ANOMALY Magazine Welcome’s Brian Worsham!

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Watching the ARGonauts Play

If you’ve followed the Elfis Network from the beginning then you know of my early interest in Alternate Reality Gaming and their potential for “mucking up the works” for paranormal and parapolitical researchers. You may also know that my interests were rekindled in 2007 by the provocative hypotheses of blogger DreamsEnd, who speculated that the mysterious suicides of artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake were some kind of sophisticated art hoax or viral marketing / alternate reality game. After a very rough period of defending his theories online, blogger DreamsEnd temporarily pulled up shop, taking down his websites. My own re-investigations into ARGland dwindled and I too went back to my normal para activities…

That is until I became aware of a new blog that was following many of the threads explored by DreamsEnd; KadesKorner. Here was another blogger (with a writing style nearly identical to that found at DreamsEnd) writing about many of the themes and topics we’d been exploring during the Theremicity period: Andy Kaufman, Election Fraud, Andy Stephenson, false identities, the Franklin Coverup, the Octopus and PROMIS, Middle East parapolitics and … Theresa Duncan and ARGs! And through “Kade” I learned of a new ARG to watch out for; what has come to be called TGATT or The Great And The Terrible aka I’m Sorry. But before getting off into the I’m Sorry mindfu…, er um, ARG, let’s take a peek at some of the more interesting ARGs and Viral Marketing campaigns that have been bleeding through their alternate ARGiverse realities into our own.

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The latest issue of the cryptozoologically themed Image Comics title Proof (issue # 18, on stands now) features a short interview with Sean Whitley, the writer/director of the forthcoming documentary Southern Fried Bigfoot, which discusses sightings of the Skunk Ape, Honey Island Swamp Monster, the Fouke Monster, and other southern hominids.

Keep your eyes peeled for an AnomalyMagazine.com review of Southern Fried Bigfoot as the premiere date approaches.

Proof # 18 is in stores now

Southern Fried Bigfoot premiers April 13, on The Documentary Channel

Bigfoot’s discovery is TBA

Somehow this has flown under my radar for a couple of months, but Dan Akroyd is marketing his own brand of boutique vodka sold in a skull shaped bottle. What does this have to do with anomalous phenomenon you ask?

Everything!

In his online video explaining the liquor, an oddly sweaty Akroyd almost seems to be parodying himself in some Twilight Zone episode of SNL as he talks about everything from ghosts, UFOs, and the “invisible world”,  to ectoplasm (a running gag of his Ghost Busters movies) and the latest Indiana Jones movie. That’s right. The latest Indie movie and this vodka have something in common other than actors who made their best movies two decades ago. The bottle shape was chosen as a tribute to the infamous crystal skulls.

So that the packaging matched the spiritual potential of the contents, naturally.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any stranger, Akroyd reveals the secret filtration process that makes his vodka the purest in the world. I won’t reveal it here. The video just has to be seen for itself.

And in spite of the sheer ridiculousness of it all, I can’t help myself. I really want a bottle of this vodka! Or thirteen. After all, as the website for Crystal Head Vodka notes:

Brought together, the Crystal Heads are said to contain vast knowledge and enlightenment capable of unlocking our most enigmatic ancient mysteries. Alone, each is believed to house radiant psychic energy, which has magical powers and healing properties.

Spirits indeed.

www.CrystalHeadVodka.com

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Respectability. Reputation. Legitimacy.

For those researching strange phenomenon, establishing and maintaining a good reputation, a measure of respect, and the legitimacy of their studies is always an uphill battle. Mainstream journalist and pundits usually scoff, when they bother to pay attention at all. Hoaxers and scam artists garner big notice in the press. But researchers who are respected in their particular cloistered field, and who have called a hoax a hoax from the outset, are relegated to a footnote in the mainstream news reports. That is, they are relegated to a footnote if they are lucky enough to be noticed at all.

In the world of conspiracy theory, ufology, cryptozoology, and fringe science, your damned when you speak out, and damned when you don’t.

So, given all of this, what does respectability even mean to these fields? Enthusiasm and interest ebbs and flows, as it does for anything, and people choose to construct a world-view that best suits them. If that means that all bigfoot reports are hoaxes so that they aren’t afraid to go into the woods at night, or that ghosts are real because nothing else explains the creepy feeling they get in the third floor guest room where Uncle Jim died, then that is what people choose to believe.

