Speaking in Tongues Part II

"And after calming me down with some orange slices and some fetal spooning

E.T. revealed to me his singular purpose he said, 'You are the Chosen One

'The One who will deliver the message

'A message of hope for those who choose to hear it and a warning for those who do not'

Me? The Chosen One?

They chose me!!!

And I didn't even graduate from fuckin' high school!"

-Tool, Rosetta Stoned

So, now that we've established that many influential and important people have claimed contact with entities over the years we can focus in on the important question; namely whether or not this is a wise idea. Previously we examined Narby's contact with the Cosmic Serpent earlier in the prior post. Now consider another experience on the DMT-laced ayahuasca that an earlier anthropologist named Michael Harner had:

"...he asked the Amazonian natives to tell him about their religious beliefs. They told him that if he really wished to learn, he had to take a shamanic sacred drink made from a hallucinogenic plant known as ayahuasca, the 'soul vine.' He agreed and after drinking the bitter concoction had an out-of-body experience in which he traveled a level of reality populated by what appeared to be the gods and devils pf the Conibo's mythology. He saw demons with grinning crocodilian heads. He watched as an 'energy-essence' rose up out of his chest and floated toward a dragon-headed ship manned by Egyptian-style figures with blue-jay heads; and felt what he thought was the slow, advancing numbness of his own death.

"But the most dramatic experience he had during his spirit journey was an encounter with a group of winged, dragonlike beings that emerged from his spine. After they had crawled out of his body, they 'projected' a visual scene in front of him in which they showed him what they said was the 'true' history of the earth. Through a kind of 'thought language' they explained that they were responsible for both the origin and evolution of all life on the planet. Indeed, they resided not only in human beings, but in all life, and had created the multitude of  living forms that populates the earth to provide themselves with a hiding place from some undisclosed enemy in outer space (Harner notes that although the beings were almost like DNA, at the time, he knew nothing of DNA).

"After this concatenation of visions was over, Harner sought out a blind Conibo shaman noted for his paranormal talents to talk to him about the experience. The shaman, who had made many excursions into the spirit world, nodded occasionally as Harner related the events that had befallen him, but when he told the old man about the dragon-like beings and their claim that they were the true masters of the earth, the shaman smiled in amusement. 'Oh, they're always saying that. But they are only the Masters of Outer Darkness,' he corrected. "
(The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot, pg. 267)

33rd degree Freemason and occult scholar Manly P Hall took a much dimmer view of the messages received from nonhuman entities.

"Those who sought to control elemental spirits through ceremonial magic did so largely with the hope of securing from the invisible world either rare knowledge or supernatural power. The little red demon of Napoleon Bonaparte and the infamous oracular heads of de Medici are examples of the disastrous results of permitting elemental beings to dictate the course of human procedure. While the learned and godlike daemon of Socrates seems to have been an exception, this really proves that the intellectual and moral status of the magician has much to do with the type of elemental he is capable of invoking. But even the daemon of Socrates deserted the philosopher when the sentence of death passed.

"Transcendentalism and all forms of phenomenalistic magic are but blind alleys -outgrowths of Atlantean sorcery; and those who forsake the straight path of philosophy to wander therein almost invariably fall victim to their imprudence. Man, incapable of controlling his own appetites, is not equal to the task of governing the fiery and tempestuous elemental spirits.

"Many a magician has lost his life as the result of opening a way whereby submundane creatures could become active participants in his affairs. When Eliphas Levi invoked the spirit of Apollonius of Tyana, what did he hope to accomplish? Is the gratification of curiosity a motive sufficient to warrant the devotion of an entire lifetime to a dangerous and unprofitable pursuit? If the living Apollonius refused to divulge his secrets to the profane, is there any probability that after death he would disclose them to the curious-minded? Levi himself did not dare assert that the specter which appeared to him was actually the great philosopher, for Levi realized only too well the proclivity of elementals to impersonate those who have passed on. The majority of modern mediumistic apparitions are but elemental creatures masquerading through bodies composed of thought substance supplied by the very persons desiring to behold these wraiths of decarnate beings."

(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, pg. 317)

Those that have actually dared click on the 'Field Work' section of this blog know that this writer is also an amateur paranormal investigator as well. Based on my experiences in the field I would have to agree strongly with Hall's assessment that the vast majority of entities claiming to be 'ghosts', the spirits of the dead, are nothing but out and out liars. At best what appear to be 'ghosts' are but minor fragments of the astral bodies of the deceased. Most likely they are simply macrobes playing off the thoughts of the investigators. I have yet to encounter such an entity that holds up under intense questioning as an actual spirit of the dead. I suspect this is also true of the vast majority of alien visitations -that what appears to be extraterrestrial has a much more earthly origin.

Thus, if these beings are not even honest about what they are, then what can be said of the 'wisdom' they supposedly wish to pass on to human beings. The best apologists have been able to come up with is that something is simply 'lost in translation.' Consider Robert Anton Wilson's explanation of John Keel's 'Mothman Prophecies':

"If objectivity fails and there are parallel worlds... it is easy to see how communications from here to there could be bedeviled by incoherence and confusion. Various humans who had turned on to the universe next door or to various universes two or more quantum jumps away might carry back signals which they would organize into such Gestalts as 'I talked to God,' 'I traveled in time,' 'I met an extraterrestrial,' etc. In particular, they might bring back both prophecies that succeed and prophecies that fail, our universe being tangent to the parallel universe at some point but not at all points.

"The 'Mothman Prophecies' of John Keel, remember, worked out that way:

"Prophecy #1: The Pope will be stabbed fatally in the Near East in 1968.

"Result: The Pope was stabbed, non-fatally, in Manila, in 1969.

"Prophecy #2: Robert Kennedy was in danger in a hotel kitchen

"Result: Robert Kennedy was shot to death in a hotel kitchen

"Prophecy 3: All the power in the U.S. will fail at noon on December 24, 1968

"Result: The power didn't fail, but a bridge in the center of Mothman territory collapsed at that moment, killing 100

"Keel interprets this mindfuck to mean that the communicating entities were mischievous, had a nasty sense of humor, and are deliberately misleading and tormenting those who get involved with them. Although he calls them 'ultraterrestrials,' his concept of them is not much different from what earlier centuries meant by 'demons.'

