Brazil's Columbine: Ten Dead in School Shooting

Two former students opened fire at a Suzano, Brazil school on Wednesday, March 13, 2019, and killed at least six teenagers as well as two school officials before dying by suicide in an attack that police said was inspired by the 1999 Columbine massacre in the United States. The two armed men were wearing face masks or hoods. They shot and killed the six children who were on their snack break, as well as two school officials, before fatally turning their guns on themselves.

They reportedly were carrying firearms, crossbows, and homemade bombs.

The gunmen have been identified as Guilherme Taucci Monteiro, 17 years old, and Luiz Henrique de Castro, 25 years old. Monteiro (pictured) posted images of himself on Facebook shortly before the attack.

Before entering the Raul Brasil School in Suzano near Sao Paulo, the former pupils shot and killed the younger assailant's uncle, who owned a car rental agency where they stole a vehicle.

Ten people, including the two attackers, were therefore killed in total, Sao Paulo police said. The students who were killed were boys mostly 15 and 16 years old.

h/t Rodrigo Craveiro

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A Columbine copycat? A few media accounts in Brazil are discussing this school shooting as a copycat of the 1999 Columbine attack, which involved two young men with multiple fatalities. But this date is filled with anniversaries.

March 13, 1943, is the date on which the Nazis liquidated the Jewish ghetto in Kraków, Poland.

This Brazilian shooting occurred on the anniversary of the Dunblane shooting in Scotland where 16 youth and a teacher were killed, ending in the suicide of the gunman. On March 13, 1996, Thomas Watt* Hamilton, a local Stirlingshire man, shot dead 16 children and their teacher, Gwen Mayor, in Dunblane Primary School's gymnasium before killing himself. He used his licensed weapons and ammunition.

This is not the first mass school shooting in Brazil. On the morning of April 7, 2011, twelve children aged between 12 and 14 were killed and 12 others seriously wounded by an armed man who entered Tasso da Silveira Municipal School (Escola Municipal Tasso da Silveira), an elementary school in Realengo on the western fringe of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

In 2015, there was a fatal school incident in Spain. A 13-year-old Spanish boy armed with a crossbow and a machete killed a substitute teacher and injured four people at his school, the Joan Fuster School in the La Sagrera neighborhood of Barcelona, Spain. Since it occurred on April 20, 2015, a direct Columbine date copycat. See my analysis here.

While the Columbine High School shootings on April 20, 1999, became the modern template for school shootings, as noted in great detail in my 2004 book, The Copycat Effect, the "modern era" of school shootings began in the USA on February 2, 1996, in Moses Lake, Washington.

The new pattern that was shown in that shooting was of a male student (not an outsider) entering the school and killing his classmates and teachers. In the Moses Lake event, Barry Loukaitis, 14, in this Columbine precusor, dressed all in black, including a long coat (apparently more of a Western duster than a trenchcoat), held his algebra class hostage, killed two students, wounded another severely, and killed his algebra teacher, Leona Caires.

Loukaitis then turned to the class and said "This sure beats algebra, doesn't it?"

The quotation was nearly a direct one taken from a Stephen King book, Rage, about a school shooting of an algebra teacher that Loukaitis allegedly used as the model for his attack. The first novel by Stephen King published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1977. King withdrew the book from publication three years later, after Columbine.

What subject did the Brazilian adults who were killed teach? The Brazilian shooters were students of mass violence.

Loukaitis had planned the shootings carefully, getting ideas, he said, from the Stephen King book Rage (1977). In it, a troubled high school boy takes a gun to fictional Placerville High School, kills his algebra teacher “Mrs. Underwood,” another school adult “Mr. Vance,” and takes the algebra classhostage. Police would find a collection of Stephen King's books in Loukaitis' bedroom, including his well-worn copy of Rage.

The Rage scenario had been played out before in real life. At Valley High School, Las Vegas, Nevada, on March 19, 1982, after algebra teacher Clarence Piggot refused to cancel a public speaking assignment; 17-year-old Patrick Lizotte gunned him down. Patrick also wounded two other 17-year-old students during his rampage. He left the school and was killed nearby during a shootout with the police. On January 18, 1993, Scott Pennington, 17, took his senior English class captive at East Carter High School, in Grayson, Kentucky. He killed his teacher and a custodian. Pennington would tell investigators later that he only read Rage after the shooting. In 1997, Rage would be linked to another shooting. A copy of Rage was found in the locker of Michael Carneal, a high school shooter in West Paducah, Kentucky.