With incidents like the recent pseudocide of 9-11 Truther Ace Baker, blogged on here by SMiles Lewis, and the Georgia bigfoot body hoax pulled off by a police officer and former prison guard (professions comprised of individuals normally accepted as paramounts of honesty and respectability) in August of last year, it seems valid that we pause and ask ourselves some questions.

How important is reputation in these fields? Jacques Vallee is educated, well written and spoken, not prone to jumping to conclusions, and yet he would be lumped in with the “saucer nuts” by most mainstream journalists. The same could be said for hominid researchers such as Jeff Meldrum, who like Vallee has an academic reputation to maintain outside of his personal studies.  Yet while the Meldrums and Vallees of this world suffer under the derision and constant scrutiny of colleagues and the media, or keep their private pursuits to themselves; known hucksters and hoaxers like Tom Biscardi continue to benefit from the flippant attitude toward the subjects and lack of background research undertaken by various local media outlets. Biscardi is a known and proven hoaxer, yet he can pull into any small town and have the cameras on his crew in a matter of hours.

Perhaps, as guest blogger Oliver Hallen muses in the post below concerning UFO reports by police officers in the UK, respect and reputation are concepts as culturally and contextually loaded, and therefore as ephemeral, as the UFOs and beasties we endeavor to understand.

(The views expressed by Oliver Hallen are his own and do not reflect the opinions or views of AnomalyMagazine.com, its editorial staff, or myself. — Jeremy D. Wells)

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80 Years with a Blinking 3rd Eye - Free Austin Event

The name C.B. Scott Jones is both obscure to many a casual UFO buff yet widely known among “deep seekers” of the UFOlogical and Parapsychological communities. His work for Senator Claiborne Pell investigating paranormal phenomena and his briefing of President Clinton’s Science Adviser on behalf of Laurance Rockefeller are the stuff of legend - and yet they are fact. He is the founder of the Human Potential Foundation and the Center for Applied Anomalous Phenomena. He supported the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR), served on the board and as President of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) and  served as board member for Atlantic University (a division of ARE, the Edgar Cayce organization the Association for Research and Enlightenment). He also helped with the TREAT II (Treatment and Research of Experienced Anomalous Trauma) conference at Virginia Tech that brought together many in the UFO, alien abduction and paranormal research fields.

These and a lifetime of other anomalous experience make Cecil B. “Scott” Jones an extraordinary guest for the Austin Consciousness / Anomaly Community.

We hope you will join us in welcoming C.B. “Scott” Jones this coming Tuesday night:

Tuesday, November 25, 2008, 6:30 - 8:30 P.M.
Austin History Center, 810 Guadalupe St., Austin, TX
Free and open to the public.

Read More Here:

Free Austin Lecture: C.B. Scott Jones on UFO Disclosure - Austin, November 25th

Stephen Romano’s Shock Festival: STARCRASH

Rated PG; 92min; Director:Luigi Cozzi  

Location: Alamo Downtown

This show is a part of the Celebrity Guests Signature Series, Click to See More

Acclaimed author/screenwriter Stephen Romano (MASTERS OF HORROR) invites you to the world premiere of his brand new book Shock Festival, a tribute to exploitation film, featuring ONE HUNDRED AND ONE of the most awesome drive-in/grindhouse flicks YOU’VE NEVER SEEN! Why haven’t you seen them? Because Stephen made ‘em all up! Shock Festival is a wild ride through the twisted back alleys of a Hollywood Babylon that never was (think SPINAL TAP meets GRINDHOUSE), and tonight we’re celebrating its arrival with a rare screening of the most awesome outer space drive-in classic of the seventies: STARCRASH! Laser battles! Intergalactic cavemen! A space fortress that looks like a big blue hand! The most beautiful leather babe that ever kicked ass in thigh-high boots! The worst special effects ever seen! All this- and David Hasselhoff!? Yep, you heard us right! DAVID HASSELHOFF. And he’s got a lightsaber, too! This Italian schlock classic was the inspiration for Romano’s book, and we got our hands on a widescreen 35mm Dolby Stereo print just for the occasion! And to do it up right, we’re also presenting TONS of swell drive-in movie trailers from just about every genre of “psychotronic” film! It’s a celebration of fringe exploitation cinema like no other, so come ready to be “blasted beyond the blackness of a hundred million nights!”

