No doubt, many in America today would fight you over saying that no secret government exists.

Whether or not governing bodies do exist in the shadows, capable of manipulating Americans (or humans in general) which remain unknown to us is a matter of intense debate these days, thanks to well-researched theories proposed by authors like the astute Jim Marrs in books like The Terror Conspiracy and Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, as well as theories and books like Children of the Matrix by David Icke, or another personal favorite, Nick Redfern’s Body Snatchers in the Desert. However, many times throughout the years have there been brilliant (if not slightly crazy) minds who have proposed the strangest stuff you might ever imagine, which sometimes, though it never made it to print in major publications, was circulated nonetheless.

In my Mirror Images column this month in UFO Magazine, I discuss “Ghost Rockets and UFOs Piloted by the Dead”, where I tap into the stories related by, among others, American fascist leader William Dudley Pelley. Pelley, was an active admirer of Adolph Hitler during World War II, which inspired his forming of the American fascist organization the Silver Legion in 1933. Like several of the infamous Nazis in Hitler’s close circles, Pelley shared a similar fascination with the occult, which stemmed from an out-of-body experience he claimed to have had in 1928 that served as the inspiration for his expose on the afterlife, “My Seven Minutes in Eternity”. Preaching his principles of “Christian economics” throughout the 1930s, Pelley later stepped in mud, was accused of anti-American propaganda involving the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and was eventually charged with high treason and sedition in 1942. Pelley would end up serving several years in prison until 1950, and upon being paroled, Pelley was given a strict condition for his freedom: he must never again write about politics.

Pelley would later describe to his readers that he was unable to express himself freely “due to radical government surveillances,” but it seems the time that Pelley spent in Jail not only hardened him, but opened his mind to new radical possibilities. Opening a small publishing company in Noblesville, Indiana, Pelley shifted his focus over to UFOs, suggesting a new theory for the origin of Flying Saucers of which he claimed the following:

“The scientific world will not entertain (this theory), no matter how real it concedes Saucers to be. It is the theory that the Saucers are not built of fabricated materials, like our earthly airplanes, and propelled by the use of magnetic currents discovered by denizens of outer planets, so much as thought-form creations from higher octaves of Reality, made seemingly solid by lowering the vibratory rates of the substance of their construction. Intellects that have graduated out of our sensatory world, in other words, may, by taking thought, specify the opaqueness or transparency of the craft.”

Another character who comes to mind was recently touched on over at UFO Mystic my pal Greg Bishop, who discussed the widely unrecognized Dr. Peter David Beter in his article Conspiracy Corner. Beter (who, sadly, went by “Dr. Peter Beter” which, as Bishop points out, did little in helping lend to his credibility), was best known for audio-newsletters he sent out between the mid seventies and eighties, which described elaborate conspiracies tapped into post Red-Scare ideologies and the Space Race. Greg reminds us of one of Beter’s most interesting stories, “The Battle of the Harvest Moon”, in this excerpt from one of Beter’s dialogues:

“By the 26th of September, American personnel at the secret Rockefeller moon base nestled in Copernicus Crater were almost ready. Their Particle Beam was almost operational–but they were too late. By late that day, the Soviet Union began bombarding the moon base with a Neutron Particle Beam. Through the night, and all day on September 27 the moon base was bombarded without mercy with neutron radiation just like that produced by a neutron bomb; and by that evening as Americans looked up at the peaceful full moon overhead known as the Harvest Moon, the last few Americans on the moon were dying of neutron radiation. America had lost the Battle of the Harvest Moon.”

Strangely, many conspiracy theorists like William Cooper, John Lear, and others have managed to become elevated to near-cult status over the years, while the sensational ramblings of those like Pelley and Beter seem forgotten, at a glance. Still, whether or not I can take their theories completely seriously, the early conspiracy theorists or, as prefer to call them, “fringe conspiracy occultists of Americana” are a unique part of American culture and society. Cheers to guys like Vance Pollock, Greg Bishop, Reagan Lee and others who work hard at keeping their memory alive.