"In terms of the multi-universe model, however, the entities could be totally honest. All of their predictions came true, in one universe or another. Keel just happened to be in one of the universes at a tangent to theirs, where only part of the prophecies came true."

(The Cosmic Trigger Volume 1, pgs. 195-196)

So, we'll give the entities the benefit of the doubt -they only appear to be lying to us because they're trying to pierce a multi-dimensional reality that we as humans can scarcely understand. It still begs the question, is it especially wise for humans to follow the instructions given to them by these beings? Given the track record of those that have dabbled in the other side, a simple observation can be put forth: Regardless of the value of this wisdom, it can be very dangerous to seek for it.

Consider the plight of one of the authors featured in part one of this series, Joe Fisher. Fisher wrote a book called The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts that documented the effects that dabbling in mediumship had on his life. Fisher became convinced that he was in contact with the spirit of a Greek woman he had been married to in the 18th century. Fisher became obsessed with this entity to the point that he drove away his current girlfriend in addition to close friends. Finally, when he headed to modern Greece to search for evidence of his 18th century soul mate, he found none. What he did find was that vast chunks of the story she had told him could not have possibly been true based on the age of certain cities and towns she described.

Fisher was devastated. He would eventually go on to commit suicide in 2001. From his publisher's website:

"Troubled by personal problems - as well as by the spirits he claimed to have angered in writing the Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts - Joe Fisher took his own life on May 9, 2001. That he would do so is all the more surprising considering what he had written earlier in The Case for Reincarnation: 'As much as the suicidal personality feels able to escape the world by getting rid of the body, reincarnation's revolving door ensures that all hope (of escape) is short lived. Those who learn that they have killed themselves in past lives are quickly brought to the realization that suicide, far from being an answer to life's problems is (instead) the violent breaking of the lifeline. If the (suicide) could only realize the resulting intensification of difficulty which must enter the life to come, (suicide) would never be (attempted).'"

Apparently Fisher changed his mind after a decade or so of contact with the macrobes.

He is not the only author featured in this series that died prematurely. Michael Talbot presents another fascinating case. Aside from writing and dabbling in metaphysics, Talbot also claimed psychokinetic powers that manifested themselves as poltergeist activities.

"...I mentioned that I had experienced firsthand many of the paranormal phenomena that would be discussed in this book and would relate a few of my own experiences... when I was a child, the house in which my family had recently moved (a new house that my parents themselves had built) became the site of an active poltergeist haunting. Since our poltergeist left my family's home and followed me when i went away to college, and since its activity very definitely seemed connected to my moods -its antics becoming mo malicious when I was angry or my spirits were low, and more impish and whimsical when my mood was brighter -I have always accepted the idea that poltergeists are manifestations of the unconscious psychokinetic ability of the person around whom they are most active.

"This connection to my emotions displayed itself frequently. If I was in a good mood, I might wake up to find all of my socks draped over the house plants. If I was in a darker frame of mind, the poltergeist might manifest by hurling a small object across the room or occasionally even by breaking something. Over the years both I and various family members and friends witnessed a wide range of psychokinetic activity. My mother tells me that even when I was a toddler pots and pans had already begun to jump inexplicably from the middle of the kitchen table to the floor."
(The Holographic Universe, pg. 149)

Michael Talbot died at the age of 38 from leukaemia, a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow.

In general, cancer seems to be a reoccurring theme amongst those in contact with macrobes or displaying some kind of psychic ability. I have already drawn attention to this in several prior blogs. Consider the fate of the men and women involved in the US Army's remote viewing program:

"...many of them had seemed to die before their time. Had they been living too far out on the shamanic edge of things? Did the act of remote viewing, or even being near a remote viewer, produce some kind of hazardous effect on the human nervous system, or immune system?.. There were Pat Price and Jackie Keith, who both died of heart attacks. (Alex Thomas would later die of a heart attack too.) Rob Cowart and Hartleigh Trent had developed serious cases of cancer; Cowart had been severely disabled and Trent had died. Cancer was currently gnawing at Jim Salyer and Hella Hammid, neither of whom would live through the decade. Even the lab secretary at SRI, young and attractive Martha Thompson, was about to die from melanoma."
(Remote Viewers, Jim Schnabel, pg. 325)

Similar results plagued Rick Strassman's DMT experiments in which participants claimed to make contact with a host of nonhuman beings. More on that can be read here at the end of the post.

It goes without saying that being in contact with the other side doesn't always lead to the healthiest lifestyle either. Both Aleister Crowley and Philip K Dick were plagued by lifelong drug addiction. Dick, a sci-fi writer who became convinced he was in contact with a being known as VALIS, was also plagued by the mental instability that characterizes many individuals that have had long contact with the other side, eg Joe Fisher.

To recap: the fallout from entity contact and other psychic manifestations can result in crippling drug and/or alcohol addiction, insanity, bizarre psychic phenomena, and terminal diseases. There's probably more effects that I'm forgetting at the moment, but you get the idea. And this is all to receive messages that, at best, may have no relationship to our own dimension whatsoever.

But can we simply dismiss these experiences in consciousness as out and out evil? Can certain individuals avoid them even if they want? In answer to both, I would have to state a hesitant no. Speaking as someone who has dabbled in divination, psychedelics, and other aspects of metaprogramming, I feel that I gained something valuable from them... Namely, the ability to see through the illusions. Unfortunately, many are easily seduced. And worse, few even consider the implications when trying to make contact, or falling into contact, with the other side.

The Hitchhiker Vanishes

The vanishing hitchhiker is one of those urban legends that appears the world over and has so since at least the 19th century. Author Patrick Harpur elaborates:

"Twenty-five years ago it was well known locally where I lived that a stretch of the London to Guildford road was haunted by a ghost. A fellow I knew knew a fellow whose uncle picked up a young girl hitchhiking on this stretch of road -only to find that she had vanished from the car. I didn't know then what I know now, namely that this is a tale which is repeated all over the world, with only slight variations...

