The Devil in Disguise: Demonic Dealings at the Vatican?

Right around the same time, my fellow MU blogger Amelia Crater did this excellent write up about the rather infamous Coast to Coast AM show where host George Noory had been toying with using what is alleged to be one of the occult’s most dangerous trinkets–the Ouija board–during a live broadcast of his popular late-night program. According to Crater, Noory claims that using Ouija boards nearly brought him to “the brink of an unfathomable black pool of chaos.” Here’s her story on it:

Ouija Board took Coast to Coast Host to “Brink of Unfathomable Chaos”

Image (above) by http://www.flickr.com/photos/hate/ / CC BY 2.0

Please keep in mind, the views expressed in these essays cover a wide array of opinions that do not necessarily reflect those of the moderators of this site, or even this contest. The are intended only as commentary or satire, and should be enjoyed as such!

That being said, our first place prize goes to Vance Pollock, an amatuer historian and researcher who provided this hilarious essay for us, based on actual historical events:

I nominate Pauly Shore and Barbara Streisand in the demon category, Richard Simmons and Dick Clark for their unexplainable immortality (no further comment) and the allegedly late Ronald Reagan because he is a cyborg.

I once saw a clip of Reagan receiving a crystal award statuette. A protestor leapt to the stage, snatched the crystal and smashed it on the ground, at which point Reagan visibly “shorted out” and had to be rolled off on a hand cart.

A great many mortals can see through the spell of Shore and Streisand, much like characters from They Live without sunglasses.

Upon learning of his prize winning essay, Mr. Pollock provided this video to accompany his essay:

Second place goes to Scott Lyall, an independent investigator in the UK:

For my money, the best film to deal with a Fortean topic was the BBC’s Ghostwatch. Briefly, it was a feature length drama broadcast on Halloween 1992 that purported to be a live broadcast from a poltergeist infested house on a London council estate. It starred a number of celebrities playing themselves, which confused many viewers into believing they were watching a real live broadcast. The line between fact and fiction was also blurred by it referencing various real life cases (it borrowed to an extent from the infamous Enfield poltergeist case). Even knowing it was a drama, I kept forgetting myself as the events escalated, especially with the fleeting appearances of the ghost in the background of a number of scenes and the gradual exposition of extremely unpleasant nature of the history of the house, though the OTT ending where the TV studio was taken over by the polt and the host possessed kind of blew the believability.

The tricksterish aspect to it is a delight-the makers of this were genuinely bemused by the outrage caused by viewers being duped. It had been conceived, filmed and advertised as a drama and they’d no intention of fooling people. But yet it was one of the BBC‘s most complained about programs, and has never been repeated. A suicide has been laid at it’s door, and allegedly two cases of post traumatic stress disorder in children who viewed it.

Reaction to films can often depend on the context you see them in, and I first saw Ghostwatch in a house where someone had died six months previously, and I knew I’d have to walk home through a dark wood that local rumour held to be haunted and where I’d an odd experience a few years earlier that I’d interpreted as a ghost! That combined with the juxtaposition of the supernatural in a mundane setting was a heady mix for my 17 year old mind, giving a genuine chill I’ve not experienced again since.

Oddly, this seems to be the fictionalised blueprint that most ghost hunting programs now follow- but don’t let that put you off!

Third place goes to John Colaw, former director of Skywatch Kansas, who submitted the following:

False-flag public UFO disclosure is imminent, as predicted by Werner Von Braun in 1977. Von Braun correctly predicted a sequence of threats – communism, then terrorism to be followed by asteroids and culminating in a staged alien invasion. Governments all over the world are releasing UFO reports, the US soon to follow suit. Black triangles are likely ours; harbingers of imminent false UFO disclosure. Consolidation of power and weaponization of space are the goals. True disclosure competes with this agenda-driven false disclosure. Economic collapse coupled with invasion fears will empower the New World Order, unless genuine UFO disclosure occurs first.

