Charles Fort (1874 – 1932) was an American author famous for his non-fiction books that document unexplained phenomena. Before terms like "UFO" and "cryptid" were coined, Fort's works dealt upon the subject of extraterrestrial visitors and undiscovered animals, as well as psychic abilities, mysterious disappearances, meteorites with unusual properties, cases of animals or unidentified substances raining from the skies, etc. His influence was such that the word "Fortean" has become virtually synonymous with the unknown.
In The Whisperer in Darkness, by H. P. Lovecraft, the main character Albert Wilmarth, initially skeptical about the existence of extraterrestrial creatures from local folklore, mentions how the defenders of such ideas have cited the books of Charles Fort as evidence to back up their claims. In the 2011 movie adaptation of the story, Fort appears as Wilmarth's opponent in a public debate, played by the film's co-writer and co-producer Andrew Leman.
In his 1919 work The Book of the Damned, Fort proposes that some disappearances could be the result of extraterrestrial beings laying down "dragnets" to capture people or animals. This idea might have inspired the concept of the Fishers from Outside, especially how they're described in The Horror from the Hills, by Frank Belknap Long.
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