"In other variants of the story the girl is a woman. Sometimes she leaves some 'physical evidence' behind in the car -a book, purse, sweater, scarf, etc. which subsequently identifies her as a dead person. She can be a girl to whom someone gives a lift home from a club or dance. She asks to be dropped at the cemetery and is never seen again. A popular American variant makes the girl a nun who cryptically predicts some event such as the end of a war before disappearing. In these versions she is sometimes Christianized, no longer a ghost but an angel. Sometimes she is a man, particularly (for some reason) if the driver is a woman."
(Daimonic Reality, pgs. 109-110)

My home state of West Virginia has several variations on this tale, complete with names. The following tale occurs in 1933 during the Great Depression and involves a traveling salesman named Hank Collier who is attempting to navigate the back roads of the WV during a heavy rain when he encounters a certain someone:

"Late one afternoon, Hank was making his way along a rutted dirt road when he saw a young woman ahead waving at him. She was bundled in a heavy coat, and he could barely make out her pretty features as the rain washed across his windshield. But Hank was a gentleman, and he could not pass by the woman without offering to help her. Stopping the car in the middle of the road so that he would not get mired down, he rolled down his window and offered the young woman a ride. She promptly accepted it...

"For a man in Hank's line of work, detours were a hindrance. Delays cost him both time and gas, but what he minded most about detours was getting lost. The young woman beside him chatted amiably while he drove. He asked her if she knew how to get around the washed-out bridge, and she gladly volunteered to direct him. She told him her name was Ida Crawford, and she lived in a house not far away. She quickly routed him around the washed-out bridge and down yet another old road that led them back to the highway. Once they were on a paved highway again, it did not take long for her to direct him to her home. It was growing dark by the time he pulled into her driveway, so Hank said a quick good-bye and hurried on his way. He paid little attention to the young woman as she got out and ran toward the house."
(Haunted West Virginia, Patty Wilson, pgs. 58-59)

Ole Hank stops at a grocery store a few miles down the road where the inevitable group of old timers set him straight on the events that just unfolded:

"The old man eyed his friends sharply before he began his story, and someone pushed a chair in Hank's direction. Hank grabbed the back of the chair but did not sit down. He felt as though he were pinned to the floor.

"The old man rubbed his chin as if choosing his words carefully. 'Well, Ida Crawford grew up around here about twenty-five years ago. She was a pretty little thing just like you described her, with long blonde hair, big brown eyes, and a smile that just made you want to smile right back. She used to drive around in a little buggy that her pap had made her. It was about this time of year when she had her accident. Just like this year, the spring melt and the spring rains came at the same time, and all the creeks and streams were flooded. Ida was on her way home from visiting a friend when she came to that bridge was under so much stress. She drove her little buggy out on the middle of the bridge, and then the bridge collapsed. They found part of the carriage downstream, but no one ever did find Ida's body. A couple years went by, and then a young fella came through here and told a story just like yours. He said that he had been driving along the road during a flood, and Ida flagged him down. He offered her a ride and she showed him the detour that she showed you today. He took her home, too, only to find out later that she'd been dead a couple of years.

"'There was one other fella after that whom Ida also helped. Anytime that bridge washes out, she seems to keep a sharp eye out for folks who might get hurt on it. Son, you are the third fellow that Ida has saved from that washed-out bridge."
(ibid, pg. 60)

In shock, Hank heads back to the house where he dropped Ida at. He finds that it is abandoned and has been for some time, with not so much as a squatter within. It's interesting to note that the appearances of Ira Crawford are tied to the seasons (the spring rains) as have been numerous Fortean events. After a quick Google search I was able to find no mention of Miss Crawford. I'm sure that there are other accounts of this haunting as well as investigations, but the names probably varies as a suitable spirit is found to justify the notion of a 'ghost.'

So, is this vanishing hitchhiker simply an urban legend? Patrick Harpur does not take such a simplistic view.

"The strange ambiguous nature of the folk tales as not-quite-fact, yet not-exactly-fiction is admirably encapsulated in the 'friend-of-a-friend' convention which distances us from the alleged event, but not too remotely. It expresses the in-between nature of the tales -which sometimes turn out to be even trickier than we thought. For instance, just as we can definitely say that the 'Vanishing Hitchhiker' is too widespread (it appears in many different cultures) to be 'true' and, moreover, is certainly very old (it appears in the nineteenth century, where a horse and cart replace the car)...

"We cannot know whether the Vanishing Hitchhiker motif began with some apparitional event such as this, or whether such an event occurred because it somehow crystallized out of a current fiction, a 'vanity,' or 'legend hanging in the air.' We cannot know the truth as to whether folklore is fact or fiction because the truth does not lie in this distinction, but elsewhere. Like the daimonic reality itself, 'folklore is never literally true, but it may always be fundamentally true.' It eschews 'either-or' distinctions and embraces the 'both-and.' It spans the gap between fact and fiction, just as daimons span this world and some other. Unlike myths which relate the archetypal deeds and patterns of a divine world, only touching upon our world where the humans are already semi-divine heroes, folklore's protagonists are ordinary humans who encounter daimonic persons or events..."
(Daimoic Reality, pg. 112-113)

It's possible the origins of the Vanishing Hitchhiker tale are even older than what Harpur is implying. Since as far back as antiquity peoples have attached supernatural elements to travelers, in some cases believing that they are their gods in disguise and taking great pains to treat them well along the road.

But not all cases of the Vanishing Hitchhiker are lacking in earthly origins... In some cases there have been well documented deaths surrounding such an apparition. Such a case also appears in West Virginia, near the small town of Logan. But before we address the murder of Mamie Thurman, we must also address the especially bloody history of this region of West Virginia in which these events unfolded.

Logan is located in the southwestern region of the WV, in what is known as the Metro Area. It is here we find a bloody history indeed. It all began with Chief Cornstalk, a Shawnee leader in the mid-18th century who became entangled in the American Revolution along with the rest of his people. The Shawnee wished to side with the English, but Chief Cornstalk attempted to negotiate with the colonists at Fort Randolph. There Cornstalk, along with his son and another chief, Red Hawk, were taken hostage and held for several months. Eventually a soldier was found scalped outside the fort and the other soldiers, bent on revenge, went after Cornstalk and his companions. As the Chief lay dying he supposedly placed a curse upon the lands and its peoples.

