Twilight Language

Mutologist Chris O'Brien Meets A Sudden End

2024-11-26T09:08:00.000-05:00

On Sunday morning, November 24, 2024, Christopher O'Brien, well-known author of several works on his investigations of unexplained phenomena (including UFOs, UAPs, and cattle mutilations) was experiencing what he thought was a "panic attack." He decided to drive himself to a near-by hospital in Sedona, Arizona, where he was living at the time. He died on route, although official details were initially incomplete.

*BREAKING*

This following statement is just in from Ron James, the producer whose house Chris was staying at in Sedona. James was away when the events unfolded.

Ron James writes that Chris was...

"helping me with the sequel to my film Accidental Truth when he experienced catastrophic breathing difficulties and tried to drive himself to the emergency room. He probably lost consciousness, due to not being able to breathe, and subsequently crashed his car into a stone sign and was fatally wounded.

"I've known Chris for over 25 years and he has helped me on five of my documentary films. I am working on more information and a more formal announcement. I was in San Francisco at the SOL conference when this happened.

"On the way back to Sedona, I asked my departed friend to give me a sign. Before going home, I stopped by the scene of the accident. This is what I found. Thank you my friend for years of loyalty and friendship."

Photos by Ron James/Facebook/Nov 25/2025

Chris' Life

David Perkins, Tom Adams, and Gary Massey would join Chris O'Brien in an unstructured early group of researchers involved in what David called "the fledgling study dubbed ~ tongue-in-cheek - Mutology."

Here are the beginnings of how Chris got deeply enmeshed in Mutology. One small point. Chris outlasted the members of the group who died before him (see the list of obits at the end here). Until this weekend, Chris was the lone and last "survivor."

Chris was born on March 24, 1957, in Medina, Washington State. He went to Kentridge High (Class of 1975), and attended Lehman College of the City University of New York. He studied media, geology, anthropology, and music from 1975-1978 and in 1980. He was an investigative journalist, author, tv/radio spokesperson, sonic sculpturist, and an aspiring techno shaman.

Chris O'Brien in 2000.

Christopher O'Brien, Unsolved Mysteries, Season 17 (October 2, 2024),

Volume 5, Overall Episode 610, "Mysterious Mutilations."

Most recently, when not traveling, visiting friends, and staying with them, Chris lived alone in Chemung, New York.

Since 1992, Christopher O'Brien investigated over one thousand unexplained events reported in the San Luis Valley--located in South-central Colorado/North Central New Mexico (the location of the initial "Snippy the Horse" incident). Working with law enforcement officials, ex-military, ranchers and an extensive network of skywatchers, from 1992 to 2002, Chris documented one of the most intense waves of unexplained activity ever reported from a single geographic region of North America. His ten-year investigation resulted in the three books of his "mysterious valley" trilogy, The Mysterious Valley, Enter the Valley, and Secrets of the Mysterious Valley.

His meticulous field investigation of UFO reports, unexplained livestock deaths, Native American legends, cryptozoology, secret military activity and the associated folklore, found in the world's largest alpine valley, has produced one of the largest databases of unusual occurrences gathered from a single geographic region.

Chris recently was working with a team of specialists installing a high-tech video surveillance and hard-data monitoring system in and around the San Luis Valley. His 2009 book Stalking the Tricksters distilled his years of field investigation and research into an unified paranormal theory.

His last major book Stalking the Herd (600 pages) has been called "The Bible of cattle mutilations books."

O'Brien, an entertaining, thought-provoking speaker was a frequent guest on Coast-to-Coast AM and hundreds of other radio shows. He has also been seen on several broadcast TV programs such as: Ancient Aliens, Weird or What, Conspiracy Theory, and UFO Hunters.

Starting in the early 1990s, Chris developed, supplied footage, field-produced and appeared in four segments of the Paramount television program Sightings and was featured on Inside Edition, Extra, Showtime's Sci-Friday Chronicles, the TBS documentary UFO: The Search, the BBC2 program Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends, Nippon TV's Special Research 2000, the Discovery Channel's two-hour documentary, Billion $ Secret (with Jane's Defence Weekly's Nick Cook,) the TV series UFO Files, Exploring the Unknown, The Unexplained, Secrets of:, Profiles in Ufology, Unexplained Mysteries, and in the English documentary film Mutilation Files. At home in front or behind the camera, O'Brien has field-produced and directed television segments for the nationally syndicated paranormal news-magazine Strange Universe.

Chris was a consulting producer and writer/researcher for Stage 3 [Television] Productions where he also wrote and produced History, Mystery and Greed: the Story of Snippy the Horse, and co-produced the documentaries Dead Whisper and Disclosure Dialogues which won two EBE Film Festival Awards. Inspired by his field-research, Chris co-wrote an action/adventure film screenplay, Deadly Waters, that was judged Honorable Mention in the 1998 Southwest Screenwriter's Guild Contest.

Since 1993, he wrote articles that have appeared in Open Minds, Fate, UFO Universe, Leading Edge, CyberWest, Western Spirit, World Exploror's Club Magazine, Crestone Eagle, Phenomena, Zeitgeist, and UFO Encounters.

Chris' investigation and research were featured in the Associated Press, Denver Post, Pueblo Chieftain, the New Mexican, the Rocky Mountain News, the Albuquerque Journal, the Deseret News, The Red Rock News, UFO Magazine, Phenomenon, (France) OVNI (Spain), Borderline (Japan).

An entertaining and thought-provoking speaker for several decades, he was a perennial guest lecturer at Adam's State College and he captivated conference and seminar audiences with his unique insight into some of our culture's last remaining mysteries. He also hosted his own regional Colorado/New Mexico radio show, Mysterious Valley Report (1996-1999), and published the bi-monthly Mysterious Valley Report (1993-2000).

Chris' involvement in Strange Universe and his co-produced film w/ Ron James, It Could Happen Tomorrow, won two 2012 EBEs for Best Feature and the Peoples Choice Award. His latest James' co-production, Accidental Truth (2023) won seven film festival awards. He also co-produced/creative consulted for James Fox's recent award winning films The Phenomenon (2021) and Moment of Contact (2023). Recent work has been for the program, Beyond Skinwalker Ranch. Christopher O'Brien was the major interviewee on Unsolved Mysteries, Season 17 (October 2, 2024), in the episode "Mysterious Mutilations."

Chris also worked under the name KK Barnes with Michael Esposito.

Throughout the 2000s, Christopher O'Brien was a frequent speaker at Para-conferences in the USA, as well as doing podcasts.

His input and insights will be missed.

Christopher O'Brien and David Weatherly at Paradigm, October 26, 2013.

Christopher O'Brien was the author of

The Mysterious Valley (1996)

Enter the Valley: UFOs, Religious Miracles, Cattle Mutilations, and Other Unexplained Phenomena in the San Luis Valley (1999)

Secrets of the Mysterious Valley (2007)

Stalking the Tricksters: Shapeshifters, Skinwalkers, Dark Adepts and 2012 (2009)

Stalking the Herd: Unraveling the Cattle Mutilation Mystery (2014)

Christopher O'Brien and Loren Coleman, June 27, 2018. Portland, Maine, International Cryptozoology Museum.

I'm in shock. Chris is gone.

See also the detailed information in:

David Perkins (October 18, 1945 ~ August 20, 2023).

Tom Adams (May 6, 1945 ~ August 20, 2014)

Gary Massey (March 5, 1948 ~ September 7, 2010)

"Itʼs unclear whether at the time of his death, Tom even knew of Gary Masseyʼs apparent suicide in 2010." ~ David Perkins.

"Massey set his house on fire, shot his dog, and then shot himself dead." ~ Christopher O'Brien

Making Aurora Great Again

2024-10-12T20:59:00.001-04:00

"The fire rises!" ~ Bane, The Dark Knight Rises, 2012

Aurora, Colorado has a long recent history with twilight language. Why should we expect 2024 to be any different?

Remember July 20, 2012? I forecast something was going to happen on that date in conjunction with the release of The Dark Knight Rises. It did.

A mass shooting occurred on July 20, 2012, at a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises, leaving 12 dead and 58 injured (some gravely), 15 minutes after the film began. The active shooting took place in Theater No. 9 at the Century 16 Movie Theaters, located at 14300 East Alameda Avenue in Aurora, Colorado. (News reports have said as high as 15 are dead, but as of 8:00 AM Eastern, CNN is reporting 12 have been killed. Double-counting caused the 15 count.)

In my first blog posting about the shooting, I wrote:

The name Aurora means "dawn." The Roman goddess of the dawn was named Aurora, and her siblings are Sol (Sun) and Luna (Moon). These names in Latin and Greek are Aurora/Eos, Sol/Helios, Luna/Selene.

Anne Hathaway/Catwoman's public persona character in The Dark Knight Rises is named Selene Kyle (Selene = Moon, Kyle = Strait of Water/River).

Aurora is a suburb less than 10 miles east of downtown Denver. Aurora originated in the 1880s as the town of Fletcher, taking its name from Denver businessman Donald Fletcher, who saw it as a real estate opportunity. He and his partners staked out four square miles east of Denver, but the town - and Colorado - struggled mightily after the Silver Crash of 1893. At that point Fletcher skipped town, leaving the community with a huge water debt. Inhabitants decided to rename the town Aurora in 1907, after one of the subdivisions composing the town.

Colorado is of Spanish origin, meaning "colored red" and "ruddy."

The memories of Columbine (20 miles away from Aurora) are being recalled by the Colorado and other media.

The Aurora name is familiar to investigators of the unexplained due to the the Aurora, Texas, Airship incident that reportedly occurred on April 17, 1897, in Aurora, Texas, a small town in the northwest corner of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The incident (similar to the more famous Roswell UFO incident 50 years later) allegedly resulted in a fatality from the crash. The alleged alien body is reportedly buried in an unmarked grave at the local Aurora cemetery.

(Various "Aurora," "Copycat Jokers," and "Red Dawn" postings followed discussing all the issues and events in the wake of the shootings and more. H ere, here, here, and others throughout the blog.

In 2019, Aurora, Illinois was touched.

On the evening of October 11, 2024, former President Donald Trump brought Aurora, Colorado, back into the news in the same time period as the aurora borealis (the northern lights) display was visible in the northern and southern hemispheres. (Credit for noting this news to Enki King.)

"Anyone who has studied twilight language probably got chills upon hearing of Trump's Operation Aurora. The announcement may signal an upcoming Red Dawn event, and I would not be surprised to see more attempts at political assassinations." ~ Enki A. King, X, October 15, 2024,

The Habsburg Jaw in Butler County

2024-07-14T12:00:00.005-04:00

Thomas Matthew Crooks

July 13, 2024: The Assassination Attempt of former President Donald Trump in Butler County, PA.

MTC

Habsburg chin, Habsburg's chin, Habsburg jaw or Habsburg's jaw.

The House of Habsburg.

The correlation between the Hapsburg Jaw and mental illness is direct. This partial paper is indicative.

Carlos II of Spain, ‘The Bewitched’: cursed by aspartylglucosaminuria?

Andrew Martin,1 Robert Heard,2,3 and Victor S C Fung1

Carlos II of Spain (1661–1700), last of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty, was known as El Hechizado (The Bewitched) because of his poor health and feeble nature. He suffered from a range of disorders including developmental delay, intellectual disability, dysarthria, skeletal deformity, recurrent infections, epilepsy and infertility. The Spanish branch of the Habsburg royal family was characterised by marked inbreeding, and the male line died out with Carlos II. Various diagnoses have been proffered to explain Carlos II’s infirmity, though none fully explain the breadth of his ailments. As illustrated here, it may be that aspartylglucosaminuria, an autosomal recessively inherited lysosomal storage disorder, can account for the characteristic facial appearance of the Habsburgs, and for the wide variety of other features exhibited by Carlos II.

Go to:

Aspartylglucosaminuria

Aspartylglucosaminuria is an autosomal recessively inherited lysosomal disorder of in which glycoasparagines, mostly aspartylglucosamine, are deposited and build up in several different tissues, including the nervous system. Most cases have been described in Finland, where a high carrier rate is prevalent, although mutations are found worldwide.1 2 Being autosomal recessively inherited, the prevalence is increased in populations with a high degree of consanguinity.

Characteristic clinical features typically include normal birth and early infancy followed, at the age of 2–3, by delayed speech and motor development with intellectual disability.3 A weak suck in infancy has also been described.4 A distinctive facial appearance is present, consisting of widely spaced eyes (hypertelorism), puffy eyelids, small ears, full lips, a square and prominent jaw, a cupid bow shape of the upper lip and a short, broad nose. Patients have frequently been described as appearing prematurely aged.5 In addition, there is frequently relative macrocephaly earlier in development, which may evolve into relative microcephaly, presumably due to retardation of skull growth as the disease progresses6

Not infrequently, skin lesions are present. A wide variety of such lesions have been described, including erythema, herpetic-appearing lesions, facial angiofibromas, seborrhoea, gingival overgrowth, buccal oedema and occasionally tumours.7 8 Fistulas have also been described.9 Bony abnormalities are often seen, including thick and misshapen ribs, scoliosis and thickened calvaria.3 Other suggestive features include recurrent pulmonary infections, diarrhoea, hypermobility of connective tissues, hernias, movement disorders and epilepsy.2Intellectual disability is typically mild early on, though verbal dysfunction is most prominent, with later progression to severe levels by late adulthood.4 A range of psychiatric symptoms may be present.

The course is progressive. Most patients die in the fifth decade. Somewhat interestingly, as was the case in Carlos II, patients generally become very apathetic/abulic before death.2

Go to:

Carlos II, The Bewitched

Carlos II was a sick and frail monarch, and the tragic end product of years of disastrous inbreeding. Ascending the throne at the age 4, he ruled over the Spanish Empire ineffectually for 35 years. His death in 1700 without an heir threw Europe into the convulsive and disastrous War of the Spanish Succession. Its end result was to weaken both Spain and France, allowing the rise of the English.10

Carlos II exhibited many features described in aspartylglucosaminuria. Contemporary sources record that he was ‘big-headed’ and a ‘weak breast-fed baby’. The bones of his cranium had not fused at the age of three, and he was unable to walk until well after the age of 6.11 Carlos II was unable to speak until the age of four, and thereafter acquired little language.11 12 He also had prominent dysarthria, with his tongue being described as ‘trabado [locked], with such a fumbling in his speech’.11 In addition, he was described as showing little interest in his surroundings. He had severe intellectual disability, and was most commonly described as ‘mentally retarded’.13He had prominent psychiatric disturbance, and was melancholic, and excessively superstitious.13

He also suffered from chronic and episodic diarrhoea. Late in life, he developed seizures.12 He had frequent pulmonary infections from a young age, and at autopsy his lungs were said to be ‘corroded’.13 He was also described as being generally ‘swollen’, suggestive of oedema.12 Somewhat interesting, too, is the description of cutaneous lesions, with mentions of a ‘herpetic rash on both cheeks’, and a discharging wound that ‘oozes underneath the right ear’, which may represent an abscess or fistula.11 Of later monumental historical significance is his well-known sterility.11The autopsy is also reported to have demonstrated a heart the size of a peppercorn, intestines rotten and gangrenous, a single testicle ‘black as coal’ and ‘a head full of water’.12

Most characteristic, however, is the distinctive facial appearance, well documented in multiple portraits. There is the strong, square jaw (the famous ‘Habsburg jaw’), a large tongue, plump, round lips, a cupid bow upper lip, a flat, broad nose and large forehead, all reminiscent of the typical findings of aspartylglucosaminuria (figures 1 and 2). He is also frequently described to have severe difficulty eating, with near continuous drooling.

Left: Carlos II of Spain, Juan Carreño de Miranda (Wikipedia, public domain). Middle: Carlos II of Spain, Anonymous (Wikipedia, public domain).

Skinwalker Ranch Deaths and the Hitchhiker Effect

2024-03-08T15:02:00.000-05:00

The Skinwalker Ranch is a property of approximately 512 acres (207 ha), located southeast of Ballard, Utah, that is reputed to be the site of strange (Fortean) and UFO/UAP-related activities. Its name is taken from the lore and sightings of skinwalkers of Ute and Diné legend.

Various parts of documentaries and programs have chronicled the mysteries of the site. As of 2020, a television series, The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, on History channel, has featured "a team of scientists and experts" that uses science and technology such as lasers, ground-penetrating radar, and drone thermography, as well as lots of rockets. It have shown the cast members searching the property, and attempting to explain claims of UFO/UAP sightings, animal deaths, and unusual events. By April 2024, five seasons of multiple episodes have been filmed and planned for broadcast.

Chief Deputy Brian Fletcher

In March 2024, breaking news was released by the Uintah County Sheriff’s Office. They reported the recovery of a deceased individual around February 29, 2024, near the Skinwalker Ranch.

Chief Deputy Brian Fletcher confirmed the finding, stating, “Our agency did locate a deceased individual south of Fort Duchesne; however, the circumstances are not suspicious, and no further information will be released out of respect for the family,” in an email to Expanding Frontiers Research on March 4, 2024.

Expanding Frontiers Research received information indicating that the body may have been found in the vicinity of 4500 East and 2800 South after an abandoned motorcycle was reported to the sheriff’s office several months earlier. The motorcycle’s discovery was reported on November 24, 2023.

According to an inside informant familiar with the incident, the deceased individual might have been in the area due to an interest in the purported paranormal phenomena linked to Skinwalker Ranch. When asked about this possibility, Chief Deputy Fletcher declined to provide further details.

Members of the investigative teams of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch have told of the "Hitchhiker Effect" involving how the ranch impacts visitors and scientists who visit and work there. Dizzy spells, headaches, and hospital visits have resulted from the apparent electromagnetic side effects from the ranch.

Former Skinwalker Ranch owner Robert Bigelow’s wife Diane, 72, died on February 19, 2020, of myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia.

