GHOST TOWNS: First up is a link to the most desolate and abandoned cities around the world:

BIG SURPRISE: The Fourth Kind hits theaters today… and is a big fake. Didn’t see that one coming…

BEATLE BUGS: Next, bigger than Jesus might not qualify, since this Beatle is only the size of a water droplet

TURN LEFT AT THE (GIANT) FORK IN THE ROAD: Super-sized silverware in Pasadena

HOSPITAL HELL-LETTER: Overhaul of health care is needed in more ways than we realize

GROWIN’ SHARPIES: Encouraging spikes to grow on an abandoned naked hedgehog

A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH: Man shows up at his own funeral in Brazil

“After being informed at Parkland Hospital that Kennedy was dead,” Gillon writes, “Johnson raced back to Air Force One, where he waited for Mrs. Kennedy and the body of the slain president, and made preparations to take the Oath of Office.” Meanwhile, the widowed first lady waited on board the plane, desperate to leave. Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh had been Kennedy’s military aide on the fateful Dallas trip, and interacted with Mrs. Kennedy on board the plane, and at her request, tried to find out why the plane couldn’t leave immediately. According to a newly declassified oral history McHugh has released, certain claims made about Lyndon Johnson’s behavior in the wake of the assassination are startling at best.

After being told “the President wanted to remain in the area,” McHugh says he went throughout the plane in search of Johnson, if he was indeed on board Air Force One at the time. “I walked in the toilet, in the powder room, and there he was hiding, with the curtain closed… hysterical, sitting down on the john there alone in this thing.” Johnson frantically warned McHugh “They’re going to get us all. It’s a plot. It’s a plot. It’s going to get us all.’”

Interestingly, McHugh had apparently discussed this incident at another time. Gillon recalls, “I soon discovered that McHugh had told a similar story when he spoke by phone with Mark Flanagan, an investigator with the House Select Committee on Assassinations.” In the interview with Flanagan—which took place only one week before he sat down with the Kennedy Library in May 1978—McHugh had then recounted his difficulty finding Johnson on the plane “but finally discovered him alone,” as written in Flanagan’s summary to the Committee. Flanagan’s notes go on to state that General McHugh had found Johnson “hiding in the toilet in the bedroom compartment and muttering, ‘Conspiracy, conspiracy, they’re after all of us.’”

Does this admission that McHugh speaks of lend weight to theories implicating LBJ in an assassination conspiracy? Is there enough evidence to support the claims, and if so, what could their implications be? Perhaps another piece of the mystery to what is arguably the greatest conspiracy to ever erupt in American politics will continue to capture the public imagination, just as it has for so many decades already.

In all likelihood, you did play this game, but failed to see a bloody witch glaring back at you. Still, many have professed an interest in the legend of Bloody Mary over the years, variously referred to as Mary Worth, Hell Mary, Mary Jones, and a host of other names. According to Snopes.com, Bloody Mary research began around 1978 in an essay published by folklorist Janet Langlois, at which time belief in summoning the mirror-witch was still widespread. “Mary is summoned whenever squealing girls get together for a sleepover,” Snopes says. “We typically performed the ‘ritual’ in bathrooms, because the bathrooms of our suburban homes had large mirrors and were easily darkened even during the day since they had no windows.” Typically, when the Bloody Mary ritual is performed correctly, a murderous ghost is said to emerge from the mirror, often attacking the individual who summoned her.

There is indeed a bit of history associated with the notion that ghostly images appear in mirrored surfaces. One early 20th century rhyme featured on Halloween post cards read, “On Halloween look in the glass, your future husband’s face will pass” (see image at right). Although this reference certainly pre-dates Langlois’ 1978 research into the phenomenon, even earlier references to magical arts like mirror-gazing and the use of “shew stones” dates back to ancient Egypt, where black obsidian mirrors were sometimes used in the process of divination known as “scrying.”

According to Raymond Moody M.D., the ancient Greeks used a similar process with the specific intention of contacting the dead, which they called the psychomanteum. In modern times, this environment (sometimes called a “spirit booth”) is used in a fashion similar to that of the Ganzfeld Technique, in that it is a form of sensory deprivation (staring into the optical depth of a mirror in a darkened room). Moody says the effect that produces “apparitions” is purely psychological—but it also causes one to consider whether, if the appearance of the dead in psychological studies can be achieved, the same might have occurred in other, less formal situations.

Ghosts in mirrors have indeed become an item of fascination. Various different takes on this theme include everything from the popular Candyman films to widely-circulated videos such as the one below, purported to show a young girl’s deceased sister staring back at her from a mirror as she turns her head back towards the camera.