Some of the most brutal campaigns of the Revolutionary War as well as the numerous Indian Wars the proceeded and followed the Revolution were conducted in this region of West Virginia. A century later and a bit further south, along the West Virginia/Kentucky border, the infamous Hatfield/McCoy feud would be played out:

"...On January 7, 1865, young Harmon McCoy -discharged from the locally unpopular Union Army on Christmas Eve, 1864 due to war wounds -had been murdered in his hiding place by men loyal to the Confederate Hatfields.

"Then, in 1878, Randolph McCoy, while visiting a Kentucky Hatfield, spotted what he believed was one of his pigs. McCoy accused Hatfield of stealing his pig, and the two went to court. A key witness testified that the pig was, indeed, property of the Hatfields, and they won the case. The witness was slain by the McCoys a few months later. Tensions rose.

"In the spring of 1880, Johnson Hatfield met Roseanna McCoy at a party at the home of one of the Kentucky Hatfields. They immediately eloped, Roseanna being taken to the Hatfield home in West Virginia. Their romance was doomed to failure, however, as everyone opposed it from both sides of the Tug River...

"The spring elections of 1882... were the scene of another hideous murder. Roseanna McCoy's brother -Tolbert, Pharmer and Bud -stabbed Ellison Hatfield twenty-six times and then shot him in the back. No one knows why. The three brothers were then themselves murdered only a few days later: executed, while tied to bushes, to the sound of their mother's screams.

"And on it went, claiming a total of thirteen lives and numerous beatings, burnings, woundings, and other damage across the border between the two states. Finally, Kentucky officials under command of Frank Philips invaded West Virginia in 1888 and captured nine Hatfields, bringing them back to stand trial. Several Hatfields had attacked the McCoy home, burning it to the ground after killing two McCoys they found there on New Year's Day, 1888. Eventually, the nine prisoners were brought back to Kentucky, stood trial, and some received the death penalty. The feud was officially over."
(Sinister Forces Book One, Peter Levenda, pgs. 105-106)

As an interesting side note, as the Hatfield/McCoy feud was unfolding along the Kentucky/West Virginia border another tragedy was unfolding in border town of Ashland, Kentucky. Generally referred to as the Ashland Tragedy, it involved the brutal murders of three local teens on December 23rd, 1881 in which they were torn apart with axes. The circus that followed, in which three men -William Neal, Ellis Craft, and George Ellis -were accused of the brutal murders was another fine display of frontier justice. Ellis himself was ultimately lynched in Ashland after receiving a mere life sentence. State militia was called on several occasions to ensure the safety of the prisoners, which nearly resulted in full scale pitched battles with the locals on several occasions. Needless to say, much debate still rages over the actual guilt of Neal, Craft, and Ellis as well as the shocking brutality of the killings of the Gibbons teens near the winter solstice.

Ashland remains a cursed spot to this day -Charles Manson himself was born in Ashland while another notorious serial killer, Bobby Joe Long, was born directly across the river in Kenova, West Virginia.

A Hatfield would sit on the jury of one of the accused Ashland killers. The Hatfield name would continue to play a major role in this area of the country into the next century as well. The significant Hatfield was Sid Hatfield, the Police Chief of Matewan, West Virginia. Sid was not apparently related to the infamous Hatfield clan but that didn't stop him of boasting of a relation.

Matewan was a mining town largely controlled by the Stone Mountain Coal Corporation. In the early 1920s it became a battle ground for the growing labor movement. To this end, the notorious Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency (who had been involved in the Ludlow Massacre) were dispatched to bring the miners back in line. Sid Hatfield sided with the miners and led the opposition against Baldwin-Felts. Things came to a head on May 19th, 1920, when 13 heavily armed Baldwin-Felts detectives (including Albert and Lee Felts) headed into town. They were met by about 50 miners under the command of Hatfield. The Battle of Matewan ended up being pretty one sided -the miners easily won, leaving seven detectives dead, including both Felt brothers.

Hatfield was eventually charged with murder and then acquitted in Welch, West Virginia. Afterwards he was assassinated on the courthouse steps by a Baldwin-Felts undercover agent named C.E. Lively. Lively was himself acquitted after claiming self-defense in the shooting of the unarmed Hatfield.

These events ultimately led to the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed insurrection in US history outside of the Civil War in which 10,000 to 15,000 miners went to war with an assortment of local and state police, and eventually the US Army itself. It also marks the only time the US Air Force has ever (officially) fired on US citizens. The Battle of Blair Mountain is one of those incidents of history that has largely been ignored by mainstream historians for obvious reasons. A full account of the conflict is well beyond the scope of this article, but hopefully I can return to this topic at a later date. For now, I can only send you toward the Wikipedia entry for more information.

Naturally this area of the country became entangled in one of the most bizarre sequences of Fortean events in this nation's history. The events unfolded at Point Pleasant, a town near the site where Chief Cornstalk was murdered. The origins of Point Pleasant stretch back to George Washington himself, who first encountered the site in 1770.

"On October 24th, 1770, Washington had camped out at a more obvious choice for a house, on a broad terrace at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River, a place already hallowed by the ruins a large ancient Indian settlement. His descendants made use of it during the nineteenth century, calling it point Pleasant. It had been his chief experimental station in western colonization, where potatoes, turnips, and corn were raised amid the two thousand peach trees he caused to be planted."
(Hidden Cities, Roger Kennedy, pg. 103)

Given how much attention Point Pleasant has drawn over the years from Fortean researchers, I find it rather remarkable that the mysterious Indian ruins there as well as involvement of the Freemason Washington in the town's founding, along with the continued involvement of his family there, have largely been neglected. Regardless, the true landmark of Point Pleasant is undoubtedly the legendary Mothman, which began to appear there in 1966.

"The basic outline of the story is that, on November 15, 1966, a strange creature was sighted about ten miles north of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. It was seen at night, was about six-seven feet tall, with what appeared to be wings folded against its back. It seemed to be male, and the most startling diameter, six inches apart on its face. It was clearly not completely human, according to the eye witnesses..., but walked upright like a man. Thus was the legend of the Mothman born.