“The reason Bigelow got rid of the place was he was convinced that it killed his wife.” ~ Travis Taylor, said, re: the “hitchhiker effect” at Skinwalker Ranch.

The number of “mysterious deaths” associated with the Skinwalker Ranch seems nil. Or the tip of the iceberg is merely being demonstrated, as shown via Diane Bigelow. And Kevin Burns, 65, executive producer of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, who died of a cardiac arrest, September 27, 2020.

Skinwalker Ranch, 

Uintah County, Utah, U.S.

Prehistory to 1934 - Utes/Diné

1934–1994 – Kenneth and Edith Myers

1994–1996 – Terry and Gwen Sherman

1996–2016 – Robert Bigelow

2016–Present – Brandon Fugal

Current owner, Brandon Fugal

The danger of fans of the program being attracted to the physical location of the Skinwalker Ranch then ending in death has been seen due to other reality programming.

Savanna Bright, 15, died after being hit by a Norfolk Southern train on Sunday night, May 26, 2019, near Pope Lick Park, on the train tracks near the Pope Lick trestle, while searching for the Pope Lick Goat Man. Louisville, Kentucky media has confirmed that two adolescent females on the Pope Lick Train Trestle were stuck by a train near Pope Lick Road, and Taylorsville Road, in Louisville, Kentucky.

The area is known to be “notoriously dangerous” as it is alleged to be the home of the Pope Lick Monster. The creature is said to be part human and part goat.

The Pope Lick Monster is the subject of an urban legend and popularized in YouTube videos, as well as a 1988 film, The Legend of the Pope Lick Monster (director Ron Schildknecht); and a 2013 episode of Destination America’s Monsters and Mysteries in America (in “Ozarks”). There is also a haunted attraction themed after the tales surrounding the Pope Lick monster called the Legend at Pope Lick located at Pope Lick Park in the Parklands of Floyds Fork.

In 2016, Roquel Bain and her boyfriend Dave Knee decided to go to a "paranormal event" at the nearby Waverly Hills Sanatorium, a well-known haunted location often highlighted on “ghost hunter”-type reality programming. But with some time to fill, the couple decided to explore the Pope Lick Trestle and actively see if they could see the Pope Lick Monster. Bain met her tragic fate there.

The "Hitchhiker Effect" can be said to have had some grave links to this location as well as it seems to have to the Skinwalker Ranch.

Conspiracy and Twilight Language Deaths of 2023

2024-01-06T15:20:00.000-05:00

Conspiracy and Twilight Language Deaths of 2023

by Loren Coleman

The "hail and farewell" obituaries at the end of a year are often a confusing mixture of multiple themes. For the twelve months of 2023, I gather here a few of the noteworthy passings of assassination authors, conspiracy journalists, cryptokubrology dots, and twilight language-linked folks we lost in 2023. From the latest, to the earliest...

2023

December 23

Hugh Aynesworth, 92. Obituary. He is shown above with Marina Oswald, in 1964. Aynesworth and others would later say they had an affair.

Hugh Grant Aynesworth, born August 2, 1931 in Clarksburg, West Virginia (as was UFO writer Gary Barker), died December 23, 2023, in Dallas, Texas. Aynesworth was an American journalist, investigative reporter, author, and teacher.

In a 1976 Texas Monthly article, William Broyles, Jr. claimed Aynesworth as "one of the most respected authorities on the assassination of John F. Kennedy".

Certainly, Aynesworth was one of the luckiest reporters or experienced an incredibly high number of coincidences in his life in journalism. He said he

~ witnessed the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dealey Plaza,

~ the capture and arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald at the Texas Theatre,

~ the shooting of Oswald by Jack Ruby in the basement of the Dallas Police Headquarters,

~ had "broken almost every major assassination story", and

~ worked openly with Clay Shaw's attorneys to defend Shaw against Jim Garrison.

He painted himself as a conservative, a skeptic, and an assassination conspiracist.

Also Aynesworth...

~ with Stephen Michaud, a former Business Week reporter, wrote two books on serial killer Ted Bundy,

~ with Jim Henderson, also of the Dallas Times Herald, did investigative reporting of self-proclaimed mass murderer Henry Lee Lucas, and

~ covered the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, referring to it as "[t]he Branch Davidian massacre".

Aynesworth was seen to have been his own greatest promoter. Aynesworth was reported to have "interviewed John F. Kennedy in the shower [and] Lyndon B. Johnson in bed". According to one report: "He also tracked down the person who stole "most of" eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes' money, chased James Earl Ray all over the South and into Canada after he shot the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr." According to Aynesworth, he was asked to serve as a pallbearer for Jack Ruby and played basketball with Fidel Castro. He said that he was playing outside of Havana: "And all of a sudden, this Jeep drives up and a bearded gentleman gets out and puts on his tennis shoes and joins us. I'd been having trouble getting an interview, and after that, it came a little easier. I told him that I would let him win."

Aynesworth co-authored seven books with Stephen G. Michaud. His 2003 book JFK: Breaking the News is "a companion piece to a documentary on the 40th anniversary of the event."

December 21

Ian Punnett, 63

Ian Punnett was a regular host of Coast to Coast AM beginning in 1998, infrequently interviewing conspiracy writers and related individuals. He died shortly after a brief illness.

December 8

Ryan O'Neal, 82. Obituary.

Born April 20, 1941, actor Ryan O'Neal starred in Barry Lyndon, Love Story, and Paper Moon, among other films, before dying on December 8, 2023.

#Cryptokubrology reflective screen history: Stanley Kubrick modeled Tom Cruise's mask in Eyes Wide Shut on Ryan O'Neal's face in Barry Lyndon (shown above).

September 22

Kenn Thomas, 65. Obituary.

St. Louis area resident and author Kenn Thomas was a former university librarian, archivist, and the editor/publisher of Steamshovel Press, a parapoliticial conspiracy theory magazine. He was an author of a great collection of conspiracy articles and books.

Kenn died in his sleep on a Friday night. Kenn resisted going into a nursing home, despite ongoing chronic health issues, because it would have meant living without his dog, books, records, and comic books, which to him was not living at all.

Kenn showed author Loren Coleman the "name game" location, the Beall House, in Missouri, on one visit.

August 20

David Perkins, 77. Obituary.

David Perkins was a field researcher and writer investigating “cattle muteology,” the mysterious mutilations occurring throughout the Midwest USA.

Long before podcasts, there was Altered Steaks: A Colloquium on the Cattle Mutilation Question (1982), by David Perkins (a/k/a "Izzy Zane"), Lewis Macadams, and Tom Clark.

February 19

Richard Jay Belzar, 78. Obituary.

Richard Belzar, well-known for his role on Law and Order: SVU, was a comic and conspiracy author. His book UFOs, JFK & Elvis: Conspiracies You Don't Have to Be Crazy to Believe, was one of his more popular.

January 9

Melinda Dillon, 83. Obituary.

Melinda appeared in the midst of films that had a central theme of interest to many of us: Magnolia, Harry and the Hendersons, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Dillon also is famously in A Christmas Story. This movie contains a scene of the parade in front of the Cleveland-based department store Higbee's featuring characters from MGM's version of The Wizard of Oz, which was released in 1939. As this clip shows, it is extremely filled with twilight language. #Cryptokubrology

Author and Conspiracy Theorist Kenn Thomas Passes Away

2023-09-24T14:21:00.023-04:00

St. Louis area resident and author Kenn Thomas, born June 12, 1958, passed away on September 22, 2023. He was a former university librarian and archivist, and a conspiracy writer, and editor/publisher of Steamshovel Press, a parapolitical conspiracy theory magazine.

Kenn was a friend of many writers, including Jim Keith, Greg Bishop, Paul Kimball, Adam Gorightly, Jim Martin, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Adam Parfrey, Jim Marrs, Mae Brussell, Tim Binnall, Kevin Nealon, Ron Bonds, Stephen Miles Lewis, Robert Sterling, Robert Guffey, and, me, Loren Coleman. Kenn also had various close relationship with some powerful women writers and thinkers (e.g. Acharya and Alfvegren). He saw many friends, male and female, die early.

I was involved with one of Kenn’s St Louis area conferences in 1999, and we visited local Fortean sites such as Piasa Rock in Alton and the nearby “name-game” haunted location at the Beall House.

Thomas wrote over a dozen books on various conspiracy topics, including NASA, Nazis & JFK; Maury Island UFO, about the possibility that Fred Crisman was connected to the assassination of John F. Kennedy; and The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro, about the Inslaw affair. In 2004, Feral House published a new edition of The Octopus, extending the suggestion of connections to the post-September 11 attacks world and al-Qaeda. A new edition of Maury Island UFO was published by Feral House in 2011 as JFK & UFO: Military-Industrial Conspiracy and Cover-Up from Maury Island to Dallas.

Thomas called his research interest "parapolitics," the study of conspiracies of all colors—from alien abductions and the Illuminati, to the John F. Kennedy assassination and the September 11, 2001 attacks. The New Yorker called his work "on the cutting edge" of conspiracy. His name has become a by-word for a conspiracy theorist; enough so that baseball was described in print as involving "enough fishy behavior to keep Kenn Thomas swarming for years,"(Baseball Prospectus 2002).

On September 16, 2016, Kenn wrote what his semi-retirement was revealing:

Kenn Thomas traveled extensively during the 1980s and 1990s to speak about his conspiracy, assassination, and Fortean interests. Thomas appeared at Conspiracy Con in 2003 and 2007.

Beth, Kenn's ex-wife wrote the following for the public:

+++

“ Kenn and I met in high school, in 9th grade history class (or maybe it was English class - you think you’ll never forget this stuff). We didn’t become friends until 11th grade journalism class. We became close in our senior year when I was the editor of the school paper and he wrote and drew a comic strip for it, the originals of which I still have. We stayed friends after high school and started dating during college. We moved in together at some point and got married when we were 25. We had two children before divorcing in 2001. When he got sick a few years ago, I stepped in to help our kids manage his chronic health issues. We had been a part of each other’s lives for nearly 50 years when he died Friday morning at Mercy Rehabilitation Hospital.

He fell almost two weeks ago while at dialysis. The details are murky, which I suspect may be due to the dialysis staff not wanting to admit responsibility, but that’s a story (and maybe an investigation) for another day. He hit his head so hard, it knocked him out, and he was taken to Mercy Hospital by ambulance. He spent two days in the ICU with a hematoma and a brain bleed. They stopped his blood thinners, which helped, and the doctors were optimistic, so they sent him to rehab. Simon visited him, and he seemed like his old self and was upbeat about getting better and going home.

If you knew Kenn, you may remember him as a charming and super bright dude who could talk about anything - music, politics, comic books, and (his favorite) conspiracies. He was probably a polymath, meaning he was talented in so many areas and could pick up new skills seemingly effortlessly. He was a writer, an artist, a researcher. He had a master’s in English and could understand and explain even the densest literary works (Pynchon was his favorite). He took an acting class once and blew everyone away with his portrayal of Cardinal Wolsey.

He was a gifted speaker with a DJ’s voice and in fact worked at KWMU on the weekends for a few years when they still played music. He reviewed rock concerts for the Post-Dispatch and the Globe-Democrat and co-hosted a music and talk show with Phil Gounis on KDHX in its early on-air days, where they mostly played Dylan but also talked about other music and books. He was part of a small but (obsessively) devoted local group of Dylan diehards who saw every concert (and recorded many of them in the early days). He loved the Beat poets and Timothy Leary and could claim something of a friendly connection to William Burroughs, who he spoke about - and accepted the honor for - when Burroughs was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 1990 because Burroughs was too frail to travel to his hometown. If all goes according to plan, Kenn will be buried near Burroughs at Bellefontaine Cemetery.

Kenn worked for the University of Missouri for almost 40 years before retiring in 2019. He never really loved the archives/historical manuscripts career field, but he made it work for him, while also writing and lecturing about conspiracy stories and publishing a magazine, “Steamshovel Press.” He loved his children and his dogs and old TV shows (Hogan's Heroes was a favorite) and resisted going into a nursing home or assisted living because it would have meant living without his books, records, and comic books, which to him was not living at all.

Over the last three years, it has taken a team of folks to take care of him, and I want to give them a grateful and loving shout-out: Jeffrey Von Behren, Nancy Von Behren, Alan and Norm (not on FB), Jerry Durrwachter, Douglas Jake Jacobs (and Kathy). His sisters Mary Thomas-Turner and Bridget Bueltemeyer, despite battling their own health issues, have been the emotional support we needed, and his niece Jackie Turner worked on his house when he needed it. We will miss him forever. If you have a story or remembrance, please share it in the comments below. He leaves behind his children, Sara and Simon, his sisters, Mary and Bridget, three nieces, Michelle, Jackie, and Brandey, two nephews, Luke and Anthony, and a multitude of friends from across the globe. Kenneth Francis Thomas: June 12, 1958, to September 22, 2023."

+++

Thomas had been involved in several books that have impacted the conspiracy thoughts in the United States.

Selected Bibliography:
Acid: A New Secret History of LSD, David Black (introduction by Kenn Thomas), Vision, UK, 2003.
The Arch Conspirator, Len Bracken (introduction by Kenn Thomas), AUP, US, 1999.
The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, Acharya S (introduction by Kenn Thomas), AUP, US, 1999.
Cyberculture Counterconspiracy: A Steamshovel Web Reader, Book Tree, US, 2000.
Inside the Gemstone File, Kenn Thomas and David Childress, AUP, US, 1999.
The Little Book of Conspiracies: A Paranoiac's Pocket Guide, Joel Levy (introduction by Kenn Thomas), Thunder's Mouth, US, 2005.
Maury Island UFO: The Crisman Conspiracy, IllumiNet, US, 1999.
Mind Control, Oswald & JFK, AUP, US, 1997.
NASA, Nazis & JFK: The Torbitt Document & the Kennedy Assassination, Adventures Unlimited Press, US, 1996.
The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro, with Jim Keith, Feral House, US, 2005.
Parapolitics: Conspiracy in Contemporary America, AUP, US, 2006.
Popular Alienation: A Steamshovel Press Reader, IllumiNet, US, 1995.
Popular Paranoia: A Steamshovel Press Anthology, AUP, US, November 2002.

Round Trip To Hell In A Flying Saucer, Timothy Green Beckley (with contribution by Kenn Thomas), Global Communications, 2011.
Saucers of the Illuminati, Jim Keith (introduction by Kenn Thomas), AUP, US, 2004.
Secret and Suppressed II: Banned Ideas and Hidden History into the 21st Century, Feral House, US, 2008.
Shadow Government: 9/11 and State Terror, Len Bracken (introduction by Kenn Thomas), AUP, US, 2002.

Trumpocalypse Now!, Adventures Unlimited Press, 2017.
William Cooper: Death Of A Conspiracy Salesman, various with contribution from Kenn Thomas, Inner Light, US, 2001.

Kenn’s beloved Charlie, his service dog, assisted him greatly during the last few years. Sending treats and dog toys to Charlie was my way to support Kenn’s journey through his dark days.

“Remember it is in love that we are made and in love we disappear.💙” ~ Kenn Thomas, 2022.

Red Pill Junkie | Miguel Romero has written a worthy tribute you should read.

https://www.dailygrail.com/2023/09/farewell-to-parapolitics-trailblazer-kenn-thomas-1958-2023/

Signs, Assassinations, and Name Games

2022-07-08T15:06:00.000-04:00

The news of an assassination in Japan must not be viewed in a void. It is part of our violent times.

As St. John's Day was passing into June 25, 2022, a gay bar in Oslo, Norway was the site of a shooting. Two people were killed and twenty-one people were wounded in a mass shooting in Oslo, Norway. Police are treating the incident as an "act of Islamist terrorism" targeting the Oslo LGBTQ pride event. The suspect is identified as 42-year-old Norwegian Iranian Zaniar Matapour, who moved from Iran to Norway in 1991 when he was 12.

Then on the 4th of July 2022, in Highland Park, Illinois, a mass sniper incident occurred. Highland Park formerly was known as St. John's. St. John's Avenue is a major thoroughfare.

On July 4, 2022, a mass shooting took place during an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois, United States. The shooting occurred at 10:14 a.m. CDT (UTC−05:00), roughly 15 minutes after the parade had started. Seven people were fatally shot, and 46 others were wounded by gunfire or injured in the ensuing panic.
Authorities apprehended Robert Eugene Crimo III eight hours after the shooting and charged him the next day with seven counts of first-degree murder.

Seven people were killed and 46 others were injured during the attack. Five of the victims—all adults—died at the scene and two died at the hospital.

Crimo left an extensive social media trail of numerological signs, symbols, and clippings related to his Trump rally appearances, neo-Nazi leanings, and obsession with Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy ("St. John" to some).

Crimo: 4 (Fourth of) 7 (July)

Name Game: Uvaldo/Uvale

Highland Park/Parkland High/Parkland Hospital

Crimo was obsessed with Jack Ruby killing LHO. Both JFK and LHO taken to Parkland Hospital. To die.

On January 3, 1967, Lee Harvey Oswald assassin Jack Ruby died at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas, the same hospital where Oswald died and where President John F. Kennedy had been pronounced dead following his assassination in 1963.

Georgia Guidestones bombed on July 6, 2022. They are 7 miles down Georgia 77. Destroyed and then down.

===

Crimo was a Trump supporter and was photographed at Trump rallies. Was he also stalking Trump?

Next up, political assassinations? The wait was short.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dies at 67 after assassination in Nara, Japan.

An assassination of an Abe in Japan.

On Friday, July 8, 2022, Japan time.

Police said that the suspect Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, admitted he thought the ex-prime minister was connected to a religious organization he has a grudge with.

The alleged killer was a Nara resident and had worked at Japan’s Maritime Self-Defence Forces for three years, but now appeared to be unemployed, cops said.

+++

Recent Mass Shootings: St. John's Day to a city formerly named St. John's

2022-07-04T16:50:00.001-04:00

A mass shooting has occurred at Highland Park, Illinois during a 4th of July parade.

