The Gralien Report

The much anticipated new book by the late Mac Tonnies has been released by Anomalist Books, titled The Cryptoterrestrials: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us. This book deals with a number of bizarre concepts, but placed forthright by Tonnies, accompanied by his usual intellect and powers of reason, they are afforded what is possibly the best interpretation of aliens as indigenous beings from Earth to-date. Nick Redfern, who in addition to providing the foreword for Tonnies’ book offered this excellent review, had this to share:

Mac was a very good friend of mine; and like all his friends I was shocked to the core when he passed away suddenly and tragically in October 2009, at the age of only 34.

But, I am pleased to say, Mac’s latest – and, inevitably, final – piece of work ensures that his memory, legacy and ability to think outside of the conventional ufological box will live on. That work is The Cryptoterrestrials: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us.
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Greetings Graliens,

Now that my new book, Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule has been available for purchase through Amazon.com and other distribution outlets for a few weeks, I am able to provide a very special offer for those of you who would like to buy the book directly through this website.

Later in this update, I will be providing a special offer code which, if you click on the link below and go directly to my e-store, will give you ten percent off your purchase! Here’s the link:

Purchase Magic Mysticism and the Molecule!

Once you follow this link and arrive at my e-store, directly below the image of the book’s cover you’ll see a button that says “Add to Cart.” After you click this, you’ll be redirected to the checkout area, and near the bottom of the page (just above the “Check Out” button) you’ll see an entry box, and beside it the words “apply discount.”In the box, all you have to do is enter the discount code below and you’ll receive 10% off your purchase:

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It’s that simple! Be sure to pick up a copy today, since the book is full of in-depth information and analysis about a variety of topics I’ve only had time (and space) to touch on previously here at the Gralien Report. Thanks for your support, and most of all, enjoy!

This Saturday is the deadline to win free copies of several great books by William Michael Mott, Joshua P. Warren, and Micah A. Hanks! All you have to do is submit a short essay to me at info@gralienreport.com for a chance to win… here is a link to the subjects you can choose from:

Click here and start writin’ up a storm!

Among the prize titles are Caverns, Cauldrons and Concealed Creatures, The Pulsifer Saga: Omnibus Edition, Pulp Winds: Pulse Pounding Adventures in Fiction and Verse, and This Tragic Earth: The Art and World of Richard Sharpe Shaver by William Michael Mott, as well as Pet Ghosts and The Secret Wisdom of Kukulkan by Joshua P. Warren, and finally, my own book, Magic Mysticism and the Molecule. Thanks to those of you who have sent in essays for entry already, and for those who are holding out until the last minute, ya better make ‘em good!

Another contest update: Last night during his Saturday night radio program Speaking of Strange with Joshua P. Warren, Josh allowed me to jump on and plug the recent contest I’ve been doing with my pal Wm. Mike Mott, who plans to give away several copies of his written works of fiction and scholarly paranormalia in an essay contest. While I was discussing the contest, Joshua also added on-air that he would be glad to toss in copies of his books The Secret Wisdom of Kukulkan and Pet Ghosts as well. Having raised the ante already, I touched base with Mike about this, and he suggested I toss in a copy of my new book, Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule also.

So far, there have been so many thoughtful, fun, and truly hilarious entries from those of you out there who have wanted to participate in this fun and engaging competition (hence, having a little fun with it, I extended the deadline yesterday for an extra week)! When Mike suggested I toss in a copy of my own book, I immediately thought, “how could I refuse?” Hence, although the contest rules have not changed, the stakes are a little higher. Here are the prizes participants will now receive:

First Prize: One copy each of Wm Michael Mott’s Caverns, Cauldrons, and Concealed Creatures; This Tragic Earth: the Art & World of Richard Sharpe Shaver; PULP WINDS: Pulse-Pounding Adventures in Fiction and Verse; and The Pulsifer Saga Omnibus Edition, comprised of two complete, and completely hilarious, fast-paced fantasy novels, as well as one copy each of Joshua P. Warren’s The Secret Wisdom of Kukulkan, Pet Ghosts, and Micah A. Hanks’ Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule.