Similarly, many parapsychologists have suggested that ghosts may become visible in reflective surfaces due to the way that mirrors, while maintaining an optical reversal of their surroundings, nonetheless reflect one of the most common forms of electromagnetic energy: light. Thus, a variety of images purported to show ghostly manifestations in haunted locations achieve their affect by aiming the lens of a camera diagonally into mirrors and reflective surfaces.

Have you ever seen a ghost in a mirror? If so, was it an apparition you recognized, or did you instead witness some strange aspect of the neither realms too horrifying to judge apart from a nightmare? Email your stories to info@gralienreport.com.

UPDATE: Sheridan Walker of San Antonio, TX sent along the following response to this story:

A friend in England, Dr. Harry Oldfield, has been interested in ghost research for many years. At the request of a friend who believed her house was haunted, Harry visited to take photos with his specially equipped camera. He and the friend stood in the doorway of the bedroom where a lot of activity had been happening and he snapped a quick photo when he saw a flash of motion–neither could say at the moment what it could have been. The wall opposite the door contained a bureau and mirror. When the photos came back there was one( the one with the mirror) that showed 3 people in medieval dress with shocked looks on their faces, one reaching his hand out as if to bravely try to touch the unknown room they were seeing. These people were within the mirror. The mirror also reflected back a small table with some things on it–a table not in the physical room. The house was of an age to date back to the time that these other people might have lived. I always got the feeling that perhaps the location of the mirror was a portal of some sort–and these folks were not ghosts. Very intriguing!

‘We were in Pacifica MO, tonight around 11:30 and we noticed a massive flying creature, not once but three times. My son even noticed it on his own the third time. We were near a large cliff/mountain with some type of cave openings. We don’t live in the area, I can say for sure we turned onto a road called viaduct road, went past a fire station and continued on for about 1 mile before we first noticed it. It was brownish/grey and the body portion was at least the size of a large adult human. This creature was tracking us – in a circle pattern. We were driving an escalade with the blue color headlights, this may have cause interest in us. The third time around us we viewed it in front of the vehicle, around driver side and around towards the rear of the vehicle, the factory tinted windows did help it vanish into the sky from out point of view.

Please understand when we could see it the range must have been about 150 feet in the air, not more than 250 feet. The distance was never less than 100 yards, often much greater. We were going about 35- 45 MPH. I have never thought of anything like this in my life! It is 3:33 and my son and myself are wide awake in a hotel 17 miles away from the place we first noticed the creature.

Note the creature’s color and size that the witness describes:

“It was brownish/grey and the body portion was at least the size of a large adult human.”

With this in mind, compare that to initial descriptions of the Mothman, taken from Wikipedia:

“Most observers described the Mothman as a winged man-sized creature… large and gray, with glowing red eyes.”

The fact that Mothman was also described having large glowing red eyes lends some strangeness to this next bit of information… is it any wonder that Jon’s post produced the following response from one reader, identified as “Lanette”? See below:

My oldest son, who is 18, was talking last night about seeing something VERY LARGE taking off from a huge old tree. He said it seems like it was 8′ tall and when he put the flashlight on it the eyes glowed back red (which a night hunting animals will at times) then it took off. Then he started in again about the very large part. We live about 20 miles from the Mississippi river.

I cannot say for sure that this animal has been the issue, but we do not have hardly any hawks in the area right now, and I have a coyote who has been using my carport as a hiding place at night, have run him/her off a few times coming home late. That is not normal at all since I have a dog rescue in the back yard which include some decent size hunting dogs. I know when the coyote is in the area at night due to the bays instead of barks out of the dogs.

Indeed, this might have been any number of animals, although the fact that it occurred at night does lend some credence to the notion that it may truly be an anomalous encounter, in some capacities at least. Generally, hawks and other birds of prey (with the exception of owls, which the Mothman traditionally resembles the most) don’t typically operate by night. What did Lynette’s son actually see?

As strange as the thing seems to have been, the “Mothman” has become a poster-child of sorts for the cryptozoological movement. Personally, in spite of my own fascination with reports of this creature, many of the fascinating elements associated with the legends that surround it make it a bit tough to chew; after all, consider that science has already proven that Bigfoot doesn’t defy known laws of physics. Mothman, on the other hand, is a little more hard to swallow, if eyewitness reports are to be taken literally (for instance, the wingspan described by witnesses would not be ideal for lifting a man-sized creature into the air). Still, I’m fascinated by the notion that such a creature–whether an archetypical “tulpa” or a creature as yet unknown to science–might have had such a lasting cultural affect on people.

