Henry Boyd Raft founded the League of Raftean Examiners in New York city in the 1930’s. Raft was an eccentric journalist who witnessed the disappearance of Cecelia Tremaine in central park. Henry spent the next thirty years of his life devoted to investigating weird and esoteric phenomena around the United States. Raft enlisted colleagues in journalist and academic circles to research events he could not investigate personally. He also founded the Raftean News, a monthly magazine that highlighted oddities for the public.
After his death in 1962, the magazine passed among several of his investigators until 1972 when it was shuttered. In the ten years between Raft’s death and the last issue of the magazine, the League of Raftean Examiners established their national organization. This was also the first year of the national LoRE Convention.
Since then, LoRE has remained a loose network of academics, journalists and amateur investigators. They still seek out unexplained (or poorly understood) phenomena like ball lightning, the Brown Mountain Lights, ooparts, spontaneous human combustion, rains of unusual animals or materials, and UFO’s. The most recent convention in Chicago counted over fifteen hundred attendees. Lectures included collecting, sharing and publishing data on a variety of unexplained phenomena.
Herbert Allan, former history professor at Valparaiso University, and his wife Ginny were major organizers for the annual LoRE convention. Allan still maintains connections with many of his former Examiner colleagues. Many of these colleagues have begun an uncoordinated investigation of paranormal events since the solstice.