Yes, I know that I have ignored this Substack, along with nearly every other aspect of my life. I promised myself that I would do nothing else until I finished my new book — a work I began to research roughly fifty years ago. Frankly, I should have crossed the finish line months ago (maybe years ago). But new discoveries meant new deadlines, and the discoveries just kept coming. This book is the BIG one, brimming with original research. It will surprise and baffle even the most seasoned weirdness connoisseur.

The title: Mysterialis. This Latin word means “mysterious” — with connotations of the spiritual. The fresh material in this work will (I hope) transform Fortean studies. I finished the final chapter a few hours ago, though the editing needs a few more passes. But there’s one huge obstacle…

I lose the internet tomorrow.

Frankly, we’ve long been in danger of losing our home. That’s why I’ve attacked this project with such maniacal intensity. This book will represent me after I’m gone.

You’ve read a zillion internet sob stories. I didn’t want to hit you with another. But a few words of explanation may be in order: I have serious health issues (full blockage in one artery), and my for-pay editing work has dried up. I used to make money as an illustrator/designer, but it seems that a fella named “Alvin Ivan” has grabbed all the gigs.

Cheeky devil, Alvin is.

The lady with whom I share my life was severely beaten in a racial incident. She came to the aid of another victim and the mob turned its fury on her. She now has permanent brain damage. Dizziness, constant headaches, aphasia, occasional loss of memory.

She has applied for disability, but the process takes up to a year. She can’t work. She can’t file for unemployment. Catch 22. We have tried every trick in the book to stay afloat — everything is for sale — but we probably remain months away from any kind of steady income.

Without the internet, I can’t put Mysterialis before the public. So here is my scheme:

I will send a free PDF or Kindle version to anyone who offers any donation of ten bucks or more. (And frankly, if all you can offer is five bucks, I’ll let you see the thing anyways.) Just hit the link above (the text in blue).

I promise: This book really is the Big One. It should clock in at 500-to-600 pages. Much of it will focus on some truly incredible — and well-documented — enigmas previously unpublished, at least in English. Do not expect the familiar.

That said, I will also include a few familiar cases — but only because I have discovered new material that kinda sorta changes everything. This project involved a ton of translation. That “French I took” actually came in handy.

I write from a radically objective standpoint which is certain to irk both capital-S Skeptics and capital-B Believers. In other words, I write from a Fortean perspective.

If you know my previous work, you’ll know that I dig footnotes. Expect hundreds of footnotes.

Stylistically, this book is meant to be compulsively readable, not dry and academic. I’ll dance on stilts if that’s what it takes to grab your attention. I see no reason why one cannot maintain scholarly standards in a book filled with wry humor and memorable imagery.

Mysterialis is about Marian apparitions. BEFORE YOU JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS: Here’s the opening…

I’d rather eat a cockroach than visit a church.

Okay, that’s not really true: Many churches feature wonderful architecture and artworks, and one of my happiest memories involves a fine performance of the Mozart Requiem at an Episcopal church in Hollywood. I have had friends who went to houses of worship fairly often, no gunpoint required, and I never scoffed or made them feel ill-at-ease.

But you must understand that I define myself as a Fortean — that is, as a student of odd claims and paranormal controversies. (The name derives from Charles Fort, an eccentric writer of the early 20th century.) A true Fortean dislikes most explanatory theories, even the ones he has devised himself, because a true Fortean follows John Keel’s famous dictum: Belief is the enemy. (Keel was an eccentric writer of the mid-to-late 20th century.) A man who does not believe in belief probably won’t feel at home in any house of worship.

Similarly, a proud misanthrope — as I have become — will always find the word “fellowship” a surer emetic than Ipecac syrup. What on earth do people see in those megachurches? They’re filled with people! The only form of Christian practice that ever appealed to me was pioneered by Simeon Stylites, although I would need an internet connection. And maybe a flush toilet.

Though irreligious, I am not anti-religious, unless you offer even the subtlest whisper of a signal that you’re out to score a conversion, in which case you may expect a thermonuclear response. And that goes double for the evangelical atheists.

So why would an antibeliever spend a large portion of his life researching visions of the Virgin?

My first paranormal investigation set me on this path.

Nearly every Fortean researcher will, at one point or another, bear personal witness to at least one unexplained event. The following story is the earliest and most transformative in my tiny collection.

For decades, I have kept that story hidden from most of my friends and lovers. I can tell it now because my brother, who insisted on secrecy, recently passed away. He was involved. There were other witnesses to the event; they’re still alive.

So: Can you help a fellow Fortean stay online? Now that I’m only a few yards away from the finish line, can you help me cross over?

And even if you have no interest in a work like Mysterialis, can you help Janet — the most wonderful lady who ever lived? She didn’t deserve what happened to her.

Sweartagod: That woman never had a bigoted bone in her body. She was just trying to help someone who was beaten and sprawled on the concrete. It was a time of hot blood, and the blood was hers.

Incidentally, that incident happened in front of a Royal Farms convenience store. The employees were among the people who beat Janet. We think that she has a good case against the company — but so far, no law firm has been willing to take her case on contingency. If you have a recommendation — she lives in the Baltimore area — we would love to hear from you. She made a police report, and she has scads of medical documentation to prove that her injury is quite real and probably permanent.

(Apparently, lawyers love to deal with workplace injury cases, not assault cases.)

Right now, even if she gets disability — and I’m sure she will — she will need someone to take care of her. I’m all she has. Once my ticker stops ticking, I don’t know what comes next.

Whatever happens, I’m glad I wrote this book.

Coming up: NEW material about MKULTRA

Presuming that the internet stays lit up: After I’m done editing my book, I plan to have a few words to say about the laughable “MKULTRA” congressional hearings occurring at present. So far, all I’ve seen are the same old stories, packaged as new.

Yep, it’s same trick Bondi tried to pull regarding the Epstein files. Remember when she packaged a bunch of old old old stuff and pretended that it was actually new new new stuff? That’s what’s going on now.

Yes, I am an expert. I embarked on a serious study of MKULTRA about six months before Congresswoman Luna was born. (Luna heads the current proceedings.) MKULTRA ended in 1963 (except for seven relatively inconsequential subprojects). Few people understand that the CIA’s research into the control of behavior and perception continued under the newly-established Office of Research and Development.

The ORD files are where you will find the real shit — if they ever get released. What the boys at ORD found made MKULTRA seem tepid.

No other independent researcher has made a similar effort to learn about the post-1963 research. For all the mistakes I’ve made in life — and God knows I have made plenty — I can, at the very least, brag that I tried to get at the unpublished story.

The ORD cryptonyms have never been revealed. Most people don’t even know the two-letter bigram associated with ORD. I do. I learned that bit of information back in 1988. (I privately told Tanner Boyle about it some weeks ago.) Once we learn the full cryptonyms, FOIA can open the floodgates — and what we know about those programs will expand a hundredfold.

When this column resumes, I’ll let everyone know what I know.

I’ll talk about the fellow whom I believe to be the man in charge of (much of) the ORD research. His name is well-known to folks in the research community. I won’t just point an accusatory finger: I’ll present evidence.

Trust me. This humble Substack column will reveal far more than Luna’s committee will give you.

Should I add “probably”? Okay. Let’s be generous. This humble Substack column will probably reveal more new information than Luna’s committee will give you.

Maybe she will surprise us. I don’t have much hope, but anything is possible in this wacky world.

Again: Please help us stay online. And please help the sweetest lady in the world survive this grueling waiting period.

If you have a book that needs editing, illustrating or print-ready design, let me know! I’ll work for loose change.

Sorry I was AFK for a while. I’m working on a book. Actually, I’m working on about three books at once — and I’m not sure which one will reach the finish line first. But it occurs to me that completing a book means selling a book, and everyone says that a Substack newsletter is one good way of keeping in the public eye. Besides, with war, inflation, illiteracy, the forthcoming AI apocalypse and other hideosities dominating our news cycles, I believe that we should occasionally turn our attention to more elevated topics.

How about UFOs? They’re pretty elevated. Some of ‘em go up real high. (And no, I won’t switch to the awful new term that people keep telling me to use. This old dog poops on your new tricks.)

Specifically, I’d like to draw your attention to a few tales from Alabama, a state which I’ve never visited. But I know that the Yellowhammer State has a rich Fortean history — from the White Thang seen in Etowah County and elsewhere, to the specters said to romp and stomp around the long-abandoned Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham.

The folks in that state also have their fair share of alarming anecdotes about alleged aliens and assorted aerial anomalies.

Fyffe

The Fyffe UFO Days festival is an annual event honoring a notable “flap” which occurred on the night of February 11-12, 1989. A large proportion of the town’s 1500 residents — including the police chief and his assistant — saw a flying oddity, usually described as massive and triangular, with a bright light in the center. Some described the object as banana-shaped or bowl-shaped. A photograph published in the Gadsden Times (March 11, 1989) shows only an indistinct oval blob; the long exposure time explains the lack of detail.

The initial event drew crowds on following nights. Sightings continued, but they were less impressive.

Reports were similar, usually a bright white light with red and green flashing lights. State Troopers, however, judged at least half of those sightings to be an airplane they viewed taking off and landing from the Albertville airport.

Some suspect that large, triangular UFOs are experimental lighter-than-air military craft. It should be noted that Huntsville is only 40 miles away from Fyffe.

Falkville

The Metal Man of Alabama appeared on October 17, 1973 — a banner year for High Weirdness across the country.

Police Chief Jeff Greenhaw (26) received a report of a landed spaceship in a certain rural field owned by one Bobby Summerford. The cop grabbed his Polaroid camera and drove out to investigate. He found not a ship but a metallic humanoid: “He was real bright, something like rubbing mercury on nickel, but just as smooth as glass.” (Perhaps it was the Silver Surfer, protesting the cancellation of his comic book?) When the lawman greeted this visitor with a cheerful “Howdy, stranger,” the Metal Man stomped toward him with jerky, robotic movements.

Greenhaw managed to snap four shots of the entity. The images shows a human-shaped creature apparently encased in aluminum foil; the pictures do not depict the antenna which (said Greenhaw) stuck out of the top of the head. The blue lights of the police vehicle startled the creature, which ran off with superhuman speed.

The photos were sent to MUFON for analysis. A certain degree of confusion arose when MUFON released a 35-image contact sheet, on which the first three images depict a classic flying saucer – or rather, what appears to be a flying saucer model hanging from a tree branch in the daytime. The other images mostly show various enlargements of the four “Metal Man” photos. Greenhaw insisted that he saw no spaceship at all, and that he had arrived at the field at 10 pm. It has been suggested that the saucer images were part of an unrelated MUFON case which somehow got mixed up with the Falkville batch. That explanation makes sense.

Naturally, many suspect that the Metal Man encounter was a hoax. But did Greenhaw perpetrate a hoax, or was he the target of one?

Personally, I doubt that he was the perpetrator. A run of bad luck hit Greenhaw after the encounter: Townsfolk ridiculed him, he lost both his job and his wife, and his home burned down. His report did him no good whatsoever.

Loxley

Another well-known UFO report occurred in Alabama on that same night, October 17, 1973. A cigar-shaped UFO supposedly used a green ray to beam Clarence Patterson and his pickup truck into the craft; he had been driving near Loxley, Alabama, some 260 miles north of Falkville. He encountered six robotic beings who (he claimed) could read his mind. Soon, all went black; the next thing he knew, he was back on the highway again, driving his truck 90 mph.

So runs the story. I’ve not seen any interviews with Patterson himself.

Decatur

On April 25, 2008, an unusual light in the sky was seen over a wide area. The strange whatzit apparently came to earth beside the Aquadome, a public recreational facility next to the Brookhaven Middle School (located in a densely populated suburb).

The landing was witnessed by high school student Cody Terry (17; incorrectly identified as female in a couple of online accounts) and a friend, who drove a car while following the flying object. At first, the two young men presumed the whatzit to be a troubled aircraft. The thing seemed to accelerate as it descended – yet it made no noise on impact. Published accounts suggest that the object came to earth just out of Terry’s line of sight.

Three military helicopters and an ambulance appeared with near-miraculous rapidity. As the object was placed within the ambulance, Cody got a fairly clear glimpse of the thing: “To me, it looked like a giant pearl, shiny, put off a diamond kind of reflection on it.” There were no bodies of any kind. The ambulance drove off in the direction of Huntsville, home of the Redstone Army Arsenal and the U.S. Army Space and Military Defense Command.

Reporters from TV station WAFF confirmed that there was one military chopper in the air that night. Authorities proffered a vague story about a meteor. As all true Forteans know, the 1995 Conspiracy Theorist Full Employment Act compels authorities to say things like that.

Terry makes a very good impression in his television interview, which was available on YouTube last time I checked — which was some years ago. Apparently, this “giant pearl” landed without leaving any marks, even though Terry saw it coming down rapidly. Very odd.

I want to share with you a poem I wrote more than ten years ago. Since then, the situation has only worsened. Some people have called me a conspiracy theorist; some have called me a conspiracy theory debunker. This poem explains why I try to be both.

(Sung to the tune of — oh, hell. If you can’t figure it out, you’ve obviously never heard the names “Gilbert and Sullivan.”)

I am the very model of a modern paranoia fan
I peddle fear while swilling beer, so much it could destroy a man.
God help you if you’re subject to my infamous loquaciousness
I’ll interrupt and interrupt with conscience-free audaciousness.

I batter all my enemies with arguments ad hominous
That’s how I proved that rock and roll and Rachel Ray are ominous.
I say the flags are flying false if ever there’s a shooting spree
The hypno-programmed killers and the cops all act colludingly.

For Marvel comics are a plot to topple Christianity
And global warming is a hoax; I saw it all on Hannity.
All scientists are socialists and murderous Malthusians.
As Lovecraft tried to warn us, they are really Cuh-thul-HOOsians

And Hillary’s the bloody queen of her Masonic ritual
Her ceremonies sanguinistic have become habitual.
And when the witch is finally dead, no-one will know a hotter fate —
Except perhaps for Johnny Dean, who bears ALL blame for Watergate.

The flying saucers really come from bases antepodean
Which Hitler built deep underground, of which he’s still custodian.
They went to Mars in ‘62, but kept it from the knavery
And now they’ve made the place a home for pederastic slavery.

The water flowing to your home will gay-ify amphibians
The Queen’s a lizard pushing drugs and working for the Libyans.
The plot to murder JFK was really quite a tangle, son,
So blame Fidel or LBJ or anyone but Angleton.

They deify a massive owl inside a Grove Palladian.
Their power is unfettered and their ego is Arcadian.
And only I have eyes to see a plot so Skull and Bonesian —
I am the very model of a modern Alex Jonesian.

The great Fortean John Keel asked a fascinating question: What if the many different “flavors” of paranormality — monsters, cryptids, aliens, humanoids, religious visions, fairies, ghosts and so forth — are all linked? What if the same elusive, indefinable phenomenon adopts many guises, the way you or I might wear different styles of clothing to perform various social functions?

Ufology and Marian apparition lore would appear, on the surface, to be very dissimilar fields of research, united by nothing except their shared ability to annoy skeptics. Only the bravest Forteans discuss those few narratives which combine these two strains of absurdity. One recent example involves the controversial Christopher Beldsoe, the topic of some of Tanner Boyle’s most extraordinary writing. In this post, I will outline an even stranger case — one that nobody talks about.

The story of Pierrette Regimbal, also known as Helene Charbonneau, has not been easy to piece together. I have assembled it from rare news clips, difficult-to-access websites, and from a forgotten, comb-bound UFO book privately published in the late 1980s. At that time, I discussed the case with the book’s author, Aileen Edwards — later known as Aileen Garoutte. The book was recently republished under the title Abducted: On the UFO Road Again.

Aileen, like most other Forteans, was a bit of an odd duck. She was a New Age seeker, back in the sweet old days before that movement curdled into Trumpiness. Although her kind heart led her to accept claims that most of us would view cautiously, I have no doubts regarding her honesty. That woman would have preferred yanking out a fingernail to telling a lie. If her book attributes a statement to Helene (the name she used when Aileen knew her), you can bet the rent money that Helene said those words.

But: Did Helene tell the truth? Was she honest with herself? Did she accurately perceive what happened to her?

Those are the questions we will explore.

Let’s start with the religious stuff

From Aileen’s book:

Helene Charbonneau had a very unusual life from the beginning. According to her mother, there was evidence of extraterrestrial intervention during the time of conception. Helene was one of 12 children. During early childhood she developed tuberculosis of the spine and could not walk. Her mother appealed to the nuns who lived close to them, to help obtain leg braces for Helene to help her walk.

Her mother saved pennies, nickels, and dimes to pay for the trip to take Helene to a Catholic shrine in Montreal, Quebec where miracles often occurred. Helene’s mother, a devout Catholic, promised God that Helene would become a nun if she were healed. The day that Helene and her mother arrived at the shrine Helene was taken to the top of a stairway consisting of 365 steps (one for each day of the year) to await her mother. The mother’s penance for the anticipated healing was to climb the stairs on her knees.

This passage obviously refers to the Saint Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal in Montreal, founded by St. André Bessette, a reputed worker of wonders. The steps actually number 283. Yes, people do make the climb on their knees; the process is arduous and sometimes bloody.

The afflicted girl was named Hélène Pierrette Régimbal, who then went by her middle name — Pierrette. Born on February 22, 1932, she grew up in the vicinity of a gold mining town called Val d’Or, in Quebec.

Although no miracle occurred on the day of the great climb, during the next morning’s Mass, Pierrette Régimbal (we will use that name for this stage of her life) felt a jolt of electricity. She stood and walked.

At least, such was the story she told Aileen in the 1980s. In those conversations, Helene/Pierette seems to have obscured an even more extraordinary tale. Aileen had no way of knowing that on August 27, 1945 (just days before the war in the Pacific concluded), Time magazine had covered the story of Pierrette Régimbal.

From that article:

One day about five years ago, Pierette was playing near home when she believed she saw Saint Francis of Assisi. She touched the saint’s hands. Then she saw that her own hands were bloodstained. Her lameness, she said, was momentarily cured. (She still uses crutches.)

Her somewhat incredulous mother washed Pierrette’s hands. Thereupon St. Francis reappeared. He told Pierrette that she should not have washed. So she touched St. Francis again. This time she simply wiped her hands on a cloth. Henceforth, the saint told her everything she touched would become a sacred relic. After that, said Pierrette, the vision of St. Francis appeared to her about twice a week, sometimes in her home and sometimes at a rock outside the town.

Frankly, it is difficult — but perhaps not impossible — to reconcile the two versions of Pierrette’s healing. Did the cure occur at Mount Royal or just outside of Val d’Or? (The two spots are about 320 miles away from each other.) I did not find a contemporary news account which mentions a journey to Saint Joseph’s Oratory.

Every day, Pierette returned to the rock where she (allegedly) saw Saint Francis. The “miracle” spot was located between the Baie Carriere road and the Catholic cemetery. Rumor spread that a nearby pond had appeared suddenly and miraculously, as at Lourdes. (In fact, water had always flowed there, and probably still does.)

Many other townsfolk accompanied her, hoping for healing miracles of their own. A local miner insisted that his mother-in-law, stone deaf for years, suddenly recovered her hearing .

Clermont Roy, who says he saw two crippled children fully cured by the girl, claims that his own eight-year-old son, mute since birth, began to talk after visiting Pierrette. Said Mme. Philippe Coulombe: “I have just taken 20 steps down the street, when for a long time I have not been able to take two steps in my kitchen without my crutches.”

Contemporary news reports speak of other cures involving a dislocated ankle, paralysis and a crippling arm injury. The most-discussed claim involved John Roy, the mute boy who (allegedly) began to talk after he attended one of Peirette’s “services.”

Convinced that Pierette had healed his wife’s leg, a local mason built a shrine at this “sacred” spot. This shrine placed a statue of the Virgin within an oval “grotto” made of rough stones. Not far away, a local entrepreneur set up a snack shop to serve the many visitors.

Pierette, now quite the celebrity, reported that her heavenly visitors included the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph, along with Saint Francis. Meanwhile, earthly visitors lined up at her home every day. Hundreds of letters arrived in her mailbox, asking for her aid.

Two women claimed that they had received cures for severe rheumatism. One, a Mrs. A. Mathieu, told a local reporter than her fingers had become so “violently swollen” that she could no longer work or dress her baby. “My arm was twisted at the elbow so that I couldn’t straighten it, and I couldn’t kneel down because my knees were so stiff.” When Pierrette rubbed her hands, they burned as if set afire. The next morning, much of the swelling had abated, and Mrs. Mathieu’s life returned to normal.

The attention paid to Pierrette Régimbal case should be seen in historical context. In the aftermath of the war in Europe, the American media publicized a wave of Marian apparition stories — for example, a child in the Bronx named Joseph Vitolo also had a series of visions at this time (late 1945). New apparition sites sprang up around Europe. The popularity of Song of Bernadette may have played a role in this phenomenon.

After Time drew attention to Pierrette, the local Catholic Church applied the brakes. Bishop Joseph Desmarias issued a blunt circular which referred to the girl’s “pretensions” and denied any comparison to Bernadette. A board of inquiry had judged against Pierette:

There are two types of miracles: ‘first class,’ involving growth of new bone tissue; ‘second class,’ such as restoration of sight or speech, healing of tuberculosis, paralysis, cancer. No miracle credited to Pierrette has been ‘first class.’

I’ve met cancer sufferers who would have happily settled for a second-class miracle.

We should be grateful that the Catholic Church maintains very high standards when assessing such claims. Although Pierrette’s “cures” didn’t meet those standards, I don’t feel comfortable dismissing them. Spontaneous remission of rheumatoid arthritis does occur in roughly ten percent of cases, but usually in early stages of the disease; the two women healed by Pierrette had suffered for years. Young John Roy did start talking for the first time in his life; the fact that he could only repeat sounds like a parrot doesn’t necessarily invalidate the cure. The deafness cure seems impressive, although we don’t have enough data for a proper judgment.

In October of 1945, a short article in L’Action Catholique closed the case:

Pierrette Regimbal — the young girl from Val-d’Or to whom the Canadian and American press has recently given so much publicity — has been placed in a boarding school to continue her studies. Mr. Oscar Regimbal, her father, wishes to inform the public that it is futile to make the journey to visit her or to write seeking news of her. He adds that he has acknowledged the wisdom of his bishop’s pastoral letter, which declared that nothing has been proven regarding the apparitions of Saint Francis of Assisi and the miraculous healings attributed to his daughter. He requests that this affair in Val-d’Or — which has caused his family a great deal of distress — be considered closed, until such time as it is officially proven and recognized as authentic by the religious authorities of his diocese.

NASA hires the girl who could work miracles

Pierette’s mother wanted her to join a religious order, but the girl chose to become a nurse. She married a man named Roy D. Terry and eventually had seven children.

Her life took a strange turn in early 1953, when she and her husband were arrested in Toronto on check-kiting charges. Although my sources do not indicate how that drama played out, or whether Pierrette was cognizant of the crime, I do know that she eventually divorced Mr. Terry. At that time, divorce meant that she could no longer take communion in a Catholic Church.

Determined to set her life on a new course, she returned to school and gained a degree in electrical engineering. “Due to that profession,” writes Aileen, “she worked for NASA as an engineer in a special medical division within the astronaut program.”

She had entered a fascinating field at a fascinating time. The space program of the 1960s led to great advances in bioinstrumentation — systems capable of monitoring vital signs from thousands of miles away. Helene/Pierrette would have been involved with amplifying ECG and EEG signals for radio transmission, and in creating biotelemetry systems capable of measuring minute changes in pulse and temperature. Miniaturization was key. Every component had to be tiny, extremely power-efficient, and resistant to electronic interference.