===============================================

End of the Day: June 24, 2022

In the US, we began hearing the reports of a mass shooting in a gay bar around 7 pm, on the night of June 24, 2022. Two people were dead and several wounded. (It was predictable.)

The shooting took place at locations associated with Oslo Pride, the local LGBT pride event hosted by the Oslo branch of the Norwegian Organisation for Sexual and Gender Diversity, the night before the planned Pride parade in Oslo. The first shooting occurred at London Pub, a popular gay bar and nightclub. A journalist from the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, stated he witnessed a man arrive with a bag, who then picked up a weapon and started shooting. The journalist thought it was an air gun at first, until the bar next door had glass shatter. According to one witness, the perpetrator shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he started shooting. He was identified as 42-year-old Norwegian Iranian Zaniar Matapour.

The perpetrator then moved to two more nearby locations, including Per på hjørnet, a bar popular among the adult LGBT community, and a takeaway. Police were called at 01:15 local time, and arrived minutes later. The suspect was detained five minutes after the attacks. 80 to 100 people hid in the pub's basement during the attack, and wounded people were lying both inside and outside the bar with the police describing the scene as "chaotic".

Two people were killed and twenty-one more were injured, ten of whom were critically injured while the other eleven were slightly injured. The deceased victims were 60-year old Kaare Hesvik, a gay man celebrating pride, and 54-year old Jon Isachsen, both residing in Bærum.

According to Eskil Pedersen, many of those present in London Pub, including himself, were also on Utøya during the shooting by domestic terrorist Anders Behring Breivik.

This shooting was said to be the first one in Norway for 11 years.

It also recalled the Pulse shooting. On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old man, killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in a mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, United States. Orlando Police officers shot and killed him after a three-hour standoff.

===============================================

June 25, 2022	Bolingbrook, Illinois	1	2		WeatherTech shooting: Police were dispatched around 6:25 a.m. to WeatherTech Way after receiving reports that someone was shot. The suspect, identified as Charles C. McKnight Jr. of Chicago, fled the building but was located about three hours later at the back of a home on Larkspur Lane and taken into custody. A handgun was also found at the scene. According to police, one victim died, one is in critical condition and a third was released from the hospital. All three are WeatherTech employees. The victim who died was identified as Central Hightower, 37, of Plainfield, Illinois. The critical condition victim is a 25-year-old man, and the third victim is a 43-year-old man.
June 30, 2022	Allen, Kentucky	3	4	7	2022 shooting of Kentucky police officers: A man fired out the window of his home, shooting seven people, six of whom were law enforcement officers. Two of the officers died at the scene, and a third died in the hospital the day after. The third officer was a canine handler, and his dog also died.

===============================================

July 3, 2022: Copenhagen, Denmark mall shooting: On 3 July 2022, a man opened fire at the Field's shopping mall in Copenhagen, Denmark, killing three people and critically wounding three others. The mass shooting is the first in Denmark since the 2015 Copenhagen shootings.

The shooting took place at the Field's shopping mall located in Ørestad, a developing city area on Amager in Copenhagen. A man carrying a hunting rifle entered the mall sometime before 5:30 p.m. A photo showed him wearing knee-length shorts and a vest or sleeveless shirt. Police received the first shooting reports at 5:37 p.m. and arrested a man 11 minutes later. A witness said the shooter seemed violent and angry, running and shouting. During the attack, a number of people attempted to shelter in a KFC restaurant in the Field's Centre.

Three people were killed, and four more were wounded. Three people went to the Rigshospitalet trauma center. The deceased victims were a 17-year-old girl, a 17-year-old boy and a 47-year-old Russian man. Four of the wounded were seriously injured, including two Swedish citizens and two Danish citizens, and one remains in critical condition.

There are reports the white male chased Muslims to shoot them.

===============================================

4th of July 2022

July 4, 2022	Highland Park, Illinois	6+	24+	30+	2022 Highland Park parade shooting: Six people were killed after a shooting during Highland Park's Fourth of July parade and a further 24 were injured. Lake County sheriff’s office deputy chief Christopher Covelli said at the press conference Monday that the suspect was an 18- to 20-year-old white male with long black hair who should be considered "armed and dangerous."

The original name of Highland Park is St. John's.

Highland Park has several landmark structures listed in the National Register of Historic Places, notably the Willits House by Frank Lloyd Wright. In addition to several houses designed by Wright, the National Register lists homes designed by prominent architects including John S. Van Bergen, Howard Van Doren Shaw, Robert E. Seyfarth, and David Adler. Landscape architect Jens Jensen lived in Highland Park and designed a number of projects in the community that are listed on the register.

Highland Park, Illinois is known as the original home of Fate Magazine.

"About a third of the 30,000 residents in the suburb along Lake Michigan about 25 miles north of Chicago are Jewish, according to some estimates, and they include many Israelis. There are synagogues from multiple denominations, and substantial Jewish populations in many of the neighboring suburbs," notes The Cleveland Jewish News.

The suspect has been identified as 22-year-old Robert "Bobby" E. Crimo.

Below is Crimo photographed at a Trump rally in 2021.

George W. Earley Passed Away in 2020

2022-06-25T12:00:00.003-04:00

George, of course, was a wonderful correspondent. He would talk about his quiet life down the isolated lane where he lived near Mount Hood, and recall the glory days of Ufology. I was sorry to hear he left us a couple years ago. I ran across this notice recently of his passing.

George Whiteford Earley, 93, of Mt. Hood, Ore., died peacefully at home on Oct. 28, 2020. His death was eased by the presence of family members nearby and a glorious view of Mount Hood in the distance.

George was born to Carol and Guy Earley in Warrenton, Va., on Feb. 15, 1927. He attended Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., received a B.S. degree in aeronautics from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and earned his M.A. in political science from Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. He served in the Air Force during the Korean War, including a year of overseas duty.

George married Margo Griffith in 1951 in Washington, D.C., and they made their first home in Wilmington, Del., before moving to Bloomfield, Conn., where they raised their four children. He worked as an administrative engineer for United Technologies in the early days of the Space program, and returned later to join the team of scientists building the very first large wind turbines. Between tenures at UTC, he served as the business administrator of First Congregational Church in West Hartford and as the energy auditor of public buildings throughout the state of Connecticut. His commitment of mind and heart to alternative energy gave him deep satisfaction for the rest of his days.

George spent every summer vacation backpacking with his family into wilderness areas all over the west, an adventure which led almost inevitably to the choice of Oregon for his retirement. In the Hood River Valley, he and Margo built a spacious home to welcome friends and family members throughout the year. He became a talented handyman indoors and out, plunged into the life of his new community, and spent many happy hours on snowy forest roads with dogsled and his beloved malamute, Thunder.

For 50 years, George was a prolific freelance writer, exploring a wide range of interests: Science fiction, space exploration, photography, Dixieland jazz, conservation, and what he termed “unexplained phenomena” — UFOs, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster. In 1968, he published an anthology of science fiction titled Encounters With Aliens. He wrote letters to the editor, op-ed pieces, and other articles for newspapers on both coasts. He formed a Connecticut chapter of the National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena, served as president of the Connecticut Writers League, worked with writers’ groups in Hood River County, served as secretary of the Hood River Valley Residents Committee (now Thrive), and for 15 years was an enthusiastic member of Friends of the Hood River Library. His curiosity and witty humor never waned, and his speech was peppered with puns both good and bad, to the delight of his friends and the dismay of his wife.

George is survived by his wife of 69 years, Margo; his children and their spouses, David and Angela Earley of Wooster, Ohio, Steve and Anne Earley of Gisborne, Australia, Kate and Ken Downes of Shelburne Falls, Mass., and Christine and Todd Strickland of Lakewood, Colo.; 13 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Columbia Gorge News, November 6, 2020.

+++

George was a member of various Fortean organizations, and his work was often via reviews and critiques of cases.

With regard to the account of the 1976 Bigfoot tracks in the Agawam, Massachusetts area, George was instrumental in finding and photographing the teenager's track cutouts. Here his daughter Christine displays them so George can photograph one cutout.

This photograph was in the November-December 1977 issue of INFO, the publication of the International Fortean Organization. Share by Paul Bartholomew.

Here is a photograph of Margo, George, and Christine from Facebook in 2014.

***

The UFO Hunters, Season 1, Episode 1, "The UFO Before Roswell," broadcast January 30, 2008.

Curt Collins of UFO Updates writes: "Here's a tribute to the life and work of George W. Earley that includes some of his rare newspaper articles."

see also

George's last published Fortean thoughts:

"Old Ufologist Replies To Young Ufologists"

+++

Margo, George's wife of 69 years passed away within a few months of his death.

===

Margo Earley (Margaret Dyckman Griffith), born June 24, 1931, in Syracuse, N.Y., died peacefully at home on Feb. 5, 2021, with family by her side and in view of Mount Hood, as she wished. Margo grew up in Washington, D.C., graduating from Sidwell Friends School, before attending Oberlin College in Ohio, where she majored in zoology and minored in music. Four months later, on Sept. 8, 1951, she married George Earley, her husband of 69 years.

After a brief time in Wilmington, Del., then West Hartford, Conn., she and George moved to Bloomfield, Conn., where they lived for nearly 35 years, raising David, Steve, Kate and Christine. An avid hiker from childhood, for the next three decades Margo organized family summer camping and backpacking trips, initially in the Appalachian and Adirondack mountains, and then throughout the Rockies, Sierra Nevadas, and northwest Cascades, as well as into Canada, Alaska, and the European Alps. At home, she sang in the church choir — including a number of years as a paid soloist — served on school parent committees, volunteered at an inner-city hospital in Hartford, performed in a local theatre/operatic group, and began a lifetime commitment as a blood donor (more than 25 gallons).

An accomplished cook, Margo sustained her family on delicious meals, homemade bread and brownies, and well into their adulthood, she mailed to each child her divine homemade birthday cake, made tastier for the time in transit. Thanksgiving and Christmas were not complete without her traditional Baked Alaska.

In 1989, Margo and George moved to Oregon to begin a new life, pursuing a love of the wilderness and a passionate advocacy for the environment, while living on the lower slopes of Mount Hood. Together they raised a number of beloved malamutes, graciously welcomed countless friends from all over the world, hosted family gatherings, as well as the Lincoln High School Constitution Class’ annual winter retreat, community meetings, and First Aid and CPR training courses.

Over many summers, Margo volunteered on trail maintenance crews (Mazamas and Sierra Club) and, for more than 15 years, led numerous backpacking trips in the Northwest (including for the Sierra Club). During this time, she maintained certification in either Wilderness First Aid or Mountaineering First Aid, serving as First Aid Shepherd for Oregon Wild, the Wilderness Society and Friends of the Gorge on local hikes up and down the Columbia Gorge.

Margo also served for 15 years on the board of the Hood River Valley Residents Association (now THRIVE), and for 10 years on The Wilderness Society’s president’s council. She summited Mount Rainer (once) and Mount Hood (three times) and hiked more than 800 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, including all of the John Muir Trail. She could recite elevations of mountains she had climbed decades earlier and had an encyclopedic knowledge of almost every trail she had hiked.

Margo was also a gifted writer with a poetic turn of phrase — and some poetic license! — and her annual Christmas letters and family emails (written by hand, before typed) were always a delight to read.

A Sierra Club trip to the Everest region inspired Margo to support a Nepalese village 50 miles from Mount Everest, funding healthcare there for more than 15 years, eventually assisting the community to establish a medical clinic several years ago. It is no surprise that her two final tasks, before calling for an ambulance, were to finish casseroles for upcoming guests and send her 2021 donation to Nepal.

Margo is predeceased by her husband, George, her sister, Julia, and her grandson, Shawn. She is survived by her two brothers, Larry and Steve and their wives, four children and their spouses, 13 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Source.

+++

Bookseller and friend Bob Gavora observed that as Margo was dying: "The family set up a bed in the living room facing Mt. Hood. She passed away peacefully viewing her mountain."

Will A Ufologist Die On June 24, 2022?

2022-06-23T14:37:00.130-04:00

by Loren Coleman, posted June 23, 2022, 2:37 pm EDT.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

In response to one of my past postings on ufologists dying on June 24ths, Robert Sheaffer, a skeptical author of Bad Ufos (2016), wrote to me, firmly tongue in cheek, at 1:28 pm, June 22, 2014:

"June 24th is coming up soon, so I'm going to be hiding under the bed."

The topic of the deaths of ufologists is oft-discussed in the field of ufology.

In 1971, UFO author Otto Binder claimed that at least 137 UFO investigators had died under mysterious circumstances during the 1960s. Binder's 1971 Saga article, "Liquidation of the UFO Investigators," summarized his findings.

Tied to the specific date of St. John's Day, Otto Binder (1911-1975), as well as John Keel (1930-2009), noticed a number of “seemingly coincidental deaths in the UFO field on 24 June.”

I have written about this special day in my first book The Unidentified (Warner Books, 1975, with Jerome Clark), in Curious Encounters (1985), and in Mothman and Other Curious Encounters (Faber and Faber, 2002). June 24th, every year since 1947, gets special attention from anniversary death watchers.

The past is prologue to the future.

Here is a quick overview of the notable ufo-related deaths on June 24:

June 24 (or 23?), 1964, Frank Scully, 72, author of one of the first crashed-saucer books, Behind the Flying Saucers (1950), dies.

June 24, 1967, two British UFO contactees, Arthur Bryant, a contactee, and Richard Church, an author and chairman of CIGIUFO, die.

June 23, 1967, Frank Edwards, 55, popular UFO author and radio personality in the 1950s, dies a few hours before Arthur Bryant. James Moseley stunned the delegates assembled for the 1967 Congress of Scientific Ufologists at New York City’s Hotel Commodore on June 24th, with the news of the sudden death of Frank Edwards.

June 24, 1969, Willy Ley, 62, a rocket scientist and Fortean author, dies. Willy Ley was one of the first respected modern scientist to attempt to answer the question of what is a flying saucer. In 1952, he was one of the first, if not the first person, to say that 85% of UFO sightings are misidentified craft, leaving the other 15% open to notions of "interplanetary travel," that he began writing about in 1926.

June 24, 1973, Bud Westmore, 55, dies of a heart attack.

Bud was a renowned Hollywood make-up artist of the famed Westmore family, and has been credited with doing make-up for 592 films, including It Came From Outer Space (1953), This Island Earth (1955), Tarantula (1955), The Deadly Mantis (1957), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Revenge of the Creature (1955), The Creature Walks Among Us (1956), and scores of mainstream films, like Spartacus (1960).

The Westmore family has dominated make-up departments in Hollywood since Bud's father George created the business in 1917. They have kept visible in recent years due to McKenzie Westmore, who since 2011, has served as the host of the Syfy original series Face Off, a reality competition featuring makeup artists. Bud was the uncle to Michael Westmore, famed for his Star Trek work and the father of McKenzie.

June 24, 1978, Robert Charroux, 69, the best-known pen-name of Robert Joseph Grugeau dies. Charroux was a French author known for his ancient astronaut theories and writings on other Fortean subjects, in such books as Masters Of The World: Groundbreaking New Revelations About The Ancient Astronauts (1979).

June 24, 1987, Jackie Gleason, 71, the actor, who was an early advocate of flying saucer research, dies. Gleason's known interest in UFOs allegedly prompted President Richard Nixon to share some information with him and to disclose some UFO data publicly.

June 24, 1997, Brian Keith (see here), who starred in Meteor (1979; with Sean Connery and Natalie Wood), dies by suicide.

June 24, 2006, Lyle Stuart, 83, the renegade publisher who published anomalist writer Frank Edwards’ Fortean book, in 1959, Stranger than Science, a paperbook full of information on ufology and other unexplained accounts, dies.

June 24, 2013, James Martin, 79, a former rocket scientist, computer scientist, and author of After the Internet: Alien Intelligence (2000), is found floating dead in the waters off Agar's Island. Dr. Martin bought Agar’s Island in 1977 and made his home in Bermuda. The multi-millionaire kept a relatively low profile in Bermuda.

June 24, 2013, Alan Myers, 58, the most prominent drummer (1976-1987) of the band Devo, dies of stomach cancer in Los Angeles. Devo played punk, art rock, post-punk and new wave music, and performed stage shows that mingled kitsch science fiction themes, deadpan surrealist humor, and mordantly satirical social commentary. Devo recorded at their own self-named "UFO Studios." More.

June 24, 2015, Mario Biaggi, 97, dies. The former Bronx congressman was involved in the "UFO disclosure" movement, and was once pictured on the cover of Ideal's UFO Magazine, December 1978, Number 4. Within the periodical, there appears the article, "Interview: Mario Biaggi 'There Is A UFO Cover-Up By The Government.'" On the cover, an image of Biaggi is shown with President Jimmy Carter. More.

June 24, 2018, Roswell, X-Files, and The Shining television guest star Stanley Anderson dies.

June 24, 2018, the Voice of New York radio during the Great Northeast Blackout (caused by UFOs?), Dan Ingram dies. See further information on Anderson, Ingram, and others who died in 2018, here.

June 24, 2019, news reporter Sean Dunleavy, dies. The journalist was a witness to and a participant in the famed Linda Cortile UFO abduction case of November 30, 1989, Manhattan, New York. Read more.

June 24, 2020, Wan Gengyu (Chinese: 万庚育) died at 98. She was born January 29, 1922, in Gansu. She was a Chinese painter, librarian & dunhuangologist [i.e. prominent scholar student of the Mogao Grottoes or Caves (also known as the Thousand Buddha Caves) built in the 4th-14th century. Caves appear to clearly show UFOs over the Buddhas, and Giants.]

Who will die on June 24, 2022, with links to ufology?

Forecasting the June 24th Copycat Effect

2022-06-22T14:37:00.023-04:00

by Loren Coleman, posted on June 22, 2022, at 2:37 pm EDT.

