Ivan T. Sanderson and Source Book Project compiler William R. Corliss as being instrumental in expanding the research into the phenomenon and to introduce a more conventional perspective into the field.
Charles Fort was of Dutch ancestry. His grocer father was an authoritarian and a physical abuser. Fort's distrust of authority had its roots in his treatment as a child and develop his strong sense of freedom and independence in his early years. He was described as curious and intelligent. As a young adult, he wanted to be a naturalist, and he collected sea shells, minerals, and birds. He was quite knowledgeable about the world that came by his extensive reading. At the age of 18, he left New York on a world tour to "put some capital in the bank of experience."He travelled through Western USA, Scotland, and England, until failing ill in South Africa. Returning home, he was nursed by Ana Filing, a girl he had known from his childhood. They were married on October 26, 1896, when he was 22 years old. Anna was 4 years older than him and was non-literally but a lover of films and of parakeets. They moved to London for 2 years. During that time, when he was not busy with his research, they went to the cinema.
He perused the files, concerning paranormal phenomenon, of the British Museum. His success as a short story writer was intermittent between periods of terrible poverty and depression. Although born in Albany, when the couple came back from London, they settled in the Bronx. He, like his wife, was fond of films, and often went together to the nearby movie theater. He frequented the parks near Bronx, where he would sift through piles of his clippings of information taken from the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue. He spent many hours reading scientific and non-scientific journals along with an armful of newspapers and periodicals from around the world. He had a very small circle of literary friends that share the same theme in their talkative gatherings.
When his uncle died in 1916, a modest inheritance was given to him enough to quit his various day jobs and to write full-time. In 1917 his brother died and his portion of the same inheritance was divided between him and another brother. Fort's experience as a journalist, coupled with high wit egged on by a contrary nature, prepared him for his real-life work, needling the pretensions of scientific positivism and the tendency of journalists and editors of newspapers and scientific journals to rationalize the scientifically incorrect. He wrote 10 novels, although only one, 'The Outcast Manufacturers (1909)' was published. Reviews were positive, the tenement of the tail was out of his time. In 1915, in his forties, he began to write 2 books, the first dealing with the idea that beings on Mars controlled Earth's events, and the second postulated a sinister civilization extant at the South Pole. The books caught the attention of writer Theodore Dreiser, who attempted to get them published, but to no avail. Disheartened, Fort burnt the manuscripts. But soon he was renewed to begin work on the book that changed the course of his life, 'The Book of the Damned (1919)," which Dreiser helped to get into print. The book referred to 'damned' data that Ford collected, phenomena for which science could not account and thus rejection or ignorance did not exist. Fort took thousands of notes in his lifetime. Fort spoke of sitting on a park bench and tossing a large amount of notes into the wind. In his short story, "The Giant, the Insect, and the Philanthropic-looking Old Gentleman,"Fort used his own data collection technique to solve the mystery. He observed that unrelated bits of information were interrelated. He destroyed many times his own work, and started again to collect new data aiming to new results. Some of them has been published little by little by the Fortean Society magazine "Doubt," and, upon the death of its editor Tiffany Thayer aged 57, in 1959, then most of Fort's information were donated to New York Public Library.
Fort was pleasant to find himself in the midst of the emotional attachment that his fans had to the object of his research. Fort distrusted doctors and did not seek conventional medical help for his worsening health, given the fact the he was dealing with supernatural forces that drained his energy. Suffering from poor health and failing eyesight, he died, probably from leukemia.
Drew University, the first institution that went into deep research on that subject, started as a theological seminary to train candidates for ministry in the Methodist church. Daniel Drew (July 29, 1797-Sept 18,1879), a great operator of Wall Street that furnished the most remarkable instance of success followed by utter failure and hopeless bankruptcy, was the one who purchased an estate in Madison to establish the 'seminary.' The seminary later expanded to offer 'an undergraduate liberal arts' curriculum in 1928 and graduate studies in 1955. The 'Drew Theological School', the 3rd-oldest of 13 Methodist seminaries is affiliated with the United Methodist Church.
Drew was born in Carmel, a town in Putnam County, New York. He was poorly educated and saw hardship after his father, who owned a small cattle farm, died when Daniel was 15 years old. Drew enlisted and drilled, though did not see face to face combat in the Conflict between United States and United Kingdom. After the conflict, he spent some time with a traveling zoo. In 1820, he moved to New York City and established himself at the Bull's Head Tavern in the Bowery, a place frequented by drovers and butchers doing business in the city. While running the Tavern, he formed a partnership with two other drovers, buying cattle from neighboring counties and bringing them to New York for sale. In 1834, he was married and entered the steamboat business and ran profitable lines outside New York City. Around this time, Drew began to speculate in stocks. He founded a brokerage firm but a decade later his partners died and he continue in the brokerage business as an independent operator. After a while in 1857, he managed to be a member of the board of directors of the Erie Railroad and used his position to manipulate the railroad stock price. He joined forces again with another one in the business but in 1864 he was struggling with his partner and speculating on the stock of New York and Harlem since he and his partner were the director of both, rescuing both railroad firms from bankruptcy because of the manipulation of the stocks. In 1866 to 1868, Drew engaged in another conflict with the same partner Vanderbilt, in which Drew conspired along with fellow directors James Fisk and Jay Gould to issue stock to keep Vanderbilt from gaining control of the Erie Railroad. Vanderbilt, unaware of the increase in outstanding shares, kept buying Erie stock and sustained heavy losses, eventually conceding control of the railroad to the trio. In 1870, the two fellow directors Fisk and Gould betrayed Drew, manipulating the stock price again of the Erie Railroad, cause Drew to lose $ 1.5 million. Fisk was killed in January 1872 by a jealous rival over a mistress; Gould himself would later be swindled out of $1,000,000 worth of Erie railroad stock and never controlled it. For Drew, the Panic of 1873 cost him more, and by 1876, Drew filled for bankruptcy, with debts exceeding a million dollars and no viable assets. He died in 1879, dependent on his son for support.
Daniel Drew, from which the university took its name, left a controversial legacy, in the same symbolic way the 'seminary school' turned in something else. At the zenith of his 'career' as a 'financer', when his personal fortune was estimated at $13 million at that time, and he was 'respectfully' called "Uncle Sam' on Wall Street, he was treated with admiration. After his 'fortunes' changed, he was vilified by the newspapers, which wrote that Drew 'has been one of the curses of the market for years past, ... he holds the honest people of the world to be a pack of fools."
Drew is credited with introducing what would be called "watered stock" to the Wall Street, to describe company shares that were issued by false means including counterfeit stock certificates and unauthorized stock release, resulting in a dilution of ownership. The term came from his time in the livestock business, when he would have 'his cattle' lick salt and drink water before selling them, to increase 'weight.' The watered stock tactic was used in the Erie conflict of the 1860s, when Drew along with James Fisk and jay Gould blocked arch rival Cornelius Vanderbilt from getting ownership of the Erie railroad.
Daniel Drew is credited with the nature of the saying: "He who sells what is not his, must buy it back or go to prison," in the physical and spiritual way.
A 'devout' Methodist, Drew built his own churches in Carmel and Brewster, New York, and was the major contributor to the founding of Drew Theological Seminary in Madison, New Jersey, which is now part of Drew University.