We do mostly Bluegrass, but we also throw in a good bit of old time country, folk, and even an occasional jazz or rock song (whatever comes to mind… or occasionally, whatever arrives at the tip jar written on the back of a five, ten, or twenty dollar bill)! If you’d be interested in hearing what a Gralien playing Bluegrass might sound like, follow this link, where you can learn about my new album, as well as hear some sample audio:

Runners of the Green Laurel

Greetings all,

At 6:00 PM EST US time today, I’ll be doing an interview at the Mabus Incarnate Chatroom about my new book, Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule. If you’d like to participate in the chat, just go to MabusIncarnate.com and you’ll be taken directly to the chat interface. Then, if you’re into customization, you can change the name of your online “alias” and your avatar (image) to suit your style a little better. Looking forward to discussing things with you!

NOW PLAYING! February 14, 2010 — Micah A. Hanks

David and Gene are great guys, and very intelligent interviewers… I hope you all enjoy this segment as much as I did!

Mike’s imagination and intellect extend beyond just the realms of scholarly research, and the mysteries of this world only seem to have provoked musings in his own mind that have resulted in the fanciful tales he spins in the latter of these four books. However, I first came to know Mike as a researcher of Hollow Earth mysteries–namely the stories told by Richard Shaver and later published by editor Ray Palmer in Amazing Stories in the 1940s and ’50s–which dealt with a race of beings that exist in hollow caverns under the Earth. This represents a sort of folkloric element that taps in to devils, demons, and a host of anti-humans that dwell in dark recesses of this planet where minds have wandered (if not also the occasional explorer) for centuries in search of their greatest fears.

Far too often, the study of anomalous subterranean mysteries are overlooked in the research that seeks to clarify the unexplained and occult mysteries of this “Tragic Earth” (to borrow Shaver’s term). In Caverns, Cauldrons, and Concealed Creatures, Mott takes a Fortean look at folklore throughout history and weaves it together with factual reports of others ranging from diminutive human-like dwarfs and hair-covered creatures, to serpentine monsters that are commonplace in both Arthurian and legends of classical swashbuckling and romance, as well deep freshwater lakes the world over. Stranger reports of amphibian-like Earth-dwellers and “faceless” aliens from underground bases pick at the mind, evoking images the likes of those that appear in classics like Etidorpha. Mott writes, “Cryptid critters, UFO phenomena, and other creepy varmints seem to have a definite connection with the underworld, as do unusual human beings of “outlandish” or “foreign” appearance. The very nature of the rapid appearance and disappearance of such beings would indicate that not only caverns, but land-locked bodies of water, oceans, old cellars, mineshafts, train tunnels, bridges (over hidden water or land entrances?), sewer systems (particularly older ones) may have a definite connection to such things.”

And indeed, when considering reports of “high strangeness” the likes of Bigfoot encounters, as well as real life reports of gnomes, trolls, and smallish monsters the likes of a Tolkien novel, perhaps no better theory could be offered. As strange as this world is, it is also riddled with hints of things that exist in the periphery of human consciousness. This Tragic Earth: The Art and World of Richard Sharpe Shaver takes a look at the “art” of the man credited with first bringing knowledge to the public of an underground domain inhabited by what he called “detrimental (emphasis on the mental) robots” and proto-human mutants that sought enjoyment by torturing slaves kidnapped from the world above. Aside from his fantastic revelations of the subterranean kind, Shaver was also frequently associated with his “rock art.” Mott explains, “The material in this book, for the most part, was sent to Ray Palmer. There was the book itself, This Tragic Earth, along with a packet of photos of sliced pieces of rock, through which Shaver had exposed light onto photographic paper.” In essence, Shaver had claimed that this unique process he had created revealed secret messages contained within rocks he dug from the Earth which indicated ancient feats of wisdom and technology by ancient civilizations that once inhabited the planet. Though most of the imagery Shaver included in his “rock books” only vaguely resembled the sorts of pictographs he was able to discern from them, Shaver nonetheless is revered today in fringe art and occult knowledge circles for his unique practices, masterfully compiled in Mott’s re-issue of the author’s masterpiece.