Second Prize: One copy each of any TWO of the Mott’s books (winner’s selection) and one copy of Hanks’ Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule

Third Prize: One copy of any of Wm Michael Mott’s books (winner’s selection)

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Since I recently posted a review that dealt with several of my friend Wm Michael Mott’s books earlier this week, I have gotten a lot of response from the paranormal community about his unique, insightful work. Therefore, after talking with Mike about it, I thought I’d provide a little more information about ways you can access his work and art (that’s right… in addition to writing and compiling vast tomes of knowledge and adventure, Mike illustrates his own work like the best of ‘em!).

First, for those of you who use Facebook, I recently joined my friend Mike Mott’s group Mottimorphic Musings: The Writing and Art of Wm. Michael Mott. Here, you can learn a good bit about more of Mike’s writing, that not only delves into hollow-earth mysteries and folklore the likes of Shaver’s Deros and Teros (discussed recently in the reviews I’ve written for this blog), but also content for which the Lovecraft fans out there will find a certain appeal also, much as I did, particularly in the Pulp Winds compilation (which apropriately features a slimy, writhing creature on the cover engaged in mortal combat with a sword-wielding adventurer).

Since it is obvious I receive a lot of personal enjoyment from Mike’s work, the spinner of great fascinating yarns himself took notice during our many recent correspondences, and this led to an offer from the man himself: “Micah, why don’t you judge a contest where folks submit essays about paranormal (also fun and hilarious) topics, and the winner(s) will receive free copies of my books?” In the past, subterranean mysteries and commentary I’ve provided on books and films that deal with this subject matter (namely The Descent) have evoked a strong response from readers, much like Mike’s work (what is it about underground mysteries that fascinates us so much?). Since Mike’s idea would allow a few of you to enjoy his work as I have, I thought Mike’s idea would be a great time had by all, especially since the topics for the essays we have cooked up are fun all by themselves. But before I get to that, let me turn it over to Mike Mott himself, just so you get it from the Horse’s Mouth:

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As the “media blitz” involving radio and other appearances in support of my new book, Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule continues, I thought I would make available here for readers of the Gralien Report an excerpt from the book’s second chapter.

The following snippet from my book details my introduction to Dr. Raymond Moody, whose unique variety of grief counseling involves the use of an ancient magical tool called the “psychomanteum.” My own experiences with this ancient practice, as well as those close to me at the time, began to get increasingly strange and unsettling as we proceeded with using it to unravel bizarre mysteries of the mind. You’ll get an idea of what I’m referring to in the excerpt below. Enjoy!

LABYRINTHS OF THE MIND: THE ANCIENT GREEK “ORACLE OF THE DEAD” REVISITED

Psychics and others who travel in other nonphysical realms like the astral world report that polarities are switched. Left becomes right. Future becomes past. Mirrors represent these shifts.Labyrinths help the individual make them.

-Sig Lonegren, Labyrinths: Ancient Myths and Modern Uses

In February of 2008, I had the pleasure of spending a snowy evening with Dr. Raymond Moody M.D. at a small conference in Ridgecrest, North Carolina. As I hinted earlier, Moody is a leading authority on the near death experience, a term he is credited with coining in the late 1970s, as well as being one of the world’s most-respected grief counselors. His preferred therapeutic methods involve a most interesting meditative technique, first developed by the ancient Greeks and later adopted and refined by Moody to be “a therapeutic tool to heal grief and bring insight.” Here an intimate crowd of fewer than thirty attendees had gathered together with hope of learning his technique, huddled around fancy tables in a small dining area in the lower portion of the rustic Madison Inn. As I stood in the doorway to the room that held our seminar, called “the library” by the owners due to its scholarly décor, a short man with an accent stepped through and politely greeted me. To my surprise, he introduced himself as Ray Buckland, a name I knew very well from reading his books detailing the modern practice of magical arts for healing and good fortune. Standing here with Buckland, our attention shifted to the various old rare books and other trinkets that lined the walls; the library seemed quite appropriate for a man of Moody’s intellect and stature, and would prove to be a stimulating environment for the knowledge he would pass along to us throughout the course of the weekend.

