Plantoids!

 

Back in the 1950s, when Flying Saucers were all the rage, people began claiming communications from the occupants of these otherworldly craft- and one commonality between the alleged messages to these so-called "contactees" was a message of environmentalism. The abandonment of nuclear weapons, and care for the lifeforms on planet Earth seemed to have been a top priority for these planet-hopping Space Brothers. One wonders what difference it made to those living on Venus, Saturn, or Mars? Was it a message of fraternity and altruism, or did it benefit them in some way? There have been a variety of answers, ranging from Theosophically informed New Age explanations about balancing life energies to more mundane but equally fantastical ones seemingly culled from the pages of pulp sci-fi mags. 

It may seem a strange question to even pose, as most people don't consider the claims of the contactees to be worthy of consideration. UFOlogy has long had a large schism between the more esoteric types of sky watchers and the "nuts and bolts" ET hunters, but either school of thought tends toward the idea that these craft (and by extension, the entities controlling them) come from another planet. There has always been some amount of thinkers who are inclined toward the idea that the source of these strange visitors might be much more terrestrial indeed. Still others have long contended that there were more metaphysical sources for these phenomena; Meade Layne, for instance, and others in the Borderland Sciences Research Associates, promoted the idea of Etherships from neighboring dimensions of reality. When we entertain the less-than-physical theories of UFOs, we open the door for everything from hallucinations to thought projections, from the unsatisfying mundane to the extremity of psychical weirdness. We always assume, however, that these entities are here for us or extensions of us; us humans, the top lifeforms of Planet Earth. We sometimes consider the mutilated cow or the scared dog, but rarely do we think about the variety of flora in the world. 

 Forteana more broadly has classically approached plants more skeptically, as evidenced by this clipping from a December 1950 issue of FATE Magazine. It's not all too often that the stories in their pages contains a disclaimer, but the tale of the Man-Eating Trees appears to have been too tall even for the editors there. Carnivorous plants are well-documented, and though somewhat exotic aren't necessarily weird. Something about the idea of a meat-eating plant, though, seems to spark a connection and allow us to anthropomorphize plant life, to imbue it with some level of sentience that we understand. We see it in fiction, albeit in a tongue-in-cheek way, in films such as Roger Corman's Little Shop of Horrors and variations thereof. The carnivorous plant in the movie is actually an alien, which can talk, and demand blood. The vampiric plant being has precedent as well in The Thing From Another World, in which a frozen plant-based humanoid is thawed out from its apparent icy grave and sustains itself on plasma.

There aren't very many UFOlogical examples of this sort of thing, but one was recorded by Gray Barker in the 1960s- the case of Jennings Frederick, whose "Veggie Man" encounter culminated in the entity apparently latching on with suction cup fingers to draw blood. The creature, whatever it was, telepathically conveyed its need for medical assistance to the terrified Frederick, and it was implied that the being was an extraterrestrial. 

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Plant beings from outer space is a fun concept to consider, but it still relies on the idea of interplanetary or interstellar travel. It also implies the very human idea that the most superior forms of sentient being would be technologically adept and probably humanoid in appearance. The more magically inclined among us have, for centuries, accepted that plants have intendant spirit forms. Nature spirits and fairy entities from cultures around the world are intimately connected with plants, or are spiritual emanations from them in some cases. We tend also to anthropomorphize these, as in practices with plants such as the mandrake.

Less magical but still on the fringe, there has long been an argument that plants have a type of sentience- and, one imagines, such sentience would be nearly inconceivable to our monkey brains. The 1973 book The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird popularized the idea, relying heavily on the "Backster Effect"- a series of findings by a man named Cleve Backster, who used a polygraph machine to test plant responses to stimuli. An episode of the popular TV series In Search of...  also focused on these ideas in the 70s, and L. Ron Hubbard claimed to confirm some of these results through the use of the same "E-Meter" he used in auditing members of his Church of Scientology. (Hubbard claimed that tomatoes "screamed" when sliced or pierced. One imagines he grinned ghoulishly while saying this.) Needless to say, the jury is still way out and plant intelligence is far from proven. Most, if not all of the ideas posed in the aforementioned media has been lambasted by scientists and disregarded as fiction. Fiction, however, provides a useful means of conjecture. Further, "sentience", "consciousness", and "intelligence" are ill-defined abstract terms using only the human mind as a baseline. Hungarian born botanist Raoul H. Francé argued for "True Botany" in his 1905 book Germs of Mind in Plants, saying that the endless categorization and study of dried plant "mummies" neglected the life, the important part of plant studies. Though useful, he felt that focusing on the minutiae of plant parts ignored the fact that humanity and plants of all types had a common bond; a will to live, that they had sensation, and a purpose. Through our animal eyes, we view other forms of sentience- if we see them at all- as either inferior or equivalent in some way to our own. It seems more likely that a non-human sentience and indeed a non-animal one would be so different from ours we may never see it at all.

There are quite a few unknowns in regard to human consciousness, and much controversy involved in investigating them. We don't quite know what happens to consciousness after the death of the body, for instance- nor do we really know the limits of the perceptions our minds can obtain. Extrasensory Perception has been studied for ages, and still unproven in the minds of many. It's worth noting that J. B. Rhine, who started the parapsychology lab at Duke University with his wife Louisa, had a degree in botany. If there are unknown borders to confine what we experience as human consciousness, who is to say whether there are overlapping borders with the neighboring lifeforms, those that sustain us through exchanges of oxygen and carbon dioxide? Further, can we really discount the mystics, the folk tales, and the magical history of nature spirits? And, if we entertain discarnate entities as emanations from the flora, how is that different from the parapsychological apport or the mystical tulpa? Can plants manifest psychic apparitions, or solid objects? Can we?

