Читать книгу The Big Book of Mysteries - Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe - Страница 8

INTRODUCTION

We live in an incredibly strange universe. From the tiniest of its subatomic particles to the farthest of its ever-accelerating galaxies, it challenges the most daringly imaginative scientists and philosophers to make some sort of sense of it.

We have been investigating and researching all kinds of unsolved mysteries, paranormal and anomalous phenomena for the best part of a half-century. Whenever possible, we have interviewed eyewitnesses and visited the sites where the mysteries were reported: Oak Island, Nova Scotia; Rennes-le-Château in France; the Chase Elliot Vault in Barbados (where heavy lead coffins moved around); and Croglin Grange, with its sinister vampire traditions. Unsolved mysteries still intrigue us today as much as they did when we took on the very first investigation.

Charles Fort (1874–1932) had the right attitude toward the unexplained: nothing is so firmly proved that it can’t be re-examined — and nothing is so ridiculously improbable that it isn’t worth looking into.

There is a serious side to investigating the paranormal, in addition to the sheer fascination of exploring the unknown for its own sake. If we want to find out more about what’s really out there, then looking in the strangest places is more likely to yield new data than going over familiar territory.

In our adventures into the anomalous we always try to be as objective, as open-minded, and as scientific as possible. We collect the data, examine it critically, evaluate it, categorize it, and formulate a theory or two and test them in so far as it’s possible to test them. If they stand up to every test we can devise — promote them to the rank of possible explanations of the phenomenon being investigated. If more data comes along, then pop the old theories into retirement and formulate some new ones.

We greatly hope that our readers will enjoy exploring the mysteries in this Big Book of Mysteries as much as we have enjoyed anthologizing them.

The authors are deeply indebted to Canon Stanley Mogford for contributing the Foreword. He is rightly regarded as one of the foremost scholars in Wales.