In short: She was a pioneer in the field of space medicine. The lives of the astronauts depended on her work.

Having remarried a man named Claude Charbonneau, she now called herself Helene. The former child thaumaturge had become a very different person. In 1973, she moved to Powell River, British Columbia; after the death of her husband the following year, she started a business in marine electronics.

Now for the UFO stuff

A new health crisis hit: Cancer of the hip, pancreas and bowels. Operations didn’t stop the progress of the disease. As she later told Aileen:

“By October of 1975 all my secretions were orange. I was on chemotherapy. They tried to shrink the tumor with x-ray therapy, but it didn’t seem to budge. By then I had lost a tremendous amount of weight. I normally weigh about 145 and I was down to 116. By January 1976, I was down to 108 and I looked like a walking corpse.”

The doctors told her that she did not have long. She visited Quebec and said her farewells. Then she returned to British Columbia.

One night — or rather one morning, at 1 am — she awoke when a voice called her name. At first, she presumed that she must have been dreaming, but the voice called again, telling her to get into her car and drive to Lunde, a town about 17 miles away. So she did.

“I was seven miles west of town, when I saw a large white globe in the sky. When I first saw it, I had no idea what it was. I was compelled to react to the voice as if I had no will of my own. As I came over a hill there was a large clearing of about 1000 feet, which was supposed to have been for a condominium. I saw the object coming down. It was circular and huge, about fifty feet in diameter. There was an off road. My car turned towards it and the engine stopped. The car kept going and it stopped in a gully. The first thing that came into my mind was, ‘How am I going to get out of here without any power?’”

The craft hovered about 15 feet off the ground. Helene felt compelled to exit her car and walk toward the object, where she encountered a group of small, seemingly-friendly aliens who “looked like ten-year-old kids.” Their metallic suits featured a symbol incorporating two triangles.

(As the reader must have noticed, many aspects of this story seem almost laughably stereotypical. If ever I am abducted by UFO-nauts, I’ll be very disappointed if the event turns into a cliché festival.)

There was an alcove and then there was a large table. It was about 24 inches wide by seven feet long. When I stood by it, it came just a little above my knees. The Being that came from behind the partition came towards me and said, “Do not be frightened, we are here merely to help you.” I had the impression that the Being was a woman, not because she was dressed any differently, they were all dressed alike. There was a gentler look about this Being. Her voice was different, even though she didn’t speak with her mouth.

She put her hand on my arm and said, “We are not going to hurt you; we are here to help you. Would you disrobe and lay on this table?”

The female alien passed a mushroom-shaped instrument over her body and told Helene that she had cancer in her breast, spleen, kidney and pancreas. When the female “doctor” held another device over Helene’s body, a burning sensation suffused the cancer-ridden areas. (Recall that Mrs. Mathieu had felt a burning sensation when Pierrette rubbed her hands.) Another instrument somehow injected her with a purple liquid, even though the device lacked a needle.

After the completion of this operation, Helene was shown a star map.

“I said, ‘Well does it show where I live?’ And she said, ‘Yes, right here.’ She showed me the lower right-hand corner of the plate-glass. I recognized our sun and our planetary system. I asked her, ‘Where is your world, according to this?’ She put her hand half in the middle and said, ‘This is Orion, and this is where we are, far beyond that.’ The system which she indicated had a lot more planets than our solar system.”

This description will annoy astronomers. Although the stars of the constellation Orion may appear tightly grouped together from the perspective of someone on Earth, they are very distant from each other. Bellatrix (the right shoulder star) is 240 light-years away, while Alnilam (the middle belt star) is perhaps 2000 light years away.

Helene was returned to her car. The craft ascended into the night sky.

Cure

The next morning, she told her son that she had had an amazing dream. The son wondered if the dream had a basis in reality, because he had found the car parked (or abandoned) in a very unusual spot: The vehicle nearly blocked the front door of the house. A quarter-tank of gas was missing.

Helene and her son drove out to the location of the encounter.

“The grass, which was very high, was flattened, as if something very heavy had been on it. I had never seen the craft on the ground at any time. We walked down the road and we saw the tire marks where my car went off the road.”

That afternoon, she became ill and began to vomit “black stuff.” At the hospital, Helene — following the directive of her off-world “doctor” — refused all medications. Her terrestrial doctors presumed that the end was very near.

Two days later, she felt perfectly well and went home.

Three weeks later, she received the results of a full checkup. The doctor told her: “This is amazing. I can’t even find any signs of the cancer in you. You don’t have a cancer cell left. What happened?”

Not long afterward, she moved to Arizona and embarked upon yet another career as a mineralogist. An inner hunch told her that she would have another extraterrestrial contact in that state, though I don’t know if she ever did.

Helene Charbonneau, born Hélène Pierrette Regimbal, died in 1993. The alien “operation” had given her an extra 17 years of life.

Similarly, the entity she called “Saint Francis” had given her an adult life free of tuberculosis and leg braces.

Assessment

Let’s make one point very clear: Every objection that popped into your noggin as you read this account has also popped into mine.

I am no fan of what ufologists call the ETH — the extraterrestrial hypothesis. My personal answer to the Fermi Paradox involves both the “rare Earth” hypothesis and a strong suspicion that the speed of light will forever remain an inviolable barrier. Considering the wide variety of life forms on this planet, I can only roll my eyes at the proposition that a visiting alien species would have a humanoid form. How could such an outcome occur? Extraterrestrial creatures would be the product of evolutionary forces operating within an unimaginably different environment. As for the suggestion that visitors from another world might be able to breathe our air — well, frankly, that idea strikes me as inane.

In short: I can’t take “the UFO stuff” at face value.

I have similar difficulties when it comes to “the religious stuff.” The comforting proposition that God can cure a little girl of tuberculosis inevitably makes me ask why a supreme being would allow a little girl to have tuberculosis in the first place.

That said…

Pierrette’s childhood cure appears to be well-established. The hostile official inquiry of 1945, which set out to quash all talk of miracles, did not question the claim that she had received a personal healing. To the best of my knowledge, Helene Charbonneau did not use crutches, leg braces, or a wheelchair during her adult life.

I cannot easily believe that Helene lied about the cancer or about her brush with mortality in 1976. She was a highly intelligent person. She knew that Aileen Edwards could have established the truth with one phone call to a family member. (I don’t know if Aileen made such a call; the book suggests, but does not state, that she made contact with the family.)

As for Helene’s miraculous recovery: Although I haven’t seen her official medical history, we do have the incontrovertible fact that she lived until 1993.

Yes, the trope-ridden abduction story bears a cringe-inducing familiarity. We cannot escape the very suspicious fact that, at the time Aileen met Helene, such stories were becoming part of America’s culture. I can’t blame any skeptic who suggests that the former “miracle girl” from Val d’Or had simply latched onto the latest fad.

Similarly, the events of 1945 echoed the post-war popularity of Marian apparition claims. That, too, was a fad.

Although one could argue that 13-year-old Pierrette enjoyed the attention she received during her brief spell as a thaumaturge, one cannot fairly argue that Helene concocted her UFO encounter as a way of seeking fame or fortune. She did not write a book; she did not speak at conferences; she did not seek the spotlight. Aileen Edwards discovered her case by accident, through a private recommendation.

Helene did not seek out Aileen; Aileen found her. An attention-seeker probably would sought the attention of someone better-known — Budd Hopkins, perhaps. Though a lovely person, Aileen was not one of the era’s ufological “superstars.” Her book was privately published and received no formal distribution.

What happened to Pierrette in 1945?

What happened to Helene in 1976?

Did the same phenomenon wear two very different costumes?

Skeptics will argue that both her religious visions and her UFO encounter had a purely psychological origin. Perhaps. But how do we account for the cures?

I place this story on the record in the hope that Helene’s family or friends may provide more data. Of course, I reserve the right to douse the whole affair in ice water, if new information gives me good reason for cynicism. That said: Gut instinct tells me that we’ll never have a truly convincing skeptical explanation.

Anyone seeking to do further research should start with Aileen’s book. Then head for Newspapers.com, where you can use the internal search function to find relevant news stories about Pierrette.

The Sphere

This intriguing mystery seems entirely forgotten; I could find no discussion of it on any website or book. To the best of my knowledge, the only article about the Sphere appeared in the October, 1974 issue of the MUFON Journal; the author was Theodore Spickler, an associate professor in physics. Perhaps this post will keep the mystery alive in Fortean memory.

Alas, I don’t have an exact location for this event. I know only that the incident occurred in “southeastern Ohio” near Parkersburg, a West Virginia city just over the border.

Around 10:30 a.m. on September 7, 1974, one Keith Hammerman went hunting on land belonging to a farmer named Oliver Wagner. Hammerman heard “a loud sonic boom followed by a sharp crack, then a swishing noise.” About 50 feet ahead of him, smoke rose above the trees, spreading a noxious odor similar to sulfur, though not precisely like sulfur.

Hammerman rushed off to inform Wagner, who had heard the booms, as had several neighbors. A search party soon found the source of the smell: A sphere made of “bluish-gray ablated metal,” just short of one foot in diameter and weighing twenty pounds. A thick seam indicated that someone had welded two metal hemispheres together.

“No crater was made,” writes Spickler; “the sphere left a clear hard impression in the clay where it obviously struck at a great speed.”

Steam rose from the moist clay near the sphere, which had “two ‘latch’ type protrusions along the side opposite to one another.” Two other metal protrusions had been melted. “A ¼ inch hole extends into the hollow interior.”

For the next few days, whatever was inside the Sphere emitted a strange odor. According to Spickler, “The sphere rings with a clear sound when struck and exhibits no radioactivity.” Also: “The bluish-gray color is typical of steel that has undergone a heat treatment similar to atmospheric entry.”

A satellite? Spickler discounted the possibility. He presumed that a satellite would have been constructed of lighter materials.

That presumption may have been hasty. The object described in this article strongly resembles Sergei Korolov’s design for the original Sputnik satellite, a sphere with four antennae. Sputnik was composed on two hemispheres made of an aluminum-titanium-magnesium alloy, which were bolted together, housing a rather primitive radio. (The first American satellite, Explorer 1, was torpedo-shaped.)

Ollie Wagner and his wife Goldie brought their find to the attention of Helen White, a writer for the Parkersburg Sentinel (now the Parkersburg News and Sentinel). At present, I do not have access to the story she wrote.

That’s all I have so far. Internet research reveals that several Oliver Wagners lived in Ohio in 1974. I can’t determine which of these Wagners is the one we’re looking for, since the MUFON story does not tell us the man’s age. In all likelihood, the Sphere still exists...somewhere. If the thing really is a downed Sputnik, it would be quite the collector’s item.

Here is the original MUFON piece. Compare the cover photo to this photograph of a Sputnik.

The hole in the ice

January 10, 1977: On a punishingly frigid day, around noon, horse breeder Bill McCarthy of Ballard’s Ridge Road, East Wakefield, New Hampshire (near the Maine border), looked out on the frozen pond near his house. A round hole, about three feet in diameter, had been cut through 18 inches of ice.

The hole was at the center of a much larger 40-foot circle of slushy, partially melted ice. “Whatever it was must have put out a lot of heat,” McCarthy later told a reporter.

The partially melted ice remained firm enough to support his weight. Through the clear water, McCarthy could see a box of some sort in the pond’s bottom; his attempts to retrieve it with the equipment at hand only caused the box to sink further.

Bill Palmer, a friend who helped him with these efforts, became worried that it — whatever it was — might be radioactive, so he called the police. The local police chief got high Geiger counter readings, so he called Civil Defense.

State Civil Defense director Wesley Williams acquired a reading of three roentgens per hour, well above normal; two other instruments registered much lower numbers. Since the readings did not agree, Williams had the machine with the high number tested thoroughly: “We put it through the rigors of trying to make it foul up and it didn’t,” he said, adding those tests included subjecting it to zero temperatures.” (Biddeford-Saco Journal, January 15, 1977.)

Journalists and curious civilians swarmed the farm. Since there were no reports of meteors or losses from aircraft, the theory of a downed satellite naturally took hold in the minds of many. Ice did not re-form over the hole, even though extremely cold weather lingered for days.

When the ice finally melted, the mystery object was gone. Had someone scooped it up?

The New York Times of January 14, 1977 reported that National Guardsmen “sawed through the ice and dug up some mud from the bottom with a post hole digger.” Ten years later, the New Hampshire Sunday News (January 19, 1986) published a very thorough follow-up story which indicated that something more than mud was retrieved.

The box was not seen again by McCarthy until photographs taken by his wife that day were developed about a week later. The pictures show two men, one carrying a long-handled fish net and another a heavy object, partially concealed under his coat. The men, said McCarthy, were walking behind the house to a car.

These two men were not part of the team that took the soil sample. Unfortunately, this photo has never been reproduced.

The same “ten years after” news story claims that one of McCarthy’s German Shepherd dogs died, presumably after drinking the water. After the dog was autopsied, McCarthy learned that the animal had suffered internal burns, indicating the ingestion of radioactive material. Unfortunately, the vet did not put that conclusion in writing.

A report by John Stanton of the state’s Radiation Control Agency noted that “some satellites contain devices that derive power from nuclear fuel, similar to a miniature nuclear reactor.”

This is true: Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) have been used in space missions since 1961 – and some RTG components are indeed box-shaped. According to Wikipedia, the RTG unit in the Nimbus VI satellite — launched in 1975 — was damaged but remains in Earth orbit. An earlier Nimbus satellite was destroyed during launch, and the nuclear fuel landed in the Santa Barbara Channel; the fuel was recovered from a depth of 300 feet and re-used.

The details I’ve give so far come from mainstream publications like the New York Times and the Boston Herald-American (both January 14, 1977). A few Fortean authors have expanded the narrative in rather dubious ways. The oddest story — which I do not believe — holds that a second hole appeared fifty feet away from the first, and that a “trench” in the pond bottom indicated that the mystery box had somehow moved. (The pond is some 115 feet at its widest.)

The official story holds that the high Geiger counter readings were erroneous, that the box never existed, and that the mystery hole was created — somehow — by water currents.

The governor issued the usual “Nothing to see here” statement, and the press moved on.

Thirty-two years later, Bill McCarthy found another oddity on or near his new property, located a bit further down the road.

While exploring the woods (he likes to collect old bottles), McCarthy stumbled across a large “rock” unlike anything he’d ever seen. Mostly dark grey, but with a red stripe, this artifact seems to be made of melted plastic, with many jagged angles as well as smooth areas. It is also incredibly light for its size. McCarthy surmised that this “plastic” had arrived in a molten state, since leaves and other ground material had become impressed into it. A sharp knife could not scrape away the red part. (My source is an article – with photos of the artifact — published by Foster’s Daily Democrat on October 9, 2008.)

Satellite debris? Possibly. But what are the chances that the same obscure horse breeder in New Hampshire would encounter space junk twice in his lifetime?

Perhaps both finds were once part of the same device.

The original pond is visible from the road and via Google Earth. The vastness of our world makes it hard to envision how falling space debris could target this small place. If Fate is random, why does it have the aim of Hawkeye?

A final note

Yes, I agree: It seems very unlikely that a satellite would survive re-entry. However, it should be noted that many components of the doomed space shuttle Columbia were recovered, including a flight data file manual and a film canister. If you still maintain that Sputnik could not possible hit terra firma more-or-less intact, let me ask: How do you explain these findings?

I am all attention.

Today, we will look at two odd “artifact” stories in my collection. There are many more. Hell, I could write a book…maybe two or three books…

The first story involves the Silver Madonna, perhaps the most intriguing lost treasure story of the American East. Our second tale provides some under-recognized details regarding the famous “Nampa Image,” a figurine which allegedly proves that human beings inhabited Idaho some two million years ago. You say you’ve heard that story before? Maybe so. But not like this.

Vermont: Treasure hunt for the Silver Madonna

An October 8, 2016 article in the Valley News discusses treasure hunters and the rarities they have found in this area. Brennan Gauthier, who worked for the Vermont Agency of Transportation, had occasion to visit the Upper Valley town of Irasburg. While there, he...

...read a town history that said a chainmail shirt was found by a farmer in the hollow of a rotted birch tree around 1828.

“It was rusted, but when they unfurled it, you could still put it on,” he said.

Aficionados of revisionist history will probably theorize that this artifact resulted from a pre-Columbian visit by the Knights Templar. But Gauthier believes that this Medieval artifact was a French family heirloom acquired during a raid led by Robert Rogers, best known as a hero of Revolutionary War. Previously, during the French and Indian War (1754-1763), Captain Rogers commanded a famous independent militia called Roger’s Rangers.

At that time, the French — having established friendly relationships with the Hurons and other tribes — seemed poised to become the dominant force in North America. French raids on British strongholds led to fears that the Pope was implementing a scheme to control the continent. In retaliation, the British targeted the township of St. Francis, located on the St. Lawrence River. This place was home to both French settlers and Abenaki tribesmen, whose cultures had harmonized with surprising ease.

Just before dawn on October 4, 1759, Roger’s Raiders — numbering about 140 — attacked St. Francis, killing men, women and children indiscriminately. Some say that as many as 300 died. All structures, including the church, fell to the torch.

It was a victory both terrible and (arguably) pyrrhic, since the 200-mile return trip proved disastrous for the raiders. Having neglected to plan for supplies, the soldiers starved, some turning to cannibalism.

Worse, the Abenaki pursued them with a ruthless vengeance. At least one-third of the Rangers died. When Rogers finally arrived at Fort Crown Point (in what is now New York), his commander lauded his heroism, despite the poor planning — not to mention the mass-murder.

Was the chainmail shirt a spoil of the raid, as Gauthier believes? We can’t be sure: The artifact vanished from the record soon after its purchase by the Barnum and Bailey Circus.

The most sought-after relic of the St. Francis Massacre is the quasi-legendary Silver Madonna, a sculpture depicting the Virgin holding the Christ child and a globe. It seems likely that the fleeing soldiers — starving men chased by deadly enemies — buried this heavy piece, though no-one knows where.

“One theory is that it is buried somewhere on the banks of Lake Memphremagog,” wrote a member of an online treasure-seeking forum. “Another theory is that the Madonna was buried ... in a cave somewhere near the junction of the Israel and Connecticut rivers.”

Others have hunted the north slope of Mount Washington; the confluence of the Connecticut and Ammonoosuc rivers in Woodsville; beneath the Moore Reservoir in Waterford; Littleton; Granby; and various Canadian locations. Some reports say a pair of gold candlesticks was found in a farmer’s field in Newport Vt., in 1816.

So tasty a catch has enticed many hunters to lug their metal detectors into rough terrain. Irasburg seems like an excellent place to start an investigation, since the chainmail shirt turned up here. If you feel the Virgin’s call, be warned: Some have spent more on the search than the object is probably worth.

Then again, what is life without a quest?

Idaho: The Nampa image

The Nampa Image is an unimpressive crude figurine not much taller than the combined diameters of a dime and a nickel; it is now housed in the Idaho State Historical Society museum in Boise. The controversy over the image concerns the location and circumstances of its discovery.

In August of 1889, workers employed by one Mark A. Kurtz were drilling for well water just outside of Nampa; their steam pump disgorged the treasure more than 300 feet below the surface, surrounded by two million year-old clay. Or so runs the story.

Let’s put this claim into perspective: Scientists hold that the first American Indians crossed the Bering Stait around 14,000 years ago, although some evidence suggests an earlier date; the most extreme theorists have posited that the crossing could have happened 30,000 years ago. (Some Native American religious traditions conflict with the scientific view.)

To this day, Creationists cite the Nampa Image as proof of their beliefs, although I don’t understand why. How does an allegedly 2 million year-old artifact buttress the theory of a young Earth?

Boston geologist George Frederick Wright (1838-1921) became the key promoter of this find. Wright interviewed the well-digging crew and became convinced that he was dealing with men of fine character. He determined that the figurine could not have been dropped in from above, due to the way the drilling machine worked.

The image soon received wide publicity in Wright’s book Man in the Glacial Period. Whenever modern revisionist historians discuss the Image, they cite Wright’s work, which they hold in the highest regard.

What they don’t tell you is that George Wright’s other writings include an anti-Darwin essay published in The Fundamentals, a seminal twelve-volume compilation published by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. The Christian Fundamentalist movement sprang from those volumes. For those not of the fundamentalist persuasion, the involvement of such a man may arouse suspicion.

In Science, Volume 20, number 508 (October 28, 1892), writer D.G. Brinton reviewed Man in the Glacial Period. The finale of the essay references our Image:

Dr. Wright’s last example is the feeblest of all — the Nampa image, a “beautifully formed clay image of a female,” said to have been brought up from a depth of 320 feet (!) in the boring of an artesian well, at Nampa, Idaho. It is sad to destroy illusions; but when this same image with its story was laid before a well-known government geologist, and he at once recognized it as a clay toy manufactured by the neighboring Pocatello Indians, the person displaying it replied with engaging frankness, “Well, now, don’t give me away!”

These are Dr. Wright’s evidences of glacial man in America. It will be seen that his structure is rather slight.

The government geologist was Major John Wesley Powell, one of the first non-Indian explorers of the Grand Canyon and the director of the U.S. Geological Survey. In the July 1893 issue of Popular Science Monthly, Powell describes his visit to Boise to examine the artifact. His article brings up a damning point: The figurine is obviously quite fragile — so fragile that a five-foot drop might shatter it. How could it have survived its encounter with that drilling machine?

In this piece, Powell says that the keepers of the image laughingly confessed all to him: The whole story about finding the figurine in a 325 foot well was nothing more than a “jest” designed to needle the “tenderfeet.” It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize a band of hardy westerners solemnly telling their whopper to Dr. George Wright, a credulous religious zealot from back east.

Some tenderfeet are attached to legs marked “pull me” — and some legs, when pulled, stay pulled.

You can find the “paranormalized” version of this story all over the internet. Skeptical views are harder to come across.

In part one, I briefly recounted the famous story of Bernadette Soubirous, Catholicism’s most beloved visionary. We then looked at an aspect of the story ignored by all cinematic treatments of the tale — the secondary visionaries who both intrigued and repulsed onlookers. Much of the repulsion stemmed from the propensity of these seers to fall into convulsions reminiscent of the infamously freakish outbreak at the cemetery of Saint-Médard, one of the most important (and under-discussed) episodes in Fortean history.

I suspect that the Saint-Médard story’s theological background has barred entry for many modern readers. One need not memorize the doctrines of Jansenism in order to appreciate the really weird stuff that happened in that Parisian boneyard. Similarly, one need not be infatuated with Bernadette (as I am) to appreciate the really weird stuff that happened in and around the grotto called Massabielle in the summer of 1858. Conventional literary accounts ignore this material — but if more students of the paranormal knew about it, they would gorge themselves at this feast table filled with strange fare.

A large number of pilgrims to Massabielle fell prey to a kind of religious mania throughout the spring and summer of 1858. Apparitions abounded.

Skeptics will presume the secondary visionaries were mere copycats, but that easy dismissal simply will not suffice. Almost no-one claimed to see an entity matching the description given by Bernadette. It is fair to presume that deliberate frauds would have adhered to the pre-approved model, but this scenario did not occur at Lourdes, where the “false” visionaries went off into the Fortean wilds. Massabielle did not become a place to “eat, drink and see Mary.”

As Estrade (the tax collector/author mentioned in part one) notes:

One fascinated child would see some Madonna adorned with scepter and crown; another, St. Joseph with the traditional lily in his hand; this one imagined he saw St. Peter; that, St. Paul; a third, the four evangelists. Very soon, almost every saint in paradise had taken his or her place in the parade. The personages who were made to figure in these diverse parodies, though clothed with a sort of artificial beauty, were uneasy and restless and betrayed certain involuntary convulsions which made them repulsive.