Perhaps, as evidenced by the new information streaming from Downes’ website, its influence is still very much among us…

Last week I discussed the discovery of a gigantic cosmic “ribbon” observed by NASA scientists, indicative of a magnetic  “heliosphere.” This, in essence, is a gigantic magnetic bubble that fills the sky, emitting no light and having remained invisible until only recently. The “ribbon” has caused quite a stir, since theories as to what causes the strange manifestation vary greatly.

However, at the website Thunderbolts.info, Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott propose a radical theory that the universe is actually electric in nature, and that present theories that look to gravity for answers, quite simply, don’t carry much weight. For Thornhill, the appearance of this cosmic ribbon is only further proof that Earth’s Sun is indeed an electric body.

Before we get to the way the electric theory might interpret this anomaly, it is worth noting that NASA scientists and various others are, at present, befuddled. Quoting David McComas of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, “The thing that’s really shocking is this ribbon,” since it is 10 times more intense than anticipated gusts in the solar wind blowing against the boundary being observed. “Charged particles have apparently become bunched along the ribbon near the boundary, but how they got there is still a big mystery.” McComas is the IBEX principal investigator, and was instrumental in the discovery. “We had no idea this ribbon existed–or what has created it. Our previous ideas about the outer heliosphere are going to have to be revised.”

Along these same lines, space physicist Neil Murphy of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California says “I’m blown away completely. It’s amazing, it’s opened up a new kind of astronomy.”

A new astronomy indeed.

As far back as 2006, Thornhill was quoted saying, “The expectations of NASA scientists are not being met because their shock front model is incorrect. The boundary that Voyager has reached is more complex and structured than a mechanical impact.” Looking at the recent data, IBEX has discovered that the heliosheath is dominated not by the Sun but by the Galaxy’s magnetic field. Thornhill says this suggests that, “since the galaxy’s magnetic field traces the direction of interstellar electric current flow in space near the Sun, it is a result that conforms to the proposed electric universe model of galaxies and stars.”

For more on Wallace Thornhill, David Talbott and the Electric Universe, visit this link:

Electric Sun Verified

Tonnies (left, photo courtesy of Greg Bishop) was an American ufologist and futurist, whose books After the Martian Apocalypse and his much anticipated masterwork dealing with “Cryptoterrestrials” helped broaden the views regarding UFOs, strange creatures, and how they relate to time, space, and mankind.

My own interaction with Mac was somewhat limited… we would occasionally email one another, though arguably, one of the sincerest compliments I ever received came from my pal Red Pill Junkie at the Daily Grail who in his article Mario, Micah and the Midnight Oil compared Greg Bishop, Nick Redfern and I to Tonnies, saying that like the Mac-Man, we were “not afraid to have a broader view of all these phenomena, instead of desperately trying to keep them separate and compartmentalized.”

It was for this very reason, in my own heart and mind, that Mac will be so badly missed. I had looked forward to so many collaborations with him, and always found comfort in knowing that while Mac was among us, the world seemed a little smaller. A truly great mind indeed; you will be missed.

Finally, here are some of Greg Bishop’s words on the matter:

Nick (Redfern) just called to tell me that our friend and colleague Mac Tonnies was found in his apartment this (Thursday) afternoon, apparently dead of natural causes. There was no evidence of foul play or suicide according to a close friend.

It is hard to find the right words to describe my feelings at this moment.

The last time we talked was just after his appearance on Coast To Coast on September 28th. He asked if I thought he had done a good job. I said he hit one over the fence. Tentatively, I asked if he would consider collaborating on a fiction project, and he liked the idea. Now, I don’t really know what to do or say.

The manuscript of Mac’s last book was apparently complete and ready to be delivered to the publisher.

Nick will have his feelings and more details to follow, but Mac’s family have been informed, and we wanted to get the news out to people who either knew Mac, or were inspired by his original and highly intelligent contributions to the study of UFOs and other anomalies, as well as many aspects of leading-edge science and technology.

UPDATE: I’m receiving a lot of general info, memories, and statements from folks in the paranormal community regarding Tonnies’ passing. Please feel free to email your insights to info@gralienreport.com if you’d like me to post them here at the site.

That being said, my friend and fellow researcher Wm Michael Mott set this along moments ago:

*******

I was stunned and saddened to see the news about Mac Tonnies on your web site today.