"Accompanying the sightings of Mothman were strange electrical disturbances, such as bizarre patterns on television sets, phones ringing with either no one at the other end or a kind of strange buzzing sound, plus weird warbles on police radios, etc. The thing actually seemed to fly, and in at least one instance was known to have chased a car full of people, and in another a Red Cross bloodmobile filled with whole blood on its way to Huntington... The sightings began to take place quite regularly all up and down the mound-ridden stretch of the Ohio River -from Marietta, Parkersburg and points south -but centered on the town of Point Pleasant.

"Exactly thirteen months later, to the day, the sightings abruptly stopped. Everyone in Point pleasant remembers the date -December 15th, 1967 -because that is also the date of the Silver Bride disaster, the worst bridge disaster in American history. The bridge, spanning the Ohio River between West Virginia and Ohio, was full of cars and trucks at rush hour, people buying Christmas presents or going to and from company Christmas parties or just trying to get home. At 5:04 P.M. the bridge collapsed, causing vehicles and the people inside them to plummet to the icy river below. Forty-six people died, more than sixty vehicles were lost to the river. Two persons were never found.

"And the mothman was seen no more after that day."
(Sinister Forces Book One, Peter Levenda, pgs. 89-90) 

I must say, I find the recurrence of the number 13 in this area of West Virginia especially interesting -13 people were killed in the Hatfield/McCoy feud, 13 Baldwin-Felts agents were involved in the Battle of Matewan, and the Mothman graced Point Pleasant for 13 months. All of this occurred around a region of the country filled with ancient Indian mounds, of which I have written much more on here as well as the peculiar history of West Virginia.

And now, at long last, we return to the Vanishing Hitchhiker.

For the final portion of this rambling diatribe we turn our attention to Logan, West Virginia, another community within the Metro Area that happens to be located roughly between Matewan and Blair and little over a hundred miles south of Point Pleasant and 80 some miles south of Ashland, KY. It was here in 1932 that the ghastly murder of Mamie Thurman occurred.

"Mamie was the wife of local patrolman Jack Thurman. She was a thirty-one-year-old dark-haired beauty with a sense of style. She was active in her church, had a lot of friends, and seemed to know many prominent businesspeople. Everyone was stunned when a young deaf-mute named Garland Davis found Mamie's body on a local mountain. Davis was picking berries on June 22 when he came upon her body on the side of Trace Mountain. She was a gruesome sight. Clad in a dark blue polka-dot dress, she still wore one shoe, and the other lay nearby. Her throat was slit from ear to ear, her neck was broken, she had a severe crack in her skull, and she had been shot twice at close range with a .38-caliber gun on the left side of her head. Someone had obviously wanted Mamie Thurman dead.

"The police arrested a prominent local banker and political figure named Harry Robinson and his African American handyman, Clarence Stephenson. Soon the whole town was in an uproar, and rumors circulated that Robinson and Mamie had been having an affair...

"...On the day of Mamie's funeral, the state police executed a search of the Robinson home. In the basement, they found a small bundle of bloody rags and several bloody spots on the floor that had been quickly wiped up. Attempts had been made to hide what appeared to have been a bloody mess. They also found a razor and a small hole in the wall that looked like a bullet hole. Later a chemist determined that the blood found on the rags and in the basement was human blood, but blood analysis was not yet allowed in courtroom testimony, so the jury never heard it...

"Harry Robinson finally testified during his indictment hearing that he had been carrying on an affair with Mamie Thurman for more than two years. He stated that they often conducted the affair at an area club called the Key Club, where many prominent men and their secret lady friends met. Robinson went on to further besmirch Mamie's reputation, saying that he had been given a list of sixteen names of men with whom she had recurring affairs. He said that he had continued to have an affair with Mamie despite the fact that she had refused to give up the other men."
(Haunted West Virginia, Patty Wilson, pgs. 28-30)

Robinson was later acquitted while the black handyman, Clarence Stephenson, eventually took the fall for Thurman's murder. Needless to say, many have questioned this out come. More information on the Thurman murder can be found here.

While the secret society in this story, the Key Club, is typically dismissed as nothing more than a gentleman's club, the date and fashion of Mamie's death indicate that the Masons, or a like organization, was behind the Key Club. Supposedly one of the penalties for revealing the secrets of Freemasonry is to have one's throat slit, as well as having your tongue pulled out and having your body buried by the sea at low tide.

Mamie kept her tongue, but it's difficult to say what became of her body as its been missing for some time.

"Mortuary and cemetery records validate that she originally was interred at the Logan Memorial Park Cemetery in McConnell. The same funeral parlor also has record of payment to disinter Mamie years later and move her body to Crawfordsville, Kentucky, where her family came from. But there is no record of her ever being reburied anywhere in, around, or near Crawfordsville. Today no one knows what happened to her body."
(ibid, pg. 31)

Apparently the sum of money paid to acquire Mamie's body from the Logan Cemetery was quite considerable -a $1000 -and paid by a local business man. It's also interesting to note that her death occurred on June 21st, which in some cultures is considered to be Midsummer's Night Eve. The typical date is June 23rd, but the summer solstice can occur anywhere between June 20th till the 23rd. According to this link, the summer solstice occurred on June 21st in 1932.

So to recap, we have a woman seemingly murdered in quasi-Masonic fashion by powerful business peoples involved in some kind of secret society during the summer solstice. It's a rather apt symbol for this region of the country, if nothing else... But something tells me the rituals here, as in most other events that occurred around here, go far deeper. And of course, some kind of entity would have to mark this bloody rite. And what better than that of the Vanishing Hitchhiker?

"It would seem that Mamie was unhappy with how the courts handled her death as well. It wasn't long after the case was considered closed that stories started to surface about ghostly sightings and weird happenings on the mountain. People claimed to see the figure of a woman in a polka-dot dress walking along the road near where Mamie's body was so callously discarded. Others tell a tale that sounds like an old urban legend, of drivers offering a lift to a woman who appeared to want a ride to town, only to have her disappear before leaving the mountain. Bus drivers who traveled the route from Holden to a town on the other side of the mountain claimed to pick up a woman in a remote stretch of the road late at night, but when they arrived at the town her seat was always empty."
(Ghost Stories of the Appalachians, Susan Smitten, pg. 189)

Is this wraith some kind of fragment of Mamie Thurman? Or is this Vanishing Hitchhiker simply a marker of the bloody deeds performed in this area of West Virginia? I am not a big believer in 'ghosts' as I outlined in a prior article on macrobes. I suspect this ghost is more a projection/manifestation of the horror and ritual this area endured, not unlike some of the paranormal sightings we have witnessed thus far during the North African/Arabic protests.

