Читать книгу The Big Book of Mysteries - Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe - Страница 9

FOREWORD

All humans are born with the same shared physical attributes. It doesn’t follow, of course, that we are therefore all like “peas in a pod.” In fact, we appear in endless variety: some taller or broader than others, some more handsome than the rest. Physical differences there may be, but we are all constructed of the same parts.

Temperamentally, however, it’s another story. Here we are often poles apart. To some of us the engine of a car, or the workings of a clock, is a fascinating piece of work. These enthusiasts love nothing better than taking the engine or clock to pieces, working out how the disparate pieces all work together, and then are capable of putting every one of the pieces back together. Others couldn’t care less how mechanical things work: we only get bad-tempered when they don’t.

This complex world of ours has even more for us to wonder about. There is something almost miraculous about the way it works. Equally miraculous are the lengths of daring, of achievement, that some people reach. Wondering at it all is where most of us are content to leave it. If there are scenes of beauty, we simply stand back and admire them. If something seems a mystery to us, we accept it for what it is. Where treasures are known to have once existed and are now lost, we leave others to find them. Where areas of the world are as yet undiscovered, someone else will be the pioneer. Captain Cook, many generations ago, was a man apart. He resolved, cost what it may, to sail where others had never been, to find and chart lands as yet unknown. His voyages made him a national and lifelong hero, but few of us, if offered the chance, would have signed on as one of his crew! Howard Carter spent more than twenty years of his life and vast sums of his partner’s money searching in vain in the vast stretches of the Egyptian deserts until he unearthed the secrets of Tutankhamen’s tomb. Few of us would ever have stood up to so many of those fruitless, disappointing, costly years. Most of us leave the search for truth to others and marvel at their dedication.

The Fanthorpes, certainly, are not like the rest of us. They long to know about the world we share. Indeed, if there was a Nobel Prize to be awarded for those bent on researching the mysteries of this world, they would be candidates for it. They have devoted much of their lives to a search for truth and understanding. They have journeyed many times to that area of France where Bérenger Saunière was once parish priest to trace the source of his unexplained access to immense wealth. They have flown to Canada to the money pit of Oak Island to see if, where so many others have failed, they can recover the treasure it is believed to be protecting. They have spent lonely hours in so-called “haunted houses,” or eerie graveyards, not merely unafraid of apparitions but longing to encounter them. With hindsight, knowing what happened to the Mary Celeste, they would probably have gladly booked a passage on that ill-fated vessel, simply to see for themselves what happened to cause the crew and passengers to disappear.

The Fanthorpes are no doubt both pleased and proud to have some of their work and their investigations included in this book. It may tempt others to follow in their footsteps. If they do, they will need to be stout-hearted and single-minded to match or outdo Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe, whose friendship I have shared over many years.

— Canon Stanley Mogford, MA