As with so many other writers and researchers, Mac and I were internet “friends.” We had corresponded off and on for quite some time, due primarily to the fact that his theory on “cryptoterrestrials” was very similar to my own theories as expounded upon in “Caverns, Cauldrons, and Concealed Creatures,” yet with very original differences. We were going to exchange signed books when his in-progress work on “Cryptoterrestrials” came out soon.

Some time back I sent him the contact info for various radio talk shows and their hosts, and was heartened to see that he had gone on to appear on many of those programs. He was a gifted, brilliant, original thinker, and the community of fortean researchers and writers has suffered a severe loss. I hope that Greg Bishop, Paul Kimball, or Nick Redfern, who all knew Mac “in person,” will somehow make sure that his research and writing on cryptoterrestrials goes on to publication.

God bless and peaceful dreams, Mac. Sorry we never got to sit down for that beer.

*******

Nick Redfern also shares this at the UFO Mystic blog:

The news that good friend, fellow author and Fortean writer and researcher Mac Tonnies has passed away suddenly at the age of only 34, is tragic, mind-numbing and overwhelmingly saddening.

It’s difficult (as it always is in such situations) to put my thoughts and feelings into words. But, my first thoughts are, of course, with Mac’s family at this terrible time.

I first came across Mac in 2004, when Paraview-Pocket Books published his book, After the Martian Apocalypse, which is a very good, and highly balanced, study of the Face on Mars controversy. I interviewed Mac not long after the book came out for the now-defunct Phenomena Magazine, and we stayed in touch, and soon became friends – albeit at the time purely by email and sometimes by lengthy night-time phone-calls, during which we would chat about Forteana, music and more.

Then, in late 2006 – at Paul Kimball’s New Frontiers Symposium in Halifax, Nova Scotia – we got to meet up, along with Greg and several others for a weekend of Forteana, UFOs, Cryptozoology, and general high-strangeness.

Needless to say, it was a fun few days, and I have a lot of good memories of Mac from that gig – he gave a fine presentation, everyone had a great time, and there was a cool vibe in the air.

After that, me and Mac continued to stay in regular contact. Indeed, only a couple of months ago I interviewed him for an upcoming project, about which he was very excited – and now he’s gone; which I am still finding hard to believe and accept.

Mac was a great thinker and a thoughtful individual. He was a person with much to say and who had the skills to say it, too. And, with the manuscript of his planned book The Cryptoterrestrials nearly completed, I truly believe that Mac was about to come into his own in the Fortean field on a very large scale indeed.

He was also my friend, and I’ll greatly miss him.

Mac was taken far too early; so let’s always remember the man, the friend, and the work that he left behind. That’s really all I want to say right now.

*******

Jeremy Vaeni at the UFO Magazine Blog shares the following:

I always liked Mac. I won’t say we were great friends but I’ll bet we would have been if we’d lived closer to each other. He always struck me as a fish out of water: sharp guy into alternative things struggling to get by with a crap job in a small town. I urged him to move to New York where he’d be appreciated but he just didn’t have the funds. (I also practically begged him to write for UFO Magazine until he thankfully caved!)

His untimely death is that jarring reminder of all our mortality but to me it’s something else too. Mac had just completed his new book. He’d just gone on Coast To Coast for the first time. He earned the respect of those who paid attention to his work and was on his way to breaking out of obscurity. For the public at large, that would have meant a refreshing, intellectually honest and level voice in a field where such is nearly extinct. For Mac, that might have meant an end to the financial struggle and the personal struggle to be heard above the droning noise churning from the stagnant minds around him.

New directions for him. New directions for us. Greater freedom for all.

Gone.

Gone but not forgotten. Remembered for what he gave us. Remembered for where he was bringing us. His is the story of a man with his whole future ahead of him and not distantly so. No, right at his fingertips, actually. He was an artistic thinker, arguably poetic, and this is the fitting ending to that general story, tragic though it is for those of us who knew and appreciated Mac and for those who loved him.

On that note, my heartfelt condolences to Mac’s family and his good friends, Greg Bishop and Paul Kimball. Mac has passed into that good night but you know better than the rest of us he was a man with a flashlight. Wherever he is now, take comfort that he’s doing just fine.

*******

Granted, with the popularity surrounding books, films and television series like True Blood and Twilight, it may come as no surprise that there are people who claim to be so fascinated with the dark side that they take to living nocturnal lifestyles in order to fulfill their own grim fascination with today’s vampiric sub-culture. But these individuals are mere neophytes; initiates by choice that could be headed down a long, dark road to something far more sinister… something so horrifying that the existence of which, though shrouded in mystery, can’t be ignored.