Kid Policy: 18 and up; Children 6 and up will be allowed only with a parent or guardian. No children under the age of 6 will be allowed.

Screenings (click on a show time to buy tickets):

• Tuesday, October 21, 2008
  • 9:30p

www.ShockFestival.net

www.MySpace.com/ShockFestival

www.MySpace.com/DoctorTheatre

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema - Stephen Romanos Shock Festival: STARCRASH

That last post about Sarah Palin’s involvement with Pastor Thomas Muthee got a lot of us talking about witchcraft, the ongoing belief in, and fear of, witches in various parts of the world, and the consequences of mob rule and even legislating faith and morality. I’ve recently been reading “Passport to Magonia” and I’m sure the various writings of Jacques Vallee, no doubt, could place this in a greater historical context than I could hope to do in a simple blog post. The fact remains though, that occurrences that most of us would attribute to happenstance, coincidence, or, if it were something truly spectacular, maybe even to UFOnauts or extra-dimensionals, are still interpreted as witchcraft by others (and not just in far off, exotic locales like Kenya, although reports from Africa are more common, either because the media ignores such claims in the US press, relegates them to the “strange news” queue, or because social pressures keep more people from discussing their beliefs openly).

At some point in the future, I may even tell you about some of my own family’s stories regarding contact with malignant spirits they attributed to witchcraft (for instance my late grandmother Bailey always attributed misplaced objects in the home to “those little imps”, a clear ideological descendant of the brownies, boggarts, and house sprites her Scots and Irish ancestors would have believed in), but for now, we’ve got witchcraft links.  Below you will find several links to news stories discussing witchcraft in these various forms.

On the political front we have Palin blessed to be free from witchcraft.

In the cultural differences department, we’ve got African albinos persecuted as witches and witchcraft rumors sparking a soccer riot.

We’ve got a little of both, a smattering of xenophobia, and that legislation of faith and morality we discussed, with a witch trial in Saudi Arabia.

Finally we come full circle, and back to our concerns about separation of church and state, and legislating faith (an issue that concerns me, too, as that rare beast, a progressive, liberal Christian) with this commentary on, and video of, Pastor Thomas Muthee praying for Sarah Palin to help tear down the barriers that separate church and state. (Also embedded below.)

I’ve been labeled a politico in the past. I’ve been villified by readers who labeled me a “Godless liberal” and a “conservative fundamentalist mouthpiece”, for the same article on the seperation of church and state. I was even fired from my first newspaper job for writing anti-pollution editorials. With Anomaly Magazine though I’ve tried to stay away from politics, leaving that territory on this site to my more political and conspiracy minded compatriots. (A notable exception being my last post, on the arrests of protesters at the RNC in Minneapolis, because there are some impositions on our liberties that just can not go ignored.)

I don’t expect to be making any partisan pleas anytime soon. But a recent article from the TimesOnline , tying Palin’s success in her bid for the governorship of Alaska with the prayers of an African Witch Hunter, seems to dovetail too nicely with our format here at Anomaly Magazine to ignore. According to that article, Palin was impressed not with Pastor Muthee’s humility and deference to the Holy Spirit, but his ”powerful” demand that God “make a way” for Palin to succeed in her bid for the Governor’s seat. And it isn’t just God that Pastor Muthee is forceful with, but anyone he deems an enemy of his faith.  This includes people he labels as witches. As noted in the TimeOnline article: 

According to accounts of the witchhunt circulated on evangelical websites such as Prayer Links Ministries, after Pastor Muthee declared Mama Jane a witch, the townspeople became suspicious and began to turn on her, demanding that she be stoned. Public outrage eventually led the police to raid her home, where they fired gunshots, killing a pet python which they believed to be a demon.

And here you thought that only “radical anarchist organizers” (btw, isn’t “anarchist organizer” a bit of an oxymoron?) needed to fear having their doors kicked in under a McCain/Palin administration.