Since the start of 2022, the number of incidents resulting in multiple victims of firearm-related violence, termed simply as "mass shootings," has been escalating weekly or even daily. Or so it seems, and the "feeling" is significant. By the middle of June 2022, the number has been noted as 250 or so mass shootings.

Several research services, groups, and media outlets track and define a mass shooting as "an incident in which four or more people, excluding the perpetrator(s), are shot in one location at roughly the same time."

=========================================================================

UPDATE (Added 28 June 2022)

In the US, we began hearing the reports of a mass shooting in a gay bar around 7 pm, on the night of June 24, 2022. Two people were dead and several wounded.

This shooting was said to be the first one in Norway for 11 years.

=========================================================================

June 24, 2022.

Based on my studies of cluster suicides, murder-suicides, and mass shootings [see my books, Suicide Clusters (Faber and Faber, 1987), The Copycat Effect (Simon and Schuster, 2004), and this blog (2005-present)], I predict that Friday, June 24, 2022 may be a key date to watch for such a major event. It could potentially be a deadly mass incident of gun-related violence ~ a shooting at a theater, school, workplace, conference, entertainment venue, sporting assembly, church, entertainment gathering, or other group affair that serves as a moment of opportunity for a future shooter.

There is nothing supernatural about making such a prediction. I've done it before. If you read what I said on July 19, 2012, the reality is that I did write before the Aurora "Red Dawn" event, in seemingly "prophetic" tones for people outside this field, that something big and violent, tied quite specifically to the opening of The Dark Knight Rises, was going to occur on July 20, 2012. This was not written after the fact. It was noted before it happened. There was a great deal to what I said, about past patterns, Joker copycats, violence, and examples like the anniversary of the Norway shootings that took place when Captain America was released on July 22, 2011.

The copycat effect follows a cyclic human pattern of contagion on the anniversaries pinpointing one day, one week, one year, and annual intervals from the initial event.

Additionally in 2022, on June 24th, a variety of events are colliding on that day:

The release of the Elvis movie occurs, and the scary, child unfriendly Black Phone film (from a story by Joe Hill, the son of Stephen King) opens.

The planets align in the sky.

The one year anniversary of the condo collapse of the Champlain South Towers, Surfside, Florida, in which 98 die, occurs.

The one month anniversary (from May 24, 2022) of the Robb Elementary School shooting, Uvalde, Texas (19 students, 2 teachers, and one gunman die) takes place.

+++

The copycat effect is real, contagion is a major factor in mass shootings, and past history indicates tomorrow's events.

After the Columbine High School "massacre" in Littleton, Colorado, of April 20, 1999, the next month saw 400 copycat incidents of shooting threats and bomb scares at schools. After the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting of July 20, 2012, copycat "Joker" shootings, terrorizing incidents, and related events followed in its wake.

The wave of mass shooting following the recent incidents in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, have been, unfortunately, "typical."

To be on the alert on June 24th is merely logical.

=========================================================================

Copycat Mass Shootings and 2022

In 2022, this prediction appears to be prudent, for the 24th of the sixth month will fall exactly 30 days after May 24, 2022, the date on which the Robb Elementary School shooting resulting in 21 deaths, happened at Uvalde, Texas.

Tracking mass shootings in 2022 has been overwhelming and Americans are showing signs of desensitivity. Only a few of the incidents are reported by the media, it seems, because keeping an heightened awareness is psychologically draining.

Some of the more noteworthy shootings detailed by the media are these:

June 9	Smithsburg	Maryland	3	3	6	A shooter opened fire at a manufacturing facility, killing three and injuring one before fleeing the scene. Responding officers spotted the fleeing suspect, who engaged in a gun battle with state troopers, leaving the suspect and a state trooper injured.

June 5	Chattanooga(2)	Tennessee	2	12	14	2022 Chattanooga shooting: Fourteen were shot, two of them fatally, at a nightclub during the early morning. A third person was killed by a vehicle attempting to flee.

June 4	Philadelphia(9)	Pennsylvania	3	11	14	2022 Philadelphia shooting: Fourteen people were shot, three of them fatally, by multiple shooters on South Street. One of the shooters may have been shot by a responding police officer.

June 1	Tulsa	Oklahoma	5	0	5	Warren Clinic shooting: At least four people were killed and multiple were injured after a shooting inside a building on the Saint Francis Hospital campus. The shooter fatally shot himself.

May 24	Uvalde	Texas	22	18	40	Robb Elementary School shooting: An 18-year-old shot his grandmother at their home before driving to Robb Elementary School, where he entered the school unobstructed, barricading himself inside a classroom and fatally shooting twenty-one people, including nineteen children. Eighteen people in total were wounded. The shooter was eventually fatally shot by a Border Patrol officer, which was shot during the shootout.

May 15	Laguna Woods	California	1	5	6	2022 Laguna Woods shooting: A man motivated by anti-Taiwanese sentiment opened fire at a church, killing one and wounding five others, before being physically restrained by churchgoers.

May 14	Buffalo (3)	New York	10	3	13	2022 Buffalo shooting: An 18-year-old white supremacist clad in body armor opened fire at a Tops supermarket, killing ten, including a security guard, and wounding three others.

April 17	Pittsburgh	Pennsylvania	2	9	11	2022 Pittsburgh shooting: An early morning shooting at a party held at an Airbnb rental property in the East Allegheny neighborhood killed two juveniles, and wounded nine others. Five people sustained injuries such as broken bones and cuts when they jumped out windows to escape the gunfire.

April 16	Columbia (2)	South Carolina	0	9	9	Columbiana Centre shooting: Nine people were shot, and five others were injured while fleeing a shooting at the Columbiana Centre, after at least one person opened fire.

April 12	New York City (2)	New York	0	10	10	2022 New York City Subway attack: Ten people were shot when a gunman motivated by black supremacy opened fire on a New York City Subway train as it approached the 36th Street station in the Sunset Park neighborhood. Immediately before the attack, the assailant donned a gas mask and threw smoke bombs. The incident caused 19 others to be injured as they fled. The suspect was arrested the next day.

Looking at one weekend after the Uvalde shooting, it becomes clear the violence was in overdrive mode.

There were at least 10 mass shootings in the US during the weekend from Friday, June 3, 2022, through June 6, 2022, following several back-to-back massacres in recent weeks. In Philadelphia, three people died and 11 others were injured over the weekend after gunfire rang out at a popular entertainment district. Three others were killed and at least 14 were injured in a shooting in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Eight people were shot at a high school graduation party in Summerton, South Carolina, with one person killed. Several other shootings forced various law enforcement entities to remain on alert across the country.

The shootings this weekend happened across eight states left at least 12 people dead and dozens more injured.
“I am tired of standing in front of you talking about guns and bodies,” Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly said.
On June 5, Sunday morning in Chattanooga, Tennessee, three people were killed and at least 14 others injured near a downtown nightclub.
In Mesa, Arizona, there was another shooting at a bar that left two people dead and two more injured.
In Phoenix, a strip mall shooting early Saturday, June 4, left one person dead and eight others hurt.
“I heard over a hundred gunshots going off. A group of people just started running like every different direction,” a witness said.
Phoenix police said the person killed in that shooting was a 14-year-old girl.
In Summerton, South Carolina, more children were hurt. Police said a drive-by shooting at a graduation party left one woman dead and seven others injured, including five young people ages 12 to 17 years old.
The mass shootings did not stop there. Five were hurt in Socorro, Texas. One was killed and three were hurt in Omaha, Nebraska.
In Chesterfield, Virginia, one person was killed and five were hurt.
“I was almost asleep and heard numerous gunshots, 20 to 40, woke me up. My fiancé running down the steps, get up get up, gunshots, gunshots,” a witness said.
In Bibb County, Georgia, a 19-year-old was killed and three people were hurt.
Other violent incidents happened over the weekend, too.
A pregnant woman was shot and killed in Philadelphia. Police said doctors were able to save her baby.

=========================================================================

Sidebar

Synchromystic Analysis of the Smithburg, Maryland Shooting

=========================================================================

Sidebar

June 24th is St. John's Day

The day is named after John the Baptist, in celebration of his birth date. The feast day of his birth (June 24) became celebrated more solemnly than the day of his death, which is often the case. His martyrdom was by beheading on August 29. This is unusual but then “strangeness” and June 24th go hand and hand.

Throughout Europe, and via the United Kingdom, St. John’s Day’s symbolism spread to the USA. In the UK, and especially, Scotland, bonfires are a key. Should we be surprised to find it so in North America?

St. John’s Day (”Jaanipäev”) is a major traditional holiday in Estonia, celebrated by singing around bonfires, in Estonian communities in the United States and Canada as well as in Estonia itself. The glow-worm, because it usually starts appearing around St. John’s Day, is called “Jaaniuss”–“St. John’s Worm” – in Estonian.

In France, the “Fête de la Saint-Jean” (feast of St John), traditionally celebrated with bonfires (le feu de la Saint-Jean) that are reminiscent of Midsummer’s pagan rituals, is a catholic festivity in celebration of Saint John the Baptist. It takes place on June 24, on Midsummer day (St. John’s day). In certain French towns, a tall bonfire is built by the inhabitants in order to be lit on St. John’s Day. In medieval times, this festival was celebrated with cat-burning rituals.

St. John the Baptist is the patron Saint of Turin.

Some previous events on this day include:

Knights Templars displayed “Mysterious Head” at Poitiers (1308). Founding of the Order of the Garter (1348). A sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance (1374) caused people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations, and jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapsed from exhaustion. John Cabot discovered North America (1497). Lucrezia Borgia (1439) died. Samuel de Champlain discovered (1603) the mouth of the Saint John River, in New Brunswick, Canada. Galileo released (1633). “Woman of the Wilderness” utopian community arrived in America (1694). “Woman of the Wilderness” angelic visions (1701). Grand Lodge of Freemasons inaugurated (1717) in London. Napoleon's Grande Armée crossed (1812) the Neman River beginning the invasion of Russia. Ambrose Bierce born (1842). Red rain, Italy (1877). Ice fall, Ft. Lyon, Colorado (1877). Fall of jelly-like mass, Eton (1911). Fred Hoyle born (1915).

June 24ths have often had a "fiery" theme, including these specifics tied to past June 24ths:

Arthur Brown ("Fire," 1942 or 1944, both are reported) is born. Jeff Beck (Yardbirds, 1944), Charlie Whitney (Family, 1944), and Chris Wood (Traffic, 1944), all born. Colin Blunstone (The Zombies, 1945) born. Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac, 1947) born.

Filmstock fire killed seventeen people, Brussels (1947). Movie theaters evaluated during huge fire, Perth Amboy, New Jersey (1947). United Airlines plane struck by lightning over Cleveland. Ohio (1947). Invasion of grasshoppers battled with flame-throwers, Guatemala/El Salvador (1947). Woman attacked and killed by bees or wasps, Seattle (1947).

More births of future musicians. Patrick Moraz (Yes, 1948), John Illsley (Dire Straits, 1949), Astro (UB40, 1957), Dennis Danell (Social Distortion, 1961), Curt Smith (Tears for Fears, 1961), and Richard Z. Kruspe (Rammstein, 1967) were all born on June 24ths.

Bizarre aerial sightings near Daggett, California (1950) and on Iwo Jima (1953). The Angora Fire (2007) started near South Lake Tahoe, California, destroying over 200 structures in its first 48 hours.

On June 24, 1908, Grover Cleveland, the 22nd & 24th US President (1885-89, 93-97), died at the age of 71. On June 30, 1908, the Tunguska event, a large aerial explosion of unknown origins, near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, Russia, occurred. The UFO wave of 1909 in New Zealand followed sightings in the Southland in June 1908. Pieces of a meteor, estimated to have weighed 450 metric tons when it hit the Earth's atmosphere and exploded, landed (1938) near Chicora, Pennsylvania.

=========================================================================

Sidebar

St. John's Day and Ufology

There are several historical events that intersect on June 24ths.

As I have written about often, June 24 is known for "Ufologists' Deaths," due in large part for this date being the day in which the first "flying saucers" were reported in 1947. Such deaths have been in evidence in the past.

It is a day about new beginnings, birth, and rebirth. But in ufology, it often is about endings and death. I have written earlier that due to the Anniversary Syndrome, ufo-related deaths do infrequently occur on June 24ths. The Anniversary Syndrome or Effect is tied to birthdays and important dates in a person's life that some people "wait" for on which to die.

There is no more important date in ufology that it's "birthday," June 24, 1947. Kenneth Arnold began the "Age of Flying Saucers" on June 24, 1947 with his famed sighting.

June 24th UFO Deaths: The List

The topic of the death of ufologists is a modern but old one in the field.

In 1971, UFO author Otto Binder claimed that at least 137 UFO investigators had died under mysterious circumstances during the 1960s. Binder's 1971 Saga article, "Liquidation of the UFO Investigators," summarized his findings.

Additionally, tied to a specific date, Otto Binder (1911-1975), as well as John Keel (1930-2009), noticed a number of “seemingly coincidental deaths in the UFO field on 24 June.”

Here is a quick overview of the notable ufo-related deaths on or near June 24:

June 24 or 23, 1964, Frank Scully, 72, author of one of the first crashed-saucer books, Behind the Flying Saucers (1950), dies.

June 24, 1967, two British UFO contactees, Arthur Bryant, a contactee, and Richard Church, an author and chairman of CIGIUFO, die.

June 24, 1973, Bud Westmore, 55, dies of a heart attack.

June 24, 1997, Brian Keith (see here), who starred in Meteor (1979; with Sean Connery and Natalie Wood), dies by suicide.

June 24, 2018, Roswell, X-Files, and The Shining television guest star Stanley Anderson dies.

June 24, 2018, the Voice of New York radio during the Great Northeast Blackout (caused by UFOs?), Dan Ingram dies. See further information on Anderson, Ingram, and others who died in 2018, here.

June 24, 2020, Wan Gengyu (Chinese: 万庚育) died at 98. She was born January 29, 1922, in Gansu. She was a Chinese painter, librarian & dunhuangologist [i.e. prominent scholar student of the Mogao Grottoes or Caves (also known as the Thousand Buddha Caves) built in the 4th-14th century. Caves appear to clearly show UFOs over the Buddhas, and Giants.]

Other items of note:

Dangerous Minds: "Meet the Man Who Predicted the Aurora Shootings" by Thomas McGrath, September 17, 2012. (Also here.)

The Copycat Effect is Real, Notes the FBI

Ten Predictions: Ten Hits

Are You Still Alive? UFO Deaths, Revisited

"One measures a circle, beginning anywhere."

~ Charles Fort, Lo!, 1931.

Kurt Cobain Killed Himself 28 Years Ago

2022-04-05T13:59:00.002-04:00

Although Kurt Cobain's body was found on the 8th day of April 1994, official records indicate he took his life on the 5th of April 1994. (See here.)

Excessive coverage of grunge suicides and deaths has occurred on this blog: here, here, and here. I have even examined the overlap between grunge, pugs, and suicides here.

Now, for 2022, the year has begun with two grunge deaths.

Taylor Hawkins and Chris Cornell

Taylor Hawkins, 50, drummer of the Foo Fighters, was born February 17, 1972. He was found dead in his hotel room while on tour, on March 25, 2022.

Before joining the Foo Fighters in 1997, he was the touring drummer for Sass Jordan and for Alanis Morissette, as well as the drummer in the progressive experimental band Sylvia. He was a big fan of Chris Cornell.

On March 25, 2022, emergency services were called to the Casa Medina hotel in Bogotá, Colombia, where Hawkins was suffering from chest pain in his hotel room. Health personnel arrived and found Hawkins unresponsive; they performed CPR, but he was declared dead at the scene, at the age of 50. No cause of death was given.

The following day, Colombian authorities announced that a preliminary urine toxicology test indicated that Hawkins had ten substances in his system at the time of his death, including opioids, benzodiazepines, tricyclic antidepressants, and THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis.

On April 3, 2022, the 64th Grammy Awards paid tribute to Hawkins with a brief montage of blended interviews and backstage home videos with live footage, ending in an audience singalong of the Foo Fighters' 1998 single "My Hero". Billie Eilish also wore a t-shirt with a picture of Hawkins while she performed her song "Happier Than Ever" as a tribute to him.

Mark Lanegan and Kurt Cobain

Grunge legend Mark Lanegan, 57, Screaming Trees singer/writer, was born November 25, 1964, in Ellensburg, Washington State, and died February 22, 2022, in Killarney, Ireland.

Lanegan saw Kurt Cobain a few hours before his death. Lanegan was one of the last people to see Cobain alive and regretted that he did not do more to help his friend. He was also a buddy of the late Anthony Bourdain.

Others have passed away down through the years. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was born on June 27, 1958. On March 25, 1996, Pierce, a founding member of The Gun Club, 37, was found unconscious at his father's home in Salt Lake City, Utah. He remained in a coma until his death from a cerebral hemorrhage on March 31, 1996, at the University of Utah Hospital.

In March 2012, Nick Cave gave an interview to Gun Club biographer Gene Temesy, researching for a book on the history of the Gun Club, which was published on the Australian web-based magazine Mess and Noise, noting Pierce's obsessions with the Vietnam War, dinosaurs, and Japanese horror movies. He went on: "with Jeffrey, you pretty much entered his world when you saw him. His obsessions crawled all over him. But in Jeffrey's world, sometimes it was very inspiring and illuminating and other times it was painful and depressing. But Jeffrey did make efforts to stay on top of all that sort of stuff. But I think it was very difficult for him ... Jeffrey very often didn’t make sense. That was part of his charm. Jeffrey was full of digressions. I think that was very much part of his character. Jeffrey digressed a lot. One minute he'd be talking about the fall of Saigon and the next minute he’d be talking about the size of a dinosaur's brain."

Paranoia Magazine's "Al Hidell" Dies

2022-02-18T17:34:00.003-05:00

"Al Hidell" a/k/a David McGuirl, died on February 5, 2022.