Often, the young seers had visions of a bearded man, sometimes holding a key (the symbol of Saint Peter). In one report from an adult visionary, the “key” man twirled his mustache like the villain in an old-fashioned stage melodrama — and then made obscene gestures.

In 1878, Father Leonard Cros — a Jesuit who devoted much of his life to studying these events — interviewed a former Massabielle child visionary who had repeatedly seen a male entity. Sometimes this visitor was bearded, sometimes not. At the time, the boy told the adults around him that he had seen the Virgin, because he knew what they wanted to hear.

“But it was really a man I saw,” he told Cros.

A local girl heard beautiful choral music emanating from the rocks of Massabielle. The next day, this auditory miracle repeated itself — and then the sounds became more dissonant.

Soon the music was lost in a tumultuous noise, an indescribable cacophony. Suddenly there was silence. Some seconds after, a threatening murmur, like that of a conflict between unclean beasts, was heard in the depths of the rocks. There were stifled groanings, savage blows, the dull thud of falling combatants.

The girl ran off and refused to revisit the grotto.

An eleven-year-old boy reported a “lady covered with gold” in the niche where Bernadette’s Aquerò had once stood. When the golden visitor turned into a frightening entity with “great black eyes,” the terrified boy ran home to his mother.

A peasant from Batsurguere became a whirling dervish:

As soon as he came near the grotto, he was taken with a sort of seizure and began to rotate with a giddy rapidity. When he ceased turning around, he would look up in the air and seem to reach out to some chimerical being. During these maneuvers, he would climb several steps up the vertical front of the rock and, contrary to the laws of gravitation, maintain his place there. Upon returning to his ordinary condition, the young villager would fall into confusion and withdraw shyly from the grotto. When questioned, he replied that he was not the master of his own will and that a secret impulse acted upon him from within the vault, compelling him to do what he did.

Julien Cazenave (17) claimed that he could see the Virgin in the vicinity of grotto, always floating out of reach. He chased after her, scrambling over the landscape at an unnerving speed, grimacing and bellowing like an animal. On one occasion, he crowned himself with laurel leaves and ordered the crowd to kiss earth; they did so en masse.

Other seers would dash over the rocks and hills like fast-moving zombies while looking upward at a target only they could see. They rarely tripped — but whenever they did, they would immediately spring back up and continue to pursue phantoms.

(A little more than a century later, the visionaries of Garbandal, Spain, took similar “ecstatic walks” over rough terrain while keeping their eyes raised upward, staring fixedly at a spot above their heads. They never stumbled, even when they traveled backwards. One can find films of these speed-walks on YouTube.)

One of the most startling incidents involved a group of pilgrims who prayed in the same area where the Basilica now stands, at the top of the cliff above Massabielle. The party included a mother and her four-year-old child.

Suddenly the little girl uttered a cry of surprise, left her mother, and walked straight on while waving her hands towards an invisible being. An exclamation of terror escaped from the lips of all present, and the mother, like a lioness robbed of her whelp, sprang after her child and grasped her on the very edge of the precipice. One step more and both mother and child would have rolled to the bottom of the abyss.

Of course, young children sometimes act in inexplicable ways. Nevertheless, this disturbing incident fit a pattern.

The epidemic spreads

Many of the “false” visionaries came from nearby towns. On a visit to Massabielle, two brothers named Lacaze caught the virus (so to speak) and brought it back home to Ossen, where they spent the next few days running and howling through the streets in pursuit of a spectral entity invisible to all others. The elder brother insisted that he saw the Virgin accompanied by a little man in white whom Mary bizarrely identified as “the good God or otherwise John.”

A thirteen-year-old boy named Jean-Pierre Pomiès was in the attic of the Lacaze house when he looked out a window and spotted a supernatural wonder floating in the air. (My source does not specify what he saw.) He immediately ran through the open window, fell three stories, landed on his feet like a video game character, and sped off in pursuit of something only he could see. The drop might well have killed him.

Years later, Father Cros examined the location and declared the event “humanly inexplicable.”

Possession

Antoine Nicolau, the miller who carried Bernadette away from Massabielle during her second apparition, brought his nephew to the grotto. (The film Song of Bernadette tries to gin up a romance between Bernadette and Antoine. In real life, they had no interest in each other.) After lifting the boy up to inspect the ledge where Aquerò had once held court, Nicolau jestingly asked if any Virgins were visible. The boy saw nothing unusual — but on a second try, the child believed that he had glimpsed an ill-defined something in the shadows.

The power of suggestion? Probably. But suggestion rarely has this kind of power: Back at the mill, the previously-healthy lad curled into a fetal position and experienced violent convulsions while emitting animalistic grunts and growls.

Over the next few days, he behaved much like a possessed child in a Hollywood horror movie. During a visit from Estrade’s sister, the wild-eyed boy screamed horrific insults and epithets: “When his anger was at its height, he rose suddenly as if propelled by a secret spring and leaped, in a single bound, from one end of the kitchen to the other.” A priest from another town performed the rite of exorcism, which restored the boy to normality.

A summer of madness

Anyone familiar with the Lourdes story knows that the city authorities erected a wooden fence around Massabielle, restricting access to the famed healing waters. All of the “Bernadette” movies ascribe this decision to petty local tyrants, whose orders were soon countermanded by Emperor Napoleon III, supposedly after water from Lourdes cured his son. (In real life, the Emperor issued his edict after receiving a delegation of citizens from Lourdes.) But when we expand the narrative to include the convulsionaries and their dangerous antics, we can understand why Herbert Thurston — a Jesuit writer with Fortean inclinations — believed that the authorities “were thoroughly justified in forbidding access to the grotto.”

In response, the convulsionaries simply moved their act to the other side of the river — and even, as we’ve seen, into neighboring towns. Whenever the guards left their posts, the visionaries would break through the fence, reinhabit Massabielle, and wreak their customary havoc.

By the end of summer, the epidemic had run its course. Time, not official opposition, brings an end to these episodes.

Bernadette, for her part, always considered the grotto a place of peace, not a home for deviltry or lunacy. Disturbing events did not occur during her visits (with the arguable exception of the day Aquerò told her to wash herself in the spring). Although she knew about Marie Courrech, she never offered any opinion about any claims other than her own. From the start, Bernadette decided to speak her own truth and leave the rest up to the official investigators.

And now the investigation falls to us.

Obviously, we cannot now know with certainty what happened in a remote Pyreneean town more than 150 years before technology placed a video camera in everyone’s pocket. When we ponder historical mysteries — of any sort — we must accept the likelihood that we will never have the kind of proof which modern juries want to see.

That said, the enigma of the “false” visionaries resists cheap debunking efforts. If these secondary seers were religious plagiarists, why didn’t they see what Bernadette saw? And why didn’t they act the way Bernadette acted?

Her much-lauded comportment had provided an excellent model which the others refused to follow. Why didn’t they give the crowd what it wanted? Why the convulsions, the contortions, the apparent demonic possessions, the animalistic howls, the ecstatic walks, the near-suicides? These behaviors left a terrible impression, yet the visionaries persisted in their repellent conduct.

Deep trance

Father Cros interviewed some of the “false” visionaries two decades after the event, and found that they had gone on to live quite normal lives; none of them admitted to fraud. In his brief study of this problem, Herbert Thurston writes (without citing specifics) that there is “the gravest reason to suspect deliberate imposture” in certain cases. Nevertheless, he admits that “there seems no doubt that these children often did pass into a state of trance.”

I agree: The available evidence strongly indicates that a substantial number of people spontaneously and inexplicably fell into an altered state of consciousness. These people saw hallucinations — not pareidolia, not fleeting misapprehensions, not tricks of the light, but persistent three-dimensional images of entities invisible to others.

Hallucinations are not like the measles. Large-scale outbreaks don’t “just happen.”

Dismissing the episode as “mass hysteria,” as the lazier skeptics are often wont to do, simply will not suffice. The term has no agreed-upon definition, and it is intellectually dishonest to use one mystery to explain another. No experimental studies have given us an etiology or a mechanism which would explain why “mass hysteria” occurs here and not there.

In fact, psychologists and psychiatrists no longer use the old-fashioned word “hysteria,” which is why it has no official status in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Many researchers now employ the term mass psychogenic illness (MPI), although they cannot yet offer a convincing explanation for the origin of the phenomenon. A label is not an explanation, and impressive-sounding polysyllables are no substitute for a testable theory.

The MPI studies I’ve read usually cite examples involving outbreaks of psychosomatic illnesses, which are not events in which large numbers of people fall into profound trances and interact with non-physical beings. Obviously, it is much easier to convince oneself that one has contracted a minor illness than to convince oneself that a demonic version of Saint Peter stands before one’s eyes. Tossing about the term “mass psychogenic illness” will not explain how a thirteen-year-old boy can leap out of a third-floor window without injury, nor will it explain why previously-normal human beings would suddenly want to fling themselves off a cliff or into a river.

It certainly doesn’t explain how dozens of people could spontaneously fall into the deepest level of hypnosis without formal hypnotic induction. Many of the phenomena ascribed to Bernadette and the other seers may be replicated under laboratory conditions, given a skilled hypnotist and a highly hypnotizable subject. But this level of trance does not happen spontaneously.

Most Catholics would find Bernadette credible while dismissing Joséphine Albario, Marie Courrech and the other claimants. By what standard?

Perhaps Thurston gives the game away when he admits that what makes the “false” visionaries false is the fact that they “brought scandal upon religion.” Bernadette — beautiful, kind, modest, and graceful — made Catholicism look good. The others did not.

For the cleric, that standard may do. The Fortean wants more.

The place

Scientist Michael Persinger has suggested that seismic activity can, under certain circumstances, induce visionary states. In other words, paranormal activity has as much to do with place as with person.

In that light, we should note that Bernadette was not the first to see odd events at Massabielle. Others had heard voices, seen lights. Therese Taylor’s biography Bernadette of Lourdes notes that “There were reports of it as haunted, with ghostly cries frightening people who had sheltered in the cave during rainstorms.” Not only that:

The Archive of the Grotto preserves a letter written by J. Latour de Brie on 30 May 1879. His family was visiting the. Pyrenees in 1856-7, when he was twelve years old. According to de Brie, he went walking along the River Gave with his brother and another child and explored the grotto of Massabielle. They crawled into the large oval niche in the wall of the rock, where they discovered many little statues of the Virgin Mary, buried in the sandy floor. He stated that at least one of the images was of the standard ‘Miraculous Medal’ type, but he could not remember the others: ‘the design meant little to us, what struck us as being strange, and beyond explanation, was the existence of these images in such a place’.

This is also what perplexes an historian, and it is extremely difficult to assess the story which de Brie recounted. It may be a fabrication, inspired by the subsequent fame of the Grotto. In later years, many people were to make claims such as that they had heard prophecies that ‘you will see miracles in that Grotto’. However, de Brie’s story was not an obvious attempt to link himself to the miraculous history of the Grotto, nor was he trying to debunk the later events. He wrote his account for a priest and simply concluded that it was ‘a faithful account of my little story, ... I would be happy to think that the memory of it will not be lost’.

It should be understood that statues of this type cost money, and most of the people who lived in this area were desperately poor.

Massabielle provides but one entrance into a cave system running throughout the area. In his final book Les Folles de Lourdes, famed writer J.K. Huysmans describes a chat he had with a local priest about these geological oddities. According to this priest:

“One could argue that it was the devil who first occupied the place, and that Our Lady came to reclaim it. Indeed, as far back as we can trace through the ages, we find that this place was always visited by the accursed one. The prehistoric excavations carried out have led to the discovery, in the caves of Espélugues, near the grotto, of worked flint, staffs of command, reindeer antler arrowheads, animal skeletons, and above all, human bones, calcined and split lengthwise to extract the marrow.

“It is therefore reasonable to suppose that human sacrifices were common in this region and that victims were butchered, roasted, and eaten there.

“On the other hand, a legend persists concerning this block of rock which still stands behind the statue of the Virgin, in the excavation of the grotto, at the very spot where She appeared. This granite block, according to some, has such a unique grain that one would have to travel to Mongolia to find a similar one; in that case, it would have been brought there, at some unknown time and by which nomadic tribes; according to others, its composition is simply that of Breton dolmens; finally, some believe that this block must have come down from the granite range of Gavarnie which once extended as far as the plains of Lourdes. In any case, even if they disagree on its origin, geologists do agree that this block is a sacrificial stone, dedicated to infernal deities that could only be appeased by repeated libations of blood...”

Listening to these stories, I tell myself that they prove absolutely nothing regarding the particular diabolical nature of Lourdes, since stones of this kind and calcined and split human bones have been found in most caves in every country.

But my priest continues:

“In a book recently published by the Savaëte bookstore, Bishop Goursat cites the testimony of two archaeologists, Messrs. de Caumont and de Mirville, according to whom this stone was specially dedicated to Venus Astarte, that is to say, to the one whom Eusebius calls the infamous demon, the cruel goddess of Pleasure. And he concludes that the Immaculate Conception appeared at Lourdes to drive out of the grotto the worship of this original sin from which She was exempt.”

If you’re familiar with Huysmans’ novel Là-bas, you’re probably smiling. Leave it to dear old J.K. to find the devil at Lourdes!

My hard drives teem with half-written, never-finished books. One of these projects examines claimed Catholic miracles from a Fortean perspective. This book (if completed) will attempt to “rescue” these stories from both conventional religious interpreters and from anti-Catholic nay-sayers. Those two perspectives deserve to be treated with respect — but frankly, we’ve already heard from those folks. It’s time to unleash the John Keelians.

The most popular Catholic miracle story involves the visions of Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes — a tale told so often, it needs only the briefest of summaries. In 1858, while kneeling in a mysterious grotto called Massabielle, she had 18 visions of a woman in white, whom she called aquerò — Occitan for “that.” (Bernadette spoke Occitan, not French.) Others presumed this entity to be the Virgin Mary, an identification Bernadette came to accept. The waters produced at the grotto are reputed to have healing powers; Lourdes receives millions of visitors every year.

Most people know this story from the 1943 film Song of Bernadette. The actual events are far stranger than the movie indicates.

Conventional accounts convey the impression that only Bernadette Soubirous had visions in 1858. Yet the moment she stepped offstage, many others came forward, and their unsettling stories deserve Fortean attention. If we expand our view to take in the so-called “false visionaries,” we will encounter motifs reminiscent of the “convulsionnaires” of the Saint-Médard cemetery in Paris, who astonished even the skeptics in the 1730s.

Anti-Catholic cynics may presume that the Church deliberately hid all the evidence pertaining to these secondary seers. Not true: The Church collected, preserved and published the facts. By contrast, journalists of that period (including many non-Catholic) always focused solely on Bernadette Soubirous. Although her story received surprisingly widespread English-language news coverage in 1858 — the British press displayed a predictable hostility — I’ve found only one contemporary news report in English which refers to the seers of Lourdes in the plural.

Secrets of the cave of Massabielle

Bernadette fell into her penultimate trance at Massabielle on April 7. (She would have one final vision on July 17.) On April 11, a group of five women, driven by curiosity, entered the cave system hidden behind the walls of the grotto. Today, Fabische’s famous sculpture of the Virgin guards the entrance to this underground hollow, but at the time, this aperture provided free passage to anyone who showed up with a ladder.

The impromptu expedition included seamstress Claire-Marie Cazenave (22), daughter of the man who employed Bernadette’s father. (The quietly-republican Cazenave family ran the local newspaper.) Although Claire-Marie had a reputation for piety — she hoped to become a nun — another explorer, Honorine Lacroix, was a prostitute.

Inside the cavern, the women encountered a stalactite about the size of a human figure, not visible to anyone outside. At this point, the explorers began to have visions of their own. Judging from the only available photograph (which appears in René Laurentin’s Bernadette Vous Parle ), I find it difficult to imagine how this formation — even when lit by candlelight — might resemble a glowing Virgin. That said, I’m quite aware that nothing will stop skeptics from reaching for the word pareidolia in these situations. Although he did not use that term, Police Commissioner Jacomet inspected the area and came to much the same conclusion.

Interestingly, the women reported incompatible visions: One saw a four-year old girl, while another saw an older girl (though still a girl) similar to Bernadette’s Aquerò. Claire-Marie Cazenave reported that she saw

“…a white rock and almost at the same moment the form of a woman of medium height, carrying a child on her left arm. Her face was smiling, her hair flowed down upon her shoulders in ringlets; on her head she had something white, supported by a sort of comb. Her dress was also white. As for the child, I only saw it imperfectly at first glance and did not notice it afterwards.”

A few days later, another group, led by an older servant named Suzette Lavantés, entered the same cave. Although her companions saw nothing, Suzette caught sight of a wispy entity somewhat like the ghosts in the classic Hollywood film The Uninvited – and quite unlike the Lady reported by Bernadette.

Marie Courrech

On April 17, the two most noteworthy “false” visionaries arrived at the grotto:

• Joséphine Albario, a pretty, well-regarded teenager from a respectable family.

• Marie Courrech, a young servant working for Anselm Lacadé, the mayor of Lourdes.

The mayor — still opposed to Bernadette at this time — encouraged his employee to visit the grotto and offer her own report on the situation. Though Marie was illiterate and not terribly bright, Lacadé knew her to be pious and honest.

Joséphine and Marie did not venture into the hidden cave system. Soon after they crossed the millstream and entered the grotto, Marie fell into an altered state of consciousness: “I was happy, and I didn’t even know I was at the grotto.” She saw a mysterious female entity similar to Bernadette’s Aquerò, with one major difference: Marie insisted that her visitor had blonde hair, while Bernadette’s dainty demoiselle had dark brown hair (as did the seer) and blue eyes (as did the seer’s mother).

For Marie, the vision of April 17 initiated a series of eleven personal encounters with the paranormal. Over the course of several months, she fell into trances and silently communed with a celestial being invisible to others. On the rare occasions when Marie’s Lady spoke, she offered no surprises: Wash in the water. Pray for sinners. During one vision, Marie fainted when she saw her Lady in a radiant, multi-colored crown. The final apparition ended when the entity rose into the air and vanished; Marie understood that she would never see her again.

At first, the humble housemaid made an excellent impression on both townsfolk and officials. Abbé Peyramale — still hostile to Bernadette at this time — wrote the following to the Bishop of Tarbes:

The visions are still going on. Last Thursday the Mayor’s housemaid, a saintly girl if ever there was one, is believed to have seen the Blessed Virgin at the grotto. This creates a curious situation for our friend the Mayor, who has received orders to arrest all visionaries.

It was Marie Courrech, not Bernadette, who softened the Mayor’s belligerent attitude. He knew his employee well and trusted her. Slowly, he warmed to the idea that a supernatural portal really did exist on the outskirts of town.

Other townsfolk considered Marie Courrech not only credible but more approachable than Bernadette. Twice, seriously ill women believed to be at death’s door made quick recoveries after asking for Marie’s prayers. An increasing number of poor people in dire situations came to her in search of solace and divine intercession. The Church commission which investigated Bernadette also questioned Marie, treating her with respect.

Ultimately, however, the “evangelists” who spread the Lourdes narrative throughout France kept Marie Courrech out of the story. She dwindled into obscurity; today, only close students of the case know her name. This omission bewildered Thérèse Taylor, author of a superb secular biography of Bernadette:

Obviously, there was something about Marie Courrech, as an individual, which prevented her from obtaining the reputation of Bernadette. The sources do not state exactly what it was.”

To me, the answer is obvious: As her apparition sequence progressed, Marie exhibited disturbing behavior.

Whenever Bernadette fell into ecstasy, she impressed onlookers with her grace and unearthly beauty. Her demeanor matched preconceived notions of how someone should look and behave if granted a glimpse of heaven — taut skin, glistening eyes, transcendent expression, dignified bearing. At first, Marie Courrech seemed as supernal as Bernadette, although the new visionary displayed more emotion — more joy — during her ecstasies. But very soon, Marie experienced tremors which would erupt into violent spasms. Police Commissioner Dominique Jacomet filed a report which stated that Courrech “had spells of ecstasy and physical contortions.”

A witness named Antoinette Garros told Father Cros:

I could never have faith in the visions of Marie Courrech. She did not look like Bernadette or kneel as Bernadette knelt. She was apt to quiver all over and give sudden starts. Several times when she was seeing the apparitions from the other side of the Gave, she threw herself forward because, as she explained afterward, the Apparition was calling her to the grotto. If we had not held her back with all our strength, she would have plunged into the river.

This unseemly conduct was contagious. In the above-cited report to his superior, police chief Jacomet also refers to Claire-Marie Cazenave, the young woman who had a mother-and-child vision while inside the cave on April 11. On a later date, while standing across from the grotto on the other side of the river Gave, Claire-Marie “experienced these ecstatic twitchings and contortions, exciting the notice of more than a hundred people around her.”

Joséphine Albario

All of which brings us to the unhappy tale of Joséphine Albario, Marie’s companion on April 17.

At that time, Joséphine had a vision of “The Immaculate Conception carrying an infant in her arms and beside her a man with a long beard.” The experience overwhelmed her: She laughed, she wept, she fell to the ground and shivered like a wet dog in winter. One witness reported that she “was going through contortions and at times uttering cries or rather shrieks.” Worried onlookers carried her home and placed her in bed, where she continued to shudder uncontrollably.

Jean-Baptiste Estrade (a tax collector who knew Bernadette before these events, and who wrote a fascinating history of the apparitions) describes a subsequent vision:

Two of my colleagues – the receiver and the chief clerk of Argeles, passing through Lourdes — came to see me. After we had discussed these great manifestations of the Virgin, in which they did not believe, they asked me to go with them to the grotto, which they wished to visit.

We arrived at the cave of Massabieille at the moment when a young girl of the town, named Josephine ***, from the Rue de Bagneres, seemed to have fallen into a kind of catalepsy. About a dozen women were standing around her, regarding her with astonishment. We drew near the group and found the young girl on her knees in the attitude of a Mater Dolorosa. Her face, though it lacked the supernatural charm of Bernadette’s, was still very beautiful and considerably above average in terms of good looks. Her hands joined, she prayed; sighs broke from her breast and heavy tears were falling down her cheeks. Feverish convulsions shook her whole body at intervals.

My colleagues were so struck by this sight that they bent the knee in prayer, and before rising they both threw a little money on the ground. I must confess that I myself experienced a very strong impression when I found myself in the presence of this young girl. For one instant, I thought I saw before me a new and genuine ecstatic. But some secret intuition qualified my admiration and seemed to warn me that the truth was not there. I made comparisons and remembered that, while watching the ecstasies of Bernadette, I felt myself transported, whilst before those of Josephine *** I was nothing more than surprised. In looking back upon my former emotions, I was conscious of a something which was truly of heaven; in analyzing the latter I discovered nothing but the agitation of an over-excited organism. I departed with my doubts and uncertainties.

Josephine *** allowed us to make no mistake as to the meaning of her ecstasies. After having returned to the grotto two or three times she declared frankly that various mysterious personages had shown themselves to her in the interior of the vault but that these personages appeared to her to be suspicious in character and of evil nature.

Although Joséphine came from a relatively prosperous household, she did not have an easy life: Her mother had died, and her elder sister — the héritière — despised her.

(In the culture of the Pyrennes, the term héritière — heiress — is reserved for the eldest child, if that child is female. The eldest sibling is destined to become the head of the family, owner of the family business and overseer of all important decisions made by her siblings. Bernadette was the héritière of the Soubirous household, although her younger sister Toinette continually rebelled against her.)

Family turmoil may explain why the kind-hearted Joséphine reported such dark visions. She saw the most gruesome moments of the Passion. She saw demons and mysterious entities. She saw bloodshed and famine. She saw the Virgin wearing a black headdress and a black veil, which she interpreted as symbols of the Apocalypse.