This may seem to be an insane line of inquiry, but to the mind of this writer it all sounds more plausible than flesh and blood visitors from another planet on a nuts and bolts craft. It has a degree of unreality to it which is so weird it just might be true. Bringing us back to the contactees, it resolves the ecological mission of the Space Brothers. If Orthon or Aura Rhanes were actually plantmind phantasms, it would make a lot of sense. It was jokingly suggested before on this blog that Nessie might be a sentient blob of peat moss, and as the years have gone by I have warmed up to the idea as a real possibility.  As we consider the muck monster form, it is perhaps advisable to refer once again the our fictions as a basis for speculation...

The fictional character Swamp Thing first appeared in 1971, created by Len Wein for the DC Comic House of Secrets. The story of a scientist through misadventure transforming into a monstrous version of his former self saw several changes over the years, culminating in a movie version and a sequel, and several television shows. The "muck monster" idea had precedent in the Theodore Sturgeon story "It! The Thing that Couldn't Die!" and in a comic book called Air Fighters from the 1940s, featuring a monster called The Heap. In "It!", the monster seems to be an animated human skeleton at its core, killing purely out of curiosity; its sentience is unformed and basic. The Heap was animated through the indomitable will to live of a crashed pilot. For our purposes here, we'll stick with Swamp Thing, and more specifically the Saga of the Swamp Thing series written by Alan Moore.

In Moore's story, a lesser DC villain Jason Woodrue is given conditional release from prison to examine the corpse of Swamp Thing. He discovers that all of the organs one might expect to find in a human are there, but none of them fulfill the function they would in a human body- they are replicas, approximations of what human anatomy looks like. They are flora assuming the form of man, and there is actually nothing left of the scientist Alec Holland. So what consciousness drives the Thing? Woodrue's villain persona, the Fluoronic Man, manages to tap into plant consciousness and discovers a worldwide network that operates as one functional mind. He and Swamp Thing refer to it simply as "The Green", a cosmic life force that permeates all of the non-animal life on the planet. So foreign is this manner of sentience, it drives Woodrue mad and he becomes megalomaniacal. 

Our diversion into comic book reality may bear some relevance to a reality we all fail to recognize, though it surrounds us every day. Our houseplant, the denizens of our crisper drawer, or even the Christmas tree we cut down and plant in our living room may have a mind all its own- or, it may be tapped into a network of mind, a cosmic and ethereal energy inextricable from our habitable material realm. Perhaps Plantoids can manifest, as UFOs or lake monsters, as phantoms or fairies; perhaps they can use organic material to build a form or can solidify purely psychic ones. Perhaps the reader assumes that these are the idle thoughts of a human mind under the influence of particular kinds of plants. But maybe, just maybe, the reader is afraid to know that they are not the authority on sentience.

Exorcism Extravaganza!

(The following first appeared in the March 2023 issue of Paranormality Magazine.)

 The word “Exorcism” brings to mind familiar images largely borne out of pop culture and horror movies. Films such as “The Exorcist” and, more recently, “The Conjuring” franchise, inform the popular conception of the ritual. The common depiction of exorcism in movies follow a similar track; a victim of demonic possession, often through dabblings in occult material, becomes taken over by an unseen force which then has to be cast out by a priest. William Peter Blatty, in writing “The Exorcist”, based his story on the real-life account of a boy known as “Roland Doe” in the late 1940s. The popularity of the movie helped to promote a growing idea within ghost hunting and paranormal circles about the prevalence of demons and conversely, the necessity of piety and Christian values. Father Malachi Martin and Ed and Lorraine Warren were instrumental in popularizing these concepts, strains of which can be felt to this day in paranormal television programming. Self-styled “Demonologists”, in the tradition of Ed Warren, can be found taunting spirits on the airwaves to largely agnostic audiences, titillated at the prospect of good conquering evil. 

Far from the fun and games of jump-scares in the cinema, or sensationalized demon-hunting in TV programming, this strain of thought has damaging effects that are sadly more human than paranormal. There is always a danger that mental illness can be exploited or built upon by introducing ideas about supernatural influence. Exorcists working within religious organizations, such as the Catholic Church, are required to rule this out before proceeding with a ritual. Medical experts should always be consulted and on hand for such events, and sadly, there have been deaths and lasting trauma in cases where these protocols weren’t followed.

Unseen malevolent forces, and methods of banishing them, appear in the traditions of cultures all over the world. It seems that humanity has always needed some manner of defense against these outside forces, although various cultures have had a more nuanced view than the dualistic moralism that characterizes the modern cadre of Devil Hunters. A comprehensive survey of varied cultural, religious, and magical beliefs about demons and what to do with them would be quite the undertaking- even within the modern, Christian-based concept of exorcism, quite a variety of cases that don’t fit the Hollywood mold can be found. Often wacky, but ever-interesting, these expectation-defying examples of modern exorcism probably won’t be hitting the theaters any time soon.

The aforementioned Ed and Lorraine Warren bring us our first out-of-the-ordinary exorcism case; that of a Werewolf. Conventional logic would have us believe that a silver bullet is the only tool that can help defeat such a monster, but in this case it was the intervention of the Warrens’ friend Father Robert McKenna. While visiting the United Kingdom, Ed and Lorraine caught wind of the story of Bill Ramsey, the Southend Werewolf. Ramsey was a blue collar, average man with a wife and kids. He worked several jobs at a time, always concerned about providing for his family. He was well-liked by his coworkers and in his community; that is, at least, until his werewolf tendencies were revealed. 

He had twice tried to seek help at an emergency room at the onset of one of his “spells”, and on both occasions he rampaged through nurses, orderlies, and other patients. He was said to have growled and moaned in inhuman ways, his hands curled to simulate claws as he struck out and bit anyone who came too close. After a similar attack on a local police precinct, he was admitted to a mental health facility and kept under observation. His werewolfism was treated as a delusion by the doctors, and a dangerous one at that. Though no physical transformation was reported during these spells, witnesses claimed he possessed superhuman strength and an uncanny animalistic rage.