On February 7, 2022, "Joan d'Arc" posted on Facebook:

"My good friend since we met three decades ago, David McGuirl, passed away on February 5, 2022 after a battle with ALS. Dave and I met at the Providence Conspiracy League at Newspeak Bookstore, and we co-founded Paranoia Magazine in 1992. He wrote under the pseudonym, Al Hidell, a tip to the 'other' I.D. found in Lee Harvey Oswald’s wallet. Together with a great team of artists and writers, Paranoia enjoyed an international following, publishing 52 issues and several books between 1992 and 2011. A talented graphic artist, Al Hidell designed many of the magazine’s provocative covers, inside illustrations, and stellar layouts. He penned the highly-anticipated Paranotes section—inventive narratives that tied curious events together synchronistically. There could not be a better friend or business partner in the world. Al Hidell will be missed by his family, friends, and dozens of team members from his twenty years in the 'conspiracy' business."

Joan added a footnote privately to me: "It was unexpected. He was not in late stages of ALS, although it had progressed quickly in just under a year."

David J. McGuirl, a/k/a "Al Hidell" ~ February 9, 1966 - February 5, 2022.

Lee Harvey Oswald's SSS card showing his use of the "Alek Hidell" name.

Bill Gaess writes on February 6, 2022:

"A friend of mine, David McGuirl, passed away yesterday morning. I barely knew him when he reached out to me last spring to help him ship some high end audio gear that he wanted to sell because he was having problems with his legs. He eventually gave me the keys to his condo and I had to sell the gear as well as ship it because he couldn't walk and wasn't improving. I organized his condo and helped him sort through his belongings, especially albums, which he had a ton of. His uncle was the late Paul Motion, talented and super famous jazz drummer, so he had many many jazz records among other genres. We shared a love for music and audio gear, and humor too. I got to know him very well and appreciated his trust. He had been at a nursing home, then his mom's house, then a hospital, and finally another nursing home. I couldn't visit him toward the end because he had tested positive for Covid (with no symptoms) and was in restricted quarters. We emailed, texted and talked on the phone until he lost the ability to use his hands. Thank God I visited him, Thursday. I brought him some tasty food and we had a few laughs. I told him to take it easy as he struggled to speak and stay awake. I stayed by his side as long as I could, then I woke him and said goodbye. I had planned on visiting again yesterday and playing some music for him on a Jambox, but God had other plans for him. He was the author of a published, fringy book, loved his cat (who died recently), his friends, his family and music. He was an intellectual with a gentle soul. I wish I knew him better before he became ill. I told him so and he wished the same thing. I also let him know I would help his sister and mom as much as I could. He was very concerned that he would burden them. He told me he had expected to be fully paralyzed with a breathing tube and an inability to talk or eat, which he managed to avoid. I know he is in a better place, listening to some jazz with his cat on his lap. I will miss David greatly and am honored to have become one of his best friends. He said I always made him smile. Keep on smiling, David!"

The Woodlawn Funeral Home published the following on February 12, 2022:

David J. McGuirl, 55, passed away on February 5, 2022, at Briarcliffe Manor in Johnston, Rhode Island, after a battle with ALS.
Born in Cranston, Rhode Island, on February 9, 1966, he was the son of Sarah A. (Motian) McGuirl and the late Peter T. McGuirl. He graduated from Cranston High School second in the Class of 1984, and went on to get a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1990 from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He resided in West Warwick and was the office manager at the International Brotherhood of Police Officers in Cranston for many years.
David was an audiophile who avidly collected and sold vinyl records and audio equipment. He collected and listened to music of all kinds, from early R&B and Rock and Roll, to Modern Jazz and Classical. His love of jazz had its roots in his family, and Dave was proud of the fact his uncle was the legendary jazz drummer, Paul Motian. Dave’s love of stereo equipment ranged from his early playing of 8-tracks on his 2-xl toy robot to sophisticated vacuum tube electronics and audio streaming equipment.

David was the co-founder and co-editor of Paranoia Magazine from 1992 to 2012 under the pseudonym, Al Hidell. The award-winning conspiracy and paranormal magazine enjoyed an international following, publishing 52 issues and several books. A talented graphic artist, he designed many of the magazine’s provocative covers, inside illustrations, and stellar layouts. He penned the highly-anticipated Paranotes section—inventive narratives that tied curious events together synchronistically.
David is survived by his mother Sarah (Motian) McGuirl of Cranston, sister Tracey McGuirl of Cranston, sister Cindy McGuirl of Thomaston, Maine, niece Kalie McGuirl of Oakland, California, cousin Rosemarie Caito of Johnston, aunt Barbara McGuirl of Cranston, good friends Al Hill and George Hanley both of Cranston, friend and business partner, Joan Ratcliffe, and several cousins. He is predeceased by his father, Peter McGuirl, his aunt, Rose Bowden, and his uncle, Paul Motian.
The family will hold a private memorial. In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the ALS Association at https://www.als.org/donate.

The literary work of David McGuirl can be sampled by reading various issues of Paranoia Magazine, and the compilation, The Conspiracy Reader.

David was a bright and creative man. I was happy to have had my works critiqued by Joan and David in Paranoia, and to see my name appear in its pages and their Conspiracy Reader.

David, rest in peace.

EYES Before Christmas

2021-12-27T09:20:00.002-05:00

The EYES have it.

Tom Cruise is an actor in Eyes Wide Shut and Vanilla Sky (a/k/a Open Your Eyes).

Alicia Witt, an actor in Dune, Eyes Wide Shut, Vanilla Sky and Walking Dead, discovered her parents died 20 Dec 2021.

Loren Coleman tweets:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEDxKzDATv8

Variety announced on December 22, 2021, that an actor in 99 films, Jack Hedley, 92, had died on 11 Dec 2021. 

His best-known role was Carole Bouquet's father, Sir Timothy Havelock, (shown right before he was killed) in the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only. 

In 1962, in Lawrence of Arabia, Hedley played a reporter at Lawrence's funeral.

Red-Shirted Fakenauts

2021-11-13T12:01:00.001-05:00

Glen de Vries

On October 13, 2021, William Shatner (age 90), the actor who played Captain Kirk on the Original Star Trek series, boarded a Blue Origin sub-orbital capsule and successfully flew to space becoming the oldest person to fly to space. The flight was ten minutes long.

The vehicle was New Shepard 4, and reached 341,434 feet (106 km).

Shatner flew to space on Blue Origin's second sub-orbital human spaceflight, Blue Origin NS-18, on October 13, 2021. He was accompanied by Chris Boshuizen, Glen de Vries, and Audrey Powers aboard the RSS First Step, the New Shepard suborbital rocket capsule, from Blue Origin's Launch Site One in West Texas. Aged 90 years, 6 months and 22 days, Shatner became the oldest person to fly to space, surpassing Wally Funk, who flew on Blue Origin's first human spaceflight at the age of 82 in July 2021.

In a televised post-flight conversation with Blue Origin's founder Jeff Bezos, who had invited him to join the flight, Shatner articulated experiencing what is called the overview effect, a deep awareness of the fragility of planet Earth and its relatively thin-atmosphere.

Due to Shatner being on the flight, spoof sites and meme builders had "fun" with the crew. Fake photos of the flight members were shown with red shirts versus Shatner's senior official uniform. The not-too-subtle meaning being that on Star Trek the first individuals killed in encounters were those wearing red.

These jokes seemingly appeared to be prophetic.

On November 11, 2021, Glen de Vries, 49, died in a small plane crash. De Vries is one of the most common Dutch surnames. It indicates a geographical origin: "Vriesland" is an old spelling of the Dutch province of Friesland (Frisia). Frisia, is a province of the Netherlands located in the northern part of the country. Hence, "de Vries" means "the Frisian". The name has been modified to "DeVries", "deVries", or "Devries" in other countries.

Since the late Middle Ages, Friesland has been renowned for the exceptional height of its inhabitants, who were deemed among the tallest groups of Indo-Europeans. Even early Renaissance poet Dante Alighieri refers to the height of Frisians in his Divine Comedy when, in the canticle about Hell, he talks about the magnitude of an infernal demon by stating that "not even three tall Frieslanders, were they set one upon the other, would have matched his height."

Where Glen de Vries was killed is a topic of social media conversation.

"The Time I Went to Aleister Crowley's Burial Site"

Or not...

"On 1 December 1947, Crowley died at Netherwood of chronic bronchitis aggravated by pleurisy and myocardial degeneration, aged 72....Crowley's body was cremated, his ashes were sent to Karl Germer in the US, who buried them in his garden in Hampton, New Jersey." Source.

Also worthy of your reading time...

Chris Knowles on Astroworld, here and here.

Halloween's Tokyo Joker Attack

2021-11-01T08:35:00.003-04:00

A man, 24, dressed as Batman's Joker, attacked passengers on a Tokyo train line on Sunday evening, October 31, 2021, injuring 17, as many party-goers headed into the city center for Halloween. The suspected attacker was arrested on the spot.

According to Reuters, the attacker had spread fluid around the train and started a fire.

A video on Twitter showed a bespectacled man dressed in a purple suit and bright green shirt, as worn by the Joker, seated in an empty train puffing on a cigarette, his legs crossed and looking calm. He can be seen through the window being surrounded by law enforcement in a subsequent clip.

Origins

As David Charles Plate observes, "Alan Moore's The Killing Joke was the first instance of The Dark Knight rendition of Batman along with The Man Who Laughs rendition of The Joker. The Thelema connections are numerous."

It is apparent that the alleged attacker's outfit was copycatted from Heath Ledger's Joker in the "Dark Knight" costuming (which, of course, has a long history before modern cinema). However, the Tokyo individual's costume was a bit off; he was wearing a green shirt, different tie, and a purple vest, as opposed to Ledger's outfit.

The attack occurred on the Keio express line bound for Shinjuku, the world's busiest rail station, at around 8 p.m. (1100 GMT).

Phantom Clowns and Jokers

In March of 1982, in Fate magazine, and then in 1983, in my book Mysterious America, I first used the term "Phantom Clowns" to talk of May 1981's Boston, Massachusetts accounts of individuals wearing multicolored clothes who reportedly were trying to entice school children into coming along with them. The eyewitness accounts of clowns in vans bothering children were discussed for the first time comprehensively in a work of Fortean wonders.

The ultimate modern "Killer Clown" was the Joker, which evolved into the killer Dark Knight, appearing in full form at Aurora on July 20, 2012 (see here at "red dawn," with many links therein).

The copycat effect continues....

On October 27, 2021, a Joker character with a knife ~ in Boise, Idaho, was seen but no suspect was apprehended. That would case be a classic Phantom Clown sighting (as per my Fortean clown classification system). The Japanese incident on Halloween 2021 is a physical manifestation of the Killer Clown.

Family Trees

Created in 1998 by artist Jeffrey Vallance.

Phantom Clowns, Killer Clowns, Jokers, and Dark Knights issue forth from the same, sometimes deadly, "Trickster"/"Clown" tree.

Created in 2008 by artist Jeffrey Vallance.

With the change of season, we may see the appearance of members of the "Wildman"/"Santa Claus" family tree, as captured above a decade after Vallance's "Trickster" family tree.

See also here, here, and here.

h/t AProdigiosus, Chris Farnsworth, Tim Binnall, Jeffrey Vallance

#Cryptokubrology, #Batman, #Joker.

Footnote: My wife, Jenny appeared to be picking up on this Joker energy on Halloween, and said several things about Batman throughout Sunday. Humm...

Qanon Suspect in America's Stonehenge Case Arrested

2021-03-03T16:53:00.000-05:00

Mark Russo

The Salem, New Hampshire Police Department released a statement on March 3, 2021 concerning a break in the America's Stonehenge case:

Chief Joel Dolan reports the Salem Police Department has arrested a New Jersey man following an investigation into an incident of vandalism at America’s Stonehenge.

MARK RUSSO, 50, OF SWEDESBORO, NEW JERSEY has been charged with one count of felony Criminal Mischief.

Salem Police Detectives arrested RUSSO on Monday (March 1, 2021) at the Salem County Correctional Facility in Woods Town, New Jersey, where he was being held pending extradition back to New Hampshire.

The arrest culminates an approximately 15 month long investigation into vandalism at the site of America’s Stonehenge at 105 Haverhill Road. According to a website for the attraction, America’s Stonehenge is believed to be more than 4,000 years old, and features various rock structures. Salem Police who responded to the scene on Sept. 29, 2019 following a report of criminal mischief came upon a rock tablet at the site that appeared to have been damaged by a power tool as well as knocked over. An 18 inch tall wooden cross was also found suspended between two trees, and attached to the cross were several photographs and hand drawn images.

Salem Police Detective Michael Geha led the investigation. The Salem Police Department wishes to thank the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Bedford, New Hampshire office and the Woolrich, New Jersey Police Department for their assistance in the investigation.

“A job well done to Detective Geha, who has determinedly and skillfully worked on this case for well over a year,” Chief Dolan said. “This is an example of fine police work, and how law enforcement agencies, wherever they may be located, can work together to resolve investigations such as this one.”

RUSSO was held without bail at the Rockingham County Jail and was scheduled for an arraignment on Tuesday before the Rockingham Superior Court.
We discussed here the vandalism that occurred at America's Stonehenge in North Salem, New Hampshire 18 months ago.

As Enki wrote, it was on September 28, 2019 (a New Moon),

....when news broke of vandalism at Salem, New Hampshire's America's Stonehenge, a site Lovecraft is rumored to have visited...A stone known as the Sacrificial Table was engraved by the vandal(s) with the messages, "AWG1WGA," an initialism of the QAnon slogan, "As we go one, we go all," and "I AM MARK." ...It would seem the individual or individuals behind this reprehensible act are simultaneously anti-globalist and anti-globe. Interestingly, QAnons refer to their opponents as "clowns."

Additional details were added by this source:

Police said the rock tablet appeared to have been damaged by a power tool. It was carved with “WWG1WGA” and “IAMMARK." Police said the first stands for “Where We Go One, We Go All," a motto affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy theory.

An 18-inch (45-centimeter) tall wooden cross was found suspended between two trees, and attached to the cross were several photographs and hand-drawn images.

Police arrested Russo after finding images of the stone and Russo online and linking to him an “iammark" Twitter account with a reference to “a few improvements" made to the site. Images on the cross also were linked to Russo.

Bail was set at $3,000 cash for Russo, who is scheduled for a hearing on April 21. An email seeking comment from Russo's lawyer was sent Tuesday.

America’s Stonehenge, which features cave-like, granite enclosures, has drawn believers who say it’s 1,000 or more years old, and skeptics who say the evidence suggests it was the work of a 19th century shoemaker.

Several incidents of fires at Jewish sites and Masonic meeting locations temporally tied into the date of the America's Stonehenge vandalism.

Cory Panshin wrote in 2019...

It may also be to the point that the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the 19th century started out as anti-Masonic conspiracy theories following the French Revoluion.

The origin of the name "Russo" is French. The meaning of the name is "little red-haired one."

Russo as a boy's name is related to the Old French name Rousseau. The meaning of Russo is "little red-haired one."

From the Mystery Hill vandalism to the Capitol Insurrection, the links are growing clear.

h/t to Tim Binnall, Enki King, and Cory Panshin.

As well as to the covert law enforcement officers around the country investigating this and other forms of domestic terrorism.

Chicken Feathers

2021-02-06T14:15:00.000-05:00

The ramifications from the events on January 6, 2021, and the links to other anti-government incidents continue. Earlier reviewed were the deaths tied to the attempted Capitol takeover (see here). Now a FBI case breaks open a can of worms in Maine, and perhaps throughout New England.

Arrest

The FBI says 37-year-old Kyle Fitzsimons of Lebanon was arrested February 4, 2021, for taking part in the Capitol riots. Fitzsimons, 37, is the first Mainer to be prosecuted for his alleged participation in the Jan. 6 insurrection. He appeared in U.S. District Court of Maine for the first time Friday.

Photos released by the FBI show Fitzsimons at the riots. In some, he's covered in blood from his clashes with the police.

In their complaint, the FBI shows screenshots of Fitzsimons allegedly lowering his shoulder and charging at police officers, getting hit by their batons and swinging at officers.

Fitzsimons’s charged with four federal offenses, including assaulting a federal officer. Fitzsimons called the violence a "set up."
~ 18 U.S.C. 1752 (a)(4) – Knowingly Entering or Remaining in Any Restricted Building or Grounds without Lawful Authority
~ 40 U.S.C. 5104 (e)(2)(F) – Violent Entry and Disorderly Conduct on Capitol Grounds
~ 18 U.S.C. 111 (a)(1) – Assault on a Federal Officer
~ 18 U.S.C. 231 (a)(3) – Certain Acts During a Civil Disorder

The FBI complaint also shows Fitzsimons dressed as a butcher, wearing a white coat with the name "Kyle" on it. (Fitzsimons is said in the document to have worked for the Hannaford Store in York. In a statement to WMTW, Hannaford says he did not work there but decline to offer any details of Fitzsimons having worked for the grocery store chain in the past.)

Fitzsimons Meaning

Fitzsimons (also spelled FitzSimons, Fitzsimmons or FitzSimmons) is a surname of Norman origin common in both Ireland and England. The name is a variant of "Sigmundsson," meaning son of Sigmund. The Gaelicization of this surname is Mac Shíomóin.

Sigmund, also spelled Siegmund, is a Germanic given name with roots in proto-Germanic *segaz and *mundō, giving a rough translation of "protection through victory."

Sigmund (also Siegmund), a hero in Norse mythology.
Siegmund, a focal character in Richard Wagner's Die Walküre.

Feathers

Also, Portland police confirm Fitzsimons is a person of interest in their investigation of a suspicious package left at the Portland Museum of Art. The suspicious package was made up of feathers surrounding a box along with a spray painted message at the Portland Museum of Art at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 23, 2021.

The word "BALM" was spray painted on the sidewalk.