Stephen King discussed the role of Rage after the Loukaitis shootings and eventually King apologized for writing the book, saying he penned it during a troubling period in his life. He said he wished it never had been published. Finally in 1999, he told his publisher to pull it from publication and took it out-of-print. He told the Today Show’s Katie Couric: “I took a look at Rage and said to myself, if this book is acting as any sort of accelerate, if it’s having any effect on any of these kids at all, I don’t want anything to do with it, regardless of what may be the moral and legal rights and wrongs. Even talking about it makes me nervous.”

______

* In The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit, Jim Brandon writes, regarding the overall "name game":

I'm not talking here of such spooky tongue-twisters as H.P. Lovecraft's Yog-Sothoth or Arthur Machen's Ishakshar, but of quite ordinary names like Bell, Beall and variants, Crowley, Francis, Grafton, Grubb, Magee/McGee, Mason, McKinney, Montpelier, Parsons, Pike, Shelby, Vernon, Watson/Watt, Williams/Williamson. I have others on file, but these are the ones which I have accumulated the most instances.

Emphasis added. ~ Loren Coleman 

Sirius Rising In the Days of Synchromysticism

"John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King were not assassinated; they were ritually sacrificed."

So begins the liner notes of Jim Brandon's newly released 2018 revised edition of his audio book from 1974-1975, Sirius Rising, which has a new subtitle, Mr. Downard and the Synchromystical Boson.

The time does seem correct for Sirius Rising. Specifically, the work, by "coincidence" appears now, on the anniversary of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan (March 30, 2018), right before Easter Sunday (April 1, 2018), and on the way to the anniversary of the killing of a King, Martin Luther King (April 4, 2018). This all is an appropriate temporal sync.

Before Brandon became well-known in Fortean circles for his classics, Weird America (1978) and The Rebirth of Pan (1983), he had created and shared with associates a now long-unavailable and difficult-to-obtain tape of his interviews with James Shelby Downard (March 13, 1913 – March 16, 1998). Yes, it was a reel-to-reel tape.

Brandon characterizes Downard as a "quasi-spiritual visionary who pioneered or advanced the mind-bending and spellbinding disciplines of 'mystical toponomy' and 'synchromysticism.'"

While some have talked only of Downard's work as that of a "conspiracy theorist" and a "mad genius," there is a core group, including Jim Brandon, Adam Parfrey, Michael Hoffman, Jim Keith, Adam Gorightly, Greg Bishop, Michael Bell, SMiles Lewis, Kenn Thomas, and me, Loren Coleman, who have framed Downward in the broader context of a Fortean examining the mysteries of the world cryptopolitically.

Jim Brandon, with all due credit to me and others, will soon expand the ranks of those discussing Downard to include a growing generation of synchromystics. I predict this CD will be played and pondered by a wide range of thoughtful researchers and followers of twilight language, cryptokubrology, sync worlds, name games, discordian works, and more.

The power of Brandon's previous audiobook, Sirius Rising (1974-1975) remains apparent in modern materials about Downard, as evidenced, for example, by a recent documentary series by Mandate33 to Adam Parfrey's published output from Feral House.

(Update: Will the shocking death of Adam Parfrey at 61 on May 10, 2018, have a quieting effect on Feral House's published works? Parfrey was the first to publish Downard's "King Kill 33" in the first 1987 edition of Apocalypse Culture, but it was not in subsequent editions.)

Adam Gorightly's recent book on Downard has much to do with Sirius Rising, as well:

Downard contended that the Illuminati arranged that the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, would be a 33rd degree Mason.
Downard’s King Kill 33° draws upon a larger conspiratorial canon, which surfaced in an audiocassette series produced by Downard protégé William Grimstad in the mid 1970’s entitled Sirius Rising. According to author Robert Anton Wilson, Grimstad’s Sirius Rising presented the theory that “the Illuminati were preparing Earth, in an occult manner, for extraterrestrial contact.” Part of this magickal preparation consisted of the founding of Cal Tech, the home of Parson’s JPL, on the 33rd degree latitude, near the SoCal town of La Canada. Located in the same vicinity is the fabled Devil’s Gate Dam, where Parsons conducted O.T.O. rituals. ~ Adam Golightly (James Shelby Downard's Mystical War)

It is remarkable how many of the subjects in Sirius Rising have become the background and foreground talking points for today's synchromystics and Forteans, in print, online, via social media, in podcasts, and in visual contexts.