No-one could fairly accuse Joséphine of fraud. During one of her apparitions, an onlooker (following the advice of Abbé Pomian) tested the seer’s trance by jabbing her arm with a long darning needle, deep enough to hit bone. The girl did not react. Nevertheless, despite this evidence of paranormality, the populace turned against her. Catholics want the sublime even more than they want the strange, and Joséphine in ecstasy looked like Joséphine possessed.

Both drama and sadness mark Joséphine’s subsequent history. She sought admission to a religious order, but her elder sister — who seems to have had increasing control of the Albario family finances — resented paying the required monthly stipend. For unclear reasons (in all likelihood, her sister simply stopped sending money), the order sent Joséphine home. While traveling a substantial distance unescorted, she underwent a horrible experience, the exact nature of which remains unspecified, although we can guess. When she arrived on her familiar doorstep looking like a tattered beggar, her family beat her and locked her in her room.

Soon thereafter, Joséphine’s father died, placing full control of the household in the hands of the elder sister. The héritière ordered the former visionary out into the street.

Months later, an old friend ran into Joséphine in Barège, a tiny mountain village some fifteen miles south of Lourdes. The prophetess was now a prostitute. The friend begged her to return to Lourdes and start life afresh. “Nobody likes me at home,” replied Joséphine.

I can find no further record of her; I doubt that she lived long. Decades later, her family continued to speak of her disparagingly. The few Lourdais who remembered her condemned her as a false visionary.

The epidemic

Joséphine Albario and Marie Courrech were not the only “false” visionaries. An increasing number of pilgrims to Massabielle fell prey to a kind of religious mania throughout the spring and summer of 1858.

In part two of this article, things will get really strange.

Among my many (many) eccentricities, I collect reports of American priests who have been murdered in baffling ways. Tracking these tales may strike you as an odd pastime, but…hey. We all have our hobbies. Some men go bowling.

The following mysterious events took place in the early 1980s. Some have theorized a link between all three crimes. Alas, theory and proof are two separate items. Maybe you can find the thread uniting these mysteries.

Los Cerillos, New Mexico

August 5, 1982: In Santa Fe’s St. Francis Cathedral, on August 7, 1982, Father Patrick Gerard received a call from a man who insisted that he needed a priest to administer the last rites. Gerard asked to man to call back in fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes later, the second call came, answered on this occasion by Father Reynaldo Rivera. The caller, who identified himself as Michael Carmello, asked Rivera to meet him in Waldo, New Mexico.

There are no dwellings or stores in Waldo: It’s a rest stop about a mile-and-a-half west of Los Cerillos. The priest drove there to perform his duty; he was never again seen alive. His corpse was found on a desert road, miles away from the rest stop. He had been shot in the stomach with a high-powered weapon; the corpse also had “trauma” around the neck. The priest’s car — bereft of fingerprints or bloodstains — turned up more than 80 miles away, at a rest stop east of Grants.

Since “Carmello” originally asked Father Gerard to do the job, it is fair to presume that the killer had not targeted Rivera personally. It seemed as though someone wanted to kill a priest — any priest.

Perhaps the motive was theft: Rivera’s last rites “kit” was missing. The rite of the Anointing of the Sick (formerly called Extreme Unction) requires blessed olive oil, while the Viaticum (final communion) requires a blessed candle, sacramental wine and a communion wafer. It is reasonable to suspect that the perpetrator wanted to obtain these items, though only the strangest sort of zealot (or cultist) would kill to steal sacramental hosts and wine. The other “last rite” supplies — a crucifix, linen, prayer books, containers — are widely available for anyone to buy.

A few have suggested that this murder may be linked to the bizarre “William Toomey” suicide in Boise, Idaho (see below), which took place on December 4, 1982. Father Reynaldo was commemorated with a bronze statue and in the naming of a nursing home.

Boise, Idaho

December 4, 1982: Using cyanide pills, a man committed suicide in the Sacred Heart Catholic church while waiting in the line for confession. The dead man appeared to be roughly 40 years old; he wore western gear and bore the sort of deep suntan rarely seen in wintry Idaho. He carried no identification, but he did have $1900 in cash; a typewritten note found in his pocket gave instructions for the money to be used for his funeral expenses, with any leftover funds going to the church. The note was signed “Wm L. Toomey” — an obvious pseudonym, since this is the name of a company which manufactures clothing for priests.

One theory holds that “Toomey” was overwhelmed by guilt because he had killed a priest — a murder for which another man was wrongly convicted. At this point, our Idaho mystery becomes a Texas mystery.

The Austin Chronicle of June 17, 2005 tentatively links the Boise event to the December 21, 1981 murder of Father Patrick “Paddy” Ryan in a motel in Odessa, Texas. Strong evidence suggests that Father Ryan was gay and had gone to that motel for a liaison.

James Harry Reyos did 20 years for the killing, even though his hair did not match samples found at the crime scene, and even though hard evidence (in the form of receipts and a driving citation) prove that he was 200 miles away in, of all places, Roswell, New Mexico. Reyos (who had previously rejected Father Ryan’s advances) “confessed” while inebriated. Even though he retracted the confession as soon as he sobered up, his outsider status as a gay Indian made him a convenient scapegoat.

The “justice for Reyos” movement became a cause célèbre in Texas, and continued even after the man’s release. A Dallas Morning News reporter named Tim Wyatt decided that the best way to secure an official pardon was to find the real killer. From the afore-cited Austin Chronicle story:

Wyatt constructed a complex database of priests, scouring the U.S. Official Catholic Directory — an annual yearbook of clergy that lists diocese, assignments, and deaths, among other things — for the five years leading up to and after Ryan’s death. “I put everyone into the database,” Wyatt recalled. The reporters were looking for patterns, and they found one. “There were clearly some [priests] that were killed; there were clearly some that were missing,” he said. The team also scoured old wire reports, and found a string of priest murders stretching from Texas, New Mexico, through Arizona, and up into the Pacific Northwest. While several of the cases had produced viable suspects, several others had not — significantly, a murder in Yuma, Ariz., remained unsolved, Wyatt said. And the Yuma murder was eerily similar to the murder of Father Ryan: In early November 1982, 54-year-old Father Benjamin Carrier was found in a Yuma motel room, face down, naked, his hands tied behind his back, dead from asphyxiation.

The Suntanned Man in Boise wore a belt buckle which traced back to a gift shop in Phoenix, Arizona, 150 miles away from Yuma. Not exactly courtroom-quality evidence.

As a matter of hard fact, nothing proves — and very little suggests — that the Suntanned Man — a.k.a. “Wm L. Toomey” — was a priest-killer.

Yet the idea lingers.

Ronan, Montana

Father John Kerrigan (58), recently assigned to the small-but-picturesque Sacred Heart Catholic Church, spoke with several parishioners at a local bakery on the evening of July 20, 1984. He soon left — and was never seen again.

The next day, items of his blood-stained clothing (including a windbreaker and a shirt) were found off of Highway 35 near Flathead Lake. Investigators also found a coat hanger which, some speculated, might have been used to strangle the priest. On July 29, Kerrigan’s Chevrolet Impala turned up some five miles outside of town. Copious bloodstains splattered the car’s interior, while blood also “decorated” items in the trunk — a pillow, a shovel, and Kerrigan’s wallet, which contained $1200.

Obviously, robbery was not the motive. It’s hard to escape the feeling that someone wanted this evidence to be found.

Speculation links this crime to the June 13, 1982 disappearance of Episcopal priest James Otis Anderson of Townsend. Anderson and Kerrigan had known each other despite belonging to different churches.

“Priest killer” theorists have attempted to tie this crime to the 1982 murder of Father Reynaldo Rivera of Santa Fe, New Mexico, which (as noted above) may be linked to that strange suicide in Boise, Idaho.

An unrelated theory attributes the Kerrigan murder to four inmates who had recently escaped from Montana State Prison.

In 2015, the Church revealed to the public something that the cops had known for quite some time: Kerrigan had been accused of sexually abusing the underaged in Montana. After being shifted from parish to parish, he had spent time in a refuge for troubled clerics. Did a victim enact private vengeance? Possibly — although it should be noted that, two days after Kerrigan went missing, schoolteacher Curtis Holmen disappeared under eerily similar circumstances in Missoula, Montana.

The July 21, 1985 edition of The Missoulian reported that, according to a spokesperson for the Lake County police, investigator Paul Choma was focused on a suspect living outside of Montana. Shortly thereafter, Choma also disappeared.

Years later, the lawman’s daughter revealed that this secondary vanishing act had a very comprehensible motive: At an earlier stage of his career, Choma had infiltrated the Hell’s Angels and developed a case against the gang’s leaders. When vengeful Angels learned of his whereabouts (perhaps due to news coverage of the Kerrigan mystery), Choma took on a new identity. Finding work in an out-of-state fast food restaurant, he was eventually murdered in the parking lot by persons unknown.

Choma left behind notes theorizing that Kerrigan had staged his own death — a scenario which explains the ostentatious display of evidence. I can understand why Kerrigan might want to do such a thing, but not why a desperate man would leave behind $1200. Choma also theorized that the diocese aided this disappearance. This is a truly silly idea: Why bother to relocate the man to Ronan only to make him vanish before he could celebrate his first mass?

(My sources do not reveal whether Choma’s notes named the suspect referenced by The Missoulian.)

I have no friends.

As the kids say: I don’t vibe with anyone. I’m like a pair of noise-cancelling headphones: If you send out a vibe, any vibe, I will radiate an equally strong anti-vibe. I am the great Mirror of Opposition. In defiance of Saint Paul, I speak as a Jew to the Greeks and as a Greek to the Jews.

In the political realm, conservatives routinely damn me as a socialist. Meanwhile, identity-obsessed young pseudo-“socialists” tend to lump me in with the MAGA maniacs.

(These days, no-one in either group talks about money. I’m old enough to recall when everyone agreed that the word “socialism” had something to do with money and the distribution thereof. Remember? If you do, your hair must be as grey as mine.)

Something similar occurs when I write about Forteana. The mere fact that I consider such a topic worthy of study has led certain conclusion-hopping skeptics to presume that I am a True Believer in Bigfoot, ceremonial magic, grey aliens, Ouija boards and tarot cards.

The horrible truth: I once illustrated a deck of tarot cards, and I did so very badly. Despite my worst efforts, and much to my astonishment, that project made a ton of money. I’ve never created a Ouija board, but I might do so one of these days. I enjoy DIY projects of that sort.

If the preceding paragraph leads you to presume that I presume that such devices have efficacy, then you are presumptuous indeed. Which is another way of saying that you’re an asshole.

Similarly, if you presume that I categorically deny the possibility that such devices have ever had some efficacy when used by other people, you’re also an asshole. A different type of asshole, but still an asshole.

Try to understand: I would never pretend to speak for every other human being who has dabbled with such items. I can speak only of my own experiences. So far, I see no evidence that Ouija boards actually work; all I know is that some of them look cool. As for tarot cards: I view them as an art project. They “work” insofar as they allow one to grapple with aspects of human psychology resistant to verbalization. In other words, they “work” they same way other works of art “work.”

Back in the 1990s, when MJ12 and Roswell were all the rage, I expressed my opinion that these areas of research would never lead to evidence of alien visitation. This stance led many UFO buffs to presume that I was a debunker in league with Evil Phil Klass.

Yet whenever I interacted with the skeptics, I found them to be every bit as obdurate, hypocritical and illogical as any QAnon-addled conspiracy blowhard. There’s a long story I could tell in order to illustrate this point, but this essay is not the place for that tale.

Brother Blue and the Rites of Saturn

Where was I? Oh yes. Friendship.

In the late 1990s, I gained — briefly — the last friend I’ll probably have in this life. He was Devin McAndrew, a.k.a. Blue Resonant Human, Brother Blue, and a few other things. If you were into fringe studies back then, the Cerulean One was a delightful internet inevitability. Instead of combating the incessant “Spook!” accusations, he accused himself of spookery as frequently as possible, and thereby disarmed his critics.

For a classic example of his off-the-wall writing style, see here.

For much more, see here.

I’ve also found a Facebook page active in 2012, but I don’t know if this account is truly the work of Devin or of one of the pseudo-Blues who took on that identity after the original Blue Resonant Human disappeared from the internet circa the turn of the century.

For the longest time, I was absolutely convinced that Dev was the protagonist of Robert Guffey’s book Chameleo, but Guffey has assured me that such is not the case. Although many geographic/biographic details line up, I also must admit — reluctantly — that coincidences do occur.

The truth is that Dev was once a very normal guy, a computer tech living and working in the greater San Diego area. He gained early-internet fame after adopting the Brother Blue persona. Everything went swimmingly until he got walloped by a hurricane of personal calamities — job loss, marriage loss, more. Suddenly, he entered a period of angst and alienation and self-destructive behavior. And who can blame him?

Hence our friendship. People tended to wander into my orbit after convincing themselves that no-one else would want their company. Yes, I was that guy.

One day, Devin showed up at my door with a plan for the evening. He wanted to attend a quasi-theatrical production called the Rites of Saturn, performed by the local branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis at an occult bookstore in North Hollywood.

I doubt that Dev truly believed that these Saturnine rites would accomplish anything spectacular. As recently-divorced people often do, he sought experiences that were novel, extreme, extraordinary. He needed to get his mind away from his problems. He needed to beat (you should pardon the expression) the blues.

Before the show, we grabbed snacks at the local Ralphs grocery. There, we saw the OTO-ers — easily recognizable in black costume — buying booze and chips. All cheap stuff. Plain-wrap beer. Gallo and sub-Gallo wine. The store-brand Doritos knock-off.

The sight made us smile. “And some people think the OTO runs the world,” I told Devin.

The Rite was a bit of a disappointment, through no fault of the performers. I blame Aleister Crowley, author of the script, who filled the show with interminable readings of Swinburne and AC’s own Swinburne-esque “poetry.” At the end (spoiler alert!), we learn the Big Secret of the Death: “Oh no! There IS no God!” With that horrific revelation, everyone — cast members, audience members, everyone — screams as loud as they can for as long as they can.

It’s all supposed to be very profound.

The Big Question

One of the performers was a raven-haired beauty with whom Dev fell immediately in love. By contrast, most OTOers look like they should lay off the pseudo-Doritos. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Jeez, look at me.)

I enjoyed hobnobbing with Thelemites after the show. Many of them brought home-made desserts. (Eyes Wide Shut this wasn’t.) While Dev tried to get the attention of the aforementioned raven-haired beauty, I asked those around me a question that was very much on my mind in those days:

Have you ever experienced the supernatural?

After all, these guys did ceremonial magic. The whole point of ritual magic is to wield supernatural forces — to make stuff happen.

But assuming the existence of the supernatural and experiencing the supernatural are two separate issues. You can invoke all you want: I don’t care. What I care about is what you saw and heard.

We’ve all heard the expression “seeing is believing.” I wasn’t interested in learning about what these people believed. I wanted to know if they had truly seen anything.

No-one I interviewed that night — or on other occasions — gave me a satisfactory answer. It was all “maybe” and “perhaps” and “out of the corner of my eye” and “You don’t understand! That’s not what magic(k) is truly for! It’s for raising consciousness and spiritual advancement and…”

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Look: What I want is proof that there’s more to existence than dreary materialism. Anything will do: A fairy dancing on the morning dew, a kiss on the forehead from the Virgin Mary, a shy “Hi!” from Caspar the Friendly Ghost, a car from Stellantis that lasts more than 300,000 miles. Anything.

In other words: I want a miracle.

Here’s a secret no-one will tell you: Most of magic is a miracle-free zone. You’re not likely to hear a persuasive supernatural story from the folks who light candles, draw sigils on the floor and chant “Ateh malkuth ve-geburah ve-gedulah le-olam…”

On a later occasion, a leading Wiccan of my acquaintance offered a similarly disappointing response. Sorry if I seem overly harsh, but I don’t really care about your claim that you felt the presence of Cernunnos. I want a goddamn snapshot. Failing that, I’d like a multiple eyewitness account.

The real thing

You know who gave me a truly persuasive supernatural tale? An arch skeptic. One of the most hardheaded rationalists I ever met.

Her name was Georgene, and she was the mother of my ladyfriend. When presented with tales of hauntings, UFOs, cryptids, mystic lights or other anomalies, she would scoff her mightiest scoffs. Trained in the law, she knew the meaning of the word “evidence” — and to her eye, neither Zak Bagans nor any of his televised competitors had any to offer.

So imagine my surprise when she ‘fessed up to her own tale of living in a haunted apartment.

If you are versed in the literature of paranormality, you would not have been terribly shocked by her details. Moving furniture. Faucets and lights that went off and on of their own accord. Oddball thumps and slams and footsteps. Poltergeist-y things like that.

She didn’t have a snapshot. She couldn’t offer multiple eyewitnesses. What, then, made her story so persuasive to me?

Simple: I knew her.

She wouldn’t lie about such things. Not to me; not to anyone. I have no way of persuading you that she told the truth. But she managed to convince me, simply because we were — well, family.

Amusingly, and infuriatingly, she disbelieved all supernatural stories other than her own. In a world filled with fools and liars and attention-seekers, no other evidentiary standard sufficed. “If I didn’t see it personally, it didn’t happen.”

Is that stance unreasonable? Of course it’s unreasonable. But it also has the virtue of safety. Your testimony, my testimony, his testimony, her testimony — none of these things would budge her out of “scoff” mode. She had to see with her own eyes. That was her one epistemological requisite.

The woman had absolutely no desire to live in a haunted apartment, yet she did. By contrast, the OTO-ers probably would have welcomed the chance to interact with such phenomena, yet they never did. The most important lesson I learned from my conversations with Georgene comes to this: The supernatural — if it exists — is not something you can choose to experience.

It, whatever it is, chooses you.

Mind you, I’m still not entirely convinced that supernatural forces exist. And yet, perversely, I have formulated a rule about how the supernatural works.

Go ahead: Chant, pray, draw sigils, whirl like a dervish, light candles, light incense, do sex magic, practice ritual celibacy, eat magic cookies, dab yourself with magic oils, stare into mirrors, make voodoo dolls, work within a group, work solitary, read a zillion books about magic, perform the Rites of Saturn and eat a huge bowl of post-ritual pseudo-Doritos. Do it all.

None of those things matter. Stop kidding yourself.

You won’t experience the supernatural.

You can’t choose it. It chooses you.

All ufologists know about the so-called “Philadelphia Experiment.” This infinitely mutable myth arose out of the flying saucer subculture in 1955, even though the original version of the story had no aliens or flying whatzits. Nothing else in American folklore offers a similar fusion of pseudoscience and government secrecy, all rolled into a single, stubborn, unkillable narrative. In the early 1990s, the familiar story of a teleporting warship evolved into The Montauk Project, a work of science fiction devised by a conster/pervert named Preston Nichols. Having transcended such mundane concepts as “accuracy,” “logic” and “morality,” Nichols packaged his fantasy as a factual account. Years later, his book inspired the wonderful television series Stranger Things.

If you’re a Fortean old-timer who thinks that there is nothing truly novel to say about the Philadelphia Experiment — well, don’t be so sure. There’s always something new. This post may contain a surprise or two.

How it all began

If you first entered this pseudoscientific candyhouse via the work of the Duffer Brothers, you probably won’t recognize the original version of the story. Here is an ultra-brief summary of the tale as it appeared in 1955:

In October, 1943, the U.S. Navy conducted a secret experiment at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard to render the destroyer escort USS Eldridge invisible to enemy detection. The experiment allegedly succeeded too well. The ship either vanished entirely or reappeared miles away in Norfolk, Virginia, before snapping back to Philadelphia. Members of the crew were said to have suffered horrifying side effects – madness, spontaneous combustion, or being physically fused into the ship’s steel hull.

It must be understood that no contemporary documentation supports any of this.

In the 1970s, William Moore and Charles Berlitz wrote a book called The Philadelphia Experiment which outlines Moore’s attempt to get to the bottom of this tale. Moore found nothing to substantiate the tale, aside from a 1943 newsclip which recounted a barroom fight near the place where the Eldridge was docked. The book offers a weak argument that this clip may have some bearing on the story of the vanishing ship. Color me unpersuaded.

The myth’s point of origin can be traced with unusual precision. In 1955, a man calling himself both Carlos Miguel Allende and Carl Allen sent a series of rambling letters to astronomer and UFO writer Morris K. Jessup. Jessup had recently published The Case for the UFO, a speculative book that flirted with anti-gravity theories and exotic physics. Allende, a merchant seaman with (shall we say) an unusual writing style claimed to have witnessed the Philadelphia Experiment firsthand while serving aboard another ship, the SS Andrew Furuseth. He asserted that the Navy had applied a form of “unified field theory” to the Eldridge, producing invisibility and teleportation.

Jessup was intrigued but unconvinced by Allende’s wild, unverified allegations.

Matters became exceedingly strange when the Office of Naval Research received an anonymously annotated copy of Jessup’s book, filled with cryptic marginalia referencing the same supposed experiment. The Navy circulated this odd volume internally. The official attention paid to this text convinced UFO buffs that the government believed in the claims made by the writer of the marginalia.

The military consulted Jessup, author of the book. Soon, it became clear that Carlos Allende — whoever the hell he was — was the man who had “improved” upon Jessup’s book with those odd marginal scrawls.

Thus, the ONR cast its eye on Carlos Allende, man of mystery.

The Varo edition

A company called Varo Manufacturing (in Garland, TX) accomplished the tedious task of typesetting Allende’s handwritten marginal annotations. The published edition of the “Allende-ized” version of Jessup’s book became known as the Varo edition.

When this edition reached the public, the book became one of ufology’s “holy grails.” For decades, it circulated in fringe circles, usually commanding a steep price.

(Too steep for my blood! I eventually acquired a samizdat photocopy.)

As Jacques Vallee notes in his excellent book Revelations (one of the few true Fortean “must-reads”):

When I became involved in American UFO research in the early Sixties, this Varo edition was regarded among collectors and amateurs as a treasure of the greatest rarity. Those who owned a copy kept it under lock and key as a librarian might keep an original Gutenberg Bible! The Varo document played the same role for UFO buffs in the Sixties as the MJ-12 documents and the Dulce papers played in the Eighties: it was supposed to contain the absolute final truth about the nature of flying saucers, their pilots, and even the secret of gravity. And it seemed to confirm the fact that there were high-level government scientists who were deeply involved in UFO research.

Of course, the “lock and key” approach made the tale seem all the more persuasive.

I must repeat: The fabled Varo edition was offered for sale in the finer New Age bookstores throughout the 1980s and 1980s, at least in the Los Angeles area. I saw it with my own eyes on numerous occasions. You could acquire the book if you truly needed it. Nevertheless, UFO buffs told themselves that “the gummint” had suppressed the Varo book: If you possess a copy, don’t be surprised to see the Men in Black show up at your door!

The legend grows

Jessup himself grew increasingly distressed and depressed, for a number of personal reasons. He died by suicide in 1959. His passing further darkened the story’s aura.

For decades, the Philadelphia Experiment remained a fringe curiosity. It gained broader public traction in the late 1960s and 1970s, when a general revival of interest in conspiracies, UFOs, and government secrecy created fertile ground for such tales. A disreputable Fortean hustler named Gray Barker fastened onto the yarn, adding his own flourishes and fantasias. Writers like Vincent Gaddis also embellished the story, often smoothing over contradictions while adding lurid details.

Charles Berlitz and William Moore came out with a book titled The Philadelphia Experiment in 1979. Moore, I am told, did the bulk of the writing, using Berlitz’ research materials. Although none of the “evidence” presented in this volume is truly persuasive, this widely-distributed book kept the legend vibrant. The Philadelphia Experiment was no longer confined to the Fortean fringe: Now, even the normies were talking about it.