That Old Blood Track

In occultic rituals special emphasis is paid to numerology, onomatology (the study of names), and toponomy (the study of places). These disciplines are part of a broader field known as 'twilight language'.  Anthropologist and zoologist Loren Coleman describes it thusly: "'Twilight language' concerns, from psychology, the hidden significance of locations, dates, and other signs; from religious studies, the hidden symbolism that lies in the texture of the incidents; and, from criminology, the profiling insights that have revealed the ritualistic nature of certain crimes and violent incidents...

"... Buddhism's tantras are thousands of years old and yet never publically revealed, never written down. Gradually it became necessary to write the secrets down so they would not be completely lost. But when they were written, they were written in a 'twilight language', that is, in allegory, symbolism, code, so they could not be misinterpreted and misused by unworthy seekers." (The Copycat Effect, pg. 237)

The Buddhist tantras are but one example of this ancient twilight language that has been handed down to us through names, dates, locations, etc from time immortal. Some believe that these sacred numbers and geography even predated the existence of man all together and were merely discovered by humans after having evolved to the point that they could recognize repeating patterns engraved upon the Earth. One noted believer that aspects of this twilight language predated human beings, especially the numerical components, was the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung who incorporated a proto concept of twilight language into his theory of synchronicity:

"But it is equally possible that numbers were found or discovered. In that case they are not only  concepts but something more -autonomous entities which somehow contain more than just quantities. Unlike concepts, they are based not on any psychic condition but on the quality of being themselves, on a 'so-ness' that cannot be expressed by an intellectual concept. Under these conditions they might easily be endowed with qualities that have still to be discovered. I must confess that I incline to the view that numbers were as much found as invented, and that in consequence they possess a relatively autonomy analogous to that of archetypes. They would then have, in common with the later, the quality of being pre-existent to consciousness, and hence, on occasion, of conditioning it rather than being conditioned by it. The archetypes too, as a priori forms of representation, are as much found as invented: they are discovered inasmuch as one did not know of their unconscious autonomous existence, and invented inasmuch as their presence was inferred from analogous representational structures. Accordingly it would seem that natural numbers have an archetypal character. If this is so, then not only would certain numbers and combinations of numbers have a relation to and an effect on certain archetypes, but the reverse would also be true. The first case is equivalent to number magic, but the second is equivalent to inquiring whether numbers, in conjunction with combination of archetypes found  in astrology, would show a tendency to behave in a special way." (Synchronicity, pgs. 41-2).

Note: Jung's concept of archetypes, and the collective unconsciousness in general, is deeply relevant to twilight language, though we will not delve to deeply into his theories here. Briefly, the collective unconsciousness was "In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature... there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents." (The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, pg. 43). In other words, a universal consciousness exists in all human beings and is handed down genetically generation to generation. Within this consciousness there exists beings Jung refers to as archetypes, figures that have appeared over and over again in the world's major religions and myths. To this very day modern man is still haunted by them in his sleep. The five main archetypes include the Self, the Shadow, the Anima or Animus depending upon whether an individual is man or woman, and the Persona. Other noted archetypes include the Great Mother, the Father and Child, the Trickster or Devil, the Hero, the Wise Old Man, etc. Archetypes may also include motifs such as the Creation, the Apocalypse, and the Deluge, or Great Flood. Some believe that twilight language, the language of symbolism, is what is used by the Collective Unconsciousness to communicate to man in his unconsciousness, especially in dreams. But I digress.  

In theory as human beings appeared and evolved they noticed certain numerical formulas appearing over and over again in nature and that certain places (usually marked by a specific kind of name) generated a kind of unique energy, or magnetism. It was at these spots that they built the first temples, measured to the exact specifics of the sacred geometry they had observed in nature. From there it was determined the optimum time to perform magick rituals would be on numerically significant dates and magnetically significant locations. This magnetic energy occurred along paths or tracks that ran across the Earth and overlapping at various crossroads, which were the preferred locations of holy centers. In modern times this phenomenon was first recognized by an Englishman named Alfred Watkins in the early 20th century.

"Watkins marked out the churches and ancient sites on a 1-inch Ordnance Survey map... Often he found eight and nine and even more sites aligned across quite short stretches of country. Extended onto neighboring maps, the lines could sometimes be traced for many miles, often ending on a mountain peak or high hill.

"His suggestion was, that in the days when great forests and wilderness lay between scattered communities, travelers navigated by natural landmarks, sighting from mountain to mountain and taking the straightest routes across the country. Where one peak was invisible from another, stone pillars or mounds of earth were placed clearly marked against the skyline along the path. Cairns were raised on mountain slopes, and notches were cut into the ridge to guide the traveler below...

"A peculiar feature of the old alignments is that certain names appear with remarkable frequency along their routes. Names with Red, White and Black are common; so are Cold or Cole, Dod, Merry and Ley. The last gave Watkins the name of the lines, which he called leys. " (The New View Over Atlantis, John Michell, pgs. 23-4)

Watkins would go on to write a book on these 'ley lines' which he called The Old Straight Track. Watkins, a practical man to the end, chalked up these massive stretches of ancient road ways he discovered across Great Britain  as simple trade routes. However numerous traditions of the straight paths exist in cultures all over the world and attaching far more mystical significance to them:

"The earliest memories of the Aboriginal race are expressed in terms of their native country. Its natural features, hills, streams and rocks, were shaped by elemental beings of the Dream Time, an endless age which preceded our own, and which still continues to flow in a dimension normally beyond our perception. The creative gods once traversed the country along paths whose lines are still remembered; for a certain seasons of the year these become animated by a vital force which fertilizes the earth and gives new life to plants and animals. To ensure the seasonal return of this force the Aborigines perform certain rites. They carve tjuringas, arrangements of interlinked dots and circles exactly like those found on cup and ring stones in Europe. These lines and circles represent the sacred paths and centres of the Australian landscape, and those who travel the paths find their way by consulting the tjuringa's pattern. ..

