Member-only story
Reclaiming the Damned
Toward a new understanding of Bigfoot, flying saucers, leprechauns and other inconvenient realities
Several years ago a critic wrote about me, “Horowitz is an okay historian, but the guy believes in leprechauns for chrissakes.” That is true — I plead guilty. In this paper, I will try to explain why my critic is right.
Although I am not a crypto-zoologist, I am a great admirer of the paranormal investigator Charles Fort (1874–1932), after whose work this essay is named. People wouldn’t necessarily call me a Fortean, though. I don’t study anomalies. But my critic was referencing a series of events that I once related, which happened to me about 20 years ago in the nation of Belize in Central America.
For those of you who don’t know Belize, it’s a very beautiful, English-speaking country that borders Guatemala and Mexico on the Caribbean. Belize is filled with lush forestry, rainforests, snaking rivers and hills — including vast hills in the highlands, which are the subject of folklore and mysteries.
I was staying in the hill country at an eco-jungle lodge founded by a very enterprising couple and…