Arguably (though it may come as a surprise to those who know my scholarly pursuits), the two books I’ve recently read by Mott for review here have been his fantasy works. Pulp Winds: Pulse Pounding Adventures in Fiction and Verse is a collection of stories (and even a bit of occasional poetry that ties together the realms of Shaver’s underworld with Lovecraft’s occult mythos; altogether peppered with inflections of Jules Verne and Robert E. Howard where characters like the semi-human Adlans and the familiar Shuggoths creep their way through the haunting “Cask of Ages,” co-authored with Gerald W. Page who notes in the introduction that, “Mike has brought not only his considerable talent to bear on this story, but his insight into the fiction of both Shaver and Lovecraft. It is a much better story than it would have been had I written it alone.” Page’s glowing acknowledgments aren’t the only endorsements he recevies; the well known and acclaimed author of all things esoteric, Brad Steiger, also contributed an introduction segment. Steiger, also a fan of classic pulp-fiction, says that Mott is “making reading short stories fun once again,” describing the colorful wording in Mott’s stories as a cauldron of time and space that allows “the days of fast-paced adventure fiction to be restored to the exalted pillars of imagination on which they deserve to reside.” This is true; and the choice wording that often entails “color” so often used by those who read an enjoy Mott’s unique brand of fiction are correct in more ways than once, since the Pulp Winds anthology is also peppered with Mike’s exotic, sometimes even avant garde depictions of strange, far-away lands inhabited by creatures nearly unimaginable.

And yet, amidst all the fantastic meanderings of Mott’s mind present within his fiction, perhaps the most enduring (and at times endearing) character featured throughout his “Mottimorphic mythos” is none other than Calim Pulsifer, the roguish vagabond traveler featured throughout the two-novel edition of The Pulsifer Saga: Omnibus Edition. Short sword at his side and hunger in his belly, the outlandish traveler and master thief manages to find his way into the most terrifying and involved encounters with mages, monsters and demiurges (extra-dimensional beings which even the smartest thieves shouldn’t smart off at). Whether it be devouring the pig-like young of monstrous devils and lying about the deed, feeding aphrodisiacs to wizards and tossing them to cannibalistic sub-humans in heat, or setting rampaging wood-ogres ablaze while escaping into the cavernous underneaths of Zev Grotto and Lunkin Karst, Pulsifer “The Velvet Knife” still manages to endear himself to the reader, all the while shooting himself repeatedly in the foot. Such unconventional characterization of a leading character brings Mott to the forefront of a unique brand of fantasy and science fiction that appeals to the inkling Tolkien or Lewis or Salvatore in any of us, appreciated just as well as the given Burroughs, Lovecraft, or Verne fans would do.

The final word: These books come highly-recommended to both Fortean scholars and fantasy readers alike, and by spinning the intricacies of both these paths to insight, William Michael Mott manages to capture something so few have done before or since–appeal to both fiction and non-fiction readers. Enjoy his work, but above all, learn from his studies in supernatural lore, and if anything, don’t end up like his anti-hero Pulsifer so often does!

To purchase books by Wm Michael Mott and learn about his many published works, visit his website.

Speaking of Strange with Joshua P. Warren

To call into the program toll-free, dial 1-800-570-9962. Also, you may enjoy participating in our chat room (also accessible through the show’s website). Tonight’s subjects, as always, will be many and varied, pertaining to all the best paranormal and down-right strange news taking place out there today. You won’t want to miss this!

Below is a link to a recent interview I did with Benjamin Grundy of the popular Australian podcast Mysterious Universe. In this edition, we discuss my new book, Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule, and delve into a broad overview of the kinds of high strangeness contained within. Enjoy!

Mysterious Universe Episode 307 with Micah A. Hanks

ABOVE: Micah A. Hanks (far left) and Vance Pollock (far right) interviewing Eustace Mullins with Christopher McCollum (not pictured) in late 2009

Mullins was born in Roanoake, Virginia, in 1923 to parents Eustace Clarence Mullins and Jane Katherine Muse. He received education at Washington and Lee University, New York University, the University of North Dakota and the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Washington, D.C. before enlisting in the military as a Warrant Officer in 1942. Mullins also served thirty-eight months active service during World War II in the United States Air Force.

Mullins was well known for the association and friendship he maintained with several noteworthy historic figures with whom he frequently visited, earning him the nickname “America’s Guest.” He first became acquainted with American poet Ezra Pound in the winter of 1948, while Pound was being kept at Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. At Pound’s request, Mullins, at the time an employee at the Library of Congress, was commissioned to author a book about the Federal Reserve on Pound’s behalf. Through the publication of such controversial books, as well as his associations with literary and political figures that included Russell Kirk, E.E. Cummings, and Joseph McCarthy, Mullins became an object of concern to the FBI under then-director J. Edgar Hoover, who secretly kept files on Mullins throughout his tenure. Using Freedom of Information Act Requests, Mullins obtained a portion of this record in December of 1981, and subsequently published a book based on his experiences, A Writ for Martyrs (1985).