"In several other parts of the world, lines linking holy centres are not only mythological paths down which the gods representing the various heavenly bodies pass at regular seasons, but have some further quality known only to native magicians. American Indians, particularly the Hopi of the Southwest, appear to use them as cables of mental communications. In China they are known as lung-mei, the paths of the dragon, and run between astronomical mounds and high mountains...

"...In several parts of Ireland he [J.D. Evans Wentz, in the early 20th century] heard about the fairy paths. These paths, sometimes visible as old roads, sometimes preserved only in local memory, were said to be the routes of seasonal processions. On certain days the fairies passed through the land, and anyone who stood in their way might be struck dead or taken off, never to return... Evans Wentz tells how he asked an Irish seer for an explanation of the fairy paths, and he was told that they were lines of some kind of magnetic current...

"The Chinese believed that lung-mei extended all over the world, and this belief is everywhere supported by the evidence of local tradition. In Australia and North America the dragon lines are creation paths, haunted by the gods and by the great primeval serpent, the ancestral guardian of all living things. In Ireland they are the roads of the fairies." (The New View Over Atlantis, John Michell, pgs. 36-38)

Fortean researcher and journalist John Keel, most famously known for his cult classic The Mothman Prophecies, made similar conclusions concerning the 'magical' properties of certain locations from his own investigations:

"The activities of these parahumans are largely confined to specific areas of this planet, where they appear and reappear century after century. 'The angels keep their ancient places,' poet Francis Thompson wrote. Thus there are many 'haunted' places all over the world, shunned by ancient man or made sacred by him. These are precise geographical locations, and anyone digging into the history and lore of such locations will find thousands of accounts of ghosts, demons, monsters, and flying saucers pinpointed within a few square miles and covering a thousand years or more of time. To UFO cultists such places are Windows: entry points for spaceships from some distant planet. Occultists teach that these are Gateways, weak spots in the earth's etheric envelope through which beings from other space-time continuums seep through into our reality.

"Sussex County in England is one Gateway, as are the Mississippi Valley, the Ohio Valley, and parts of our Western states, such as the area around Prescott, Arizona. There are litterally thousands of these weak spots all over our planet. Paranormal and supernatural activities in these areas seem to be controlled by complicated cyclic factors. Periodically, all hell breaks loose in all these places simultaneously, and then we have a flap, or wave, of UFO sightings, apparitions, poltergeists, sudden inexplicable disappearances of animals and human beings, mysterious fires, and even a form of mass madness." (Our Haunted Planet, pg. 81)

Interestingly, Keel was also favorably disposed toward Alfred Watkins work on leys, in no small part due to the name of the legendary cryptid, nationally known as the Mothman, that he would encounter in West Virginia in the late 60s. This entity told Keel It's name was Indrid Cold. Watkins found that the last name 'Cold', or some variation such as Cole, was commonly found amongst families living along ley lines.

           

Keel and John Michell also agree that what makes these places attractive to the Macrobes is their unique magnetic qualities.  As to this magnetic current, Michell states: "The practice of locating sacred centres in accordance with the flow of terrestrial magnetic current was not confined to prehistoric times, for it appears that every Christian church was similarly sited. The orientation of a church, even its dimensions and architectural plan, was determined by the lines of current, of which the strongest spring is frequently located directly beneath the tower. At this spot the celestial influences, attracted by the spire, combine with the terrestrial force to produce the fusion.

"It becomes apparent that the prehistoric leys and dragon paths of Britain are indeed lines of the earth current. And the most remarkable feature of the whole system is that the paths of underground streams or magnetic flow are not naturally straight; they spiral and undulate like surface rivers or currents of air; yet the currents that follow prehistoric alignments are as direct and regular below ground as are the leys on the surface. The magnetic centres lie in straight rows across the country with a precision that characterizes human construction rather than the work of nature.” (The New View Over Atlantis, pg. 93)

Keel echoes these sentiments, writing:  "One significant factor, which is hardly a secret to the occultists, is that the Window areas tend to be places where peculiar magnetic faults exist. Our haunted planet is covered with magnetic faults, and increasingly enough, many of them are grouped around the ancient mounds, temple sites, and spots where flying saucers are seen most frequently. Psychically oriented people living in these regions tend to have extraordinary experiences with elementals, angels, MIB, and spacemen...

"Back in the Middle Ages the Vatican pointedly ordered that new churches should be constructed on the sites of old temples whenever possible. The tradition of sacred places runs deep and seems to be largely based upon the continuous observations of paranormal manifestations. The entities who allegedly approached human beings in miraculous events frequently ordered a church or temple built on the spot...

"A magnetic survey of the United States was carried out by the government in the 1950s. Maps detailing magnetic variations in nearly every state can be obtained from the Office of Geological Survey in Washington. Comparisons of the concentrations of paranormal manifestations with these maps show unique clusters around the magnetic aberrations. Could it be that periodic sweeps of those rays from outer space set up some kind of physical or psychic  reactions in these fault areas? " (Our Haunted Planet, pg. 84)

Michell even goes so far as to suggest that some ancient megalithic sites were used to store the magnetic energy generated along these ley lines: "The caverns within artificial mounds could certainly have been used for the accumulation of energy and for this purpose they may have been designed. They would have been used in conjunction with standing stones, for the geological selection is similar in each case. Welsh circles often include a single foreign stone quartz, which is also a feature of Boscawen-un circle in Cornwall. It is hard to think why this should be, other than that they were chosen, like the foreign bluestones of Stonehenge, to attract a particular form of current." (The New View Over Atlantis, pg. 209)

As far out as this might sound the megaliths-as-power-plants idea has gained some currency. Master craftsman and engineer Christopher Dunn published an excellent explanation of the Great Pyramid at Giza in his book The Giza Power Plant adding some hard evidence to this theory. A professor of theology, Joseph P Farrell, also published a trilogy of books, commonly referred to as the 'Giza Death Star' trilogy, elaborating upon Dunn's work. Some even believe that the secret of Nikolas Tesla's mysterious magnetic batteries lied in their ability to draw upon the earth's natural magnetic currents.    