Fitzsimons told the Rochester Voice newspaper in a Jan. 11 article that he changed into a “costume” – his white butcher jacket – before he joined the throng at the Capitol that day, and he carried an unstrung bow as a sign of peace. Rochester is across the Maine-New Hampshire border from Lebanon.

The affidavit also describes him wearing what appeared to be a fur pelt around his neck, and Fitzsimons described himself as a trapper when he called in to the Lebanon Board of Selectman meeting Jan. 7 to describe his experience the previous day in Washington.

“Fitzsimons was identified early in our investigation as the person who placed the package at the PMA,” Portland police Lt. Robert Martin said Friday evening, February 5, 2021, in a text message. Martin said surveillance footage from the area and extensive work by detectives helped make the identification.

Feathers as Symbols

White Feathers As Symbols of Cowardice
During World War I, thousands of women across the British Empire gave men white feathers to shame them into enlisting in the military. By 1785 in England “show the white feather” was a folk saying for the behavior of a timid fighting cock. Fighting cocks was not then or subsequently a respectable activity. In 1902, British novelist A. E. W. Mason used the white feather as a central symbol of a British army officer’s cowardice in his adventure novel, The Four Feathers. A silent-film adaptation of that novel, Four Feathers, was produced in the U.S. in 1915. Mason’s novel thus symbolically elevated the white feather into a potent means for publicly shaming men into fighting in World War I. Source.

American's Stonehenge

Investigator Enki King has pointed to various strange crimes occurring around New England in recent years.

For example, in September-October 2019, vandalism was investigated at America's Stonehenge/Mystery Hill at North Salem, New Hampshire. The power tool infected carvings appeared to have the fingerprints of QAnon all over this. The suggestions go in a few different directions and point to a variety of conspiracy angles.

My posting at that time in 2019, overviews the connections being made, "October 27: Anti-Masonic, Anti-Semitic, and Anti-Pagan Terrorism."

Mid-2020, "Colorado, Aurora, Waffle House, and the Watts Name Game" reared its head. At the end of last year and the beginning of the present one, "Aurora" was back in the news.

What's next?

FBI Filing

The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs has created a web page where the public can track the charging and arrest of defendants in connection with the Capitol breach. The page includes defendants’ names, charges and case status. Please find that site here.

Capitol Insurrection Deaths, Suicides, and the Name Game

2021-02-03T15:42:00.005-05:00

During the first day of the Impeachment Trial, February 9, 2021, the footage that was played showed a new realization and acknowledgement of the number of deaths associated with the Insurrection of January 6, 2021.

While the media had stayed with the number "five" (5), the footage presented a new counting. That number still falls short of my count.

From the footage shown to Congress.

++++

Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick lies in honor at U.S. Capitol, on February 2-3, 2021.

Sicknick was killed during the attack on the Capitol.

During the "Capitol Insurrection" on January 6, 2021, we have heard of several individuals who were killed, died, or took their own lives. A hostile crowd or mob of mostly Caucasian individuals stormed and took control of the halls, offices, and floor of Congress at the Capitol. The Capitol Police were ill-prepared, under armed (if at all), and slow in received frequently requested backup. The head of the Capitol Police resigned soon afterwards.

Let's take a look of those who died during and in the wake of the storming of the Capitol.

The deaths resulting from and in the wake of the January 6, 2021 events include:

(1) Brian D. Sicknick, 42, a Capitol Police officer was a 15-year veteran of the force. He was mortally wounded by a rioter who hit him in the head with a fire extinguisher, although a new theory based on later investigations tied his death to "bear spray."

(2) Ashli Elizabeth Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran from San Diego, was fatally shot by Capitol Police as she attempted to climb through a shattered window in a barricaded door leading into the Speaker's Lobby, which has direct access to the House floor.

(3) Rosanne Boyland, 34, of Kennesaw, Georgia, was trampled to death by people rushing to breach a tunnel entrance on the west side of the Capitol; she was a radicalized follower of QAnon whose family had begged her not to attend.

(4) Benjamin Philips, 50, of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, died of a stroke. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that there was no indication that Philips participated in the raid. Philips had started the social media site "Trumparoo," intended for Trump supporters.

(5) Kevin Greeson, 55, from Athens, Alabama, Greeson had a heart attack outdoors on the Capitol grounds, and was declared dead at 2:05 p.m., shortly before the breach of the Capitol. Posts circulating on Twitter and Facebook claimed that Greeson suffered a heart attack after leaving a taser in his pants and accidentally triggering it when he was attempting to steal a portrait in the Capitol. This cause of death was investigated by USA Today, and declared "false."

(6) Christopher Stanton Georgia, 53, who was arrested for participating in the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, has died by suicide, on January 9, 2021. The investment manager was found dead in his Alpharetta, Georgia home with a gunshot wound to his chest.

(7) Howard Charles Liebengood, known as Howie, 51, was an officer of the United States Capitol Police from April 2005 until his death by suicide at the age of 51, on January 9, 2021. Liebengood had been on duty during the storming of the United States Capitol three days before his death.

(8) Jeffery Smith, 35, had worked for the Metropolitan Police Department for 12 years and died by suicide on January 15, 2021,—just nine days after thousands of MAGA supporters stormed the Capitol. Smith had been one of the police officers who rushed to the scene.

(9) Ron Wright, 67, died February 7, 2021. Representative (R-Arlington, Texas). Republican Rep. Ron Wright of Texas died after contracting Covid-19.

The media keeps saying "5" died due to the Insurrection. I count a possible 9.

+++++

[Strange timing?]

Dr. Harold N. Bornstein, 73, who for a time was President Donald J. Trump’s personal physician and who had attested that Mr. Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” died on Friday, January 8, 2021. His death was announced on Thursday in a paid notice in The New York Times. The notice did not give a cause or say where he died.

===========

Details

Brian D. Sicknick

Capitol Police released a statement on Friday, January 8, 2021, saying Officer Brian D. Sicknick passed away Thursday night, January 7, 2021, "due to injuries sustained while on-duty." Sicknick was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher, returned to his office, and collapsed. He was taken to the hospital, and died the next day.

Sicknick was a Trump supporter, and an Iraqi vet. Sicknick was originally from South River, New Jersey, and the youngest of three sons, according to a statement issued by his brother on behalf of his family. Sicknick "wanted to be a police officer his entire life," his brother Ken said, and joined the New Jersey National Guard in his pursuit of that goal. According to a statement from New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy's office, Sicknick was a staff sergeant for the New Jersey National Guard. He served as a fire team member and a leader of the 108th Security Force Squadron, 108th Wing, at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, Murphy's statement said. Sicknick's service included two deployments -- one as part of Operation Southern Watch and another as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, Murphy said. Sicknick's family was "very proud" of his service to his country, Ken Sicknick said.

"Brian is a hero, and that is what we would like people to remember," he said.

One of the hidden name games that seems constantly in battle for our attention, like the Fayette Factor (see here and here), is the moniker with roots in Nicholas.

Nicholas does have some intriguing connections:

Nicholas = English and Dutch: from the personal name (Greek Nikolaos, from nikān "to conquer" + laos "people"). Forms with -ch- are due to hypercorrection. The name in various vernacular forms was popular among Christians throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, largely as a result of the fame of a 4th-century Lycian bishop, about whom a large number of legends grew up, and who was venerated in the Orthodox Church as well as the Catholic. In English-speaking countries, this surname is also found as an Americanized form of various Greek surnames such as Papanikolaou "(son of) Nicholas the priest" and patronymics such as Nikolopoulos.Examining monikers, sometimes we find surprises. For instance, I discovered the name Nixon, which is an English baby name, is part of this name nexus. The meaning of the name Nixon is, literally, an abbreviation of Nicholas.

Nike (Winged Victory), Louvre, Paris, France.

The mythological Nike was a Greek goddess of victory and root origin of Nicholas. The Roman equivalent was Victoria. Depending upon the time of various myths, she was described as the daughter of the Titan Pallas and the goddess Styx, and the sister of Kratos (Strength), Bia (Force), and Zelus (Zeal).

Names stemming from Nike include among others: Nikolaos, Nicholas, Nicola, Nick, Nicolai, Niccolò, Nikolai, Nicolae, Nils, Klaas, Nicole, Ike, Niki, Nikita, Nika, Nieke, Naike, Niketas, Nikki, Nico, and Veronica.

Ashli Elizabeth Babbitt

Air Force veteran fatally shot by police.
A woman was fatally shot by a US Capitol Police employee as the mob tried to force its way toward the House Chamber where members of Congress were sheltering, US Capitol Police said in a statement.
The woman was given medical assistance immediately and taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Authorities identified her as Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old from Huntington, Maryland.
Babbit's mother, Michelle Witthoeft told CNN on Thursday she was devastated to learn of her daughter's death.
"I loved and admired her greatly," Witthoeft said of Babbitt. "She served this country boldly and proudly."
Babbitt was an ardent Trump supporter who held strong political views, her mother said, and was "passionate enough to die for what she believed in."
Babbitt, who was previously married but separated from her husband in 2019, frequently attended pro-Trump rallies. She flew to Washington, DC, from San Diego, California, with the intent to participate in the protest this week, her mother said.
"Her political views were strong and adamant, and she voiced them whenever she could," Witthoeft said.

Rosanne Boyland

Benjamin Philips

Philips created Trumparoo.

Kevin Greeson

False:

Harold N. Bornstein

Harold Nelson Bornstein (March 26, 1947 – January 8, 2021) was an American gastroenterologist, who was best known as Donald Trump's personal physician. Bornstein was Donald Trump's personal physician from 1980 until early 2018; before then Bornstein's father was his personal physician.
Bornstein received his M.D. degree from Tufts University in 1975 and had been licensed to practice medicine in New York State since 1976. He was certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine as a specialist in Internal Medicine (1978) and Gastroenterology (1983).

Christopher Stanton Georgia

53-year-old Christopher Stanton Georgia of Alpharetta, Ga., who was arrested last week in connection with the storming of the Capitol, was found dead in his home from a gunshot wound to the chest on January 9, 2021.

Howard Charles Liebengood

Officer Liebengood worked in the Senate Division and was the son of the late Sergeant at Arms Howard S. Liebengood. “Every Capitol Police Officer puts the security of others before their own safety and Officer Liebengood was an example of the selfless service that is the hallmark of the USCP,” Gus Papathanasiou, the chair of the Capitol Police Labor Committee, said in a statement after Liebengood’s death. “This is a tragic day.”

Former Sen. John Kerry remembered Liebengood on Twitter, saying the officer used to guard a door near his office on the Hill. “Howie always had a smile on his face, but he also showed great care for the safety of the young staff who worked behind our office doors,” Kerry wrote.

The officer's father was Howard Scholer Liebengood (December 29, 1942 – January 13, 2005), an American lawyer and lobbyist. A protégé of Senator Howard Baker, he served as Sergeant at Arms of the United States Senate from 1981 to 1983 before leaving to become a lobbyist for the Tobacco Institute. He later served as chief of staff to Senators Fred Thompson and Bill Frist.

Jeffery Smith

A second police officer who responded to the riots at the Capitol earlier this month has died by suicide, the D.C. police chief revealed. Jeffery Smith had worked for the Metropolitan Police Department for 12 years and died on Jan. 15—just nine days after thousands of MAGA supporters stormed the Capitol.

“Officer Jeffrey Smith’s service and presence will be dearly missed at the Second District,” MPD Second District Commander Duncan Bedlion told The Daily Beast in an email. “My prayers are with his family during a very difficult time.”

Smith is the second police officer to die by suicide after working at the Capitol on the day of the siege. U.S. Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood, a 51-year-old who had guarded the government building since 2005, took his own life on Jan. 9.

“My prayers are with the family and colleagues of Officer Jeffery Smith,” California Rep. Ted Lieu (D) wrote on Twitter Wednesday.

Ron Wright

"Congressman Ron Wright passed away peacefully at the age of 67 on Feb. 7, 2021. His wife Susan was by his side and he is now in the presence of their Lord and Savior," his office's statement read. "For the previous two weeks, Ron and Susan had been admitted to Baylor Hospital in Dallas after contracting COVID-19."

+++++

The Memes were widespread. The FBI wanted posters were too.

The White House was burned by the British on August 24, 1814.

Inauguration Predictions Come True?

2021-01-25T14:35:00.001-05:00

Did Inauguration predictions come true?

Current artist drew the 21 year comparison.

See also the blog posting I wrote in the past about Senator Kamala Harris being our future president, as shown in an Andy Thomas painting.

The Dirty Little Secrets of Twilight Forteans

2021-01-06T13:53:00.008-05:00

The Dirty Little Secrets of Twilight Forteans

"Next time the devil reminds you of your past, remind him of his future.” ~ Sterry Ks

The following discussion contains thoughts on holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis, regular Nazis, Nazi sympathizers, fascists, anti-Semites, anti-zionists, racists, bullies, abusive men, and more. Also mention is made of William Grimstad, Jim Brandon, H. P. Lovecraft, Susan Saxe, Walt Disney, Charles Lindbergh, Philip Johnson, and others.

“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically ‘woke’ and all that stuff. You should get over that quickly. The world is messy, there are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids. And share certain things with you.” ~ Barack Obama, October 29, 2019.

Past is Prologue

Let us begin at the beginning of this episode.

With Blake Smith, at Cryptid Con, September 9, 2017, Kentucky.

Blake Smith with the Matt Griffith model of the Dover Demon, Cryptid Con, September 11, 2017. Photo by Loren Coleman.

On the last day of the year 2020, Blake Smith of MonsterTalk and other podcasts, posted that he "wouldn't be that excited about meeting a Nazi holocaust denier...I'm very disappointed at how respected he apparently is in some Fortean circles."

Having done some research, Smith had found that the author of The Rebirth of Pan (1983), one Jim Brandon, who, as well, authored Weird America (1978), was noted by me and others in the Fortean literature. Brandon was also the author of other, non-Fortean, books, including Antizion and The Six Million Reconsidered.

Horrors.

"Brandon" was more than a Fortean author, he was something else.

Smith passed along that "Both [of the latter books] were written by William Grimstad, a professional anti-Semite. Grimstad is also a registered foreign agent of the Saudi Arabian government and the Saudi Embassy paid him $20,000 in June 1987 for the blatantly anti-Semitic Antizion."

Smith continued later with "do you repudiate this Nazi lover or just want to keep hiding his 'secret' racist alter-ego?"

And "It really bothers me, @CryptoLoren, that you've promoted his work for so long while protecting his Nazi alter-ego yet spend so much time talking about secret twilight language and hidden meaning. Red Dawn. The Matrix. Is the only 'Neo' you can't see the one in front of 'Nazi?'"

Finishing out the year, Smith wrote: "I just want to make sure we all know that William Grimstad (Jim Brandon) is a neo Nazi."

The Daily Grail chimed in with this: "Some worthwhile information for Forteans when evaluating the work of ‘Jim Brandon’ (nom de plume of one William Grimstad), of The Rebirth of Pan fame. He was a straight up white supremacist and Holocaust denier, associated with David Duke."

On January 1, 2021, even though I have a long history of anti-racism and anti-fascism in print, in action, and in conversations with associates, I found myself combating claims that I was "promoting" a Holocaust denier "without adding any Nazi disclaimers," as Smith tweeted on the first day of the New Year.

Blake Smith then wrote on January 1, 2021: "All I'm asking is that going forward either don't promote Brandon, or introduce him as a Nazi."

My reply was to the point and said "I’ll have more to say but not on Twitter. 2021 deserves better than to continue with a culture of tweets."

Also in another January 1, 2021 tweet, Smith wrote: "Just do better, Loren. That's all I'm asking."

I am not willing to rush into quick replies via tweets. That's not me. Besides, I understand "defensiveness" is not a great approach to discussions like this. My response, via this blog, had to be thoughtful.

A couple of thoughts, first.

On April 13, 2011, "Lauren" at Goodreads wrote: "William Grimstad is a published Holocaust denier."

It's a fact known to well-read Fortean writers; in conversations with associates since the 1980s, I was asked, "Who is Brandon?" I answered the query completely, that he is a revisionist, Holocaust denier, anti-Zionist, and I disagree deeply with all those thoughts I've learned about from him, but not through tweets. (Because many of these conversations were held in person, and in earlier, pre-Twitter times, I do not have, what "cancel culture" folks call, "receipts.")

Trying to share my insights, I have found, via tweets, is not conducive to detailed exchanges. It often is, as I said in one reply, a "trap."

Besides, many of us, established in the field, are aware that Jim Brandon/Bill Grimstad is extremely litigious. As someone said during this exchange, people were unsure if calling Grimstad "names" constituted slander and were opening themselves up to torts. What if, for example as they put it, he was "only" an anti-Zionist and not an anti-Semite, when he was discussing the reality of the Holocaust, and where did hate crime begin and his freedom of speech end? It was a bit scary for penniless Forteans. Righteous fury is noble, but sadly, not always practical.

By the time in 2020 this was being re-examined, one person was asking me to do one thing and Blake was asking me to do what some might read as the opposite. I was getting confused in TwitterLand. After all, I joined Twitter in August 2011, but I've been blogging since 2004, had written articles beginning in 1969, and publishers had been releasing my books from 1975 onward.

I'm old-fashioned; I think deeply before writing. And still, in the face of ridiculous personal accusations and with an eye on distancing myself as completely as possible from Brandon/Grimstad and his repugnant beliefs, I did try to appease Blake and others by deleting the "offensive" tweets where I was purportedly "promoting" a Neo-Nazi, and by adding disclaimers on previous blog postings, as recommended, although nothing I had written promoted or even referenced Brandon's later, vile, and controversial work.

To "Hayley Stevens," who had joined Blake Smith's thread, and was celebrating getting "free coffees" in response to what she was saying in supportive response to Blake's tweets, on Twitter and her personal blog, I replied on January 1, 2021, "I am being responsive to both of your points ~ as diverse as they might be. I am surveying my output and seeing what makes sense to insert awareness keyed to focused postings that are referenced most often. If you know my output, you know I have been against fascism since 1947."