In meeting the Warrens, he told a tale of being a young boy and feeling a “chill” while out playing in the backyard of his childhood home. It was the first time that he had lost control, and by his account his parents watched in horror as he ferociously ripped a fence post out of the ground and proceeded to bite at the wire, thrashing at the fence like a panicked animal. Ed Warren immediately identified this as the moment “the spirit of a wolf” entered young Bill Ramsey. He also insisted that the only person who could help was just an ocean away at Our Lady of the Rosary Church, in Connecticut.

Father McKenna was sedeprivationist, whose ministry was an offshoot of the main Catholic Church. These traditionalist Catholics disavowed the primacy of the Pope in the wake of changes made in Vatican II. He was altogether willing to help Bill with his werewolf problems, as such traditionalist Catholics tend toward fostering belief in demonic forces as a means of driving people back to church, and to the old ways of doing things. The overseas voyage to his church was sponsored by the British paper The People, in exchange for exclusive rights to the story. The exorcism itself proved to be fairly anticlimactic. The entire affair was videotaped, and the “wolf spirit” did try to resist the efforts of McKenna. Ultimately, Bill was a changed man, and credited this to the ritual. Presumably he’s had no bouts of werewolf rampage since then, at least none that have made the news… 

While exorcising a werewolf is novel, it still very much falls in line with the idea of a person possessed by an evil spirit- and, as we all know, possession is 9/10 of the law. But what about larger scale exorcisms, not just of people but of places?

The 1990s had a few such stories in the national news. In 1998, an exorcist named Baron Deacon tried, and reportedly failed, to drive out “the dragons and serpents” from the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. While it’s unclear what specific effect Deacon had hoped to achieve during his exorcism on the steps of the Capitol Building, it nonetheless garnered attention in newspapers around the country. Another such public ritual, and a much sillier one, occurred earlier in the decade and was led by Father Guido Sarducci. Sarducci was a character developed by comedian Don Novello, who first appeared in episodes of Saturday Night Live. Boston radio personality Charles Laquiderra invited Sarducci to lead the faithful among the Red Sox fans in an exorcism of Fenway Park, their stadium. The idea behind this was to rid the team of the Curse of the Bambino- a superstition among sports fans that Boston had been magically barred from a World Series win after Babe Ruth had left the team for New York in the 1920s. Sarducci’s exorcism involved the releasing of balloons, sprinkling of water, women in short skirts, and liberally applied “noogies” to “shake out the bad spirits”. While amusing, the aforementioned Curse did not cease until 12 years after the exorcism- so it’s unclear whether Sarducci’s efforts could be credited.

While the exorcism of a branch of the Federal Government or of a baseball franchise may seem like a tall order, there is one man whose exploits in banishing make those attempts seem like child’s play. Enter the Reverend Doctor Donald Omand- the man who Exorcised the Bermuda Triangle.

Donald Omand was the son of a minister, and also claimed to have inherited his “feyness” or second-sight from his mother’s side of the family. He credited his innate psychical abilities, this feyness, for his successes in exorcism. To his mind, no amount of training or knowledge could make an exorcist- one must be born with these attributes, and the faith and knowledge would come later. While these magical beliefs may seem at odds with Christian ideas, Omand would say that these are gifts granted by God, and that employing them in his name would then be necessary. 

He studied theology in Germany in the 1930s, while working as a reporter to earn money. This led to him interviewing Hitler multiple times, and also set him on the path of international renown as an exorcist. While in Germany, he was advising on a religious movie being filmed in a studio near another film which featured circus performers. The circus folk saw Omand in his clerical attire and asked him to join their troop as a circus minister. Traveling circuses are perpetual outsiders wherever they go, and many are religious or at least superstitious. The tradition of having a dedicated minister for weddings, baptisms, and other religious ceremonies is not an uncommon one, and it was a role Omand was happy to fulfill. It was in the circus, in southern Germany, when he performed his first exorcism. 

The strong man had been acting strangely. Usually a jovial man, and friendly to children, he became foul and vulgar, and would scare kids away when they came near. Later he would describe the change coming over him after encountering an odd, menacing group of people outside of a church- the leader of which, he believed, had cursed him. During a performance of the lion tamer, the strong man got a crazed look in his eyes and grabbed hold of the bars to the cage where the tamer was directing his lions. The big cats in the show were like pets to the tamer, and the lions in this case were particularly affectionate; but now as the strong man grinned at the edge of the ring they became agitated. Suddenly, the strong man passed out and the lions attacked, mauling and killing the lion tamer. It was surmised that whatever foul force had possessed the strong man was now in the beasts.

Omand had to enter the lion’s den in order to exorcise the possessed felines. For a first attempt at exorcism, this was pretty extreme, but he later recounted a serene feeling coming over him and giving him faith that he would be protected in his endeavor. He was apparently successful, and the lions became tame once again. 

Omand is perhaps best known in Fortean circles for having performed an exorcism of Loch Ness, as recounted in F. W. Holiday’s posthumous book The Goblin Universe. While the exorcism of lake monsters may seem absurd, it’s worth noting that the earliest recorded mention of a monster near the loch comes from an account of St. Columba driving back a serpent in the River Ness, in 565 A.D. Dr. Omand was careful to note that he was not trying to exorcise the Loch Ness Monster, necessarily, but to remove its “evil influence” over the minds of men. Nessie may have been the ghost of a prehistoric beast, he suggested, and ghosts aren’t necessarily harmful. This way of thinking informed other similar exorcisms he performed at the Arctic Circle and at a fjord in Sweden. His method at Loch Ness involved several ceremonies at points along the shore, which would form a cross when pinned on a map, and finally a ceremony on a small boat in the center of the loch. Nessie has still been seen in the years since this event, but Omand was satisfied that the evil aura of the area had been dispersed.