Due to the controversial nature of some of his written works, Mullins was dogged with accusations of racist and anti-Semitic views expressed in books such as The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History. Mullins refuted these accusations, but due to his controversial status was nonetheless frequently asked to appear on radio and television programs that included The Political Cesspool.

Jim Marrs, author of numerous books on conspiracies such as Rule By Secrecy and The Terror Conspiracy shared his feelings about Eustace after hearing of his passing:

Eustace has, and will remain, on my Hero List. His diligent work to bring out the under reported aspects of our national history have been a tremendous help in my own investigations. And I know of no factual information that significantly contradicts his finds and conclusions. If the day ever comes when America honors truth over spin, hype and distraction, the name of Eustace Mullins will be at the top of the list. We must never forget his legacy.

Christopher McCollum, a writer and editor at the Culture of Spirits website, shared the following of his visit with Mullins in winter of 2009:

I would like to say that with my three days that I spent with him, I felt completely at home. His breadth of knowledge and experience was astounding, and the only thing more impressive than that was his willingness and ability to speak about it. Like a rare visit from a favorite uncle, we gathered around him and sat mesmerized as he told his tales.

It was an experience that I will never forget, I daresay. The last of Ezra Pound’s students had the temerity to stand up for himself against unthinkable enemies and odds, and should serve as a beacon to those who think that one man can’t fight the system.

Eustace will be sorely missed, and I thank the heavens that I got to spend the time that I did with him, in his waning days.

Vance Pollock, historical consultant for the L.E.M.U.R. Paranormal Investigations team out of Asheville, North Carolina, also expressed sentiments regarding his many meetings and discussions with Mullins:

For my part, I will miss Eustace as one of the last links to that greatly misrepresented American struggle against “creeping communism” which it seems we lost with a whimper over the last few decades.

To anyone who would question authority and the establishment formula which states what a person should think, feel and believe regarding the way the world is run, Eustace Mullins was that rare and exceptional voice of the free thinker.

Eustace Mullins will forever stand in my mind as the unwavering underdog. In seeking to understand why Eustace will be given the silent treatment afforded all such troublesome characters, I imagine him as a young man standing by the coffin of Joe McCarthy delivering his eulogy (Editor’s note: It is known that Mullins was actually a featured speaker at McCarthy’s funeral).

Fifty some years later, this chapter in history has been rewritten for us to interpret any such sincere and patriotic opposition to “the enemy within” as some confused or misguided paranoia… but was it? Eustace Mullins preserved for us a seed of truth that will continue to be hidden away from the mainstream.

He will continue to be loved, respected and admired by future seekers who search for their answers in the dark, neglected corners of the dustbin of history.

Those who knew him proudly called him a friend, and an American patriot. Mullins was not married at the time of his death, and is survived by one remaining sibling.

Also, in addition to being able to purchase it here at this site, the book is now available on Amazon.com as well. If it isn’t already available to retail stores for order upon request, it will be very soon. Additionally, I’ve had a few requests for autographed copies; if you’d like your copy signed by me (or customized with a nice dedication to a loved one), feel free to email me at info@gralienreport.com and I’ll be happy to provide you with information about how to get a signed copy.

Finally, I want to point out a new addition to the Gralien Report: below the link on the right side of the page where you can buy my book, you’ll now see a button that looks like this:

If you click on this button (go ahead, try it), you can sign up for free news and updates from the Gralien Report that doesn’t get posted on this site (for instance, I’ll be launching a new blog soon, along with the rest of my colleagues in Joshua P. Warren’s L.E.M.U.R. team, that will be a sister site to the Gralien Report). If you’d like to get the scoop on all the “insider info” from the Gralien’s abode miles beneath runway #9 at the Emma International Airport, signing up for this free–and spam free–email newsletter only takes a few seconds.

Again, thanks for all your support out there. It is my hope that through sales of my book, we can raise enough funds so that our mascot can make that long vacation visit back to his home on Zeta 2 Reticuli (you wouldn’t believe how expensive maintaining a mercuric-combustion engine is these days)!

Cheers,

Micah A. Hanks