I was not being sarcastic. I was born in Norfolk, Virginia, at the end of World War II, with my abusive father still in the U.S. Navy, near the naval base. Everyone in my family had just spent the war fighting fascism in the Pacific and Nazis in Europe. My Native grandmother was killed by a white man. I was bullied by vets because I was a Vietnam War C.O. (There's more, but there will be a Part Two.)

As a person whose own family fought Fascism and Nazis on the front lines, I should be, and am, offended at the bold implication that I somehow support either. But rather than sink into the impassioned vulgarity of the vocabulary-deficient, I’m choosing to look at this critically, and while I will not forget, I will forgive.

Ms. Stevens wrote back: "Okay, I understand. I thought you were just providing that you'd always used disclaimers when this was in fact a recently added one."

By the end of the January 1, 2021, Blake Smith sent me a two-word tweet: "Thank you."

Enter "Jim Brandon"

"Jim Brandon," little did I know when I first began reading him, is more than an innocent Fortean. That is a false persona, but just as many began learning in 2020, when they did a little research, he is a neo-Nazi, Holocaust denier, and anti-Semite. I found this out through researching the life of "William Grimstad."

In many ways, Sun Tzu's advice was my path in this realm: "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." But this was 2020, and I apologize for not keeping some friends even closer.

So how did we get here?

Forteans first became aware of William Grimstad after his appearance in the Spring 1978 issue of Fortean Times magazine. Grimstad wrote an essay on his findings, entitled “Fateful Fayette,” in that issue.

As one commentary said years later, "Since then, the subject has been expanded upon and expounded upon by many other researchers, most notably by author Loren Coleman. Coleman suggested that Lafayette visited certain places in America for symbolic and spooky reasons."

William Grimstad's "Fayette" theorizing passages were viewed as conceptual Fortean folkloric facts that are fictions or nonfictions, but, first and foremost, they were seen by me as ideas.

I shortly afterward wrote an article for Fortean Times in which I saw evidence of Fortean events happening in Devil-named places. That piece was one I had been working on for a time, long before I heard of Grimstad/Brandon.

In "Devil Names and Fortean Places," in Fortean Times, no. 29, Summer 1979, I retroactively analyzed specific locations to discover indigenous peoples and colonial settlers had named these areas after sinister entities to forewarn travelers and future homesteaders they might want to be careful in exploring and living in those spots.

I gave examples in Fortean Times and my followup re-writes of Devil-, Hockomock- (Algonquin for "devil"), Diablo-, and similarly named sites.

Grimstad's article pointed out something similar with “Fayette-named” places. The precursor namers were tied to America's founding fathers (mostly Freemasons), and the idea seemed novel.

Please note. I was not "promoting" Grimstad, but talking about examining an idea, and instead wondering about the elements of the theory, such as General Lafayette's 1824 "tour of America" when he was welcomed to Masonic lodges all over the country. This was "credit," not "praise" for an idea. It was not the "promotion" of the author.

I was young and naive about the author but started digging and found the writer - one William Grimstad, using the name Jim Brandon - wrote a book entitled Weird America (1978) and was planning a followup, The Rebirth of Pan (1983). I was in the process of getting my book Mysterious America (1983) ready for publication. In the final editing of my 1983 book, I inserted a harshly written passage about the "Fayette Factor" (my invented alliteration) in my "Name Game" chapter, and said, frankly, read The Rebirth of Pan, to form your own opinions.

This person’s ideas on the name game fit within my earlier correspondence I'd had with John Keel about names, in the late 1960s. These included McDaniel, Reeves/Reaves, Maddox, Allen, and Hill from Keel, and ones like Wetzel, Decatur, Hobbs, Rowan, Logan, and Coleman, from me.

By extension, I knew nothing about Brandon/Grimstad’s Holocaust denier background when he offered to give me his Pan book 38 years ago, which he had autographed. Blake Smith’s 2020 quip about “not wanting to meet with a Holocaust denier” is temporally out-of-context.

When I learned of Grimstad’s background as a far-right supporter, revisionist, Holocaust denier, and more, I was horrified. Realizing I could not rehabilitate him, at all, I felt I could cherry-pick his “Fateful Fayette” ideas and decided to interpret what I wanted of his Fortean notions as the “Fayette Factor.”

In the 1980s, despite my recommendation that folks read The Rebirth of Pan, I didn’t see that as “advocating” on the behalf of Grimstad, so much as asking people to “critically digest” it. What I found was people were not even reading it and continued to base their opinions on a reflective sense of its contents.

I am only human, and oftentimes a weak one, at that. As a young man, when I realized that Grimstad was known also as a Holocaust denier, I was shocked by my naivety. I was instantly reminded of an experience (almost a post-traumatic flashback) of my Enema Bandit investigations of Illinois. Soon after John A. Keel began corresponding with me in 1969 (when I was 21), he wrote me after he heard I was looking into the Enema Bandit crimes. Keel told me that people in New York City engaged in sexualized games where they urinated on each other in "golden showers" and gave each other enemas, as "fun." I was aghast and embarrassed by my Midwestern innocence; I had no idea.

My creeping skin moments when hearing those behaviors shot through my body again when I learned Grimstad did not consider the Holocaust a fact, and, indeed, was a Holocaust debunker. How could I reconcile the neo-Nazi stance of Grimstad in a Fortean cosmos? I could not. More importantly, I did not.

The most unfortunate thing about Hayley Stevens' December 31, 2020, comments: "You're either anti-fascist or not. There isn't an option where you just ignore the fascism because it's inconvenient. You don't tip toe around Holocaust denial," is that they are soooo very incorrect.

However, if one begins with an untrue premise, naturally, they must be excused for painting me with the broad strokes they are using on their assaults.

Stevens blogs: "For context, Jim Brandon/William Grimstad (whom I’m going to just call Brandon from here) is the author of a book called The Rebirth of Pan. I’m not overly familiar with this book (I haven’t read it)...."

For those who have been paying attention, Grimstad allegedly appeared in the "counterculture" even before the Fortean Times piece, via Robert Anton Wilson (Cosmic Trigger, 1977), to Timothy Leary, John Lilly, San Francisco Phoenix, the S.L.A., and Patty Hearst.

Flash forward to 2021, what happens when people become "woke" to Lovecraft, Crowley, Hoffman, and the others who are "horrible people?" The stampede to the doors will be incredible.

I'll admit and I have admitted to my faults, but please don't accuse me of supporting Holocaust deniers just because you didn't do your own homework.

“Never wrestle with a pig,” as George Bernard Shaw said. “You both get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”

Grimstad's Anti-isms Are Everywhere

Despite the claims of those who have not read The Rebirth of Pan, and now are critical of those who have read it, it is not difficult nowadays to discover it is a well-known fact that Grimstad is a Holocaust denier. But here's the rub, Grimstad dropped the Brandon identity since 1983. For those who looked, nevertheless, finding that Grimstad had a history of Holocaust denial was easy.
Many people, post-George Floyd, post-the toppling of the Albert Pike statue, are applauding themselves for bringing forth that Jim Brandon-Bill Grimstad held neo-Nazi beliefs. They should be applauded. But it was already part of that history that some of these same people throw to the side, in their anti-boomer push for renewal.

“Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” ~ George Santayana.

One such example concerns the line: "If a Jew be called upon to explain any part of the rabbinic books, he ought to give only a false explanation. One who transgresses this commandment will be put to death." This is alleged to be a quote from a book titled Libbre David (alternatively Livore David ). No such book exists in the Talmud or elsewhere.^[149]The title is assumed to be a corruption of Dibre David, a work published in 1671.^[150] Reference to the quote is found in an early Holocaust denial book, The Six Million Reconsidered by William Grimstad.^[151] ~ Talmud

[James Shelby] Downard was assisted in many of his earlier works by his good friend, William N. Grimstad. Grimstad is better known as Jim Brandon, author of the Fortean classics, Weird America: A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States and The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit. In the early 1970s he was assisted in his writing and editing by John and Darlene Cox in Lake Havasu; then, later in the early 1980s he resided with John and Karen Bissell in Estacada, Oregon where Karen typed his manuscripts and John assisted with research. ~ James Shelby Downard

The Tentacles of Influence

Those who did read his two 1978-1983 Fortean books, discovered Grimstad’s created alter-ego "Jim Brandon" did not place any hidden plot of neo-Nazism in these Fortean books. Do not read my words as saying I supported his fascist tracts (which, of course, even when I did not know about them or when I did). Quite the opposite. But I felt a reading and using of his databits or “Fortean units” of analysis, as they were called at the time, were not diffuse tentacles of an octopus that would infect the Fortean world. For heaven's sake. They were about unexplained phenomena, creatures, ley lines, and weird names.

In a parallel world - that of the universe of H.P. Lovecraft - we all realize today that the extreme racism and Nazi sympathizer tendencies of that honored, respected horror-goth fiction writer’s Cthulhu infiltrated his tentacles everywhere. Lovecraft’s influence may be beyond comprehension.

If readers of Jim Brandon’s two works from 1978-1983 can point out to me any Holocaust denying in his Fortean speculations, I say ignore Brandon and I shall be the first one to root them out with you.

But do people wish me to quit mentioning or merely to “drop in” a tag that "Jim Brandon" is a Holocaust denier or a neo-Nazi every time I write about him? Should I not credit his concepts or stop crediting him as a source? Would my actions fringe on censorship and lockstep obedience as practiced by the fascists or communists, which indeed, ironically, now seems to be demanded by the "woke"?

Something tells me there are no right answers, but I'll attempt an action anyway.

Blake Smith writes: "This is me asking you to not support literal Nazis by hiding or covering for their background. I'm asking you to stop sharing Grimstad's work with colleagues UNLESS you also let people know that his other hobby is denying the holocaust."

And, from Smith, after he said I was deleting some items to add clarifications: "Scrubbing history is not the same as being responsible. All I'm asking is that going forward either don't promote Brandon, or introduce him as a Nazi."

Beside disagreeing with the implied meaning of "promotion," I have, to a fault, a habit, reputation, and practice of "crediting" people forever for concepts, writings, art, and other items that I use from them.

But that's my psychological fight against the "imposter syndrome," as I hardly think I deserve the praise I often receive.

So let me try this. Henceforth, since I have built, researched, banked, and booked almost 40 years of effort and thought into the "Fayette Factor" and the "Name Game" via my "Twilight Language" writings, I will take on the full ownership of this "Fayette" concept. It is not a secret, it is not an idea hidden, but it is mine. "Jim Brandon" and "Bill Grimstad" gave it up by being Holocaust denier(s) and not coming forth with apologies, new editions, or reprints of The Rebirth of Pan.

The future should hold no quarter for twilight Forteans. At all.

I have been warning people for a long time about a subculture of school shooters, synagogue worshipper murderers, and racist mass shooters who were actually picking dates and locations because they are neo-Nazis. The not-so-hidden messages in events like the 6/10/2009 attack on the Holocaust Museum are worthy of raised awareness. I am an enemy of the fascists and to attempt to censor me takes out someone who has authored hundreds of anti-fascism alerts.

Glass Houses and Nazi Sympathizers

"Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones." ~ Old European Proverb

Events have a way of giving life's lessons to all of us at every turn.

Blake Smith's calling me out for not mentioning that I knew for perhaps the last 30 plus years that William Grimstad is a Holocaust denier every time I mentioned Brandon/Grimstad gave me pause for thought. Should I go back and revise everything I've written?

As I was thinking about this, I saw that Blake Smith retweeted the remembrance that CBS News Sunday Morning had just broadcast about the death of Gilligan Island's Dawn Wells. I saw that on Sunday on television, and it was a piece from Mo Rocca with Ms. Wells at the "Walk of Fame" in her hometown of Marshfield, Missouri. It showed her "star" and then flashed on the two stars next to hers ~ Amelia Earhart and....

Wells' star was right next to Charles Lindbergh's "star."

Charles Lindbergh? Should Blake Smith, Mo Rocca, and CBS News have posted this video with disclaimers?

After all, Charles Lindbergh wasn't without controversy, as Esquire mentioned in March of 2020: "Lindbergh wasn’t shy about his white supremacist and anti-Semitic beliefs. In 1939, he wrote for Reader’s Digest that Americans 'can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races.' According to him, Hitler 'accomplished results (good in addition to bad) which could hardly have been accomplished without some fanaticism.'"

“A few Jews add strength and character to a country, but too many create chaos,” Lindbergh wrote in a 1939 diary entry. “And we are getting too many.”

Lindbergh "became a spokesman for the America First Committee (sound familiar?), which advocated for the US staying out of the European war, and counted among its 800,000 members future Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart and president Gerald Ford. It also included some of the nation’s most prominent anti-Semites, like Lindbergh’s close friend Henry Ford. (When asked what they talked about during Lindbergh’s visits to Ford’s plant, the automaker reportedly replied, “When Charles comes out here, we only discuss the Jews.”) And Lindbergh was one of the organization’s spokesmen."

Lindbergh's Nazi sympathizes tarnished him, and as Esquire ends its piece, "But his affection for Germany survived the war: He fathered seven secret children in the nation during the 1950s and ‘60s by three women that included a pair of sisters.

What does America do about all the land mines in our history filled with Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers? Of course, if you are a member of the new America First movement, as alleged neo-Nazi sympathizer Don Trump is, you become President of the US. The media should have called him out at every turn, but they didn't, which leads us to the current atmosphere of heightened awareness.

What of the creative, intellectual, and mostly white male list of the others people talk about? How far should we go in ignoring the ideas and works of Erza Pound, Walt Disney, Edward VIII, Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and Philip Johnson because they were alleged, verified, or known Nazi sympathizers?

So back to those glass houses, for a minute.

The Stupidity of Architect Philip Johnson

We all are human. Some of us go about the job of being human foolishly.

Philip Johnson's Glass House is a museum in New Canaan, Connecticut today. This souvenir building replica is a treasure to collectors.

Philip Johnson (July 8, 1906 – January 25, 2005) was an American architect best known for his works of modern and postmodern architecture. Among his best known designs are his modernist Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, and postmodern 550 Madison Avenue in New York, designed for AT&T. He died when he was 98, and by then had been able to reflect on a large mistake in his life.
Between 1932 and 1940, Johnson was an "antisemite, fascist sympathizer, and active propagandist for the Nazi government". He attempted to start a fascist party in the United States. As a correspondent for the newspaper Social Justice, which was edited by the antisemitic cleric Father Charles Coughlin, he made several trips to Germany, sympathetically covering the huge Nazi rally at Nuremberg and the German invasion of Poland in 1939....
Johnson sought to distance himself from his views on Nazis after the outbreak of World War II. In 1993 he told Vanity Fair, "I have no excuse (for) such unbelievable stupidity. ... I don't know how you expiate guilt." ~ Philip Johnson

This is something more than the habitual matter of trying to reconcile a great artist with his vile politics, as with Richard Wagner or W. B. Yeats. Even on those terms, Johnson is a bit more like Ezra Pound—not just a creator in his own right, but someone who fostered the talents of many others, and whose enthusiasm for a terrible cause took him far from his friends and his country. Yet Pound’s star was brightest before his adventures with Fascism, and dimmed thereafter. Johnson managed to abjure his past and, on the march toward an exceptionally successful career, leave it behind. ~ The New Yorker, December 12, 2018.
Philip Johnson's name will perhaps be fading. Architects are asking the Museum of Modern Art "to remove Philip Johnson's name over fascist ties."
Johnson's self-described "unbelievable stupidity" is catching up to him, but are those who appreciated his masterpieces of architecture to be excused for liking his works?

Will Your Truths Set Us Free?

I've met many people in my life, from all sides of the political and cultural spectrum.

Sometimes my time with these individuals was on purpose, and other times meeting them has been by chance. Meeting Jim Brandon, I eventually discovered William Grimstad. Was I supposed to have turned and run away from the revelation? Is that not, indeed, "scrubbing history?"

It's happened before. In the 1970s, I was working with women inmates at a prison, to learn what social services I could assist them in receiving for their children. On my first day there, I was introduced to a prisoner who was instrumental in organizing the women. She was Susan Saxe, a Weather Underground fugitive and one of only ten women ever to make the FBI's most wanted list. Saxe ended up serving seven years in prison for her part in a bank robbery in Massachusetts in which an accomplice shot and killed Boston Police Department officer Walter Schroeder.

Talking to her gave me the sense that leftwing politics in her mind could be merged with a Fortean point-of-view. I listened. I had empathy and sympathy. But I agreed no more with her attack politics or the murder she was involved with than I did with that of a neo-Nazi.

Indeed, Saxe's current blog describes her as a "lifelong radical activist, intersectional in outlook since back in the day when we just expressed it as the idea that 'everything is connected.'"

At its most intense, members would be berated for up to a dozen or more hours non-stop about their flaws. It was intended to make group members believe that they were, deep down, white supremacists by subjecting them to constant criticism to break them down. The sessions were used to ridicule and bully those who didn't agree with the party line and force them into acceptance. ~ Weather Underground

One person's truth is their/her/his own, and not mine, whether they are from the left, right, or the excluded middle.

The heart of the matter is, there is a much more effective way to build social justice movements. They happen in person, in real life. Of course so many brilliant and effective social justice activists know this already. “People don’t understand that organizing isn’t going online and cussing people out or going to a protest and calling something out,” Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, wrote in How We Fight White Supremacy.

***
Calling-in engages in debates with words and actions of healing and restoration, and without the self-indulgence of drama. And we can make productive choices about the terms of the debate: Conflicts about coalition-building, supporting candidates or policies are a routine and desirable feature of a pluralistic democracy.
You may never meet a member of the Klan or actively teach incarcerated people, but everyone can sit down with people they don’t agree with to work toward solutions to common problems.