In 1984, the tale inspired a not-bad science fiction film called The Philadelphia Experiment. Within ten years, the more gullible UFO buffs began to tell themselves that this film was “suppressed.” Supposedly, the gummint ordered the film pulled from distribution.

Really? I distinctly recall watching this movie at the old Hollywood Pacific theater. Later, it appeared on VHS — in fact, you could find the cassette in every sizable video rental store. There are plenty of would-be screenwriters in Los Angeles who would love to have their own works “suppressed” in this fashion.

RAINBOW

One of the most persistent details in the “Philadelphia” literature is the claim that the invisibility experiment was part of something called “Project Rainbow.” That was the cryptonym assigned to the operation, according to Carlos Allende. Since he said that he was just an ordinary seaman in World War II, one wonders why he would be made privy to the code-name. (He didn’t even serve aboard the Eldridge!)

The name sounds plausible enough to a modern ear — vaguely poetic, faintly scientific, and reassuringly classified. Yet this detail raises a serious historical problem unnoticed in all previous discussions of the Philadelphia Experiment. Before the United States entered World War II, “Rainbow” had a very specific meaning within U.S. military planning.

The “Rainbow Plans” were high-level strategic war plans developed in the late 1930s and early 1940s to prepare for various global conflict scenarios.

One of them, Rainbow Five, was leaked to the Chicago Tribune in early December, 1941, shortly before Pearl Harbor. For a few days, this leak caused one hell of a scandal, because the leaker was undoubtedly a fascist sympathizer lurking with the military establishment. The brouhaha died down after the Japanese attack: The onset of war was no time to publicize an inquiry bound to cause division and paranoia. Nevertheless, that leak had created troubling headlines and remained well-remembered within military and political circles. Given this context, it would be odd — and, I would argue, quite reckless — for the military to re-use “Rainbow” as the cryptonym for a sensitive naval experiment only a year or two later.

For obvious reasons, the military and the intelligence services strive to avoid duplication of code names. You don’t want to have two projects called BASEBALL BAT running at the same time. Yes, duplication does occur, but (unless someone has seriously screwed up) a cryptonym will re-appear only after a number of years have passed. Even allowing for looser naming practices during wartime, it strains credulity to argue that the Navy would use a codename associated with a very recent scandal.

The MAJESTIC parallel

A parallel can be drawn to another UFO-related cryptonym. In the late 1980s, ufologists were told that, in 1952, the Truman administration had assigned the code-name MAJESTIC to a Top Secret effort to study alien artifacts allegedly recovered at Roswell. Ufologists did not understand that MAJESTIC was, in fact, the most highly-classified project of that era, although the actual project had nothing to do with aliens.

MAJESTIC was the code-name for the attack plan on the USSR.

In a future piece, I intend to publish further details about the actual MAJESTIC project and why that particular code-name was assigned to a fictional UFO research effort. For now, I will simply ask the reader to ponder the overall cryptonym mystery.

Why did Allende latch onto a genuine code-name about the plan to attack Nazi Germany? Why did the originators of the MAJESTIC-12 (or MJ-12) mythos latch onto a genuine code-name involving the plan to attack the Soviet Union?

Is coincidence at play here, or were the creators of these myths playing a more devious game?

Yes, there was another RAINBOW

As noted earlier, code-name duplication did sometimes occur. The CIA — which came into existence after the war — developed its own system for devising cryptonyms. They accidentally re-used a few code-names which had previously been assigned to military projects of the pre-war and wartime eras.

(In 1975, the DOD came up with the NICKA system, a registry which attempts to correlate all of the code-names, exercise names and nicknames in use by the military and the intelligence community, with the goal of preventing duplication.)

In the mid-1950s, the CIA used the name RAINBOW for a classified effort to reduce the radar visibility of the Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft.

This RAINBOW was a genuine project, firmly documented and entirely unrelated to ship-based invisibility or teleportation. The U-2 was a spy aircraft designed to fly over Soviet airspace, well above the reach of enemy defense systems. It was extremely important to the Cold War.

The existence of a real RAINBOW project explains why the DOD (and the CIA) took a deep interest in Carl Allende’s annotated version of Jessup’s book. In those feverish Cold War days, Allende’s careless use of the term RAINBOW must have pressed a few panic buttons. It’s easy to imagine some military/intelligence bigwig screaming at an aide:

“Who the hell is this Allende guy? Did anyone tell him about RAINBOW? How did he learn about it?”

Allende must have seemed very important — for a while. But a close reading of the Varo edition would have convinced any rational person that Carlos Allende (a.k.a. Carl Allen) did not pose any threat to national security. Allende’s writings clearly indicate that the author was…

…well, there’s no polite way to say it. He was a complete whackadoodle. Nuttier than a jar of Peter Pan.

Pretending to be three separate people (who all write in the same distinctive fashion), Allende makes reference to Atlantis. He speaks of two visiting alien races — the friendly LMs and the hostile SMs. (Apparently, the SMs don’t use safe words.) Capitalizing words at random, he rambles on and on about teleportation, force fields, “the Great War of the Ancients,” alien motherships and the hidden wisdom of the Gypsies. The Navy knew full well that the Philadelphia Experiment story was total nonsense.

In his writings, Allende never gives a clear indication of how he knows what he knows. In the lower Fortean realms, ipse dixit remains everyone’s favorite fallacy. Naive buffs adore “whistleblowers” who routinely engage in this particular offense against logic, but they will become very angry at you if you dare to point out that this fallacy is, in fact, a fallacy.

That said…

I must confess that I have long been irked — and intrigued — by Allende’s use of the term RAINBOW. This lingering mystery irritates the mind the way a popcorn kernel lodged between one’s teeth irritates the tongue.

Why did Allende use that term?

Most skeptics will vote for the “coincidence” theory. Although this is probably the safest bet, I have enough residual paranoia coursing through my veins to keep me from embracing that suggestion. Was Allende inspired by vague memories of the Chicago Tribune’s reporting in December of 1941? Or — odd thought — had he somehow gotten wind of what the CIA was up to in the mid 1950s?

The latter possibility is very disturbing. We cannot blame the CIA (or the DOD) for investigating the matter.

Who was Allende?

Beginning in 1967, Jacques Vallee (like Jessup before him) received correspondence from the enigmatic Carlos Allende/Carl Allen. I hope Vallee won’t mind if I reproduce a somewhat lengthy passage from his book Revelations:

In his first postcard – a night view of “the beautiful Sanger Harris Department Store in Dallas, Texas” – he informed me that for the mere sum of $750 I could purchase his instructions on “how to build your own flying saucer.” He also wrote that his deductions, research, and other papers accumulated over the last nineteen years “have arrived safely into the USA from old Mexico with me.”

Oddly enough, although the card was posted from Dallas, Carl Allen gave a return address in Minneapolis. The style was identical to that of the letters to Jessup, down to the bizarre underlinings and the emphasized passages in bold capital letters.

We corresponded during 1967 and 1968, and I accumulated many pages in Allen’s clear, closely-spaced handwriting, including one astounding letter of fifteen pages about the Navy’s experiments and their implications for Einstein’s physics. He had observed a destroyer escort that was heavily instrumented; a field was created, and something like an explosion took place. Several men suffered long-term injuries as a result.

In one of his first letters – he wrote to me from Monterrey, Mexico, in October 1967 – Allende described to me his observations of the Philadelphia Experiment and its medical impact:

After this tremendous explosion my hair came out in bunches in my comb and I observed same result in other Deck-crew members . . .

He also offered to sell me “the long suppressed annottated [sic] version of Proffessor [sic] Morris K. Jessup’s book” with the annotations printed in red ink. “The book has been continually marked on since and now contains a wealth of information and corroboration not available to any other person in these United States . . . the book is truly the only copy left and is said to be ‘the book that killed Einstein’ (so hard was its psychological blow on the good & gentle Einstein).”

Carlos Allende, who showed himself as a persistent promoter, reduced the price of this valuable document from his initial demand of $6000 to a paltry $1950, representing fifty dollars for every month of research: “I need the money for an operation in cardiac area.” The letter closed with the revelation that the Gypsies were related to UFO landings in Assyrian times.

Over the next few months Carlos Allende and I played a hide-and seek game with each other, as he tried every trick to sell me his valuable document…

Vallee decided that he was “corresponding with a con man.” Allende later described being aboard a merchant ship called SS Maylay in 1947 when it was nearly destroyed by the “kilotomic” explosion of a nearby UFO. Vallee checked. No ship by that name existed at that time.

In October 1980, Fortean researcher Robert Goerman published a piece in Fate Magazine which pinned down “Carlos Allende” as a mentally unstable loner named Carl Allen, of New Kensington, PA. (In that period, Fate published a fair amount of skeptical material, though it rarely got any credit for doing so.) Although I accept Goerman’s identification, I remain baffled. And irked. How could such an inconsequential oddball latch onto the “RAINBOW” nomenclature?

I suppose coincidence is possible, but that idea just doesn’t sit well with me.

The Office of Naval Research has offered a thorough accounting of what the Eldridge actually did in 1943. David Halperin offers more insight into Allen here:

An astronomy professor who met Allen in 1980 (and afterward wished he hadn’t) pegged him accurately as “a sad, frustrated old man who…knows no physics beyond a bit of jargon.”

Further on:

Yet there was more than that to the Philadelphia experiment, and we must reckon with this if we’re to understand its abiding resonance. The myth spoke not only of invisibility but of transcendence, of instant transport over vast distances. It spoke these things to a nation bursting forth to space as its “new frontier.” True, it was first heard by those persuaded that outer space was already here in our skies, that we were the space people’s frontier no less than they were ours. But it didn’t remain with the UFOlogists; it was too protean for that, its echoes too powerful. It entered the cultural bloodstream. Half a century later, it remains.

From Philadelphia to Montauk to Netflix

Newcomers to Fortean studies may now be wondering: How did the ramblings of a deranged old former seaman give rise to Stranger Things? The Philadelphia Experiment is a putative maritime mystery; Stranger Things takes place inland.

When did the sailors become landlubbers? How did Allen give way to El?

Tracking the evolution of this mythos would require a much longer post. We must save that tale for another time. Suffice it to say, I was there when the great shift took place.

The “Philadelphia” legend evolved into the “Montauk” legend in 1989, at a MUFON UFO conference in Phoenix, Arizona. On that occasion, I (foolishly) made my “debut” in the Fortean subculture. After I left the stage, the spotlight turned to a very odd individual named Al Bielek, an alleged survivor of the Philadelphia Experiment. He pretty much became the star of the show.

Over time — 1989 through 1992 — Al, along with his pals Duncan Cameron and Preston Nichols, created the Montauk mythos. As I recall, Al Bielek did not use the name “Montauk” during that initial lecture in Phoenix. (My memory may be faulty on this point; I hope someone has maintained videotapes of the occasion.)

I spoke with Al about an hour after we both left the stage. He seemed friendly enough, but I could tell that he was “mining” for material that he could incorporate into his next riff. Being quite young and naive, I blabbed and blabbed about my research into MKULTRA, hoping to impress everyone present, especially the pretty blonde sharing a meal with me. Thus, I contributed — inadvertently — to the development of the fantasy which became Stranger Things.

There is more to say about the development of the Montauk myth, but that tale must wait for another time. Suffice it to say: Yes, this is how the world works. A young doofus tries to impress a blonde in 1989. A not-so-young kook named Al listens in, taking mental notes. And twenty-seven years later, Millie Bobby Brown points her finger at a Demogorgon.

If you are anxious to learn more about the Montauk story right now now now, I strongly urge you to watch this video by the extraordinary Emily Louise.

Adventure-seekers and alternative historians still talk about “Explorations in the Grand Canyon,” an article published in the Arizona Gazette on April 5, 1909. According to this story, a man named G.E. Kincaid had found an underground city within a Canyon cave system — a city constructed by a culture derived from both Ancient Egypt and Tibet. Kincaid’s discovery led “the Smithsonian Institute” to send a team of archeologists headed by one Professor S.A. Jordan. The Jordan/Kincaid expedition made astounding discoveries:

Nearly a mile underground, about 1480 feet below the surface, the long main passage has been delved into, to find another mammoth chamber from which radiates scores of passageways, like the spokes of a wheel. Several hundred rooms have been discovered, reached by passageways running from the main passage, one of them having been explored for 854 feet and another 634 feet. The recent finds include articles which have never been known as native to this country, and doubtless they had their origin in the orient. War weapons, copper instruments, sharp-edged and hard as steel, indicate the high state of civilization reached by these strange people. So interested have the scientists become that preparations are being made to equip the camp for extensive studies, and the force will be increased to thirty or forty persons.

The story does not specify the exact location of the cave entrance, noting only that it is in a nearly inaccessible spot “on government land,” some 42 miles upriver of El Tovar Crystal canyon.

“Over a hundred feet from the entrance is the cross-hall, several hundred feet long, in which are found the idol, or image, of the people’s god, sitting cross-legged, with a lotus flower or lily in each hand. The cast of the face is oriental, and the carving this cavern. The idol almost resembles Buddha, though the scientists are not certain as to what religious worship it represents. Taking into consideration everything found thus far, it is possible that this worship most resembles the ancient people of Tibet.

Surrounding this idol are smaller images, some very beautiful in form; others crooked-necked and distorted shapes, symbolical, probably, of good and evil. There are two large cactus with protruding arms, one on each side of the dais on which the god squats. All this is carved out of hard rock resembling marble. In the opposite corner of this cross-hall were found tools of all descriptions, made of copper. These people undoubtedly knew the lost art of hardening this metal, which has been sought by chemicals for centuries without result.

There were hieroglyphs and mummies, indicative of an Egyptian influence. The idea of Egyptians and Tibetans working together — in defiance of everything we know about both cultures — is almost as incredible as the existence of an underground city.

Perhaps needless to say, we have no proof for the existence of this cave — no artifacts, no photos, no documentation, no eyewitness testimony, no family recollections, no second- or third-hand sources. Nothing. Not one piece of official paper confirms that the Smithsonian Institution (not “Institute”) mounted a large expedition in the Grand Canyon.

I can find no online confirmation of the existence of an explorer named “G.E. Kincaid.” All published references to him trace back to two 1909 stories in the Arizona Gazette. (Kincaid had popped up in a previous Gazette piece on March 12, 1909.) Professor Jordan appears to be fictional. Researchers have confirmed the existence of an archeologist named S.A. Jordon, but he worked in Europe and had no link to the Smithsonian.

The Smithsonian says that its files contain no information about Kincaid, Jordan, or an underground city in the Grand Canyon. Of course, this disclaimer means nothing to those paranoia junkies who consider the Smithsonian to be the key player in The Great Conspiracy to Hide the Truth and Do Evil Stuff.

One such personage is David Hatcher Childress, who gives this tale uncritical treatment in his Lost Cities of North and Central America. The Childress account has convinced many to scour the area – both on foot and via Google Earth – in search of the cave entrance. An explorer named Jack Andrews claims that he found the cave in 1972: “I have held the secret since then.” But why?

And then we have David Icke, the British prophet who claims to have unmasked Queen Elizabeth as a malevolent space lizard. In The Biggest Secret, Icke writes of this ancient underground metropolis: “My own research suggests that it is from another dimension, the lower fourth dimension, that the reptilian control and manipulation is primarily orchestrated.” If I understand Icke’s confusing syntax correctly, he seems to believe that lizard monsters control the world via an interdimensional portal in the Grand Canyon.

Well, that’s one theory. Another theory is that a whole buncha people fell for a hoax.

The Arizona Gazette published this story at a time when it was not unheard-of for a western newspaperman to fill column inches with tales of lost treasures. In this case, however, I believe that we should blame not the journalist but his informant. It’s quite possible that the man calling himself “Kincaid” was either a con artist or a prospector desperate for a grubstake.

(If you recognize the name “Charlie Clusker,” you’ll know that the gold bugs of that period could be quite creative. I tell the Clusker story in this video.)

One factor keeping this legend alive is the proximity of Kincaid’s imaginary cave to a site which I consider worthier of our consideration...

The Sipapu

The legendary Sipapu — the hole or portal through which the first human beings entered this plane of existence — is revered by the Hopis. Their ceremonial spaces (underground rooms called kivas ) all have a depression in the floor representing the first Sipapu, the place of emergence. According to Hopi belief, the first human beings became human only after they hopped through this portal. In their previous world, they were more lizard-like.

(Perhaps David Icke cribbed ideas from the Hopis?)

If you want to see the original — or rather, if you want to see a geological formation often thought to be the original — you’ll find it 3.5 miles east of the conjunction of the Colorado River and the Little Colorado. It’s a dome-shaped mound, 70 feet in diameter, with a hole in the center that ostensibly goes all the way to the center of the planet. Although sacred to the Hopi and the Zuni, this spot is under the control of the Navajo, who do not consider it significant to their own belief system.

At this point, the reader may wish to locate the Sipapu on Google Earth. You probably won’t identify the actual mound, but you should be able to find the general region: It sits on a bend in the river 3.5 miles east of the two buttes.

In the film Expedition to Sipapu, oddity-hunter Christopher O’Brien provides a grainy black-and-white photograph of this mound but offers no further hard evidence of its existence. Some believe that the True Sipapu remains a mystical place, like Avalon or Shamballa -- invisible to aerial photography, and locatable only by Hopi elders. The reality is that hikers have found the mound (which isn’t particularly impressive) and have provided more recent photographs. On his website, backpacker Bob Bordasch says that the hole in the center is two feet in diameter, and that it “contains bubbling water 8 feet or so below the surface.”

If you truly believe in Lizard People and you wish to meet them, jump in.

Converging legends

Conclusion-hopping sensationalists often assert that the Sipapu and Kincaid’s wondrous cave are one and the same. Not true. Nothing links Kincaid’s underground “lost city” to any aspect of the Hopi belief system. The Hopis, for their part, did not speak of Tibetans or Egyptians. The Sipapu is a small hill with a small hole on the top. Kincaid allegedly found the entrance to a cave — an entrance large enough to allow one to walk inside.

Let’s repeat two basic facts of geography:

1. The original Sipapu is on the bank of the Little Colorado River some 3.5 miles east of the confluence.

2. Kincaid claimed that his mystery cave faces the Colorado River — not the Little Colorado — some “forty-two miles up the river from the El Tovar Crystal canyon.” This location takes us at least ten miles north of the confluence.

Geography aside, we have another problem: Both G.E. Kincaid and his cave are fictional. A very small hill often called the Sipapu actually exists. It’s probably nothing more than a mound of dirt, but it is real.

Further skeptical discussion of the Lost City may be found here and here. If you’re itching to see how the more credulous YouTubers treat this legend, go here and here.

If you’re a UFO buff, you probably know this story, which exists in several variants. Here’s one version. My summary:

Famous comic Jackie Gleason (known as “The Great One”) was a not-so-secret Fortean who possessed a vast paranormal library. In 1971, he visited the White House and asked President Nixon for the straight scoop on flying saucers. Nixon told him to show up at MacDill Air Force Base (just outside of Tampa) a few days later; once there, Gleason would see something special.

When Gleason showed up, he was escorted into a dark storage building, where he had to pass through elaborate security measures. Finally, he was brought into a large room where odd debris lay on the floor. Holding one piece of this debris, Gleason found it to be both flexible and extremely light. Another piece seemed to float above the floor. An officer identified the material as coming from Roswell. In another room, Gleason was shown two alien cadavers, a little over four feet tall, stored within glass containers.

If you’re of a certain age, you’re probably picturing Gleason-as-Ralph-Kramden, eyes bulging as he sputters “Homina homina…!”

That’s the tale as it appears in Albert Rosales’ multi-volume Humanoid Encounters series; the entry lists ufologist Bill Knell as the source. (I was tempted to write “controversial ufologist” — but aren’t they all?) Rosales adds this comment: “Beverly McKittrick, Gleason’s ex-wife, later wrote a book about him, which included what he told her about his trip to MacDill.”

No such book exists. I enjoy Rosales’s work, but he should have double-checked before publishing this statement.

As noted earlier, we have more than one version of this story. In a variant — which you can find on several websites — Nixon and Gleason both visited the base, which was not MacDill, but Homestead Air Force Base, near Miami. More recently, some YouTube commenters have claimed that Nixon personally picked up Gleason at his home in Florida — and that they drove all the way out to Area 51.

That must have been one hell of a road trip.

Do we have a credible source?

Many online sources aver that Gleason revealed this secret to his wife Beverly McKittrick. Supposedly, Jackie divorced her shortly after he found out that she had blabbed everything to a writer for Esquire magazine. We are told that a 1974 edition of Esquire published an article about the day the Great One met the Grey Ones.

No such article has ever appeared in Esquire.

However: On August 16, 1983, the National Enquirer — not exactly the nation’s most reputable news source — published a piece which claimed that Beverly would soon release a tell-all book, and that this book would discuss the time Gleason saw two-foot-tall alien cadavers.

The piece is attributed to “Beverly Gleason” — that is, to Beverly McKittrick. The article is told in the first person, yet it is clearly written in the National Enquirer’s sensationalistic “house style.”

The Enquirer version of the story featured Homestead, not MacDill, and made no mention of Roswell. (Roswell did not enter the public’s consciousness in a big way until the late 1980s, although the Moore/Berlitz book on the topic first appeared — to little acclaim — in 1980.)

Since Beverly McKittrick’s book never materialized, a skeptic might suppose that the Enquirer concocted the whole tale.

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

In 2003, Beverly told MUFON investigator Kenny Young that Jackie Gleason did indeed see “dead little men in cases,” and that she had given a full account of this incident to a writer for Esquire in 1974. Kenny Young said that he had recorded multiple conversations with McKittrick, in which she related this tale.

Let’s be clear: Beverly made no reference to writing anything for the Enquirer in 1983 (even though that story bears her byline). She insisted that she had been interviewed by an unnamed Esquire writer in 1974.

Young, I am told, is no longer with us. He had a reputation as a “semi-skeptic” — perhaps not a hard-core debunker, but certainly not a wild-eyed True Believer. He felt that most sighting reports have conventional explanations. Since Young never tried to capitalize on the Gleason story, I feel comfortable stipulating that he did not concoct these chats with McKittrick.

That said, I wish someone would make available a recording of McKittrick telling this story in her own voice. A recording would remove all doubt.

Question: Why didn’t Beverly publish a book? Such a volume might well have topped the bestseller lists. Although she had asked for half of Gleason’s net worth, she received far less than requested. Her divorce settlement did not leave her set for life.

Outside of Beverly McKittrick’s brief exchanges with Kenny Young, we have no other evidence for this “alien encounter” claim. Although Nixon and Gleason did play golf together, no Nixon biographer depicts the president as expressing an interest in UFOs. Gleason and Nixon were not truly close friends.

(It’s hard to visualize Nixon having any truly close friends.)

Frankly, it seems ridiculous to posit that Nixon would choose to divulge such a remarkable secret to Jackie Gleason. Whatever else one might say about Nixon, he knew something about national security. Gleason was not the sort of person in whom one would confide a truly spectacular piece of information — not unless one wanted that information to reach the public.

In the early 1970s, Gleason was drinking heavily and was known to be popping pills. After being rather rudely bumped from national television, he became depressed and rueful, spiraling into self-destructive behavior.

The ex

Perhaps Jackie Gleason concocted this tale to cover an unexplained absence from his wife. Note the exact words that Beverly McKittrick used when she replied to Kenny Young: “Jackie had been out very late one night. I did not know who he was with.”

Her brief marriage to Gleason had been tempestuous, in large part to her intense jealousy of other women. Could Gleason have used an alien as a “beard”?