Worst of all, it’s real.

In his new book Real Vampires, Night Stalkers, and Creatures from the Darkside, Brad Steiger yet again takes the psyche of the reader into a veritable neither realm of dark foreboding mystery surrounding one of mankind’s most ancient foes: the vampire.

Most of us who have been scholars of vampire lore are well acquainted with the likes of Vlad Tepes, King of Wallaschia, or Montague Summers, the self-proclaimed clergyman, witch-hunter and author of the 1928 thesis on vampire hunting, The Vampire: His Kith and Kin. Arguably, Dracula himself (though a fictional character, nonetheless a close cousin to King Tepes) dominates the majority of the twilight neither-studies of the vampire. Lesser known are the varieties of murderous vampiric stalkers who have haunted and ruthlessly killed right here in the United States within only the last few decades, and that in many instances, to become a “vampire” requires not a bite, nor a curse, but merely a choice.

Take for instance the story of Sean Sellers, a self-proclaimed “Devil Child” who made his own evil pact that began with storing a jar of his own blood in his refrigerator, used for ghastly purposes of ritual imbibing. His thirst for the life-liquid eventually led him to murder a 36 year old night clerk, and even his own parents who he claimed to love. Along these same lines, Santanic ritual murders carried out by the likes of the wayward Steven Hurd, who professed his right to “snuff people out” as justification for murdering a defenseless mother of two and using portions of her remains in a blood-sacrifice to the Darkside.

Better known for his devilish bloodlust is serial killer Jeffery Dahmer, who Steiger refers to as a “Vampire-Cannibal-Werewolf all in one.” The mysterious Zodiac killer–whose identity is still unknown more than 40 years after his reign of terror in San Francisco–is also taken into question. Steiger supposes “Perhaps the spirit parasite that had held him in thrall had grown weary of the hunt in San Francisco and moved on to possess another student of the occult in another city,” referencing Stanly Dean Baker, who infamously contacted an California FBI agent and told him, “I am a cannibal.” Baker, who seemed to take the name “Jesus” for himself, had used his misguided logic to determine that the Christian words “eat my flesh and drink my blood” were meant literally, prompting him to remove the heart from one of his victims and devour it. One witness at a “beer-and-pot party” even claimed they watched Baker drink an entire mug of human blood.

By intensively analyzing reports such as these, Steiger manages to unveil the sick, twisted, and startling reality of a vampiric element present among us today. This is nothing new; it has existed for longer than we can imagine, stemming from demonic rites and ritual sacrifice, to notions of possessive “demon-parasites” borrowed from his earlier books (namely the Shadow World trilogy). But demonic serial killers aren’t by any means the only strange parallels Steiger manages to weigh in with. Shadow People, Black-eyed Beings, Chupacabras and, yes, even UFOs are recounted with an insightful look at their various vampiric elements.

One relaxing camper, Gretchen, recounts a vivid encounter with “toad-like” beings that emerged from a spacecraft in the wooded mountains of Oregon. The creatures, which carried a large metallic box that seemed to detect her presence, approached Gretchen, and in a rather typical abduction scenario, took small samples of flesh and blood, as evidenced by the strange marks covering her body the next morning. How often do we question the consistency of reports occurring during UFO encounters like this, where contactees claim to have had blood removed? Strange conspiracy notions do exist, supported by the likes of former Air Force officers like John Lear, that suggest aliens actually bathe in human blood, much like several of history’s most notorious human-vampires including Elizabeth Bathory, the “Blood Countess.” Might there be a more sinister truth behind the UFO enigma than we realized?

Whether or not you buy the notion that vampires and flesh-consuming devils exist among us, Brad Steiger’s Real Vampires, Night Stalkers and Creatures from the Darkside will keep you awake at night, and makes for a chilling read this Halloween season. Rest assured, you’ll want to sleep with the lights on… though to be fare, I must warn you that this may be the only way you’ll rest at all.

MEN AT WORLD’S EDGE: Joshua (right) and I stand at the edge of a 200-foot cliff adjacent to Wiseman’s View in the Lineville Gorge. Though smiling, the fingers of Josh’s right hand were actually crossed, as we both prayed a sudden, strong gust of wind wouldn’t blow us into a corresponding 200-foot drop to oblivion below.

