Encyclopædia Forteana takes inspiration from its namesake, Charles Hoy Fort (1874 - 1932), a quietly eccentric American author who became consumed with cataloguing what he termed "damned data"; data ignored by the scientific community as it conflicted with their dogmatic worldview. He was fascinated by events such as flocks of birds falling from the sky and iron tools found inside lumps of coal, things that escape the "hope and despair of attempted positivism".

Fort saw Truth as an arbitrary "circle in the sea, including a few waves, saying that the other waves […] are positively different". As belief systems change, its dimensions would alter, excluding what was previously included and vice versa. For this reason he was not particularly concerned with searching for meaning within events, choosing instead to use phenomenological truths as a means of inviting his reader to challenge their own ways of understanding the world.

The Encyclopædia does not make assumptions about what things are or why they happen. Its goal is to be an accessible repository for events which appear to be inexplicable, while documenting any interpretations an observer may have had.

Unless otherwise specified, images on the website are sourced from the Public Domain Review and Smithsonian Open Access, and are in the public domain, while text is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.