However, it's likely that these techniques for harnessing earth energy were handed down by the Macrobes, nonhuman entities commonly thought of as demons, 'evil aliens' and the like and which will be explored in much greater depth in a later essay. John Keel was noted for his skepticism regarding messages and rituals handed down by the Macrobes. He was also weary of their attraction to all different kinds of energy:

"Electromagnetic energy plays a key role in these manifestations. We are still learning about it. Our planet may be constantly interchanging energy with some outside force. This exchange of energy is an important part of occult belief. It occurs, we are told, on every level. Chinese philosophers of long ago contended that man was moon food (i.e., the energy of individual souls was drained off and absorbed by some extraterrestrial force that needed such energy to replenish itself). Later, theologians extended this to form the classic explanation that we were the subjects of a war between God and the devil... a war to win the souls of man and thereby control the planet. Thus, the demons and MIB who appeared in earlier times were supposed to have been after souls. They made lavish promises, according to the records, and offered fanciful philosophies and cosmologies, but as Swedenborg figured out, they always proved to be nothing but splendid liars." (Our Haunted Planet, pg. 85)

Despite his new age slant John Michell at lest addresses the dark side of these rituals to be performed  along and at intersects of the ley lines:  "The appearance of an organized spiritual technology, controlled by the priests, was attended in every country by a massive increase in human sacrifice. The Aztec massacres are notorious; the Druids in Ireland are said to have decimated the population. The innumerable sacrificial stones, carved with basins and channels for the flow of blood, and the traditional violent and bloody associations of so many ancient sites confirms what is recorded of the slaughter carried out by priests in the interests of necromancy.

           

"The practice of human sacrifice flourished in the ruins of the universal civilization. The secrets of spiritual invocation, once common property, had become exclusive to those appointed by the community to produce the seasonal renewal of fertility and interpret the will of God through the heavenly potents. The priests, thus established in a position of power, began, as do the members of all professions similarly placed, to extend their influence and activities and to make demands on the population for sacrificial offerings. It was recognized throughout the ancient world that the spirit at physical death re-enters the life essence from which it came and, unless released onto a higher plane of existence, merges with the terrestrial current, seeking the occasion of rebirth." (The New View Over Atlantis, pgs. 95-96)

           

Our own nation, these United States, have seen more than their fare share of ritual killings along the old straight track to be certain. For the rest of the present essay we will focus on a particularly nasty ley that runs along the 33rd degree North Latitude in the USA. I choice this one for both the character of the events that have occurred along it, and for the number's significance in occultic practices. In Robert Temple's book The Sirius Mystery he notes that many holy sites in the ancient Mideast and Mediterranean were located between nine bands of latitude, stretching from north 31 degrees to 39 degrees. Further, 33 is the highest number rank in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, the final degree being a purely honorary one to boot.

Of course the best sources specifically for the 33rd degree north latitude and it's occult significance are the late James Shelby Downard and Michael Hoffman. Their King Kill 33 essay as well as Hoffman's book Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare are both highly recommended for a more in-depth look at the alchemical rites performed along this trek. Here I will briefly recount some of the significant events and other oddities that have occurred along this northern latitude and offer some closing thoughts.

-In 1670 Charleston, South Carolina was founded 15 miles from the 33d degree north latitude; it was the first port where African slaves were sold in the US and the founding site of Scottish Rite Freemasonry; In 1861 the first battle of the Civil War occurred at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor and led to the bloodiest war in US history

-In 1945 the first atomic bomb was exploded at Trinity Test Site in White Sands, NM, just below the 33rd north latitude at the 32 degree, possibly so that bomb would be exploded at a crossroads that also included the ancient Jornada del Muerto trial; crossroads were a preferred location for occultic rites as the legend of bluesman Robert Johnson implies

  -In 1947 a UFO allegedly crashed at Roswell, NM, which is located exactly on the 33rd; from here the modern era of ufology was ushered in

 -In 1963 JFK was assassinated within the triangle shaped Dealey Plaza along Elm Street in Dallas, Texas, which is slightly south of the 33rd

-In 1968 RFK was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, slightly north of the 33rd

-Towns with death row prisons located along the 33rd: Florence, AZ; Parchman, Mississippi; Jackson, GA; Atlanta, GA (for women); Ridgeville, SC

-At least five key nuclear facilities are located along the 33rd across the USA; The states they appear in are: GA, CA, SC, TX, AZ; Two located on opposite sides of the country, one at Goose Creek, SC, the other at San Clemente, CA, are key spots for nuclear subs; bizarrely Los Alamos National Laboratory, responsible for much of the original nuclear research, is located in New Mexico a little north of the 33rd degree.

Nuclear energy and the occultic significance behind it will be examined in much greater depth in a later piece. For now I will state only that some schools of thought believe that the splitting of the atom was an alchemical work and that areas with any kind of nuclear related facilities tend to be lightening rods for Fortean events. That the 33rd degree North Latitude would be chosen for so many major nuclear works is very significant in my opinion. Besides nuclear energy, the American slavery movement, the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, and the modern UFO movement were largely born along the 33rd. All of these things had a profound effect on the course of American history, to say nothing of the national consciousness.

Death, the obligatory bloodletting, is of course also a major factor along the 33rd. Aside from the Kennedy assassinations and the death row facilities the specter of war also hangs heavily through this ley line. Slavery was of course a prime factor in eventually leading America into Civil War, which spurred a remarkable degree of bloodletting all across the nation in addition to major changes in the legal and political structure of the nation that are still barely understood by the population at large today. The atomic bomb was used to both end the Second World War, but also to ensure a half century long Cold War that dragged countless other countries into actual hot wars along the way. Of course the assassinations of both Kennedy brothers were key to prolonging the US involvement in the Viet Nam War. And then there's the specter of nuclear holocaust that has forever hung over the world since a false sun exploded over Trinity.   

We may tentatively conclude that, if in fact rituals were preformed along the 33rd degree North Latitude for advanced technology or worldly power, the payment that was asked in return for these services was extraordinarily high.