His most audacious exorcism was yet to come- that of the Bermuda Triangle. The area off the coast of Florida had a notorious reputation for disappearances of all kinds, such as that of Flight 19. Omand theorized that a history of trauma in that area as enslaved people were brought to the New World in centuries past had created a vector of evil influence for that part of the sea. In an unfortunate and problematic turn, he suggested in an interview that perhaps a “witch doctor” had been cast overboard from such a ship, and cursed the sea with his dying breath. His exorcism of the Triangle followed a similar plan to that of Loch Ness, with rituals being performed at key areas on shore and at sea. While it’s unclear whether this worked, it’s worth noting that no one ever seems to talk about ships going missing in the Bermuda Triangle anymore.

These wilder tales of exorcism show that there’s much more to the tradition, even in modern times, than we’re led to believe by Hollywood productions or television shows. It also shows the persistent need in humanity to have ritual, to have authorities to which one can appeal in order to address unknown and terrifying maladies. Whether the ritual is silly, as in the case of Guido Sarducci at Fenway Park, hardly matters- the intent and communal engagement in working toward a goal still has power. It also goes to show that there are myriad motivations for pursuing this work, and for seeking such supernatural assistance. Perhaps for some, the simplified “good versus evil” model brings comfort, while others like Omand have a more nuanced and accepting view of otherworldly forces. Whatever the case, perhaps it's high time we had a lake monster exorcism movie!

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The exploits of Rev Dr Omand were a lot of fun to read about and write up in an article- but due to word count restrictions and my compulsive need to pack as much into an article as possible, I wasn't able to get into all of it. Look out for my (at the time of this writing) upcoming appearance on Conspirinormal where I'll be getting into more stories, such as Omand vs a Vampire and Omand vs a Dangerous Intersection!

Nessie-a-Day #7 - Fair Wetherell Friends

As the Nessie-a-Day entries wind down, I thought it only appropriate to get back to that photo - the Surgeon's Photo, which inspired the series. This is the final entry, and I could go into the story of the hoaxing of the photo, but that can be found on innumerable websites in almost verbatim fashion. What strikes me in each case is that the same photo of "big game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell" appears every time - wide eyed, stationed behind a camera, with what appears to be a stuffed monkey sitting on it.

What a character he appears to be! For some reason, upon seeing it, my first thought was of the Abbott and Costello movie Africa Screams. As it happens, old Duke here was actually in the movies, so I guess my intuition was right on the money. An actor in silent movies filmed in England, he went on to direct with minimal success. He couldn't exactly be faulted for this - In the 1920's British films languished in comparison to the much more popular American movies, so much so that in 1924 many movie studios in the U.K. closed down. Ironically, one of the major stars of American films at the time was Charlie Chaplin - a Brit. Embedded is a Wetherell adaptation of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, starring Marmaduke Wetherell.

With his movie career behind him, was he seeking new exploits? Was it his celebrity that prompted the Daily Mail to hire him to track down the beast? And furthermore, was he behind the hoax?

The story goes that he was humiliated after turning in tracks made by an ashtray or umbrella stand, which was made out of a hippopotamus foot, to the Natural History Museum. It's not clear whether he was fooled by a prank by someone else, or if he staged the prints, although some sources claim that the umbrella stand belonged to the Wetherell family. I'm not prepared to rule out an umbrella stand moving of its own volition down the beach... But surely a "big game hunter" estimating an animal so big as 25ft in length would understand that the weight of such an animal would create a deeper impression than a human hoaxer would manage. I'm dubious about whether he was a big game hunter at all - or if he just played one in the movies.

Wetherell Looking at a Map of Loch Ness

The film directing, acting, and producing angle does raise questions - was he there to put on a show? Was the Surgeon's Photo an example of early movie magic? Maybe he was naive enough to try to pass off a taxidermied hippo foot imprint for Nessie tracks, because in a movie it would have looked just fine. The first film appearance of a fictional Nessie, after all, was just a big iguana... fairly lackluster, I must say.

I'm sure someone has asked these same questions and perhaps got answers. With my self-imposed deadline of daily posts I have only managed to get the same limited info on M. A. Wetherell over and over again. Most of the information concerning a hoax attached to the photo comes from a 1975 Sunday Telegraph article with an admission from Marmaduke's son, (also an actor), explaining how the hoax was achieved with a toy submarine model. This was later found and expanded upon in the book Nessie-- The Surgeon's Photograph -- Exposed by David Martin and Alistair Boyd, a review of which can be found here. Perhaps reading that book in its entirety would help me suss some of this stuff out, but I rather like the illusion - shaken though it may be, like the disproportionate ripples on a miniature scene set adrift. True believers still maintain that the photo is genuine, and I'm generally open to possibilities. I sure hope that Nessie's out there, I still get excited about the idea of it. If nothing else she's given me a week straight of writing material, and that in itself is some manner of existence. 

In closing, this week of Nessie posts has taken some turns that even I didn't expect, and if you took the whole ride I heartily thank you. You may now return to your significantly less weird life!

Nessie-a-Day #6 - Conjecture Time

via GIPHY

So far in the series of daily Loch Ness Monster posts, I've covered a few of the many people involved in the history of studying the mystery animal. I've also tended toward more metaphysical or downright magical explanations that have come from the likes of Ted Holiday, 'Doc' Shiels, or others who would link the monster to Crowley. To balance things out, today's post is less research intensive as it relates to specific investigators, authors, and the ideas they have; today's post is almost 100% pure speculation and conjecture about what Nessie IS. (Isn't that what we all get into Forteana for anyway? Doesn't each of us secretly think we've got it "all figured out" or that our ideas about a given subject are so much more informed than the next guy's? No? Just me? Oh. A-hem...)