Strangely, in her communications with Young, Beverly McKittrick insisted that Esquire magazine really did publish a “Jackie met aliens” story in 1974. She told Young: “We were on the verge of divorce, but everything was okay until it came out in Esquire.”

Later on:

“I just made that one statement about the UFOs and it appeared in Esquire and I guess a few other places and he didn't like that and I thought, I just can't go through with this. Let him live his life. So I never wrote the book.”

Jackie Gleason died in 1987. One wonders why she did not publish a book after his death.

McKittrick begged Young to find a copy of that Esquire article, because it allegedly contained details which she could no longer recall. Her insistence on this point damages her credibility, since no such article ever appeared in Esquire or any other periodical throughout the 1970s.

Only a fool would assert that such an article could be covered up. So noteworthy a piece would have instantly found its way into the files of thousands of researchers. Everyone in the Fortean subculture would have read the thing. The UFO Newsclipping Service (the archives of which are now online) would have reprinted it; paperback books and Fortean periodicals would have cited it. Yet I can find no evidence that the “Jackie met ET” allegation appeared in print before that 1983 Enquirer story.

If you’re the sort of person who likes to mutter about “the Mandela effect,” that’s your cue. Could Beverly confused Esquire with Enquirer? Could she have confused 1974 with 1983?

If so, then our sole source for this yarn was one very easily bamboozled lady. Keep in mind: She asserted that the Esquire article played a role in her divorce. As we shall see, her claim that “everything was okay” until the article appeared is clearly erroneous.

In 1992, a respected journalist named William A. Henry III wrote a Gleason biography titled The Great One : The Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason. While researching the work, Henry interviewed McKittrick, who mentioned nothing about Gleason’s alleged secret trip to view an alien cadaver.

Why would McKittrick keep this information from a well-known writer like Henry while divulging it, more than a decade later, to a ufologist like Young?

Obviously, if the Esquire story had appeared, Henry would have known about it. He would have mentioned the matter in his book, if only to debunk it. The fact that Henry did not mention the Enquirer story suggests that he held a low opinion of that publication and considered it unworthy of notice.

The book describes Beverly McKittrick as a secretary from Baltimore who hastily married Jackie Gleason in the summer of 1970. According to Henry, they had nothing in common other than a shared affection for the bottle.

Mercedes Ellington says,‘“Beverly encouraged the dark side of Jackie, the drinking, the carousing, the staying up all night, the being out of shape and not taking care of himself.” By his own admission, in this period Jackie often got only two to three hours of sleep a night. His weight began to seesaw again, a condition even more dangerous than permanent obesity according to researchers, and his temper, never entirely controlled, often flared.

The marriage seemed not to agree with Beverly, either. She aged rapidly in appearance and looked haggard by the time she and Jackie divorced in November 1974.

Another source told Henry that the union was a “real” marriage for only “about a weekend.” However:

About a month after the divorce, Beverly said, “Jackie moved back into the house without warning, bag and baggage. And he was drinking then. He wasn’t drinking when he left. I tried straightening him out. I cooked him corned beef and cabbage. I got him off the booze. We lived as man and wife.” Then, said Beverly, she and Jackie started fighting again, in her judgment because he started pill-popping. “Anytime he’s not drinking, he’s taking prescription pills for his weight,” she said. “And then he’s against me, because I’m strictly against pills.”

The reconciliation ended in acrimony. Again: If there had been any truth to the “alien” story, one wonders why she did not attempt to capitalize on it.

Final analysis

Despite the dubious origins of this story, a conspiratorially-minded person might wish to consider a scenario in which Jackie Gleason — who sometimes discussed Forteana on the radio — really was taken onto an Air Force Base and shown mock-ups of alien cadavers. Perhaps the charade was an experiment in the propagation of rumor. Perhaps Air Force intelligence sought to increase belief in extraterrestrials, since the UFO mythos provides marvelous cover for tests of the latest advances in aerospace.

Something very similar happened to documentarian Linda Moulton Howe, who, in 1983, was invited into Kirtland Air Force Base, where she was directed to read (but not copy) an elaborate collection of ersatz UFO documents. Nobody really knows why that charade occurred, but occur it did.

Do I personally believe that Gleason was the target of a hoax? No. I can neither dismiss nor endorse the idea.

Here’s the bottom line: This allegation depends on the word of Beverly McKittrick, a drinker who fastened onto a provable lie. She insisted that the story was published in an Esquire article published before her divorce. Since that article never existed, we must conclude that her memory cannot be trusted.

An important claim requires a credible source — preferably more than one source. I cannot classify Beverly as credible. Your assessment may vary.

An elaboration of the Jackie Gleason story was told by saucer promoter Timothy Green Beckley, who calls himself Mr. UFO. Nobody has ever called him Mr. Credibility.

Paul Blake Smith recently came out with a book titled The Nixon-Gleason Alien Encounter, which I have not read. I have read an earlier work by Smith — the one about the “Ike and the aliens” canard. Frankly, I consider that book to be garbage. (Sorry to pass such a harsh judgment, but I must be honest.) If Smith has uncovered any new and compelling data, no reviewer has shared that breakthrough information. That said, I am always willing to be turned around by truly new evidence backed by good sourcing.

Nota bene: “Evidence” means evidence — not conjecture, not rumor, not discussions of unrelated cases and certainly not ad hominem attacks directed against yours truly.

The so-called “Decalogue stone” — sometimes called the Ten Commandments Stone, the Phoenician Stone, the Mystery Stone and the Los Lunas Inscription — may be found on Hidden Mountain, not far from Los Lunas. To see this enigma for yourself, you’ll have to travel some 35 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Prepare for a hike.

This is a large flat rock — four feet tall by eight feet wide — upon which an unknown party has inscribed the Ten Commandments in Paleo-Hebrew characters, some of them reversed, with a few Greek letters tossed into the mix. The writing is at a 45 degree slope, fueling speculation that the stone fell from a higher perch. Frequent cleanings and chalking of the letters has made scientific examination of the stone nearly impossible.

Archeologist Frank Hibben (1910-2002) first saw the stone in 1933; he claimed that the guide who led him there insisted that he saw the writing in the 1880s. No source known to me identifies the guide.

Some of the letters have an unconventional shape suggestive of a Samaritan origin. (The Samaritans were a northern Jewish tribe not taken captive by the Assyrians; their culture developed separately.) One interesting theory holds that this rock was intended to be an ancient Samaritan mezuzah — a stone inscription of the Decalogue placed above an entranceway to a public place. (Modern Jews have a very different approach to the mezuzah.)

This theory has a few problems.

Problem 1: The lack of any portal in or around Hidden Mountain.

Problem 2: The lack of evidence that the Samaritans came to America. They weren’t exactly famed as explorers.

Problem 3: The wording differs from the version of the Decalogue favored by the ancient Samaritans.

It should be noted, however, that [Professor Reinhard] Pummer himself (personal communication, Aug. 31, 1998) does not believe that the Los Lunas inscription could be Samaritan. First, in Verse 8, the Los Lunas text follows the Masoretic (standard Jewish) text by saying “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” whereas the Samaritan text always says “preserve the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” Second, the Samaritans added a clause to the tenth commandment calling for a temple to be built on Mt. Gerizim, but this clause is absent in Los Lunas. And third, although an inscription in Greek language written in Samaritan letters is known, he is not aware of Greek-style letters ever appearing in Samaritan inscriptions.

Visualize it: A hardy band of Samaritan explorers crosses oceans, marches to this desolate place far inland, and carves the rock in a language none of the locals can read. The leader announces: “Our work here is done. Time to head home.” And off they go, without leaving any other sign (or orally-transmitted memory) that they had ever been there. Does that scenario make sense to you?

It’s hard to comprehend why any writer, ancient or modern, would use such a strange admixture of Paleo-Hebrew and Greek. One expert has argued that the writer appears to have been someone fluent in Greek who learned Hebrew late in life — for example, the writer uses the Hebrew aleph (a consonant) as if it were the Greek alpha (a vowel). It has been suggested that the carver came from ancient Alexandria.

The use of the “caret” on display here did not arise until the Middle Ages, an oddity which argues against the theory of a pre-Columbian origin.

The greatest problem with the pre-Columbian theory is the lack of evidence that ancient Hebrews — or Samaritans, or Greeks, or Egyptians, or anyone else from that part of the globe — established a community in New Mexico. All cultures produce trash and other artifacts. If a Near Eastern culture lived here, we would have far more evidence than this one stone.

Tabor weighs in

Religious scholar James Tabor took an interest in this artifact, although his opinion did not impress the Chafer Theological Seminary:

James Tabor of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and Cyrus Gordon of Brandeis interacted with the inscription. Tabor, a conspiracy theorist who was behind archaeological and historical fantasies such as the “Jesus Tomb” ossuaries and the “Jonah” ossuary, both which have been overwhelming rejected by scholars, interviewed Hibben about the Decalogue Stone, visited the site, and claims that the inscription was made by Israelites sometime in the B.C. era. He offers no detailed analysis of the inscription and no plausible reason as to its antiquity other than the letter forms.

This response is overly caustic. I see no justification for the “conspiracy theorist” accusation. The ossuary controversies are not classifiable as “conspiracies.” I hope we don’t reach a point where “You’re a conspiracy theorist!” is simply another way of saying “I don’t like you.”

That said: I don’t agree with Tabor’s ideas regarding the Decalogue Stone.

Neither am I persuaded by anyone else’s conclusion.

The Mormon theory

Most archeologists believe the stone to be a forgery perpetrated by Mormons, who were (and are) wedded to the belief that Israelites came to the New World in olden times. The Mormon Battalion rode through this area in the 1840s.

I have some sympathy for those who scoff at the “Mormons did it” theory. The main problem is that the Mormon church does not use this stone as evidence for their belief system. Why would any Mormon go to the trouble of creating such an elaborate fraud without publicizing it?

That said, it should be noted that the Joseph Smith Foundation website does offer a page devoted to the Decalogue Stone conundrum. The discussion is, in my view, reasonable; the website does not use this oddity as an excuse for heavy-handed proselytizing.

George Moorehouse (1985), a professional geologist, indicates that the boulder is of the same basalt as the cap of the mesa. He estimates its weight at 80 to 100 tons, and says it has moved about 2/3 of the distance from the mesa top to the valley floor since it broke off. The inscription is tilted about 40 degrees clockwise from horizontal, indicating that the stone has settled or even moved from its position at the time it was inscribed. (The above photograph was taken with a tilted camera.)

At present the inscription is badly scrubbed and chalked up. However, Professor Frank Hibben of Albuquerque reportedly saw the inscription in 1933, when it was covered with lichens and patination. By one report, it was seen as early as 1871 (Fell 1985, p. 34). Moorehouse compares the surviving weathering on the inscription to that on a modern graffito on the top of the mountain dating itself to 1930. He concludes that the Decalogue inscription is clearly many times older than this graffito, and that 500 to 2000 years would not be an unreasonable estimate of its age.

The inscription uses Greek tau, zeta, delta, and kappa (reversed) in place of their Hebrew counterparts taw, zayin, daleth, and caph, indicating a post-Alexandrian date, despite the archaic form of aleph used. The letters yodh, qoph, and the flat-bottomed shin have a distinctively Samaritan form, suggesting that the inscription may be Samaritan in origin.

In the Book of Mormon, Israelites allegedly came to North America in the 7th century BCE (give or take). The Samaritans did not form a distinct culture until somewhat later. Thus, someone fabricating evidence for the Book of Mormon should have avoided Samaritan letter forms.

Under what circumstances would a Mormon learn the right Hebrew words but not the correct letter forms?

For that matter, why would a non-Mormon hoaxer make that error?

Hoax or history?

One would think that a fraudster would simply copy the Decalogue as it appears in a Hebrew-language Bible published in the 19th century. Why mix paleo-Hebrew, Samaritan Hebrew, and Greek? The more one contemplates the unconventional orthography, the more perplexing this mystery becomes.

There are people who suspect Hibben himself engineered the fraud. But for what purpose? Hibben did not profit in any way. He was an academic; he would have known better than to mix Hebrew and Greek letters.

We have to keep one fact in mind: Using hand tools to carve letters into rock is not an easy task. In his Fortean classic Weird America, the ever-controversial Jim Brandon (William Grimstad ) makes a fair point: Most “hoax” theorists have never tried to carve so much as a comma into hard rock.

Incidentally, there are various smaller inscriptions in the immediate area — mostly random letters. These are rarely discussed.

This site describes a visit to the area:

The stone may be a hoax, but what's on the top of Hidden Mountain isn't. After a scramble up a ravine, we arrived on top, where we found a lot of petroglyphs and the ruins of an ancient settlement that might have been part of a string of look-out and way stations along an ancient trail from the Rio Grande to Acoma Pueblo. Also in the area is the Franklin Pottery Mound, where a large diversity of ancient pottery has been unearthed. Both the mound and the ruins are believed to be from between 1350 and 1500.

We can’t let pride prevent us from admitting that some mysteries simply do not have a solution — yet. There’s nothing wrong with shrugging one’s shoulders and muttering the words “insufficient evidence.”

To visit the stone, you’ll need a permit from the New Mexico State Land Office, which will ask for a small fee. The Los Lunas Decalogue has spawned many insane YouTube videos, and will probably do so for as long as YouTube exists.

Some miscreant obliterated the first line of the stone in 2006. I cannot understand what would motivate any vandal to do such a thing. There oughtta be a commandment...!

Back in the 1990s, when I had some small reputation in ufology, many considered me a skeptic. Actually, I inhabited the worst of all worlds: Normies dismissed me as a credulous oddball, while saucer buffs presumed me to be an Evil Gummint Agent. Why? Because the extraterrestrial hypothesis never sat well with me. Sorry to offend, but my response to the Fermi paradox involves both the Rare Earth Hypothesis and a strong suspicion that the speed of light will always be inviolable.

But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have mysterious events in our skies.

Here’s a key fact that my critics never understood: I love a mystery. And I respect John Keel’s famous axiom: Belief is the enemy.

For many people, the extraterrestrial hypothesis isn’t a hypothesis. It’s a belief.

Adherents of that belief insist that they have All The Answers. All I have are questions.

And so, in the spirit of non-belief, I’d like to offer a randomly-chosen selection from my collection of oddball UFO reports. Can I vouch for each story? Nope. Have I investigated each one personally? Nope. I just happen to enjoy the way my head feels when I contemplate the sheer oddity of these claims.

These stories remind me of the wonder I felt when I was a tyke, using a flashlight under the blanket to sneak-read the books of Frank Edwards. Mom thought I was asleep, yet sleep was impossible: Those stories kept me up way past midnight, permanently screwing up my biological clock. Thanks to those happy memories, I will always instinctively link ufology with a sense of boyish transgression.

That said: A good down-to-Earth explanation is always preferable to an unproven trans-mundane scenario. So if you care to smash any of these tales with the mailed fist of cynicism, by all means, smash! Please share any new facts you might bring to light.

1969: Ririe, Idaho

In 1969, C. Reed Ricks of NICAP (the best-known saucer research organization of that era) investigated the case of Willie Begay and Guy Tossie, both 23 year old Navahos employed by a ranch near Ririe. On November 2, 1967, at 9:30 pm, they traveled in Begay’s Buick on Highway 26 toward Ririe. Suddenly, they saw a blinding flash. Directly afterward, a classic “domed” UFO hovered overhead, flashing green and orange lights. The car came to a stop, even though Begay had not braked.

The transparent dome retracted and two small figures floated out. Local newspapers later described the humanoids as “little green men,” even though they simply reflected the color of the bright green light. Aside from the oversized ears, the faces more-or-less matched the famous image on the cover of Whitley Streiber’s book Communion. In 1967, that depiction had not yet become a pop-cultural trope; aliens were popularly depicted as green, not grey.

One of the aliens entered the car from the driver’s side and somehow propelled the vehicle into a field 75 feet from the highway. Either the 3½ foot tall alien drove the car or the saucer “towed” it. One wonders how so small an ET could reach the pedals.

Tossie bolted, running toward the home of a farmer named Williard Hammon, who could barely understand what the terrified young man was trying to say. After Tossie regained his nerve, he and the Hammon family walked back to the car. The saucer and the aliens were gone. Begay sat trembling in the driver’s seat, his eyes shut.

So, at least, runs the story.

Later that night, Hammon told this story to a deputy sheriff in Ririe, who called in Tom Harper of the Idaho State police. Harper’s report stated that young men seemed genuinely frightened, and that farmers in the area reported strange cattle behavior that night. A woman named Elaine Quinn, who lived six miles east of Ririe, saw a similar UFO in the sky while en route to a relative’s home.

NICAP investigator Ricks found still another witness, who refused to allow his name to be published. This witness said that a UFO stopped his pickup truck as he drove between Ririe and Rigby on Highway 48. In this instance, the alien scratched at the windshield and driver’s side window, but could not enter the truck. The creature re-entered the craft, which left.

While there are many tales of UFO “car stops,” one rarely encounters reports of an alien carjacking; in fact, this may be the only account in which aliens sought to enter the vehicle and drive off. And one alien was stymied by a door lock! How could a star-farer be stumped by something so simple?

Investigator Ricks seems to have done an admirable job, as did Officer Harper. They assessed the witnesses as truthful, and I see no reason to disagree. These people saw something.

In an interesting postscript (not included in any online retellings of this case), Ricks said that a year later – August of 1968 – the Air Force came into the area to check on UFO reports “90 miles south of Ririe.” A local police chief arranged for Ricks to meet with the investigators to talk about the Begay/Tossie case, but the AF men didn’t show up for the appointed meeting. Bear Lake straddles the Idaho/Utah border 90 miles south of Ririe; in recent years, locals have seen mystery orbs in this vicinity (Idaho State Journal, March 7, 2016).

Of course, Bear Lake is much more famous for monster sightings. But that’s a matter for another post.

1920s: Hubbell, Nebraska

This story is hardly inexplicable, but it is pleasantly odd, and I’d like to rescue it from neglect. There’s nothing else quite like it in the literature.

Jacques Vallee’s Passport to Magonia speaks of an incident from the early 1920s:

William C. Lamb was following strange tracks when he heard a high-pitched sound and saw a circular object intercepting starlight. It became brilliantly lighted and landed in a hollow. Soon afterward, a creature over 2.4 m tall was seen flying from the direction where the object had landed. It left tracks in the snow, which Lamb followed without results.

Unfortunately, the Lamb encounter first became known in a letter sent to the Air Force after the Arnold sighting, at a time when the Air Force still investigated UFOs. In other words, although the writer claimed that incident occurred before 1947, we no proof that such was the case.

Ufologist Chris Aubeck, a specialist in pre-1947 UFO reports, made an attempt to find out everything he could about Walter Lamb — who, we learn, was quite keen to publicize his alleged alien encounters. (Yes, he laid claim to more than one.) The incident mentioned in Vallee’s book supposedly occurred on February 22, 1922, when Lamb, hiding behind a tree, saw a “magnificent flying creature” — nearly eight feet tall — land like an airplane in the snow.

Aubeck:

“I worked on this case for about three years, amassing every scrap of information about Lamb and his sighting. I managed to get hold of his personal letters, his original articles, and a good amount of biographical information.”

“Basically, the date is not clear. In his private letters he used different dates, ranging between 1920 and 1924.”

“The sighting was also much more complex than this brief outline suggests, involving more than one creature. There was also a moral or religious overtone to the story, not just to the interpretation he later made.”

In the 1930s, Lamb gained a certain notoriety for his claim that he could discern the face of God in astronomical photographs of stars. It’s fair to say that few would consider William Lamb to be the ideal witness.

In his 1965 Book of Saucers, Gray Barker describes an exactly similar UFO/winged humanoid encounter (replete with religious overtones), which supposedly occurred in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1922, the same year as the Lamb encounter. Barker cites an article in the Lincoln Daily Star; unfortunately, he does not favor us with a specific date, a newsclip, or a named witness.

Barker being Barker, I suspect that he simply concocted a fantasia based on Lamb’s tale, which was itself a fantasia.

1957: Near Tonopah, Nevada

The Tonopah Test Range, home of the first stealth fighters, lies some 33 miles southeast of the sleepy town of Tonoapah. The base, the town and the surrounding area loom large in the lore of ufologists and conspiracy buffs.

A noteworthy incident occurred on November 23, 1957, the same year the base opened for business. Having just completed a survival training course, Lieutenant Joseph F. Long — a fighter pilot – was driving some thirty miles west of the town of Tonopah when his vehicle stalled for no apparent reason. A high-pitched whine filled the air. On foot, he followed the aural trail to a spot 300 feet from the highway, where four classic 1950s-style flying saucers, 15 feet high and topped by transparent domes, sat on the ground. Suddenly, the landing gear retracted — leaving impressions in the desert floor — and the circular objects shot off over the hills.

Finding his car operable again, Long drove to Indian Springs Air Force Base (now Creech Air Force Base) and told his tale, which was not exactly well-received. A psychologist employed by the Air Force felt that such a report would be dismissed as a hoax were it made by anyone other than a military officer with a good record. The case came to the attention of J. Allen Hynek, who fretted that the Air Force could be embarrassed if Long quit the military and became embroiled in the saucer subculture.

Despite Hynek’s worries, Long did not go public – at least, I can find no follow-up interviews.

The Air Force dismissed the whole episode with the unconvincing theory of “road hypnosis.” The official report also noted darkly that Long was familiar with “well-known science fiction” writers of that period. Translation: If the year is 1957 and you recognize the name “Ray Bradbury,” your credibility is shot to hell.

Of course, the Long encounter is far from the only example of UFO-related weirdness to be found in and around Tonopah.

Researcher Albert Rosales, in one of his Humanoid Encounters books, speaks of a December, 1970 incident involving one William Huff, an enlisted man stationed at the Tonopah base. While walking back to the barracks one evening, he saw a UFO hovering over the desert. After quickly rounding up other witnesses (who, alas, remain unnamed), he began to feel a mental connection with the pilots of the craft. Years later, Dr. Leo Sprinkle hypnotically regressed Huff and evinced a rather familiar abduction narrative — a circular room, a bright light, authoritative men in uniforms, that sort of thing.

Hypnotic regression is now considered quite problematic, to put it mildly.

Since that time, there have been many other UFO sightings around these parts, and State Route 375 (which leads to Tonopah) became known as the Extraterrestrial Highway. According to Wikipedia, the secretive military base is used for testing “nuclear weapon delivery systems” as well as experimental aerial vehicles. This mission statement surely explains at least some of the oddities people have encountered in this area.

1984: Dummerston, Vermont

Joseph Citro’s book Weird New England seems to be the only source for an intriguing story about cattle non-mutilations.

On the morning of Feburary 14, 1984, a farmer named Robert Ranney went out to his barn (just off of Route 5), where he discovered twenty-three dead cows lying in a circle – apparently electrocuted, found whole. No slicing or dicing. There were no signs of a lightning strike. Six other cows had survived.

Using a Geiger counter, MUFON investigator William Chapleau (a former policeman) found high levels of radiation, both in the barn and in the field where the cows were buried. Chapleau had collected reports of a “torpedo” shaped UFO in the local skies that night.

Unfortunately, we have no newsclips or police reports to verify this story. Using online sources, I found listings for a Robert Ranney of the appropriate age with an address in Putney, just a few miles north of Dummerston. MUFON of Vermont is registered to William Chapleau at an address in Rutland, Vermont.

Call me obstinate, but I will never accept the theory that space-farers would travel light-years just to zap a handful of cows. That said, this story deserves further investigation.

I could compile a small book — perhaps a sizable book — about alleged outbreaks of paranormality in America’s graveyards. This post discusses a few of the odder boneyard mysteries you may wish to explore.

We will concentrate on cemeteries which offer something more than the familiar claims involving orbs, mystery voices, and women in white. These enigmas don’t quite fit into the usual categories.