For example, nowadays most people take it for granted that Aleister Crowley, the events at Boleskine House, and Loch Ness would appear in the same linkages. The association  appears, perhaps for the first time, in the midst of Brandon's talking book. There are several gems to be mined in Downard's words.

Sirius Rising (2018) covers many topics that serve as dots that Downard and Brandon connect in their free-ranging discussions. These include:
- the killing of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King;
- sex magic;
- CERN;
- the killing of the king ritual;
- William Shakespeare's MacBeth/ Barbara Garson's MacBird;
- the Black Watch;
- Miss Chudleigh, the "Great Whore";
- Sir Francis Dashwood's Hellfire Club;
- Aleister Crowley;
- Loch Ness;
- "Scarlett Woman" Leila Waddell;
- Zorro;
- Ordo Templi Orientis;
- Jack Parson;
- Jet Propulsion Lab;
- Moon Child ritual;
- Lee Bouvier;
- Jacqueline Kennedy;
- Tres Hermanas / Three Sisters
- Kennedy Mountain;
- Johnson Mountain;
- Ruby Road;
- Alchemy;
- Jornada del Muerto / Journey of Death;
- 33 degree of latitude;
- Dealey Plaza;
- Dallas, Texas;
- Trinity River;
- Egyptian Masonry;
- Memphis;
- Mizraim;
- Little Egypt;
- Rite of Memphis;
- Scottish Rite of Freemasonry;
- Albert Pike;
- Coyote;
- Mt. Palomar;
- Orange Court;
- Phoenix;
- Rancho Sante Fe;
- Hotel del Carco;
- J. Edgar Hoover;
- Knights Templar;
- Ley Lines;
- Cal Tech;
- Jules Verne;
- Cape Canaveral;
- Star Cities;
- Jupiter;
- Sirius;
- Apollo 11;
- Trinity Site;
- Homunculus;
- Vacaville;
- SLA;
- Naga; and
- Patty Hearst.

Quite a list, and the connections to items of interest that continue to be discussed today are significant.

Highly recommended.

Sirius Rising: Mr. Downard and the Synchromystical Boson (© 2018) by Jim Brandon.

A new CD, with a new introduction and new eight-page booklet by Jim Brandon. Contains the original 1974-1975 recordings obtain by Brandon of several interviews with James Shelby Downard.

The titles of the 8 tracks are:
1. Mr. Downard speaks - Jim Brandon updates.
2. The matrix of symbols.
3. 'Voici le temps des assassins' (A. Rimbaud)
4. 23 Skidoo...plus 10.
5. Little Egypt is bigger than ever.
6. Memphis belle to Scarlett Woman of Revelation.
7. Amerika Alkhemika?
8. A spyshop Phoenix.
You will want to secure your copy today, from Jim Brandon personally, before this CD becomes as rare as the previous offering was soon after it appeared 42 years ago.

There are a few different ways you can obtain this CD:

Sirius Rising (2018) is available by USPS from Jim Brandon Media - Post Office Box 6653, Colorado Springs, CO 80934. The cost is $15.00, postpaid.

Checks and money orders (made out to Jim Brandon Media) accepted.

To assist this important material reach interested researchers, I am allowing Jim Brandon Media to utilize my PayPal for those who wish to use credit cards.

My PayPal address is

LColeman [@] maine.rr.com

(remove brackets)

Send $17 to cover the CD, fees, and postpaid. It will be sent to you via first class mail.

Domestic orders only; no international orders accepted at this time. Cash sent at the sender's risk. Please allow two weeks for delivery.

[Disclaimer: This review is an independent critique. I gain no personal fiscal return from the sales of Mr. Brandon's CD. ~ Loren Coleman.]

Bellingham's Ramming: Bell Name Game Again

After rammings in Heilelberg and New Orleans, there has been another. On Sunday, February 26, 2017, a car ramming took place in London.

At about 8:20 am on Sunday, February 26, 2017, a car rammed into pedestrians on Bromley Road, Bellingham, southeast London. Five people have been injured, with at least one person trapped under the vehicle at the site.

Allegedly, the driver reportedly lost control and crashed into the group of pedestrians before hitting a wall.