The most popular depiction of the Loch Ness Monster is that of a living Plesiosaur. As a young boy that's what attracted my interest to Nessie, as I was obsessed with dinosaurs - the idea of a flesh and blood, living aquatic reptile that appeared during the Triassic Period and flourished all over the world up until the extinction event that eradicated the dinosaurs. The 'living dinosaur' theory is a very nice one, but it raises serious questions. For one thing, such a creature would presumably need to come up for air often, and thus would likely be seen more often and accepted as a natural fauna of the Loch. In addition, similar beasts have been seen in lakes much smaller than Ness - leading some toward the more magical explanations explored in previous posts. Loch Ness does open to the sea, (kind of), and I've always liked to think of it as a spawning ground for Plesiosaurs or other such like prehistoric monsters living in the ocean most of the year. That the mating period just so happens to coincide with tourist season in Scotland is neither here nor there...

Other accounts of living dinosaurs have come up from time to time through-out history, from the Thunderbirds of the Americas to Mokele Mbembe of the Congo. The lack of evidence for this as a solution is often a source of derision for skeptics who would seek to debunk the monster sightings. Meanwhile, true believers often point to the Coelacanth, a fish thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago and eventually discovered as a living specimen. The ocean may well be a fantastic place to hide creatures long thought extinct, and Loch Ness has its secrets in the murky depths as well. I've always thought perhaps there were underwater caverns, leading to a vast cave system or perhaps some manner of Hollow Earth. In the documentary Hellier, it's noted that the Mammoth Cave system on the eastern end of the U.S. is massive, extending from Kentucky up into New England. One wonders if subterranean waterways could also exist, accounting for the more landlocked lake monsters like Champ, or Ogopogo. Also, Hollow Earth theory might sound crazy, but in light of the scope of a cave system like Mammoth Caves, it starts to sound more reasonable...

Scientists are only just learning recently exactly how old some creatures in the ocean are. New methods to help determine the age of sharks like the Greenland Shark have shown, in recent years, that they can live to be somewhere between 270 to 500 years old. It's thought that they don't even reach breeding age until age 150. If some sharks can live for centuries, it makes one wonder how long a Plesiosaur might have lived. Also, various clams in the ocean are thought to have the longest lifespan, and actually become less likely to die as they age! And plant life can live on replicating itself through vast networks with other plants... I'm not suggesting Nessie is an amorphous glob of sentient peat moss, but I'm not ruling it out either!

We touched briefly on Holiday's tullimonstrom gregarium (giant slug) theory, and Shiel's elephant squid theory, which are both great because they involve invertebrates who would leave nothing behind in the way of fossilized bones, and also would conceivably not need to come up for air. And of course there is the more logical explanations of what people are seeing - otters, seals, swimming deer, logs, and whatever other no-fun dismissive reactions. But to take a step in an even wackier direction than living dinosaurs and Hollow Earth Theory, what about Time Slips?

Suppose a prehistoric aquatic creature pokes its head above water, and finds itself 150 million years ahead of where it swam up from? Then, having had a glimpse of the future, it goes right back the way it came to tell all its friends about the cool castle ruins of Loch Ness's coast. Then it writes a book on its experience, and none of its friends believe it as they've been to the Loch and never seen such things. Old prehistoric Nessie lives out her days wondering "Just what the Hell was that?"

With all the research going on in physics these days related to quantum field theory, retrocausality, and potential paradigm shifts as to the nature of space-time I tend to believe more and more that Time Slips like the one described in Versailles around the turn of the century to be a real possibility. Frankly, all of the quantum physics stuff is above my pay grade, but it makes for fun thought experiments...

Join me tomorrow for my seventh and final Nessie-a-Day installment - same Ness time, same Ness channel!

Nessie-a-Day #5 - East of the Loch, as the Crow(ley) Flies...

The Loch Ness Monster is many things to many people - to some, those perhaps with a tendency toward magical thought, Nessie may well be a dark entity or demon. As referenced in my previous entries, Ted Holiday came to believe that his Great Orm was something of another Goblin Universe, and was present for the exorcism of the Loch; Janet and Colin Bord postulated that 'Doc' Shiels' invocation rituals, as (intentionally) silly as they were, may have in fact created Tulpas - thought forms represented not only by Nessie, but by ABCs (Alien Big Cats), Black Dogs, and flying creatures. In Alien Animals, they note the proximity not only to Loch Ness but to a place called Boleskine House for a few major ABC events. Boleskine House was the scene of a legendary botched magick ritual by a young Aleister Crowley, who bought the estate in 1889. He had intended to call upon his Holy Guardian Angel, in a sacred ritual from the 1500s - the Sacred Ritual of Abramelin the Mage. The story goes that young Crowley summoned and then lost control of shadowy figures from Beyond, or that he abandoned his 6 month preparation program too soon - a full and well-written account of these events by Greg Newkirk can be found here, in a 2011 article for the wonderful Week in Weird website. But a lot has happened at Boleskine since 2011, and more has come to light regarding the rituals Crowley was engaged in.

The day of this writing, a BBC article appeared concerning Boleskine - that it is up for sale again. The house and property changed hands many times over the years, adding to the legend that Crowley's black magic had made it an evil place. Most notably, it was owned by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. In 2015, a fire broke out in the remote estate which reduced it nearly to rubble. Some would argue that the place was cursed, so a fire seems a fitting end to the building itself. But the question that is just too good and too weird to not ask is did Crowley conjure Nessie?

The Bords argue that although the modern phenomena of a monster in the Loch kicked off in 1933, stories of a monster went back centuries. Holiday also acknowledges tales of dragons, or Orm, in his second book The Dragon and the Disc. The ABCs occurring as a result of botched magical workings have precedent in occult literature - to King James I it was the Devil himself, choosing a form he liked - a lion, an ape, or a dog. The Ritual of Abramelin did involve calling forth evil entities, so the story goes, and bringing them under control after union with the Holy Guardian Angel. This is reportedly where Crowley ran into trouble.

Crowley was a complicated man who really divides people in opinion about him. Often thought of as a well-to-do kook who lived for infamy, he has just as many (or more) devotees, admirers, and people who respect and fear what he brought to the table. In addition to his aforementioned association with the Loch Ness monster, there's also his contacts with an inter dimensional being called "Lam", who seems eerily similar to our modern concept of Grey Aliens. In addition, I've noted before that his death was right around the time of the first major Flying Saucer flaps - 1947. Whatever your thoughts about Crowley might be, it's not unfair to say from an objective standpoint that his life was chaotic. Thus, it's not beyond the pale to blame him for a bungled ritual. But that might not be the whole story...

