It’s A Big Conspiracy

On March 10, 2022March 10, 2022 By Sarah AngletonIn Conspiracy Theories, literature, Science13 Comments

In August of 1926, The Yale Review published a little sci-fi story that I suspect had much further-reaching consequences than the editors imagined it would. But some astute readers were paying attention and quietly began spreading the highly instructive message of “The Tissue-Culture King” by Julian Huxley.

Julian Huxley. Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Huxley tells the tale of a group of scientifically minded explorers that, lost in the African bush, follows a two-headed toad and stumbles into a giant engaged in worshipping a microscope slide. The party soon becomes acquainted with a previously unknown kingdom with a highly developed culture of blood and ancestor worship.

Also in the kingdom is another white man who had been captured fifteen years earlier and, with the aid of the King’s most important advisor, had managed to exploit the people’s religious rites for the purpose of scientific experimentation, thus giving rise to the worship of tissue cultures as the means to immortality for the king and beloved elders.

I admit that so far, the story sounds a little far-fetched, but I think it’s safe to say that’s just what They want us to think. Late in the story, just about the time this reader’s eyes want to glaze over, another type of ongoing research is introduced. The captured scientist reveals that, with the enthusiastic support of the King’s man, he has been experimenting with hypnosis and telepathy.

Excited at the possibilities of the experiments, the narrator begins to assist and soon the two are able, with group hypnotic suggestion, to send instructions in a wave over the entire kingdom. At this point the narrator thinks they might use their newfound scientific powers to put the kingdom to sleep and make their escape, if only they can find a way to shield themselves from the hypnotic suggestion.

Rory112233, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

To us modern readers, the answer is clear. The captives shield themselves from the telepathic waves by donning hats made of metal foil. It works, at least until they assume they are far enough away to abandon their protective headgear, only to discover that the King’s evil henchman has overcome and amended their suggestion to a simple, irresistible command to return.

Experts on tin foil hats, who are extremely difficult to find and are rarely willing to make public comments, suggest that Huxley’s fairly obscure story is the smoking gun in the truth about where the foil hat phenomenon came from in the first place. Of course, they also admit that could be a lie fed to us by the government. The world may never know.

What we do know, thanks to the incredibly important work of some MIT grad students who allegedly have too much time on their hands, is that there may be more to the story. In 2005, the students released the results of a groundbreaking and mind-shattering study which revealed that aluminum foil hats actually amplify the radio frequency bands allocated for use by the US government.

It’s worth noting that the MIT researchers did not receive so much as a whiff of interest from the Nobel Prize committee. And I suspect we all know why that might be.

This leaves us, I think, with some questions. First, if Julian Huxley’s story really is the first mention of the protective nature of tin foil hats, then how did that idea first occur to him? Could it have been fed to him telepathically by a government intent on amplifying the private thoughts of its citizens? Was Huxley, instead, involved in the elaborate plan? Was the editorial staff of The Yale Review complicit? Is the MIT study merely an attempt at misdirection by the Feds?

Or did Julian Huxley never intend for any of his readers to actually wear tin foil hats? And was the point of “The Tissue-Culture King” exactly as stated in the story itself, that the increase of scientific knowledge and the power it may lend to those who would yield it for their personal gain, might carry with it some consequences well worth considering? Eh, that seems a little far-fetched.

Looking to the Skies

On May 27, 2021 By Sarah AngletonIn Astronomy, Conspiracy Theories, Current Events12 Comments

On the night of February 20, 1954, while he was vacationing in Palm Springs, California, then US President Dwight Eisenhower disappeared. Fortunately, he reappeared the next morning and attended a church service in Los Angeles as scheduled, but there were several hours during which the president’s whereabouts couldn’t be accounted for.

Does this look like a man with a toothache? Dwight D. Eisenhower, official photo portrait, May 29, 1959.jpg, White House. Public Domain.

According to the president, his staff, his wife Mamie, and one bleary-eyed dentist, Eisenhower’s absence could be explained by the need for an emergency dental procedure following a tooth cap mishap at dinner. I think, however, it might be worth considering another possibility.

According to conspiracy theorists, a bunch of people who refer to themselves as UFOlogists, and the son of a US Navy Commander witness, what actually happened that night was that the president traveled to nearby Edwards Air Force base for a clandestine meeting with some blue-eyed aliens.