Marion, Ohio

The Marion Cemetery is where one finds the marker of Charles Merchant (erected in 1897, located in the northeast section of the park). Atop the marker rests a large, black 5000 pound granite sphere -- which rotates, albeit very gradually. Visitors can tell that it revolves because they can see the small, grey unpolished circle which once rested at the very bottom, where the globe met the pedestal.

When the family first noted the problem early in the 20^th century, they righted the sphere (at no small cost), using tar to hold it in place. In fact, the sphere has been set right twice in its history. (Columbus Dispatch, July 19, 1986.) Nevertheless, the thing keeps moving, albeit at the very slow rate of two inches a year, and not in a predictable direction.

The large Merchant gravestone is surrounded by the graves of other family members, each marked by a smaller globe. The lesser spheres don’t move. Many have theorized that heat causes the large sphere to expand and contract unevenly, thereby triggering the movement. If so, why don’t the surrounding balls move as well?

Another question: Why is the rotating sphere so pristine? One would think that this shiny surface would become marred and scratched by contact with the pedestal.

In 2003, skeptic Reza Saberi offered an interesting theory:

During three seasons of the year (autumn, winter, and spring) when it rains or snows and the temperature drops below freezing, any water that is collected under the ball on the unpolished surface of the base freezes and thus expands and raises the ball. When the ice thaws, which is usually on the side facing the sun, it causes the ball to tilt or roll slightly in that direction. When repeated many times, this phenomenon gradually moves the ball (about 0.0054 inches [.0137 cm] per day).

Not bad. But the slope of the pedestal allows rainwater to drain; one wonders how much ice would stick to this surface. Enough to lift a two-and-a-half ton chunk of granite? Wouldn’t the ball rotate in a predictable east/west direction? And why don’t the other globes -- closer to the ground, and thus more susceptible to icing -- also rotate?

Fortean author Jim Brandon (real name: William Grimstead — a very controversial figure in his own right) wrote the following in his seminal volume Weird America: “It has been observed by cemetery custodians that the sphere continues to revolve at about the same rate the year round...” If this claim is true, then ice does not suffice.

Deep River, Connecticut

The grave of the legendary XYZ bandit may be seen in Fountain Hill Cemetery, 57 High Street. The marker is a rough, square cement block bearing only the letters XYZ. The man beneath the stone died in 1899, during a botched robbery of the Deep River Savings Bank.

The thieves had planned the heist for months. Somehow, the bank managers got wind of the scheme. They hired a guard named Harry D. Tyler, who was ready for the four bandits when they showed up on the night of December 13. Tyler shot one of the intruders in the head, causing the others to flee. According to many sources, the authorities were unable to identify the body.

The legend — and the mystery — began when Tyler received a letter in a woman’s handwriting, asking that the slain man be buried in a grave marked solely by the letters XYZ. This wish was granted. For the next forty December 13ths, a woman in a black dress would arrive at the train station, walk to the cemetery, and leave a flower at the grave. It was a ritual.

Thus runs a story which locals love to tell. But how much of it is true?

The Nagatuck Daily News of July 6, 1900 confirms that a night watchman named Tyler did shoot a burglar. The story also confirms that Tyler received a letter which instructed him to mark the grave with the letters X.Y.Z. Apparently, there were threats against Tyler: “The fear that when the relatives of the dead man come to Deep River to take the body they will harbor a spirit of revenge is also worrying Tyler. In his affliction Tyler has the sympathies of every citizen in the town.”

He switched careers, becoming first a ferry captain and then a state legislator.

Although many online sources state that the identity of XYZ remains a mystery, the New Era of February 23, 1900 identified the slain thief as Frank Howard, “a deep-dyed criminal.”

One mystery remains: The woman in black. Who was she? Did she even exist?

The earliest story about her I’ve found in any online newspaper archive appeared in (of all places) the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (of Texas), May 5, 1965 — and even that account implies that the woman in black could be myth. David Phillips’ Legendary Connecticut says that the Hartford Times wrote about her in 1947, but I haven’t yet located the actual article. Not much happens in Deep River: If a mystery woman made such a dramatic visit on every December 13 until 1940, surely newspapers and photographers would have given the story annual coverage?

(Nowadays, people leave coins on the XYZ headstone, which isn’t too far from Tyler’s grave.)

West Greenwich, Rhode Island

Behind the West Greenwich Baptist Church (sometimes called the Plain Meeting House Baptist Church, at the intersection of Plain Road and Liberty Hill Road) is an old cemetery. Here, one may find the final resting spot of one Nellie Vaughn, who, at the age of 19, died of pneumonia in March of 1889. Her tombstone bears the words “I am Waiting and Watching For You.”

For the next 80-or-so years, nobody gave her much thought — but at some point in the 1970s, she gained a strange sort of fame. Local kids stumbled across her grave, noted its eerie epitaph, and decided that she must have been that vampire girl they’d heard about. Apparently, they confused her with Mercy Brown of Exeter, the 19 year-old tuberculosis victim who, many years previous, was wrongly labeled a vampire.

Thus, Nellie also became a wrongly labeled vampire. When a 1977 news story misidentified her as a bloodsucker, the late Miss Vaughn took it personally, or so we are told. Ghostly events bedeviled the cemetery as Nellie mounted a post-mortem PR campaign to convince the living that she was just a normal American girl who happened to catch a bad bug in the days before antibiotics. Definitely not nosferatu.

The two best stories trace back to a local Nellie expert named Marlene Chatfield. She says that she captured an EVP in which an unseen woman’s voice clearly says “I am perfectly pleasant;” after which an invisible something scratched the face of Marlene’s husband. Message: “I am perfectly pleasant goddammit!”

On another occasion, Marlene ran into a young woman in the cemetery who kept shrieking the phrase “Nellie is not a vampire,” and then vanished.

If you want to see a manifestation, I suggest hanging out by Nellie’s tombstone while playing old Christopher Lee movies on your mobile device. While holding a stake in one hand, loudly proclaim these words:

“You’re not fooling anyone, Nellie! I brought garlic and a mirror!”

If that doesn’t rouse her, I don’t know what will.

Landenberg, Pennsylvania

Landenberg is a quaint township at the southeastern end of Pennsylvania, home of the picturesque London Tract Meeting House (a.k.a. the London Tract Church), which is nestled in a bucolic spot at 307 London Tract Road. In the cemetery behind this church, visitors will find a famous heart-shaped headstone bearing only the initials “R.C.”

Nobody knows who R.C. was. Legend holds that he was a young boy who swallowed a pocket watch belonging to surveyor Charles Mason, of Mason-Dixon fame. The boy died. Mason, it is said, wanted his watch retrieved from the poor lad’s intestines; of course, no doctor would do the job. After the burial, the tombstone emitted a ticking sound. It is said that the phenomenon inspired Edgar Allen Poe to write “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

In a variant of this story, the watch was swallowed by one Fithian Minuit, who died in adulthood. Why would someone named Fithian Minuit lay beneath a headstone marked “R.C.”? That’s another mystery. Conspiracy buffs are hereby invited to come up with a theory involving the Rosicrucians. Have fun!

The “pocket watch” fable was an ex post facto explanation for a real-life oddity, heard for generations. Science-y folk have offered a science-y explanation: The sound was caused by an underground stream slowly drip-drip-dripping its way through a limestone cavity. I use the past tense because, according to recent reports, the sound is now imperceptible, or nearly so. Perhaps erosion has changed the shape of that cavity.

I have a special fondness for reports of skyquakes, mystery booms and other odd sounds filling the skies. Do I have an overall theory of these phenomena? Nope. Nor can I vouch for the reliability of all of the reports that keep coming in. Many YouTube videos purport to document these events; alas, few of them present the kind of evidence we would like. Nevertheless, something is happening.

Here are just a few of the tales in my personal collection. Although these anomalous audio events occur internationally (in Japan, skyquakes are called Uminari; in Belgium, they are Mistpoeffers), this selection will concentrate on the United States.

The Bama Boom of Blount County

In truth, ascribing the “Bama Boom” (as some called it) to Blount County, Alabama is somewhat arbitrary, since this mysterious event was also heard over across several other counties on November 14, 2017, at 1:40 p.m. We have audio evidence, thanks to a video recording made at the time. To my ears, the sound is not explosive; instead, it seems more like what one might expect from the fall of a heavy metallic object.

Seismologists recorded the event, as did the Elginfield Infrasound Array at the University of Western Ontario. The seismic signature was not that of an earthquake. Suggested explanations include a bolide, a ground explosion or a supersonic aircraft. One interesting scenario links the mystery boom to the massive number of fracking operations in Alabama.

In recent years, other mystery booms throughout the nation have also fit into the “heavy metal” genre.

Denver, Colorado

On November 11, 2017, the sound of a massive blast jolted residents of LochBuie, northeast of Denver. Residents rushed out into the street, wondering if the town — perhaps the country — was under attack. But the explosion (if we can call it that) was heard, not seen. Eleven days later, the Denver Post reported that the mystery boom occurred when built-up pressure caused the lid of an oil storage tank to blow its top.

Spokane Valley, Washington

Beginning in 2011, YouTubers around the world uploaded videos which, they claimed, documented a new Fortean phenomenon: “Sky trumpets.” Visually unremarkable, these videos recorded inexplicable noises which (supposedly) resounded throughout various areas of the world, both urban and rural. Sometimes, the noises reminded one of horns; sometimes, they seemed more like distant machinery. Apocalyticists warned that The End was nigh. Skeptics simply snickered — especially after several offerings were proven fraudulent. (Multiple videos featured the exact same audio).

My reaction? If these YouTubers really did record Gabriel’s horn, color me disappointed. I would prefer something a bit more Brucknerian.

Let’s put those videos to one side for a moment.

What happened in Spokane Valley (a large suburb east of Spokane proper) on the night of December 13-14, 2016, was quite real, unless one cares to argue that hundreds of social media posts were all part of a coordinated prank. Many independently-uploaded videos captured the mystery horn which kept thousands of residents awake from 11 pm to 5 am. On an icy night, numerous people left their homes to search for the source of the noise — and found nothing.

One theory holds that a snow plow caused the sound, although it is hard to imagine how one machine could generate enough volume to unnerve so large an area. Judging from the recordings, the noise sounded nothing like a plow or any other vehicle. Frankly, it — whatever it was — sounded like badly-played trumpet, greatly amplified.

Maybe Gabriel needs lessons.

Of course, cold air can affect sound in hard-to-predict ways. Unfortunately, the recent wave of bogus YouTube videos discouraged investigation into an event worthy of serious attention.

(Wanna hear a truly eerie Last Trumpet? Try John Taverner’s Fall and Resurrection. Start at the 39:40 mark and just let it run through until the bells fade out. I recommend playing it loud, around 2 AM, with all the lights off. Even if you are not of the classical music persuasion, you may get a serious case of the cosmic heebie-jeebies.)

Port Angeles, Washington

Mystery booms have rocked a number of American locations in recent years. In February of 2015, similar booms emanated from the Strait of Juan de Fuca, rattling the residents of Port Angeles. Seismologists recorded no earthquakes, and no military facility on either side of the border had set off ordnance.

Similar booms were heard here in 2009, 2008 — oh, hell. Let’s just call it an annual event. From the Christian Science Monitor:

One resident, Michelle Kaake, heard two booms at her home. The first vibrated the floor and rattled the windows. She heard another one about five minutes later.

The newspaper reports that loud booms have been reported occasionally on the north end of the Olympic Peninsula for the past nine years without explanation.

Shallow earthquakes can cause loud booms, according to the U.S. Geological Survey website. “No one knows for sure, but scientists speculate that these ‘booms’ are probably small shallow earthquakes that are too small to be recorded,” the USGS website said.

But no earthquakes were recorded in the Clallam County area Wednesday, according to USGS seismic data

In 2012, a series of mysterious and disconcerting overnight booms and vibrations that kept Clintonville, Wisc. residents awake for three consecutive nights.

Magic Valley, Idaho

On the night of April 3, 2016, windows shook and residents heard — and felt — something very much like a sonic boom. A typical Facebook comment: “It felt like our whole house was going to fall into the canyon.” Just after the blast, a woman named Sarah Bloss saw yellow-green smoke rising from Snake River Canyon.

Nobody was doing any blasting in that vicinity — certainly not at 8:05 on a Sunday night. Seismologists registered nada.

Skyquakes have often bedeviled this region in recent times. Most ear-witnesses believe that the phenomenon originates somewhere “on high,” as opposed to ground-level or below. Locals tend to blame the military, even though Mountain Home Air Force Base invariably denies responsibility.

When MagicValley.com covered the April event, one reader sent in this intriguing comment:

On a similar note anyone see sets of 3-4 lights in the sky to the west that dim away then reappear in the evenings. I think they’re formations of military aircraft but I’m not sure. Last summer I would see them pretty regularly while driving home from work around 9:30-11:30 PM.

On November 20, 2017, KMVT reported that Eric Jones (living near Snake River Canyon) and his family were getting “boomed” constantly:

“One of the booms or grounding sounds was so loud, I jumped out of my chair,” Jones continued. “It sounded like the furnace in our basement exploded.”

Unlike most, Jones felt that the blasts were coming from below ground. If so, why no seismic readings?

Similar skyquakes hit a number of east coast states (Maryland, New York, Connecticut) in January of 2016. By November of 2017, the phenomenon had spread to many other states, from California to New Jersey (Newsweek, November 24, 2017).

Many Forteans will tell you that this phenomenon is not new. Although it is true that one can find references to mysterious sky explosions in the 19th century (and perhaps earlier), the current sequence seems different — more intense, more frequent, more confounding. And it all started in Idaho’s Magic Valley.

Seneca Lake, New York

In 1850, James Fenimore Cooper wrote a short story which discusses the inexplicable “lake guns” heard in the vicinity of Seneca Lake.

“It is a sound resembling the explosion of a heavy piece of artillery, that can be accounted for by none of the known laws of nature. The report is deep, hollow, distant and imposing. The lake seems to be speaking to the surrounding hills, which send back the echoes of its voice in accurate reply. No satisfactory theory has ever been broached to explain these noises.”

A website devoted to Cooper argues that this short story, “The Lake Gun,” is actually a political satire.

The “Lake Gun,” though based on folklore about Seneca Lake in Central New York State (the “Wandering Jew” and the “Lake Gun”), and on a supposed Seneca Indian legend, is in fact political satire commenting on American political demagogues in general, and in particular on the then (1850) Whig Senator from New York State, William Henry Seward (1801-1872), who had served as Governor of New York (1838-1842) and would later become Secretary of State (1861-1869) under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson. By 1850 Cooper feared that unscrupulous political extremists, mobilizing public opinion behind causes such as abolitionism, were leading America towards a disastrous Civil War.

If you want to know how 19th century politics links up with the sounds many have heard over the lake — well, it’s a long story. You’ll just have to read the above-linked article.

That said, Cooper was not the only person to take note of this aural oddity, which some have called the Seneca Drums. Scientists claim to have it all figured out:

Fast-forward to 1934, when area scientists searched for explanations for the phenomenon. According to Herman Fairchild of the University of Rochester, “the explanation is bubbles of natural gas escaping from a layer of sandstone deep in the earth and coming up through the waters of the lake, where they burst with a booming sound.” His interpretation was confirmed in 1971 by Dr. William F. Ahrnsbrak of Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Ahrnsbrak added that “it’s conceivable that the layers of mud at the lake bottom intersect with rocks with natural gas, causing the bursting of natural gas bubbles.”

The sounds have decreased in recent times, allegedly due to increased mining activity. “Poking holes provided another outlet for the gas,” opined one theorist. This article takes a deeper look at the “gas bubble” theory.

The likeliest explanation, however, is this: Natural gas trapped inside the Earth is seeping up toward the lake. “Methane or other geologic gases are penetrating the ground surface and bursting like a big pimple,” Morin explained to The New York Times. The bursting forms the craters and creates the sound.

Gas bubbling out from beneath lakes can be dangerous, even deadly.

There are some folks in Cameroon who could vouch for that statement.

Are skyquakes related to earthquakes?

Probably not. I’ve “enjoyed” a number of earthquakes, and none of them went boom. Moreover, none were presaged by artillery sounds, even though such sounds were reported just before the extraordinary New Madrid quake of December 16, 1811.

From the audiology.org website:

Seismologists from the University of North Carolina recently published some theories in their effort to determine what causes skyquakes (Bresson, 2020). They conclude that skyquakes are NOT from seismic activity, which makes them even more mysterious. The team produces some ideas for the atmospheric phenomena, including meteors exploding above cloud cover or the sound of a large wave crashing being amplified by the sea.

Skyquakes are counted among the top five air and atmospheric events that take place on our planet, but the causes remain unknown…

Incidentally, there is an entire website called strangesounds.org, which is dedicated to these oddities. For a collection of recent sky trumpet videos, go here.

America’s favorite specter must be the Woman in White — usually described as a lovely young lady who stands by the roadside and hails passing drivers. Her garb is often filmy and old-fashioned. Some say that she wears a prom dress, while others insist that she wears a wedding gown. In many variants of the story, she hitches a ride, only to disappear before reaching her destination.

The best-known exemplar of the genre must be Chicago’s Resurrection Mary, the ethereal being said to haunt Archer Avenue, in the vicinity of the old Oh Henry Ballroom. Some say that, in life, she was an accident victim named Mary Bregovy, although one researcher has devoted much time to identifying the ghost as a 12-year-old Lithuanian immigrant named Anna Norkus.

We even have a named, on-the-record witness to the Chicago phantom. Jerry Palus Sr. (1914-1992) claimed that, in 1939, he spent an evening dancing with a mysterious young woman (not a 12-year-old) at the Liberty Grove and Hall (not the Oh Henry). After the dance, he dropped her off at Resurrection Cemetery, and she promptly disappeared before his eyes. Palus himself currently resides in the same graveyard.

In the future, I may devote a full column to Chicago’s favorite spook. Right now, I’d like to direct your attention to a few of America’s less famous Women in White. Three are in California; two are in Maine. As a bonus, we will pay a surprise visit to one of the world’s great religious shrines.

Fillmore, California

Sycamore Road and Hall Road both meet Highway 126 roughly 3.4 miles west of Fillmore. A not-terribly-impressive Sycamore tree sits in the middle of Sycamore Road, bifurcating the entrance/exit. Local rumor holds — incorrectly — that, on January 13, 1847, General John C. Fremont met with General Andres Pico beside this tree to sign a treaty ending the Mexican-American war in California. Actually, the treaty was signed on the porch of a still-extant adobe building called the Campo de Cahuenga, in Studio City.

The tree’s main claim to fame is its connection to the local Woman in White, sometimes known as the Fillmore Lady. She causes quite a stir whenever she wafts onto the highway. Some say that she was once hanged from the tree; others say that she was California’s first automobile accident victim.

One online account of this particular WIW enticed a reader to offer an interesting comment from “Steve of Lompoc”:

I was driving east on Highway 126. Highway 126 changes from a divided highway, known as the Santa Paula Freeway, to regular undivided highway... As I crossed over Hallock Drive I was stunned to see a nun hitchhiking. Mentally I said to myself “What the heck is a nun doing hitchhiking at 9 o’clock at night?” Then I said to myself “Well, at least she’s wearing white.” At that instant, the image split in two, vertically. Each half seemed to roll up from the middle, one half going up, and the other going down.

A novel way to vanish! My theory: This nation’s roads have become so crowded with Women in White that each one needs a gimmick — a little extra something to make her unique.

Hallock Drive is in Santa Paula, a bit more than three miles west of the Sycamore tree. If you seek the lady, keep traveling back and forth between Santa Paula and Fillmore.

El Centro, California

Dogwood Road — a.k.a. Imperial County Route S-31 — begins about a mile north of the border with Mexico, passes through El Centro, and ends at scenic Brawley Dump Road. It’s a ruler-straight two-lane highway which offers drivers a magnificent view of Not Much.

Local lore holds that post-midnight travelers sometimes glimpse of one of this nation’s many Women in White. She is a weeping hitchhiker who flags down cars and disappears shortly after taking her place in the passenger seat. If you refuse to give her a lift, she will leap wildly from one side of the road to the other, and may even bound atop the hood of your car. That’s her gimmick — the signature move that differentiates this WIW from all the others.

One (anonymous) online witness reports that she has “a part of a car stickin’ out of her brain.” So there’s another gimmick.

There are other reported phenomena — vehicle malfunctions, radio interference, odd “voices” permeating the air. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has tried to document these claims. Since the road is said to be particularly “active” during the wee small hours, we may fairly argue that these perceptions owe much to simple fatigue.

There have been a surprising number of fatalities on this road, so drive carefully.

Mt. Diablo, California

The Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve lies roughly three miles west of Empire Mine Road and 7.5 miles north of Mt. Diablo. Coal mining was big business here until early in the 20^th century, when it became economical to import better-quality coal from elsewhere. Nowadays, the area is best known for hiking, horseback riding, and ghost-hunting.

Spook-seekers should check out the Rose Hill Cemetery, nestled on a picturesque hill some ways down the trail. Many of the gravestones mark young lives cut short by diphtheria, typhus, smallpox and other diseases.

Lore holds that the most frequently-encountered spirit is that of midwife Sarah Norton, the spouse of Noah Norton, founder of the nearby community of Nortonville. In 1879, she died in a carriage accident while en route to deliver a baby. Today, she manifests as a glowing lady — a “White Witch,” as many call her. A variant legend holds that the White Witch is actually a benevolent spirit named Mary who oversees the souls of prematurely deceased children.

Night-time visitors have heard inexplicable bells and have seen glowing crosses over the graves of children. Or so, at least, runs the legend. As usual, we lack first-hand testimony from credible witnesses willing to divulge their names.

Poland, Maine

The Route 26 hitchhiker is Maine’s best-attested Women in White.

If you want to meet her, spend your nights traversing this scenic highway between Gray and Norway— and take it slow as you pass through Poland, because that small town seems to be our phantom’s base of operations. Like so many other spectral wayfarers, she is described as an attractive young woman in white. Her backstory varies, but most locals believe her to be a 19^th century murder victim named Mary Knight.

The Route 26 ghost-girl stands out from her sisters in other cities, if only because a few news articles have given her semi-serious coverage. One such account appeared in the Lewiston Sun-Journal of August 6, 2009. The author of this piece directly interviewed the witness, identified only as “David.” The writer says of his source: “I sought him out for this story; he didn’t come to me. He spoke to me only hesitantly once I explained what I was after.”

Just before 2 a.m., David was driving on Route 26 bound for Oxford. In the midst of all the darkness that collects in the middle of the night in Poland, suddenly there was a gleam of light at the roadside.

“She was standing on the side of the road, near the frozen custard place. At first, it was just a white glow,” David said. “I drove up closer and saw that it was a woman. She looked to be between 20 and 24. I pulled over and she said, ‘Can you bring me to the church on Route 11?’”

Routes 26 and 11 are two north/south roads which criss-cross in Poland. The article claims that David and his companion soon came across “what appeared to be a church” about a quarter mile down Route 11 (also called Bakerstown Road).

Question: Which way did he turn? We are not told. There are private homes one quarter mile north of the intersection, while there are no structures of any kind to the south. In short: There is no church — and nothing that can reasonably be mistaken for a church.

Nevertheless, David saw “what appeared to be a church.” After the car stopped in front of it, the girl told David: “There is a cop coming.”

On cue, a police cruiser zoomed by, roof lights ablaze.

Then she said “Goodbye” just before pulling the vanishing act which has become such a familiar part of American folklore. Needless to add, the passenger door never opened.

At least she offered a proper farewell. Most of America’s vanishing hitchhikers take French leave.

Question: Would a well-bred 19^th century murder victim refer to the police as “cops”? Doesn’t seem likely. Perhaps afterlife entities can pick up new slang.