In recent years, a new translation of The Book of Abramelin has been released by Ibis Press. In 1897, S.L. MacGregor Mathers had translated the ritual from an incomplete French version of Abraham von Worms' original grimoire, and this would have been the version that Crowley brought with him to Boleskine House. Is it any wonder that his working would go sideways on him, if the book he was working with was translated from an unreliable source? In the foreword by Lon Milo DuQuette, he goes to great lengths to stress that Mathers actually did a great job of translating the French text - it's just that the French text did a poor job of translating from the original German. It seems an Erisian twist of fate that Crowley may have really done everything to the letter - but the letter itself was wrong! The famed 6 months of preparation, it turns out, should have been 18. It would seem that small discrepancies can do a lot of damage...

Also worth noting, in the spirit of Name Game synchromysticism - the Magician who authored The Book of Abramelin is called Abraham von Worms. Holiday referred to Nessie as an Orm, which can also by Worm or Wyrm in English folklore. Of course, "von Worms" as a moniker simply means that Abraham was from Worms, Germany - but that has synchronistic value as well. Worms is the setting for the first part of the Nibelungenlied, in addition to other German folktales tracing their roots to the Kingdom of the Burgundians in the the early 5th century. The legendary hero Sigurd, or Siegfried, is prominent in these tales. Siegfried is, of course, notable for having killed a dragon, before being murdered himself...

In closing, if anyone wants to loan me (or just give me, preferably) $650,000 to buy Boleskine House estate, I'll be your best friend!

References

• https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-47936223?SThisFB
• http://weekinweird.com/2011/04/11/the-boleskine-house-loch-ness-other-stranger-monster/
• The Book of Abramelin - Abraham von Worms, compiled and edited by Georg Dehn and translated by Steven Gutch. Revised and expanded edition 2015. www.ibispress.net
• Alien Animals - Janet and Colin Bord, 1981
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worms,_Germany
• Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule - Micah Hanks 

Nessie-a-Day #4 - Tony Shiels... What's up, 'Doc'?

Tony 'Doc' Shiels is one of the most fun and colorful characters I've come across in all of my strange reading. And that's saying something! He seems to round all the bases of my various weird interests - first and foremost, as he would prefer according to interview segments I've read, the man is an artist - a Surrealist painter who came to call his conceptual continuity (to borrow a term from Zappa) works of "Surrealchemy". He has been a busker, musician and performer; a stage magician and the Wizard of the West; a trickster and a sincere lover of spectacle - but for the purposes of the Nessie-a-Day series, he's the man who coaxed the Loch Ness Monster out for a photo shoot!

Tony Shiels was born in 1938 in Salford, where he developed an early affinity for sleight-of-hand and learned some tricks from his family. At age 16, he began attending Heatherly School of Fine Art in London, thereafter beginning a promising career as an artist in St. Ives, Cornwall. He played blues piano, performed magic, and generally had a good time in the counterculture scene. Eventually he would write columns in such magic magazines as Linking Ring and The Budget, developing what became known as "Bizarre Magic" - spookier magic tricks that worked in occult elements (ie card tricks utilizing Tarot cards) that broke the mold a bit for the tastes of stage magicians at the time.

All of this is very interesting to me - the blues, Surrealism, the occult, sleight-of-hand, 60s counterculture are all long-term fascinations of mine. But my introduction to the Doc included none of these details - I was drawn in by his appearance in a book called Alien Animals, by Janet and Colin Bord.

In the interest of fairness, I sought this book out after seeing a picture of it online - that cover art is FANTASTIC. As it happens, it's a great book that explores all manner of mysterious out-of-place (hence, alien) or unknown creatures from all over the world. Janet and Colin Bord have written many books on a variety of Fortean and folkloric topics, and are the stewards of the Fortean Picture Library. In a 2017 interview Janet credits Shiels' Nessie photo (printed in the Daily Mirror, shown above) for being the first of many that made up said library...

In the book, published in 1981, 'Doc' Shiels comes up repeatedly with very little explanation as to who he is - he's described as a Wizard, one who does experiments in "monster raising" with a trio of nude witches - an experiment that apparently yielded results. How could I do anything other than dig deeper into this story??? The photographic evidence seemed to indicate that his efforts were efficacious, leading the Bords to question whether the creatures were summoned, or created out of thin air in the manner of a Tulpa (as described by Alexandra David-Neel in Magic and Mystery in Tibet).

Skyclad Witches inkvoke Morgawr - if nothing else, 'Doc' knew how to throw a party!

1976 was the year of the skyclad witches and their swimming rituals to lure in sea serpents - the monster Morgawr was reported during this time at Falmouth Bay in Cornwall. The Owlman of Mawnan was also reported around this time, and by '77 Shiels had developed his monster raising techniques into a network of participants, willing monsters into existence in an experiment called Monstermind. A lot of reports came out during this era, a lot of photos as well; Shiels gained a bit of notoriety (and perhaps infamy) in the press as the busking Wizard who had Nessie under his spell. Most of the photographic evidence from this era is considered a hoax now, and many of the reports were thought to be a product of Shiels himself - often they were in the form of a letter, and original witnesses weren't interviewed. Shiels maintains that he never hoaxed any of the monsters - his conjurations he credited, in 1981, to his "strong desire for success".

Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry for Shiels has been edited between the time I first viewed it and the time of this writing - last year, the entry seemed to be a damning indictment of Shiels as a fraud, while now it has a more generous and fuller account of his personality. If you're reading this in the future, it may have changed again! But such is the nature of our amorphous reality, when information is as malleable as a bunch of ones and zeros in a computational code...