To be clear, I am not suggesting this other possibility has a great deal of merit or anything. I count myself pretty firmly in the camp that assumes if there is life on other planets, its only use for us is as the villainous visitors in stories about midnight abductions and anal probes. That’s assuming that said aliens possess anuses, which I certainly wouldn’t swear to.

But I do think it’s fun to talk about the possibility of aliens, because there’s an awful lot of scary stuff happening on this planet—stuff that divides all of us humans with our widely varied cultural outlooks, political ideologies, and beliefs about the universe and our place within it. In light of all that, alien life still seems like a relatively safe, apolitical, uniting topic.

Actually, I bet aliens don’t have anuses. That’s probably why they spend so much time probing ours. Image by Daniela Realpe from Pixabay

And maybe that’s the reason that all of the mainstream media outlets in the US suddenly decided last week to spend their time talking about UFOs and alien visitations. UFOs, known to people in the know who do not refer to themselves as UFOlogists as UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), have evidently been appearing to military pilots. Frequently. For years.

So says Luis Elizondo, alleged former member of a super-secret government Pentagon project called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program and former president and armchair UFOlogist Barack Obama. At least one of those sources seems credible. And actually, both kind of do, because neither has said that we have definite proof of extra-Earth astronauts (which those of us schlubs outside the UFOlogist and secret government communities simply refer to as aliens).

What they’ve said is that sometimes we see stuff and upon further inspection, we’re still left scratching our heads. Personally, I am in favor of a Pentagon project to figure out what all these pilots are looking at and if Congress wants a little more information coming up next month, I’m okay with that, too.

I’m not sure why it all had to be super-secret, or why it suddenly has to claim top billing in the news cycle, but I don’t mind amid all the chaos down here on Earth, taking a little time to look at the skies. It’s significantly less worrisome up there. Because if we can believe the UFOlogists (and why wouldn’t we?), Eisenhower worked out a treaty with our alien visitors back in 1954.

Bigfoot, Mormons, and Smoking Guns

On February 6, 2020February 6, 2020 By Sarah AngletonIn Books, Conspiracy Theories11 Comments

Earlier this year, on January 22, the Washington State Department of Transportation made an unexpected discovery. While reviewing footage from a camera near Sherman Pass on State Route 20, they spotted…something.

Sasquatch spotted!!! I’m not superstitious… just a little stitious. Have you noticed something strange on our Sherman Pass/SR 20 webcam before? If you look closely by the tree on the left there looks to be something… might be Sasquatch… We will leave that up to you! pic.twitter.com/RaDGqQdEUF

— WSDOT East (@WSDOT_East) January 22, 2020

That’s right folks, Bigfoot is alive and well and living in the mountain passes of Washington State. Maybe. It’s a fair bet that people are paying closer attention to the WSDOT twitter feed these days and that’s a good thing. These cameras are supposed to show potentially dangerous environmental conditions along the state’s most treacherous roads. They are not necessarily intended to reveal the presence of cryptozoological creatures, which lends maybe the smallest hint of sort of credibility to the video.

The WSDOT certainly isn’t staking its professional reputation on the discovery. After all, they are only “a little stitious,” but I suppose it’s possible they have found the smoking gun in one of the world’s greatest mysteries.

Not a literal smoking gun, of course, though that does seem to be how the phrase may have originally been used. One of the earliest examples is found in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Gloria Scott” in which a “smoking pistol” in the hands of a criminal demonstrates his guilt beyond any reasonable doubt.

The phrase didn’t gain much traction as a metaphor for another eighty years when the US press pretty universally adopted it in reference to the hunt for evidence in President Nixon’s impeachment case.

Since the more metaphorical resurgence of the phrase in the 1970s, its use has blossomed to incorporate that one missing piece of crucial evidence that supports not only a criminal case, but also a scientific assumption, or even a conspiracy theory.

I do love a good conspiracy theory. And the best ones seem to all be missing just that one smoking gun. If only the public could finally see the alien technology kept at Area 51 or the original unedited film from Stanley Kubricks’s moon landing hoax.

My new novel Smoke Rose to Heaven, which came out this week, was inspired by a smoking gun from history. In 1830, a man named Joseph Smith published a new sacred text called The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi.