~ "I'm a Black Feminist. I Think Call-Out Culture Is Toxic." Loretta Ross, New York Times, August 17, 2009.

This multitentacled posting details my thoughts on "The Dirty Little Secrets of Twilight Forteans."

Also look at the Dunning-Kruger Effect,

And the Indian Burial Grounds Trope.

One last thing. While I acknowledge I have credited certain direct "name game" ideas to Brandon/Grimstad, I also have a history of being critical of the political side of his views.

A year exactly before Blake Smith felt I needed to be reminded of this, I engaged Twitter with yet another round of this. As long as I have referenced Grimstad, I have been questioned and addressed this:

What people delete has no bearing on what I said. We were discussing Grimstad.

Top Synchromystic of the Year 2020: Alex Fulton

2020-12-30T18:35:00.001-05:00

"Synchromysticism: The art of realizing meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance." ~ Jake Kotze, The Brave New World Order, August 18, 2006.

Top Synchromystic of the Year 2018 and 2020

by Loren Coleman, author Twilight Language, Mysterious America, Suicide Clusters, and The Copycat Effect.

Alex Fulton

Alex Fulton is the creator of Cryptokubrology on Twitter and the co-mastermind (in association with Robert Shawn Montgomery) behind various cryptokubrology contributions on YouTube and Facebook. (See their site here.)

During the fall of 2018, Alex Fulton began noting the Cryptokubrology hits were coming fast and furious.

Fulton further implied the cause behind this. The date 11/7/2018 "marked the beginning of the 237th month since Stanley Kubrick's death."

A Cryptokubrology "death watch" began.

Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL in 2001, died on November 11: "Here is the 11/11 Cryptokubrology hit," tweeted Fulton.

11/12/18 = Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee died.

11/16/18 = Alex Fulton's birthday.

11/16/18 = William Goldman, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, died.

11/16/18 = Pablo Ferro, graphic designer, film titles designer of Stanley Kubrick films (Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange), died..

11/24/18 = Another director died. Nicolas Roeg directed David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth, and other important films.

11/26/18 = Bernardo Bertolucci died. He had directed The Last Emperor, The Dreamers, The Conformist, others.

11/27/18 = Samuel Hadida, with over 70 producing credits including the Resident Evil franchise, died unexpectedly at 64, in Santa Monica.

Alex Fulton deserves the recognition as one of the Top Synchromystics of 2018.

As a token of his award, Alex will receive a Christmas ornament fashioned after the key to room 237.

The Synchromystic of the Year for 2018 award for Jim Brandon has been withdrawn.

Who is Jim Brandon/Bill Grimstad? See The Dirty Little Secrets of Twilight Forteans.

Past Synchromystics of the Year

Top Synchromystics of the Year 2019: Shawn Montgomery, Sibyl Hunter, Andrew Griffin

For 2018: See above.

Synchromystic of the Year 2017: David Charles Plate

Synchromystic of the Year 2016: Joe Alexander

Synchromystic of the Year 2015: Will Morgan

Synchromystic of the Year 2014: Alan Abbadessa Green

Master List of Synchromystics of 2017: The Living

Lizard People In Anthony Quinn Warner's Life

2020-12-30T05:57:00.002-05:00

During the evening of December 29, 2020, an ABC News outlet in Tennessee, WKRN reported that federal investigators (ATF/FBI ?) are looking into evidence that Antioch’s Anthony Quinn Warner, 63, the Nashville bomber, spent time hunting for alien life forms in a nearby state park (where was not disclosed), and was involved in chasing conspiracy theories on reptilians or shapeshifter “lizard people.”

The illustration above is credited to Mysterious America by Loren Coleman (first published in 1983 by Faber and Faber, most recently in the revised edition from Simon and Schuster 2007). This is Wetzel’s “It” by Bill Rebsamen.

For much more on the bombing, see: "Explosion in Nashville: Down The Rabbit Hole on Christmas Morn." (December 25, 2020)

Explosion in Nashville: Down The Rabbit Hole On Christmas Morn

2020-12-25T10:04:00.018-05:00

Is this person a key to the enigma of the Christmas Day bombing?

********************************

Communication center appears to have been targeted.

Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean via AP.

Plumes of smoke rise next to the Regions Building near the explosion reported in the area on Friday, December 25, 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee. Buildings shook in the immediate area and beyond after a loud boom was heard early Christmas morning.

It has been declared "an intentional act."

Three people were injured.

The explosion occurred at 6:30 am on 2nd Ave N (& Commerce), in the city’s downtown area. Police described the blast, which has been linked to an RV, as “significant” and said it was likely intentional. Three people were taken to a local hospital, though none of their injuries are believed to be critical.

Authorities say when they arrived on the scene (at 5:30 am) after reports of gunfire, only to find a RV with a woman's voice “recording” saying the vehicle would explode in 15 minutes.

The van also was playing a recording of Petula Clark's "Down Town":

Down Town
by Marianne Faithfull
When you're alone
And life is making you lonely
You can always go
Down town.
When you've got worries
All the noise and the hurry
Seems to hurt, I know.
Down town.
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city,
Linger on the sidewalks where the neon signs are pretty.
How can you lose?
The lights are much brighter there,
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares
And go down town.
Things will be great when you're
Down town.
No finer place for sure,
Down town.
Everything's waiting for you.
Don't hang around
And let your problems surround you,
There are movie shows
Down town.
Maybe you know
Some little places to go
To where they never close,
Down town.
Just listen to the rhythm of the gentle bossa-nova,
You'll be dancing with them, too, before the night…

Was there "backward masking," revealing "Merry Christmas"? ~ Enki King.

The explosion was in front of the AT&T Building at 166 2nd Avenue.

CBS News was the first to report that Nashville Police Chief John Drake says investigators have found "tissue that we believe could be [human] remains" at the site of the downtown explosion. No fatalities from the blast have been confirmed.

********************************

Beginning on December 25, 2020, social media contacts began sending me their notes.

Eddie Lin mentioned: "I wonder if it's near Paul Laffoley's structure."

As it developed, Paul Laffoley, who had worked on the Twin Towers before he was asked to leave for suggesting a bridge between the two, had been approached to help design the Carillon Bells in Nashville's Bicentennial Park.

I had researched and found: "Words, people, and events associated with "Paul Laffoley" and his life include: December 25, Twin Towers, "Constantinople,” Frederick Kiesler, Andy Warhol, Bucky Fuller, The Day The Earth Stood Still, UFOs, 9/11, Freedom Tower, and 873 (the number of times he had seen The Day The Earth Stood Still)."

Lin said he had heard Laffoley interviewed in the show "Freedom Perspective" in an episode entitled "The Sorcerers of Atlantis."

Brian Holcomb and Enki King found it (here).

Freeman records Laffoley using the words "blow up," and centers the edited video on Laffoley's comments on the Carillon Bells in Nashville (posted over three years ago).

Nashville Carillon

Located on the northern edge of Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park near Jefferson Street, the 95-bell carillon represents the musical heritage of the citizens of Tennessee. There is a bell for each of the Volunteer State’s 95 counties. Each quarter hour, the carillon plays a portion of the Tennessee Waltz. At the top of every hour, the 50-tower carillon plays the entire song. A 96th bell on the capitol grounds rings an answer symbolizing the government answering the call of the people."

The towers surround the Court of 3 Stars that represents Eastern, Middle and Western Tennessee.

The bells at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park are one of the most popular attractions for visitors. The bells are part of a “Carillon,” which means the bells reside in towers and are played with either a keyboard or, in this case, an automated pattern. The bells ring all day between the house of 6:00 AM and 11:00 PM. First, they ring on the quarter hour (example: 1:15) and then play a full Tennessee song at the top of each hour (example: 1:00). Visitors enjoy standing in the midst of the bells when they are ringing and playing for an immersive musical experience.

Composed of terraced lawns, the amphitheater was designed after the Greek theater at Epidaurus.

"The musical columns are one mile from the blast site," writes Enki King.

"I went down a rabbit hole on Christmas and read up on a Seventh Day Adventist splinter group called Future for America. They took out a full page ad in The Tennesseean in June which warned of a coming nuclear attack on Nashville on July 18.

"The group's spokesman, Elder Jeff Pippenger, also warned of a subsequent attack to take place on Christmas of next year. His reasoning is convoluted, but seems to be partly based on the belief that Nashville functions as a center for disseminating humanistic Greek thought."

********************************

By December 28, 2020, the official "verdict" was announced:

Authorities have identified the bomber behind the Christmas Day explosion in Nashville that injured three people and damaged dozens of buildings. DNA found at the scene was matched to Anthony Quinn Warner, 63, who was already a person of interest in the case. Investigators are now looking at “any and all possible motives.” Quinn was killed in the explosion, and because authorities aren’t sure why he did it, they aren’t labeling the incident as domestic terrorism. The explosion occurred right outside an AT&T transmission building, causing widespread cell phone service outages and impacting other area communications for hours.

As a youth.

As an adult.

For an update on Warner, see here.

********************************

A shooting on Saturday night, December 26, 2020, ended with the death of three people and injuries to three others. It occurred at Don Carter Lanes, Rockford, Illinois. A U.S. Army special forces sergeant Duke Webb, 37, based in Florida was charged with the random killings.

"Don Carter Lanes includes an eatery called Shooter's Bar & Grill," shared Enki King.

Was there a copycat incident?

********************************

Other considerations have been shared with me:

The explosion took place on 2nd avenue and Church street, 2nd avenue is kind of a sister street to the famed neon lights of Broadway, lined with honky tonks, night clubs, and restaurants. Second avenue continues north to the historic courthouse, done in an Art Deco style, lined on top with repeating masonry of a bull, lion, and coiled serpent. As a tourist destination for heavy drinking, these few blocks upset the violent crime statistics for the entire downtown area. There is what I consider a very dark energy and I have seen many literally bewitched with the reflection of the neon lights in their glazed eyes. The drunken revelry and violence stretches back before Country and Western Music to the days of Union occupation, when prostitution was legalized. At the top of Broadway is the old Union Station with a statue of Hermes that was once the tallest point in the city, and the Andrew Jackson Grand Lodge of Tennessee. There are also documented networks of underground tunnels throughout the area from Prohibition times.

One street over from where the explosion took place, on 1st avenue, is a reconstruction of one of the first settlements, Fort Nashborough, and The Founding of Nashville Monument. Fort Nashborough was originally further north in an area known as French Lick, named after pioneering French Trappers aligned with Shawnee Native Americans who established the first trading post atop a large mound in the 1710’s. The street on the southern parallel of Broadway, “Demonbreun,” is named after the most well known of these Frenchmen, Timothy Demonbreun. Nashville started with a mound and was a virtual graveyard, with thousands of remains being removed on both what would become downtown and across the Cumberland River on the east bank. Human habitation in the area goes back at least 10,000 years and a unique Missisipian culture has been identified by Archeologists as the Middle Cumberland Culture, with their unique style of primarily limestone stone box graves. The flag of Davidson county itself is filled with still-disputed imagery, it features a Native American holding and contemplating a skull, bringing up associations of Hamlet or Poussin.

Directly across the river from 1st avenue is the Tennessee Titans stadium, built on yet more graves and adjacent to more demolished mounds. While “Titans'' would seem like an apt mascot for American Football, remember, as the “Athens of the South”, this city also contains a replica of the Parthenon with a gigantic statue of the pagan Goddess Athena holding the head of the slain Medusa. The Titan’s logo itself is surrounded by a fiery circle, with Tennessee’s three stars and a pitchfork-styled T arranged in a method that can be easily traced as the Seal of Solomon. Nashville is a very mysterious city full of Synchromystic connections and Twilight Language, and as final note: the answer is yes, Lafayette street is not too far from where this took place, and he did visit here, bearing gifts still held at the Grand Lodge on Broadway. ~ Serfiel Stevenson of the Conspirinormal Podcast, written for this blog, on December 26, 2020.

Both Freeman's "The Sorcerers of Atlantis" and Stevenson's comments on the Masonic overlay of "honky tonks, night clubs, and restaurants." Freeman even mentioning the not-so-subtle coincidence of "owls" (shades of the Bohemian Club) in Hooters.

In the photos of destruction in Nashville, clear as day, there you have Hooters and Dicks.

********************************

On to Antioch. It was discovered that Anthony Quinn Warner's base of operations was in Antioch, Tennessee. 

Antioch has passed this way before. 

See "Antioch: A Prediction Comes to Pass" (August 14, 2015).

The 2015 event took place at the Carmike Hickory 8 Cinema in Antioch, Tennessee, around 1:15 p.m. The gunman at the Hickory Hollow Cinema, Vincente David Montano was allegedly armed with a hatchet, pepper spray, an Airsoft gun, and a fake bomb. He reportedly was wearing a surgical mask. He was shot dead by a SWAT team as he exited through the theater's rear door.

A surgical mask? Was he a time traveler from 2020? Where was the Carmike Hickory 8 Cinema? Bell Road (1) and Mountain View Road.

Outside Antioch, Greece, on October 22, 362, a mysterious fire destroyed the Temple of Apollo at Daphne.

The name Antioch populates modern incidents of violence.

An Antioch, California woman, Layla Trawick, 34, used a butcher's knife and a carving knife to attack the victims in a Target store in West Hollywood, California, Monday afternoon, May 3, 2010. She used both blades at the same time — one in each hand, like in the movie Psycho, sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said.

The Yellow Springs, Ohio, campus of Antioch College – specifically the haunted Glen Helen - was the site of a supposed report of a gunman, probably a hoax, on June 27, 2013.

The Taco Bell in Antioch, California, decided to close on September 18, 2014, because of rumors of a "fight club" there in which students had broken into brawls the previous week. 
On September 24, 2017, during Sunday service, a mass shooting occurred at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ in Antioch, Tennessee. Six were injured and one died as a result of the shooting.
At the Antioch, Tennessee Waffle House restaurant on Murfreesboro Pike, 
on April 22, 2018, 
a man began shooting, 
killing four and wounding four others. 

Enki King quotes the media: "Warner's letter concluded with the bizarre and sinister lines, 'The attic has plywood and lighting, take a look. The basement is not normal, take a look. Woof woof Julio."

Joanna Lenski figures this is tied to...

"Woof woof Julio"

Julio - as a boys' name is of Latin and Greek derivation, and the meaning of Julio is "youthful; Jove's child". Julio is a version of Julian (Latin): form of Julius.
STARTS WITH Ju-
ASSOCIATED WITH Greek, youthful (red)
Cesar sync - Roman (Nero manifestation) and biblical sync codes.
Julio name meaning: "down bearded youth.”
Down bearded is a very soft beard like the kind a young man would have.- reference to a young man ?
"devoted to Jove"
Julio-Claudian Dynasty, the first five Roman Emperors

Jove = Jupiter
Jove - (Roman mythology) supreme god of Romans; counterpart of Greek Zeus."

********************************

One major mystery remains to be solved. Who is Michelle Swing? Is she, as noted on Twitter the "white rabbit" pictured at the beginning of this posting?

********************************

“We do not know if that (explosion location) was a coincidence, or if that was the intention.”
— Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron

The BellSouth Building is located at 333 Commerce Street in Nashville, Tennessee and was completed in 1994. This building was designed by Earl Swensson Associates and stands 617 feet tall with 33 floors. BellSouth is nicknamed "The Batman Building" due to its resemblance to the costumed super hero's mask. This building is also the tallest in all of Tennessee. This pewter replica (by InFocusTech) stands 6 inches tall and is finished in antique pewter.

Pandemic Mall Shootings

2020-12-01T09:21:00.000-05:00

Has there been less mass shootings that "usual" or is the seemingly absence of media attention to such violence due to the focus on the pandemic and election 2020 news?

Twilight Language

Mutologist Chris O'Brien Meets A Sudden End

Making Aurora Great Again

"The fire rises!" ~ Bane, The Dark Knight Rises, 2012

The Habsburg Jaw in Butler County

Carlos II of Spain, ‘The Bewitched’: cursed by aspartylglucosaminuria?

Aspartylglucosaminuria

Carlos II, The Bewitched

Skinwalker Ranch Deaths and the Hitchhiker Effect

Conspiracy and Twilight Language Deaths of 2023

Author and Conspiracy Theorist Kenn Thomas Passes Away

Signs, Assassinations, and Name Games

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dies at 67 after assassination in Nara, Japan.

Recent Mass Shootings: St. John's Day to a city formerly named St. John's

George W. Earley Passed Away in 2020

Will A Ufologist Die On June 24, 2022?

Forecasting the June 24th Copycat Effect

Kurt Cobain Killed Himself 28 Years Ago

Paranoia Magazine's "Al Hidell" Dies

EYES Before Christmas

Red-Shirted Fakenauts

Halloween's Tokyo Joker Attack

Qanon Suspect in America's Stonehenge Case Arrested

Chicken Feathers

Arrest

Fitzsimons Meaning

Feathers

Feathers as Symbols

American's Stonehenge

FBI Filing

Capitol Insurrection Deaths, Suicides, and the Name Game

Inauguration Predictions Come True?

The Dirty Little Secrets of Twilight Forteans

The Dirty Little Secrets of Twilight Forteans

"Next time the devil reminds you of your past, remind him of his future.” ~ Sterry Ks

Past is Prologue

Enter "Jim Brandon"

Grimstad's Anti-isms Are Everywhere

The Tentacles of Influence

Glass Houses and Nazi Sympathizers

The Stupidity of Architect Philip Johnson

Will Your Truths Set Us Free?

Top Synchromystic of the Year 2020: Alex Fulton

The Synchromystic of the Year for 2018 award for Jim Brandon has been withdrawn.

Who is Jim Brandon/Bill Grimstad? See The Dirty Little Secrets of Twilight Forteans.

Past Synchromystics of the Year

Lizard People In Anthony Quinn Warner's Life

Explosion in Nashville: Down The Rabbit Hole On Christmas Morn

Down Town

Pandemic Mall Shootings