The best way to really get to know 'Doc' Shiels is by reading the biography written about him by Rupert White - Monstermind: The Magical Life and Art of Tony 'Doc' Shiels.

The 1977 experiments were cut short due to "Psychic Backlash" - an effect reportedly experienced as a sense of fatigue following encounters with Nessie by F. W. Holiday and Tim Dinsdale, among others. That and, according to Shiels, it had already been a success as photos had been produced not only of Nessie but of other monsters around the world. The antidote to this backlash effect, as prescribed by the 'Doc' was, in keeping with his trickster nature: humor. The protection offered by a sense of humor, he says, "has to be paid for. So, although my humourous wizardry is successful, it is not taken seriously by the monster hunting establishment." Truly a man after my own heart!

He wrote continuously for the Fortean Times, as heavily quoted in my previous entry, in his column "Ask a Wizard". He eventually came up with a cephalopod theory about Nessie, that the monster was actually a form of elephant squid!

In his long and varied career of various careers - from monster-raiser to artist, musician to magician, he's been an amazing figure that it took me far too long to find out about. There's a list of books that he's authored that I someday hope to get my hands on... and he's still out there, creating art and has made television appearances in the past few years. Long live Tony Shiels- thanks for all the entertaining and thoughtful fun!

Nessie-a-Day #3 - Sail into the (Synchro)Mystic

Today's Nessie post is a bit of a mind-bender and one I probably put way much thought into. It involves a bit of the Fortean "Name Game", and plays on words from the old Fortean Times magazine, with a nod to cryptozoologist / author Loren Coleman's Twilight Language, which he defines as "the study of hidden meanings and synchronistic connections via onomatology (the study of names) and toponymy (study of place names)". And Mr. Coleman, if you're reading this, I apologize in advance for what may be a sloppy version of the work you do - and by no means do I wish to diminish it!

In the aforementioned Fortean Times issues, the game was "Lexi-Links", coined by Anthony Bell. It's the pun-like repetition and distortion of names and symbols linked to anomalous phenomena. And given the F. W. Holiday synchronicity alluded to in Nessie-a-Day #1, and all the ado given it's due, let's do the thing and proceed.

The "Surgeon" in question, who is allegedly took the photograph this series is celebrating, is often referred to in reports as a Dr. Wilson, or Kenneth Wilson, but the man's full name was Robert Kenneth Wilson. (It's likely to my mind that he preferred to go by "Kenneth".) Well as a devout Discordian (except every other Thursday, when I choose a religion randomly out of a hat to ascribe to) it's hard to see that name without thinking of Robert Anton Wilson, the author of  Illuminatus! and Episkopos, Pope and saint of Discordianism.

He was actually born Robert Edward Wilson, a year or so before the first major Nessie sightings. Technically, he earned a PhD in psychology from Paideia University in 1978 - making he, too, a doctor - but that particular university is now closed, and was unaccredited in the time he spent there. R.K. Wilson was a gynecologist, and was described as someone who "enjoyed a good practical joke" - The story behind the surgeon's photo is that it was staged by the nephew of the humiliated would-be monster hunter Marmaduke Wetherell, and given to Wilson who could play the role of a more reliable and unbiased witness. Compare this to R.A. Wilson, a notorious prankster who, along with popularizing Discordianism, was one of the driving forces behind Operation Mindfuck - which often involved prank letters printed in magazines and newspapers...

The two Dr. Roberts above made me think of the Beatles song from the 1966 album Revolver, which made me think of the "Mr. Wilson" reference in the song Taxman from the same album, which made me think of the hit single Yellow Submarine - which reminded me of the VIPERFISH, a mini-sub piloted by Dan Taylor in the Loch in 1969 in search of Nessie. The sub was yellow... I wasn't sure any of that was significant, but I tend to think that I'm an Idiosyncratic Synchromystic whether I admit it or not. So my thought is: Every particular thing is significant, except for those things that aren't. Looking into the recording details of the song Dr Robert, it was recorded on April 17, 1966, and the vocals were recorded April 19th - the 32nd anniversary of the shutter click heard round the world. Also worth noting - 1966 is the year Paul McCartney died, if you believe the Paul is Dead theories. I'm with RAW, who said "belief is the death of intelligence"...

I'm not the first to note the confluence of Wilsons - self-proclaimed Wizard, Artist, and raconteur Tony "Doc" Shiels (who is intimately tied to Loch Ness - he famously "summoned" the monster and will absolutely be covered in a future post) wrote in the Autumn 1982 issue of Fortean Times:

'W' is the 23rd letter of the alphabet...twenty three skidoo, Weishaupt and Wilson! Wilson (viz: Robert Anton, Kenneth, and Colin) is a name with weird worm and wizardry associations, so we will keep it in mind: 

Of course, he also includes Colin Wilson, who I mentioned in the F. W. Holiday post as being responsible for Holiday's The Goblin Universe being published - which examines the whole of weird phenomena as a network of otherwordly symptoms - synchronicity prominent among them - all having a common cause, or controlling force. The word "goblin" is thought by some to be associated with a later term, "gremlin", which brings me to the next Wilson on my list...

This Robert Wilson isn't a doctor, in fact, he's presented as a recently discharged patient. He goes by "Bob" instead of "Robert", and his other distinguishing characteristic is that he's entirely fictional. Bob Wilson is the name of the character played by William Shatner in the classic 1963 Twilight Zone (Twilight - Language, Zone!) episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. Wilson is on an airplane, alone in his awareness of the monstrous gremlin on the wing threatening to kill everyone aboard. It's a bizarre and truly nightmarish scenario, where the line between sanity and reality is unclear for everyone involved. It is, also, a great metaphor for monomaniacal pursuits of various Fortean phenomena - always seeing things or knowing things that you can't easily communicate to the average person, like a sighting of a lake monster, or spending a Saturday night deconstructing a Twilight Zone episode to make it relate to the Loch Ness Monster...

via GIPHY

Eventually, the episode culminates in Wilson stealing a revolver (!) from a sleeping policeman and opening the emergency hatch to fire on the creature, which then departs. In the end, he's vindicated by the physical damage to the fuselage, but is wheeled away in a straightjacket all the same. In 1983, the story was done for the movie version of the Twilight Zone, with Jon Lithgow playing John Valentine. The only name I could relate this to was Michael Valentine of Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein, but I couldn't grok any real meaning out of it so I abandoned it. It's worth mentioning simply because it extends the Fortean metaphor; Valentine attempts, in desperation, to get a Polaroid photo of the gremlin, only to have the flash thwart him and leave him with a picture of his own sweaty, frenzied face - echoing Holiday's observation of Nessie's eerie aversion to being photographed... Deep, man...