He claimed to have found these golden plates buried in the Hill Cumorah in New York State and to have translated them from “Reformed Egyptian” by divine interpretation made possible with the use of seer stones thrown into a hat. Once he was finished, the plates were taken up to heaven. BoMSmoke

As you might imagine, not everyone was quick to swallow this unusual story. Though Smith’s book won him followers and started a religious movement that continues today, it also garnered a number of detractors. One of those was newspaper editor Eber D. Howe who in 1834 published Mormonism Unvailed. Howe’s book includes a large collection of affidavits swearing that Smith’s sacred text was really the plagiarized work of an unpublished and by then deceased novelist named Solomon Spalding.

Like most conspiracy theories, the claim is supported by a lot of circumstantial evidence, a few assumptions, and possibly some questionable motives, but also like most, it is plausible. At least it’s plausible enough for fiction.

Because if true, this theory, which has come to be known as the Spalding Enigma, would be well served by the existence of the original manuscript of the Spalding novel, allegedly titled Manuscript Found. This particular smoking gun has thus far been lost to history.

But it’s not lost to historical fiction. My novel is the coming of age story of a woman who comes to possess that manuscript. It begins with the Spalding Enigma, but in the course of the story also seeks to explore the unique cultural environment that allowed several new religious movements to begin. The book is fiction. It’s intended neither to convince nor convert, but rather to look at an interesting moment in history.

I mean it’s certainly no Bigfoot caught on a Department of Transportation camera, but I’m pretty proud of the book and I hope you’ll consider checking it out.

Want to help me spread the word? If you’re willing to share about the book on social media, I’d be so grateful. You can share this post, the Amazon link, or the book trailer. Really, any mention at all would be great! I even have some ready-made tweets if you’d like to use them. Thanks!

Tweet this “A fascinating look at a historical mystery that spell-bindingly blends fact with fiction.” Smoke Rose to Heaven. #bookrelease #tbrlist #amreading

A girl abandoned becomes a woman pursued by a dark past, a dangerous secret and those who would kill to keep it hidden. Smoke Rose to Heaven. #bookrelease #tbrlist #amreading

A woman with a unique gift and a tragic past holds the key to unravelling one of history’s greatest deceptions. Smoke Rose to Heaven. #bookrelease #tbrlist #amreading

Puritans Inhaling Swamp Gas

On March 15, 2018March 16, 2018 By Sarah AngletonIn Astronomy, Conspiracy Theories, Holidays6 Comments

Sometime in late February of 1639, a man by the name of James Everell, along with two of his Puritan buddies, rowed his boat up the Muddy River of Massachusetts and spotted a weird light in the sky. The light appeared as a large flame, about three yards square, and then began to dart around the sky, taking on a different shape, like that of a swine, presumably still on fire.

Maybe that fancy, dancy light was just the aliens’ way of inviting the men to a pig roast. photo credit: eric dickman Pig Roast ’05 via photopin (license)

After a few mesmerizing hours of watching the flaming pig streak back and forth across the sky, the three men realized that during that time, they had somehow ended up a mile upstream from where they’d been with no recollection of how they’d gotten there.

But here’s the really strange part. These three pals actually told people they’d watched a flaming pig fly through the night sky. By people, I mean they told John Winthrop, then governor of the Massachusetts Colony and among the puritanest of Puritans. On March 1, 1639 he wrote down the account in his now well-studied diary. It’s clear he found the tale a little odd, but also that he believed the tale-tellers to be credible men who generally made pretty bang-up witnesses.

JohnWinthrop — John Winthrop. If this man told me he’d been abducted by aliens, I’d probably believe him. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

There are a few possible explanations, then, for what these reliable men saw. First, and obviously most likely, this could be the earliest written account of a North American UFO sighting and alien abduction. Alternatively, these gentlemen could have been boating to a safe distance away from the stocks before overindulging in their puritanical beer. Or of course the whole thing could just be an example of spontaneously igniting swamp gas reflecting off Venus.

Governor Winthrop proposed another explanation nearly five years later when two similar events occurred. During the second of these later events, a voice accompanied the mysterious lights. Winthrop’s most reliable witnesses said they heard the words, “Boy! Boy! Come away! Come away!”