The driver was detained at the scene by an off duty police officer before being arrested on suspicion of drink driving and causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
The road remains closed as investigations are carried out.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said:

Five people - four men and a woman, believed to be aged between 25 and 46 years - were treated at the scene before being taken to south and east London hospitals.
Three of the pedestrians - a 35-year-old woman and two 25-year-old men remain in a critical condition.
Two other men, aged 36 and 46 are in a stable condition; their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.
The driver of the car was detained at the scene by an off-duty police officer before being arrested on suspicion of causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
He was also arrested on suspicion of drink drive before being taken to a south London hospital with a head injury.

The crash happened opposite a car wash outside Catford bus garage.

Photos posted online show a Mercedes sedan that appears to have come off the road and rammed into the end of a hedge, its hood and trunk popped open by the impact. 

Bellingham, U.K.

Bellingham is an area of southeast London, Within the London Borough of Lewisham. It lies south of Lewisham and north of Beckenham.
The Bellingham Estate is an London County Council cottage estate bordered to the east and west by railway lines running south from Catford. Along the south it is bordered by Southend Lane, the A2218 main road. The River Ravensbourne runs through Bellingham, although it is either underground or part of a man-made section of the river. The Prime Meridian passes to the east of Bellingham.
Randlesdown Road serves as a mini "High Street" for Bellingham providing a local supermarket, men's and women's hair dressers, dry cleaner, off license, newsagent, fish and chip shop, pub, various takeaways and a recently built gym (situated on Bellingham playing fields). Source.

Bellingham, Washington State, U.S.A.

Bellingham in America is a well-known site of strangeness. "Bellingham alone has been linked to no less than four serial killers in the last 30 years," writes Ali LeRoy in "Bellingham's Most Violent Visitors." (Thanks, RDS.)

Bellingham has been a focus of Bigfoot cases, conferences, and even the tragic death of a Sasquatch conference organizer, Star Sams, in 2006. Source.

The X-Files episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" has the Air Force pilot, dressed as an alien, as being shown to be born in Bellingham, Washington. (Thanks, AWG.)

Bell Green

Bell Green is an area in the London Borough of Lewisham, between Perry Vale and Bellingham. The area was historically known for its gas works and the poverty of the local workers, in what Charles Booth called "the one really poor district in this quarter of London." The gasworks closed in 1968 and the whole area redeveloped; it is best known today for the eponymous retail park. Source.

Bell Name Game, Again

Are we seeing a bit of the The Name Game this weekend? Should we watch what monikers come our way through Tuesday, Mardi Gras?

In Jim Brandon's 1983 book, The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit, he writes, regarding the "name game":

I'm not talking here of such spooky tongue-twisters as H.P. Lovecraft's Yog-Sothoth or Arthur Machen's Ishakshar, but of quite ordinary names like Bell, Beall and variants, Crowley, Francis, Grafton, Grubb, Magee/McGee, Mason, McKinney, Montpelier, Parsons, Pike, Shelby, Vernon, Watson/Watt, Williams/Williamson. I have others on file, but these are the ones which I have accumulated the most instances.

Besides detailing the Fayette Factor often, in my 1983 Mysterious America, I noted:

Cryptologic or coincidence? Jim Brandon should be credited with calling attention to the name Watts/Watkins/Watson, and its entanglement with inexplicable things. Some other names involved in mysterious events pinpointed by Brandon are Bell, Mason, Parsons, Pike, Vernon, and Warren. The influence of such names as Mason, Pike, Warren, and Lafayette, for example, issues, in some cryptopolitical and occult way, from their ties to the Masonic tradition.

See also:

Bell Name Game

Phantom Clown: Macon + LaGrange

Correspondent Jim Brandon (The Rebirth of Pan) writes:

Well, we had a Fayette episode so how about something explicitly Masonic? Phantom clowns were reported in Macon, Georgia. 

I have written about this part of the name game often, as Macon is the French for Mason, and the use of that name is an overt Masonic naming of the landscape, just as much as Lafayette, Washington, and a number of other power names. I grew up in Macon County, Decatur, Illinois, so my decoding experience with "Macon" is firsthand.

After the organization of Bibb County in 1822, the city was chartered as the county seat in 1823 and officially named Macon. This was in honor of the North Carolina statesman Nathaniel Macon, because many of the early settlers in Georgia hailed from North Carolina. Macon was the 5th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, under President Thomas Jefferson.