Or perhaps the “Mary Knight” theory is a presumption. After researching the matter, David decided that the ghost-girl was actually a woman who died in the 1930s — a bride-to-be killed in a car accident on the way to her wedding. In other words, the hitcher wanted to get hitched. David also avers that the groom was still alive (as of 2009) and living in Oxford, Maine.

The temporal instability of this tale amuses me. If David saw a 1930s church no longer extant in this century, why did he also see a modern police car?

Come to think of it, David’s Camaro must have looked very science fiction-y to a girl from the 1930s. Why don’t vanishing hitchhikers ever mention the shock of the new?

As the French say: Cherchez la femme. And while you’re in the neighborhood, cherchez l’eglise.

Millinocket, Maine

About three miles east of Millinocket, on Route 11 (also called Brownville Road), the picturesque White Lady Bridge crosses a waterway connecting Elbow Lake and Quakish Lake. Running parallel to this span are a now-disused railway bridge and a pedestrians-only wire suspension bridge called Wiley’s Crossing, which I would not recommend to the skittish.

Why is the main span informally known as the White Lady Bridge? Because local lore holds that drivers occasionally spot the ghost of a white-clad woman who disappeared in the 1940s. Her death is yet another of those oft-told tales which people believe despite the absence of a newspaper clipping or other evidence.

According to the story, a honeymooning couple crashed into a ditch near the bridge. Both survived; the man hiked into town alone to fetch help. When he (accompanied by some townsfolk) returned to the vehicle, the wife was gone, never to be seen again — at least, not corporeally. Her spirit became known as the White Lady.

The legend also holds that the crashed car can still be seen on a disused unpaved road which branches off of Route 11 about one-third of a mile north of the bridge. You may find the road, but I doubt that you will find the car.

A number of people claim to have sighted this WIW (Woman in White). There’s even an alleged photo of her online, although the image depicts what appears to be another bridge entirely.

What interests me most are the parallels between this legend and the Phantom Hitchhiker of Poland, Maine, some 200 miles to the southeast. Poland’s hitcher is also a lady in white, and at least one of her origin stories (she has several) involves a tragic wedding day. Although one traditionally encounters her on Route 20, she asks to be taken to a church on Route 11.

Does Route 11 have two roadside revenants with similar backstories? Or did a bit of folklore migrate?

The White Ladies and Bernadette

We’ve hardly exhausted the topic; I could probably dig up dozens of examples in the United States alone. Although America seems to have a special affection for this type of specter, Women in White (or White Ladies) are seen worldwide. In the Philippines, for example, these immaterial girls are known as the kaperosa. Quezon City’s White Lady of Balete Drive is particularly famous. If ever you are in the area, ask any taxi driver about her: You’ll definitely hear stories.

Most people know that a woman in white — identified as the Virgin Mary — appeared to 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous on February 11, 1858. The Lady reappeared on seventeen subsequent occasions. The apparition stood in the niche of the grotto of Massabielle on the outskirts of Lourdes, a small town in the Pyrenees, near the border with Spain.

Most people do not know that, well before Bernadette had her mystical experiences, “White Ladies” were a traditional type of phantom reported in the woods around Lourdes. I know of no serious sighting reports involving named witnesses. Like many other places, Lourdes has always had its own folklore — stories that locals love to tell without insisting on belief. Texas has the jackalope, Wisconsin has the hodag, and small villages in the Pyrenees have White Ladies.

For a while, many of the townspeople (known as Lourdais) pretended to be Women in White. Even Bernadette’s father may have paraded about as a White Lady.

Why would he do such a thing? The explanation is a bit complex.

Around the time Bernadette was born, the French government — beset by debt, thanks to a couple of unwise military adventures — came up with a scheme to raise cash quickly. Declaring all woodlands to be national property, the government forbade the gathering of free firewood. Only accredited agents could go into the forest, gather wood and sell it to the locals.

This policy infuriated the peasants, who depended on wood for heating and cooking. For many people, wood was the only energy source. The common folk had gathered free firewood since the beginning of history; charging for such a thing was considered as ridiculous as charging for air.

The more affluent citizens accepted the new policy because they liked the convenience of having someone else do the work. But the peasantry simply could not afford to comply with this law, and thus they routinely defied it. Many were arrested.

The people of the Pyrenees, famed for their odd sense of humor, hit upon a whimsical form of resistance: Whenever they went on forays into the forest, they dressed up as Women in White. Even men donned the costume. If any witnesses saw them engaged in the forbidden act, the accused would tell the police (or the judge): “That wasn’t me! That was the Woman in White!”

The authorities eventually tired of trying to enforce such an unpopular edict, though it stayed on the books. When Bernadette went out to gather firewood on February 11, 1858 (as depicted in Song of Bernadette and several other films), she technically broke the law.

A final note. As you may have noticed, many American Women in White are named Mary. Strangely, nobody has ever tried to link these roadside sightings with the lore of Marian apparitions.

Nobody until now.

It’s Christmas! And in the spirit of the season, I thought I’d talk about a series of child murders which occurred in an ominously-named recreation spot called Devil’s Gate Dam, located in Pasadena, California. Most people know this place as the stomping grounds of Jack Parsons, the famed occultist and rocket scientist. I’ve got a story about his mysterious death that you’ve never heard before.

The name “Devil’s Gate” derives from an outcropping of rock which, when viewed from a certain angle, looks like a horned profile of His Infernal Majesty, glaring over his “kingdom” just south of the Dam. Apparently, the place has held this name since 1858.

The city of Los Angeles built the first flood control dam here in 1920. The job was a botch, and had to be more-or-less redone in 1932. Today, it’s a delightfully grim place to have a picnic.

I’ve spent many hours hiking in and around the dam, but only once did I muster up enough courage to linger here after sundown. This locale becomes seriously eerie after dusk. I doubt that even the most obdurate rationalist could visit the place at night without getting a formidable case of the creeps.

On my visits here in the late 1990s, I took a particular interest in a group of very large wooden poles (adorned with strange symbols) which an unknown party had placed in this area for no logical reason. This mysterious construction became more elaborate over time. An art project? If so, this was art without beauty or purpose — or any known artist.

(I don’t know if those poles are still there.)

Beneath the Devil’s head rock formation is a flood control channel, normally protected by a tall iron gate. One witness claims that he saw two glowing red eyes within this channel. The Weather Channel television show American Supernatural dramatized another incident in which a witness saw a ghostly little girl standing beside this gate.

In January, 2011, a local man named Bob Jessup and his dog Miles went out for a late-afternoon jaunt through this area. (A jogging path connects the “haunted” area to the nearby Brookside Golf Course.) He heard a piercing screech. From a distance of about 40 feet, Jessup saw a pale creature with skinny limbs and bat-wings on the Devil’s face, climbing the rocks in a fashion reminiscent of Spider-Man. The entity spotted Jessup, screeched again, then disappeared over the top of the rocks.

In 2016, an anonymous Reddit poster insisted that, as a child, he had been abducted by a “dogman” in this area. “When I was eventually found, it was in the direction of the river, which i admit is more suggestive than damning.” Lon Chaney Jr. was rarely so docile.

There have also been reports of orbs and odd sounds in this area. I never witnessed such phenomena.

Jack Parsons

The marshlands north of the dam are best known as the area where John Whiteside “Jack” Parsons conducted his pioneering rocketry experiments in the 1930s and ‘40s. His team called themselves The Suicide Squad because they played with dangerous toys.

Parsons is known as both the founder of Jet Propulsion Laboratories (located above the Arroyo Seco) and as the leader of the California branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis, an occult group headed by the British mage Aleister Crowley. Taking on the magical name Belarion, Parsons obsessively attempted to contact entities from another realm.

The television series Strange Angel offers a hyperbolic version of the Parsons tale. Please don’t take the show too seriously; it goes way over the top. The OTO has always attracted free spirits, but I doubt that the Thelemites would have dared to conduct mass open-air orgies in a semi-public place in the 1940s. (Remember: The group’s leading member needed to maintain a security clearance.)

Frankly, the actors in the series were too damned attractive to be believable as occultists. I may get into trouble for saying this, but generally speaking, dabblers in ceremonial magic (or “magick,” to use the preferred Crowleyite spelling) tend to look like they should lay off the potato chips. Parsons himself was an exception to this rule. He was quite dashing — the Errol Flynn of the esoteric world.

In one episode of Strange Angel, dear old Uncle Al himself makes a covert trip to the United States in order to conduct some war-related skullduggery. Ridiculous. By that stage of his life, the man could not leave home for any great length of time. He was a junkie. Only England allowed him to obtain legal heroin.

Parson’s great god was Pan. His goddess was BABALON, known to the ancients as Ishtar, and to the OTO as the Scarlet Woman of the Apocalypse. Liber 49, Parsons’ “magical diary,” ends with these mysterious words: “I see you hate this way. But it is an ultimate time — it is you that have taken the oath. The choice is me or Choronzon.”

In Crowley’s system, Choronzon is the king of demons, who can be summoned into our reality by the Enochian call Zazas Zazas Nasatanada Zazas — words which allegedly can open the gates of Hell. Here’s the catch: You have to pronounce that call correctly, and the spelling does not give you a clear idea of the pronunciation.

(Do I know how say those words? But of course! I am Cannon. I know such things. Will I tell you how to do it? Absolutely not. If you want to open a gate to Hell, you’ll have to do your own homework.)

I won’t recount here the familiar tale of Jack Parsons’ former girlfriend Sara Northrup, his eventual wife Marjorie Cameron, and L. Ron Hubbard, the hack writer and compulsive liar who later founded Scientology. Even though the story has been told and retold many, many times, people still get the facts wrong.

Most people prefer myth. Hubbard understood that fact better than anyone.

What you don’t know about the death of Jack Parsons

At the risk of adding to the mythos, I’ll add a story which has never been published before. I heard this report from someone in a position to know. For reasons which should soon be obvious, I could never confirm it.

Alas, I can not name my source here. If you feel that the lack of a name compels you to dismiss what I have to say, so be it. I understand your caution — in fact, I respect it.

Nevertheless, I feel obliged to place this story on the record somewhere. Perhaps it will spur someone out there to do some independent research.

First, let’s rehash the story that many of you already know:

When McCarthy’s witch hunts inaugurated an era of post-war conservatism, Jack Parsons could no longer get work as a scientist for Uncle Sam. Even though Parsons had resigned from the OTO following the Hubbard debacle, the FBI opened an investigation into his past. Rumors spread that he was sympathetic to communism. (He wasn’t.) Thanks to his relationship with a power broker named Herbert T. Rosenfeld, Parsons helped Israel establish its fledgling rocket program. But the Land of the Free no longer wanted anything to do with him.

Parsons died in a massive explosion in his home laboratory (located at 1071 South Orange Grove Avenue) on June 17, 1952. He was only 37 years old. Those who knew Parsons opined that he was incredibly safety-conscious and thus unlikely to commit such a deadly blunder.

The blast left his body badly mangled and difficult to identify. Parson’s death was confirmed by dental records and a ring.

That’s the familiar story. Here’s the part you don’t know — the part that has never been published before.

In the 1990s, I was told by an an associate of Marjorie Cameron that — in the late 1950s and early 1960s — Jack Parsons would visit her each year on their anniversary.

He would sit in a car parked outside her home.

Perched in the driver’s seat, he would watch her through the living room window. No verbal communication. If ever she tried to approach him, he would quickly drive off.

She decided that she was having a mystical experience. At some point in the 1960s, Jack stopped showing up.

Ever since I first heard this story in 1997, I’ve wondered: What if the “death” of Jack Parsons was staged?

What if either the American or Israeli government came up with an elaborate scheme to give the man a new identity? Transforming him into a new man with a bogus history would allow Uncle Sam to continue to make use of Parson’s expertise in rocketry. The CIA had a project called MKTOPAZ devoted to concocting the fake documentation necessary for that kind of subterfuge.

This ploy has precedent. If you dig deep into parapolitical history, you will encounter similar allegations.

(I rarely drink, but if you ever catch me after I’ve had some vodka, ask for my theory of the Frederick Valentich affair. And don’t get me started on the disappearance of Richard Colvin Cox.)

For a while, I found the “staged death” theory very intriguing. Eventually, I turned against it.

There are two book-length biographies of Parsons: Strange Angel by George Pendle and Sex and Rockets by John Carter. From these works, we learn that Parsons was found barely hanging on to life; he died in the hospital. That’s not the only reason for doubting this theory: One must also consider the impact of his death on his mother, Ruth Whiteside Parsons, who committed suicide upon hearing the sad news.

Nevertheless, my source knew Marjorie Cameron well. Neither my source nor Cameron had any reason to lie.

Did the ghost of Jack Parsons visit Marjorie Cameron? If so, he was a particularly avant-garde specter. Most spirits don’t drive to and from their haunts. My informant did not specify the make and model of the ghost car.

“Cannon,” I can hear some of you saying, “you can’t leave it at that! You MUST name your source!” No. I must not. And I can’t tell you why I can’t tell you. I can be quite stubborn in these situations, so don’t bother trying to turn me around. Your insults and accusations and stupid-ass conspiracy theories won’t budge me even half a centimeter. Neither will wheedling and flattery.

(I’ll give you only one clue: Although I never met Cameron, she was an artist and so was I.)

Back in the 1990s, as I wandered beneath the Devil’s gaze on the south side of the dam, I could not help but wonder if Parsons had ever banished the forces he summoned. Four years after Parsons’ death in 1952, the vanishings began.

Brenda Howell and Donald Baker

On August 6, 1956, Brenda Jo Howell (12) and Donald Lee Baker (13) went out bicycle riding a couple of miles east of this area, heading toward the reservoir. They were never seen again. Despite a vigorous search, only the bicycles and Brenda’s jacket were discovered.

In 1970, a serial murderer named Mack Ray Edwards confessed to the murder of Howell and Baker, along with the killings of four other young people (abducted elsewhere) between 1953 and 1969. Edwards supposedly bragged of 18 murders to a fellow prisoner, but in official interviews, he spoke only of six. Edwards was convicted for three of these murders, and neither Howell nor Baker were among those three.

Tommy Bowman

On March 23, 1957, and eight-year-old named Tommy Bowman vanished while walking just a short ways ahead of his family during an exploration of the Arroyo Seco. An unidentified man was seen near the area; the police created a sketch from witness descriptions.

An hour after the disappearance, two sisters — Kimberly and Dede Gunn — saw a boy crying near the entrance to the ranger station; they later identified this child as Tommy. However, a week-long, 400-person search effort found no trace of the boy, despite the use of helicopters and police dogs.

Today, many suspect that Mack Ray Edwards kidnapped Bowman. The leading advocate of this theory is writer G. Weston DeWalt, who says that Edwards resembled the man in the police sketch; DeWalt also claims to have seen a letter which Edwards told his wife about killing Bowman. Strangely, the LAPD later confiscated this letter, or so says DeWalt.

The “Edwards did it” theory has its attractions, although it does not easily square with the report of the Gunn sisters. If DeWalt’s report is trustworthy, then the LAPD’s treatment of that important letter seems incomprehensible.

Bruce Kremen

On July 13, 1960, Bruce Kremen (6) disappeared near a YMCA camp within the Arroyo Seco. Out with a group on a nature excursion, he asked to return to camp, which was within line of sight, roughly thirty yards away. When the counselor returned to camp a short while later, she could not find Bruce. Another massive search ensued, including helicopters and police dogs.

Once again, recent investigators have fixed on Mack Ray Edwards as a likely suspect, although no evidence links him to the crime — if crime there was. Why would a serial killer confess to six child murders while refusing to discuss others?

Edwards committed suicide in 1971, taking many secrets with him.

Is Arizona the oddest state in the union? Excellent cases can be made for California, Florida, New York, Maine, and Wisconsin. Some would argue that the states with the densest populations are the likeliest to generate strange stories, because mysteries are produced by people, not real estate. Nevertheless, I believe that Arizona, home to 7.6 million citizens, punches above its weight when it comes to weird claims.

Hear are a few of the more haunting Fortean oddities to be found in Arizona’s casebook of the unexplained. Please note: Unexplained does not necessarily mean inexplicable. If you can debunk— or buttress — these claims, please step forward. We’d love to hear from you.

The Arch of Time

Even by my liberal standards, this tale is just too damned bizarre to take very seriously. At the same time, it’s too colorful to ignore.

Arivaca is a tiny village of about 70 souls located about nine miles north of the Mexican border. To the south, the Tumacocori Mountains straddle the boundary line which separates nations — and realities. At least, so say certain paranormal researchers who have visited the area. Local Forteans speak of inexplicable blue-green lights flitting through the crags, and of a ghostly monk who haunts the former site of an abandoned mission.

On May 15, 2003, the Tucson Weekly carried the tale of three young Indians who, many decades ago, found a mysterious stone archway which functioned as a kind of time/space portal.

• One member of the party jumped through the arch but never emerged on the other side.

• Someone else tossed in a rabbit, which never landed on the other side of the arch.

• On a later occasion, a horseman riding under threatening dark clouds passed by the arch, through which he saw a clear blue sky.

• A modern-day rancher riding in the general area claimed to have spotted a column of Spanish soldiers from a bygone era.

Ron Quinn, author of the Weekly article, insists that the arch is real, and that he has visited the place more than once. Quinn reported that, on one very hot day, the archway “shimmered” while he and his friends felt a bizarre pressure build within their ears. On another visit, while trekking up the steep slope one must take to visit the arch, Quinn suddenly found himself transported to another part of the mountain. Another investigator claimed that, while he and his party camped near the arch, small hematite stones fell out of a cloudless sky.

I can’t confirm the hematite. I can’t confirm the teleportation. In fact, I can’t confirm that the arch even exists.

In 2013, a writer calling himself reptilicus — a name designed to instill trust — posted a follow-up report on the Unexplained Mysteries board:

As far as giving the exact location of the site, I am bound by an agreement with the handful of others who have visited the area. We have all agreed that we will not give the exact coordinates out as we cannot be assured that the area will not be plundered, spray-painted, artifacts stolen from it, etc. We will take folks with us on our expeditions should they decide to join us.

It is important to point out that artifacts and relics discovered in the area would cause the current history books relating to North American to be rewritten. There are artifacts from the Vikings in the area. This in itself is quite a find. There are some very curious cave drawings. I might add that the whole area in that part of the state is a virtual honeycomb of caves that very few know about and even fewer have explored.

You want mysterious? Ok, how about the obvious magnetic anomaly that causes a compass to spin. Or the way the weather can change very dramitically in a very short amount of time. As a meteorologist, I can say that some of what I have witnessed defies explanation.

Then there is the night when a noise similar to a very low flying helicopter was heard above our campsite yet no stars were blotted out by any flying craft. Or maybe the stars that seem to move and stop at will. Perhaps, you might be interested in the strange stone formations that are there on one expedition and gone the next......stones weighing in the tons. Or maybe the night we looked out of our tents and saw the stars had become huge, as if we could reach out and touch them. Then there is the day we ascended a slope and looked down upon the site only to see that it and our campsite were not to be seen. It was as if we were looking at the area from a different time. Once down the mountain, all seemed back to normal. Also, the night we all had the feeling something was overhead yet not seen and the next morning on the trail, several large rock formations had burn marks and holes that were not there the day before. I will add one more....what was believed to be a deer was seen that stood higher than a large horse.

I do not quote the above as Gospel truth. I simply note it.

You’ll have to ask the locals for directions to the Mystery Arch. Don’t be surprised if they regale you with all sorts of tales involving oddball happenings in the area.

The arch is not the only noteworthy odd claim generated by this borderlands region. Over the decades, many seekers have come to these mountains in search of the legendary lost treasure of Carreta Canyon — a cache of silver hidden away by Jesuit missionaries escaping the Pima (or O’odham) uprising of 1751. Carreta Canyon is probably now Peck Canyon. Although the general area has been well-scoured, no-one has found the heavy wooden door which supposedly leads to the treasure cavern.

We have good reason to doubt that any treasure was concealed here. Conventional historians hold that the O’odham warriors, led by Luis Oacpicagigua, caught the Spanish colonizers unawares, leaving them no time to create an elaborate depository. Neither is there any proof that the Jesuits had amassed large amounts of silver.

The orbs of Mesa

On December 08, 2019, Mesa residents saw — and video-recorded — a glowing orange orb flying above their homes. Fascinatingly, this spherical light would drop smaller orbs, somewhat like a chicken laying eggs. The “child” objects fell at more-or-less the speed of gravity, though they rapidly faded out. The videos — taken from multiple viewpoints — do not show any orbs striking the ground. Eventually, the main object vanished.

This odd aerial display occurred southeast of Mesa (a Mormon-friendly place which has never figured out if it wants to be a suburb of Phoenix or a city in its own right). A journalist contacted Luke Air Force Base (west of Phoenix), which denied any connection to the phenomenon. It should be noted that several very small airstrips — Valley Farms Airport, Ray Schnepf Airport and the Pegasus Airpark — are located southeast of Mesa, as is Williams Air Force Base.

Some theorize that the witnesses saw a night-time parachute training mission in which the parachutists used flares. This theory has one major drawback: The “parent” orb bore no resemblance to any known aircraft.

YouTube videos have documented similar “big orb dropping smaller orbs” incidents all over the world — even as far away as South Korea. The people who upload these videos seem unaware that the phenomenon has occurred elsewhere. This fact argues against the theory that hoaxers have fastened onto the latest fad in paranormality.

The saucers of ‘77

Arizona, some say, is the most active state in the union when it comes to UFO visitations. 1977 was a particularly good year for ultra-weird cases, at least in Tucson.

Around 7:30 pm on February 10, Lois Stovall was sitting in her grandmother’s living room when she saw a remarkably bright light hovering above the Lillian Cavett Elementary School, just across the street. Moving slowly, the light descended close to the living room window. Lois fetched her grandmother, Alice Bruckner, who stepped outside with Lois and saw the object levitate, coming directly toward them until it hovered just out of touch. The front section of the object was transparent, and within it was a humanoid in a “puffed up” grey suit. A neighbor named Dessie Turner also saw this object from her own living room window. The witnesses also noted military-type helicopters buzzing the school.

Eleven days later, also at 7:30 pm, Trudy Clayton and Dorothy Sanders were driving near Tucson high school when they noticed a bizarre “silver airplane” over the school. They knew it was no ordinary aircraft because it quickly hopped about the sky in a stop-start fashion. Yes: An airplane-shaped UFO flitted like a hummingbird, occasionally stopping directly overhead. Moreover, the thing followed them home, where several members of Dorothy’s family also saw it. Dorothy’s niece, Carolyn Howard, said that when the craft came near the ground, it became a cylinder, lacking wings— but wings re-appeared when the craft re-ascended to a higher elevation.

A third case occurred on April 4, at 1:30 am. The sole witness, a 52-year-old woman, is identified only as “K.O.” by MUFON investigator Fred Dennis, who interviewed her twice. We are told that she was on the grounds of the Veterans Hospital when she saw a glowing ellipse-shaped UFO descend from the sky and land a short distance away. A few seconds later, a tall humanoid figure materialized directly in front of her. The entity wore a one-piece suit, replete with a mask or helmet covering much of his face, although his hypnotic eyes were revealed. Speaking telepathically, the visitor called himself Onleel. Next thing she knew, she was aboard the craft, where Onleel grilled her about her reincarnation and other spiritual matters. After the interview, she was instantaneously transported outside once more – and the ship was gone.

Most of the above comes from an online article by Marcus Lowth. Further study may injure or increase their credibility of these three cases. I’ve not investigated these allegations, but I encourage you to do so. Fortunately, Lowth gives the sort of detail – names, dates, locations — which may make further research possible.