The most recent offering from Jordan Peele, Nightmare at 30,000 Feet, is more of an homage to the classic story, and is quite different. I won't go into too much detail, as it's still new and I wouldn't want to spoil it, but the lead role is played by Adam Scott, and instead of Valentine or Wilson the character is named Justin Sanderson. Old school Forteans will recognize the name Sanderson - Ivan T. Sanderson wrote a great deal of literature on weird phenomena, as well as the foreword to Holiday's The Great Orm of Loch Ness... as for the name Scott - Sir Peter Scott was a respected naturalist who studied the Loch for signs of a hidden beastie and was the one who named her Nessiteras Rhombopteryx - Latin for Ness Dweller with a Diamond Shaped Fin. It was noted not long after that the term is also an anagram for "Monster Hoax by Sir Peter S". That may well just be the Goblin Universe having a bit of fun with us... Shiels notes that it also can be "Tony's ESP beats hex... Mirror" and that Scott is a name long associated with magic (Michael, Reginald, Sir Walter).

Of course, prior to Richard Matheson's fictional tale of a man on the wing made television history, there were reports of gremlins tinkering with planes. The phenomena is almost as old as aviation itself. During the Battle of Britain in 1940, reports of gremlins messing with aircraft were so common the Ministry had a service manual written by "Gremlorist" on how to handle them!

1940 began with a bang, or perhaps a splash - though not specifically gremlin related, a New Year's even training flight over Loch Ness resulted in a Wellington bomber sinking into the depths. The bomber was numbered N2980, but the nickname was - ready for it? R for Robert. The sunken WWII bomber was discovered in 1976 during the sonar surveys of the Loch, 230 ft below the surface. In the mid-eighties, efforts were conducted to retrieve the lost bomber by an organization called the Loch Ness Wellington Association, headed up by chairperson Robin Holmes.

Which brings us to our Nessie-a-Day #2 entry about the movie prop -from a Sherlock Holmes film- that was found twice during surveys of the Loch - the sunken monster, which was, in the movie, a submarine disguised as a monster, and was intentionally sunk at the end. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes was a 1970 movie by Billy Wilder, while in 1975 Gene Wilder starred in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother... The filming by Wilder on location at Urquhart Bay was in 1969, and was assisted by a submarine called the Pisces II, while the yellow submarine VIPERFISH was also in the Loch, hoping to catch a piece of Nessie... The same year Abbey Road was released, with the "28IF" license plate on the cover...

This is now degenerating as these things tend to do - this has been an exhausting post and I hope you made it this far. I'll leave you with one more snippet from Tony "Doc" Shiels, again from a Fortean Times magazine which also features articles from Loren Coleman and Robert Anton Wilson...

The names Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson can be anagrammatized into such telegrammatic lines as "O NO! WHAT? JOHN KEEL LANDS COY LOCH NESS ORM!" or "JOKE ON LOCH NESS AND LOCAL MONSTER, OH, WHY?"

References / links / further reading:

• https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/07/the-real-gremlins-of-wwii/
• https://copycateffect.blogspot.com
• http://www.donttakepictures.com/dtp-blog/2017/4/19/the-loch-ness-monster-turns-83-the-story-of-the-surgeons-photograph
• Monster Wrecks of Loch Ness and Lake Champlain by Joseph Zarzynski, 1986
• Fortean Times - issues 37 and 38 (Fall 1982 and Spring 1983)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Robert
• https://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3555152/flight-fright-richard-mathesons-nightmare-20000-feet-many-adaptations/
• Alien Animals by Janet and Colin Bord
• Alien Dawn by Colin Wilson

Nessie-a-Day #2 - The Loch Gets Wilder

In spring of 2016, an underwater robot caught a picture of a monster in the loch - but this monster had been photographed before, some say, by Robert Rines and the Academy of Applied Science (AAS). Of course, this monster was made to be put in the movies - turns out all it needed to do was act naturally!

In 1969, the Billy Wilder movie The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes was filmed on location in Urquhart Bay. The plot involves secret submarine tests in Loch Ness, with the test sub disguised as a lake monster - Sherlock's brother Mycroft (played by Sir Christopher Lee) is wrapped up in all of this. It seems that Billy Wilder didn't like the double hump of the Nessie model and had it removed - unfortunately, the design of the humps were part of what allowed for buoyancy for the 40 foot beastie. So, as it was towed out into the bay, it sank beneath the waves and was abandoned- the scenes involving the movie monster used a rebuilt head and neck at a London water tank.

The AAS continued to believe that the underwater photo they captured in 1975 showed a genuine living creature, despite the insistence by the press and skeptics that they had simply found the movie prop. Also, the area where the model was recently found has been a hotspot for Nessie sightings in recent years. Maybe the sunken model is something of a roadside attraction, or a sacred idol to the monsters of the Loch? Perhaps Nessie simply wants a selfie with her Hollywood double...

Joseph W. Zarzynski's 1986 book Monster Wrecks of Loch Ness and Lake Champlain covers this and other stories of sunken boats and crashed planes in both lakes, and is certainly worth reading for the lake monster fanatic. For more information on the underwater robot mentioned at the top, look here.

That wraps up Nessie-a-Day #2!