The governor notes fourteen days later, the same voice could be heard again. The reason, he suggests, is that the colony had recently experienced a nearby shipwreck resulting in an explosion. All the victims’ bodies were accounted for except one. Logically, Winthrop theorized the Devil had possessed the body and was now using it, along with a freaky light show, to terrorize the colonists. Hmm. Maybe.

foil hat — This guy knows what I’m talking about. photo credit: c r i s They’re Coming To Take Me Away / 135.365 via photopin (license)

Then again, perhaps a bunch of enthusiastic otherworldly visitors were calling to their human would-be abductees as they have so many times in generations since. Personally, I’m a little skeptical, but perhaps you’re not. Perhaps you, or someone whose story you find credible, have experienced something that to the rest of us might seem a little far out there.

If so, then National Alien Abduction Day, observed in the US on March 20 every year for at least the last decade, may be just the day for you. As for me, I think I’ll avoid the swamp gas and the puritanical beer that day. Perhaps I’ll fashion a nice aluminum foil hat, too, just in case.

Earthquakes and Alien Probe Technology

On January 18, 2018January 17, 2018 By Sarah AngletonIn Astronomy, Conspiracy Theories3 Comments

At around 9:00 on the morning of January 19, 1916, Baxter, Missouri resident Mrs. Frank Jackson heard a terrible noise and received a frightful shock. The sound would later be described as something like discharged dynamite followed by a series of heavy strikes against a large drum and fading off to the north, disappearing completely after a few minutes. Initial reports in the local paper didn’t identify the source of the noise, but rather requested the opinions of readers as to what may have caused the disturbance.

One of the most useful observations came from some of the Jacksons’ neighbors who were working in a field nearby and claimed to have been peppered by gravel falling from the sky. And of course there was the 611 gram stone that crashed through the Jacksons’ roof, hit a log beam, and lodged itself in their attic.

What had fallen from the sky was a meteorite, made of, well, spacey meteorite stuff, as verified twenty years later by American Meteorite Laboratory founder H. H. Nininger. It measured somewhere around 13 cm across. While the impact of such a stone isn’t going to dramatically alter the earth’s climate or cause mass extinction, it’s certainly large enough to weigh down the corner of a tarp on a breezy day or scare the stuffing out of someone when it crashes through the roof of their house.

There’s not much word on what poor Mrs. Jackson thought as the meteorite came crashing into her house, but perhaps we can make some assumptions based on the reactions of those who witnessed a fiery meteoroid falling through the sky above southeast Michigan on Tuesday of this week.

If Twitter is any indication, the good folks in Michigan, though not quite as terrified as Oregonians facing the trauma of pumping their own gas, were pretty freaked out by the incident. Captured on dashcam video, the meteoroid, which scientists estimate was about two yards across when it entered Earth’s atmosphere, exploded in the sky, causing a small Earthquake and an awfully loud boom.

meteoroid — I’m a big fan of shooting stars, but I admit if I actually saw a huge one that exploded with a loud boom and an earthquake, I might get a little jumpy. photo credit: tonynetone meteorite hits Thunder Bay, Ontario via photopin (license)

Witnesses expressed confusion and then a great deal of concern as they processed whether Armageddon had come at last. Within minutes, conspiracy theorists took to the Internet to caution against initiating any contact with the many small meteorites scientists believe are now spread across the state. The main concern, obviously, is that surviving meteorites are actually alien technology, likely parts of otherworldly probes, of the variety that have been sent frequently to Earth by malevolent alien forces since at least since the 15th century. Seems legit to me.

NASA, on the other hand, has seemed relatively flippant about the whole event, more or less stating that though massive balls of fire flying into the Earth’s atmosphere are relatively rare, slightly less massive balls of fire do it all the time. So maybe everyone should just calm down.

I just have to assume that if aliens have really been sending probes to Earth for at least hundreds of years, they aren’t really in that much of a hurry to invade.

Despite both the dire warnings and the nonchalance, the hunt is on for meteorite pieces. NASA has made a few suggestions for where people might have luck looking, but is clear that any chunks found will probably be pretty small and might not really be worth all that much.

But when H. H. Nininger verified the Baxter meteorite as the real thing, he was quick to make an offer. I haven’t been able to find how much he paid for this delightful addition to his extensive meteor collection, but hopefully it was at least enough to cover the repairs to the Jacksons’ roof.

Since Tuesday’s heavenly event, experts have explained to the media that the value of a meteorite will depend largely on its makeup. Whereas the more common iron will net you somewhere between 50 cents and $5 per gram, a stone meteorite might fetch up to $20 per gram. Now if it’s made of alien probe technology, well, I suppose there’s no telling how high the price might go.

Author Sarah Angleton

Category: Conspiracy Theories