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You awake from a restless sleep, perhaps from a discomforting dream or nightmare, and as you begin to become aware of your surroundings, you are startled to find that you cannot move your body. A prisoner within your own physical shell, you struggle to find why a sudden, inexplicable paralysis has occurred, though you notice you’re only capable of opening your eyes and looking about the room. Suddenly, something catches your attention; a dark silhouette moving against a far wall, or an illuminated, waving form just above you. Faint whispers gather around you, just out of your visible range, and though they seem to be speaking right in your ear, you can’t make out distinctly what is being said. This is followed by the terror of perceiving movement–another being–moving on the bed next to you. You can’t see this individual, but you feel their hands creeping over onto your body, then their knees as they mount on your chest. You panic, and just before you meet what appears to be an inevitable demise, you regain control of your body, and sit up sweating, desperate to find the unseen intruder, who no longer exists.

No doubt, many of you reading this review have experienced the phenomenon described above, which became the focus of Louis Proud’s new book, Dark Intrusions: An Investigation into the Paranormal Nature of Sleep Paralysis. This volume, no doubt, will solidify Proud’s presence in the Fortean community, as well as take what is, to date, the most particularly focused view regarding the nature of apparitional and other external influences on humanity as they relate to Sleep Paralysis and other phenomena–physiological and otherwise–that accompany it.

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In 1945, Ray Palmer, a diminutive dwarf who had suffered a near-crippling accident early in life that stunted his growth, had been working as the editor of the popular pulp fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. One day, Palmer happened to receive a long, rambling letter from a man who claimed to psychically “hear” a strange series of communications from individuals living under ground in extensive caverns that filled the inner Earth. Palmer, a writer of some repute himself, took the liberty of using the raw information sent to him by the author of the letter, a Mr. Richard Sharp Shaver of Pennsylvania, and created from it a fantasy story titled, “I Remember Lemuria.”

Thus, the Shaver Mystery was born.

Timothy Green Beckley, Editorial Director and mastermind behind Global Communications, has issued the definitive source on esoterica related to the now-famous Shaver Mystery, published in several volumes. Otherwise long forgotten and lost among the science fiction favorites of yesteryear, the efforts of enthusiasts like Beckley have guaranteed a place in history for Shaver and Palmer’s strange stories. And yet, perhaps the strangest thing of all pertaining to the tales is that many of those involved, as well as readers who enjoyed the stories from issue-to-issue, maintained that there was indeed some fact upon which they were based.

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“I AM DIANE… I COME FROM VENUS.”

Thus were the words of “Diane,” a eight-foot tall alien being “Standing like a sylph-like goddess” after manifesting before Dana Howard, a woman famous for her communications with what she believed to be alien visitors from Venus in the 1950s. Howard’s claims certainly represent a fringe element in the history of Ufology, some spectral aspect that can be attributed to the extraterrestrial mystery. As obscure as her story remains in the present day, there is one collaborative aspect to all this that cannot be ignored: she was not alone.

With his book Contactees: A History of Alien-Human Interaction, Nick Redfern has placed himself at the pinnacle of what may be the strangest aspect of modern Ufology. Indeed, many like Howard–famous and flamboyant individuals throughout history–have claimed to possess knowledge of beings from other worlds; although the greatest concentration of contact with “aliens” maintains an epicenter that comprises the last sixty years. This historic period is the focus of Redfern’s book, which the author presents for us in the most well-researched and informative presentation available.

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Early this morning I was surprised to hear the unmistakable voice of Art Bell, creator of the late-night radio program Coast to Coast AM taking the airwaves, for one of his now-seldom annual appearances on the show (these usually coincide with holidays). To add further excitement to the situation, I also recognized the voice of his guest, author William R. Forstchen, an excellent writer and an acquaintance of mine, whom I met several years ago at a conference in Asheville, North Carolina.

Forstchen, having authored numerous books with Newt Gingrich, is a New York Times Best-Selling author and expert on military history, as well as a professor at Montreat College outside of Black Mountain, NC. The subject on the table during Art’s interview last night was Forstchen’s new book, One Second After, which follows the struggle of John Matherson, a retired Colonel who lives with his family in Black Mountain, NC, during the weeks and months that unfold after an EMP strike against the United States by an unknown foreign enemy.

I’ll keep my endorsement simple and short: You owe it to yourself and your loved ones to buy this book and read it as soon as possible.

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