International Fortean Organization

"[6] Colin Wilson said he wished to assure The American Spectator that Charles Fort is far from forgotten and credited the publishing efforts of the International Fortean Organization's INFO Journal.

The organization was formed in the early 1960s by brothers, the writers Ron and Paul Willis, who acquired much of the material of the original Fortean Society which had begun in 1932 in the spirit of Charles Fort but which had grown silent by 1959 with the death of its founder Tiffany Thayer.

The Fortean Society was formed by a friend of Charles Fort, Theodore Dreiser, who had threatened his publisher that he would leave if The Book of the Damned was not put into print.

Dan Oldenburg in The Washington Post said of the all-volunteer staffed International Fortean Organization, "Its membership ranges from hard-core skeptics to top scholars to true believers -- but its cornerstone is open-mindedness."

The Willis brothers owned a bookstore in the States (Arlington, Virginia) and were also publishers of SF fanzines and magazines of speculative fiction and non-fiction, notably "Anubis".

Ron Willis, with help from his brother Paul, and in collaboration with Jacques Bergier, in 1974 brought out the book, Extraterrestrial Intervention, the Evidence, published by Henry Regnary Company in the US and as in France as Le Livre de l'inexplicable by Editions Alvin Michel.

The Willis', under the banner of the International Fortean Organization, had also started a conference called FortFest with speeches given by and largely attended by those working in the field of anomalous phenomena.

Keel was, and still is, an advisor and friend to INFO and would give FortFest a generous plug during his stint as a contributing editor at Fate Magazine and be available for midnight wit and wisdom consultations.

The four books by Fort are unabridged and unaltered, but the 1941 Introduction by Tiffany Thayer has been omitted...The present edition has had the encouragement and cooperation of the International Fortean Organization (Info), P.O.

An office was found for INFO's 10,000+ books and large collection of clippings, files, and magazines such as the complete issues of "Doubt" dating back to the original Fortean Society along with letters from Theodore Dreiser, Tiffany Thayer and Ben Hecht.