Fortunately, weather was perfect for the outing, and the majestic Lineville Gorge wilderness was just beginning to ride the crest towards the “peak” color season here in beautiful Western North Carolina while the film crew, along with members from L.E.M.U.R., worked at solving the ever-intriguing mystery of the Brown Mountain Lights. These strange manifestations comprise strange “ghost lights” seen throughout the region, particularly within the vicinity of Brown Mountain and the nearby Table Rock. With sightings dating back as far as the year 1200 according to Indian legends, it is one of the nation’s most enduring legends, of both historical and (perhaps) scientific merit. The L.E.M.U.R. team (of which I am an investigator) has spent more than a decade studying the phenomenon. For more information on Joshua P. Warren’s theories and the research we have conducted together over the years, visit L.E.M.U.R.’s Brown Mountain Lights website.

ABOVE: Christopher McCollum (far left) and I (far right) are shown an advanced thermal imaging camera by Ben, one of the producers with the National Geographic crew. L.E.M.U.R. hoped to use this to help determine if the Brown Mountain Lights produced significant heat sources when manifesting (photos by Dean Warsing).

True, this isn’t exactly “new” technology (for instance, DARPA ihas planned to use this sort of technology to aid in developing prosthetic limbs that are movable in response to to neural commands). However, in this next step in utilizing mechanical benefits from the technology’s practical application, Dr. Christopher James at the University of Southampton has used BCI (brain-computer interface) to illustrate how people can communicate with what he dubs “true brain-to-brain interfacing.”

By hooking up two individuals to EEG amplifiers that monitor specific brain activity, one person initiates “contact” by generating a series of zeros and ones by merely imagining they are moving their left or right arm for zeros or ones respectively. Recognizing the thoughts in this binary code system, the person’s computer then transmits the series of ones and zeros being generated to a second participant’s computer, which causes an LED light to blink at two different frequencies similarly corresponding to one and zero.

Similar to the recognition used in the binary function, the second person’s EEG uses information “recorded” by the subject’s visual cortex as it perceives the flashing LED, translating it back into binary code. “Brain-to-brain communication” is achieved without the use of language or direct active communication such as typing, etc.

Although this process certainly can be qualified a “hands free,” will humans ever master the art of brain-to-brain communication without the aid of machines? I guess many of us awaiting the release of the upcoming film Men Who Stare At Goats, based on the military work of Colonel John Alexander, might suppose that serious attention as been given to such studies in the past, and that covert government remote-viewing programs have in the past existed–and may still be in operation to this day. Still, it seems that the notion of breeding “psychic super-warriors” eludes us in totality, and no “quick fixes” for this particular brain function yet exist. In the meantime, we are relegated to playing hop-skip-and-jump with binary code and brainwaves, but nonetheless, greater things have stemmed from things so seemingly basic–or in the case of this specific coding language–binary.

Nick Redfern’s Science Fiction Secrets From Government Files and the Paranormal is one of my favorite new offerings from Britain’s finest Gonzo journalist of paranormalia. From strange FBI tales involving the apparent paranoia of Sci-Fi writers like Phillip K. Dick, to weird parallels he draws between the terrorist attacks of 9-11 and television programs that predicted the disaster before it happened, this  book is a mind bender in the first degree, and will leave you wondering how soon Anomalist Books will be asking for “round two.”

One of my favorite chapters deals with Ray Palmer, a fascinating little dwarf who published the Sci-Fi pulp magazine Amazing Stories back in the late ’30s and into the ’40’s. Palmer was perhaps known best for his publication of the long running and controversial “Shaver Mystery” stories, based on accounts (allegedly true in some capacity) related by a machine welder turned “psychic” named Richard S. Shaver. Palmer’s support of the truth of Shaver’s stories, which dealt with notions that the world is controlled subversively by wicket, inbred inhabitants of the hollow earth called Deros, was controversial in the science fiction community. Many felt Palmer published the stories because of the literal “shock value”, although readers soon flooded the mailbox of Amazing Stories after the initial publication of Shaver’s offerings, spinning their own yarns of assault and capture by real-life Deros from underground worlds.

Redfern brilliantly unveils a variety of parallels regarding Palmer’s involvement in lapsing the realms of Sci Fi and reality, as well as the likes of Issac Assimov, and Arthur C. Clark. Rocket scientist Jack Parsons comes into question, as well as the infamous Roswell UFO crash of 1947. The old adage “truth is stranger than fiction” comes to mind often when reading this gem, and if you ever doubted it, this will be the manuscript that will finally change that perception. Read it, enjoy it, and be prepared to never see the world around you quite the same way you once did.