Nathaniel Macon

Nathaniel Macon, a Freemason, was the son of Maj. Gideon Macon (1715–1761) and Priscilla Jones (1718 – March 1802). Nathaniel’s father’s parents were John Macon (December 17, 1695 – March 31, 1752) and Ann Hunt (1697 – February 15, 1725), both of Virginia. Nathaniel’s paternal great-grandparents were Col. Gideon Macon (c. 1648 – February 1701 or 1702) and Martha Woodward (1665–1723). Gideon and Martha Woodward Macon were also the great-grandparents of Martha Dandridge who married George Washington and became First Lady of the United States of America. Therefore, Nathaniel Macon was the second cousin of Martha Dandridge Washington.  In Masonic circles, Major John Mason held several offices in the grand lodge. Most, if not all, the Macon men in the ancestral line were all Masons down through the 20th century.

Freemasons use Mason names to name locations to honor other Masons, thus Macon, Georgia was named after Nathaniel Macon.

Brandon continues, regarding Macon, Georgia, with these insights:

The really interesting aspect is the geographic since Macon is just a few miles south of the 33-degree latitude line. But also – ta-dah! – abt 50 miles west on the line is Warm Springs and the Little White House where 33-degree Mason FDR use to go (all the way from DC by train no less) for rest cures. And even FDR died there in 1945 under strange circumstances, according to crime writer Emanuel Josephson.

The essence of the Phantom Clowns reported from Macon, Bibb County, Georgia are that several reports developed when four children at a bus stop or walking to school said they saw some clowns bothering them.

It happened on Tuesday morning, September 13, 2016, near Elkan Avenue. Three clowns were reported by Aisha Thompson, after her children ran home.

“If it’s a joke, it’s not funny. If you think this is something to play with, don’t. Take it serious,” said Thompson. "They're still shaken up. My oldest daughter, she's the big sister of all four of them, she's shaking in her jacket. When I was hugging her she was shaking and she's in the mentor's program, on the softball team, and JLC. She doesn't want to go to school and my children love school."

Thompson's youngest son, Marlon Patterson, said the clowns were wearing face paint and were shining lasers as they ran out of the woods and up and down the street.

"I was very scared, I started crying, I didn't know how we were gonna get home so we just tried to go to everybody we could to get a ride and one lady gave us one," said Patterson. 

Thompson said her children have also received friend requests on Facebook with clowns as their profile pictures.

"I don't know if it's something they're doing just to scare them or if it's something serious, but I would rather be safe than sorry," said Thompson.

“They saw a laser light. When we were having our discussion about this yesterday, it was mentioned that they would be in the woods shining one of those lasers to get the children’s attention, so they said they started to walk fast and as they approached the woods they came out and they took off running,” she continued.

Lt. Randy Gonzalez with the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office says, “We’d like to find out who they are because we don’t want them giving small children impressions that clowns are scary because we as adults growing up know that clowns to us were not scary.”

“Kids think they’re going to school is their job. They’re unable to perform their job correct, having fear,” said concerned mother Teria Davis.

Thompson says her younger child attends Southfield Elementary which is nearby the area. She adds she will have to take her kids to school on her own until this issue is resolved.

It was reported that the clowns came from bushes and abandoned houses near Elkan Avenue and Dapleton Drive.

Some of the kids who reported the clown sighting to authorities also reported that they received Facebook messages from people dressed as clowns saying "I will find you."

The Bibb County Sheriff's Office said this is the first report of clown sightings in the area, though Tuesday morning's witnesses told deputies that the sightings had been going on for the past few days in the "bottom side" of Bloomfield.

Sources, 1, 2.

Just in...also from Georgia and also Masonic.

Tom Mellett passes along a news story from LaGrange, Georgia about someone on Facebook threatening to become a creepy clown and abduct children - for Tuesday, September 13, 2016.

LaGrange Police are working to get warrants to track down the person threatening to dress like a clown and abduct children from specific schools.
Lt. Dale Strickland told 11Alive News someone started a Facebook Page (which has since been taken down) threatening to dress like a clown and drive a white van to Callaway Elementary, Franklin Forrest Elementary, Callaway Middle School, Troup High School, and Callaway High School and abduct children. Strickland says that threat is a clear violation of the law. The department is working to obtain warrants that will help them track down who posted the threats.
Stickland said there were no spottings of the creepy clown, but the police department was flooded with calls from concerned parents. The police department posted a message on Facebook: "This behavior is not cute or funny... if applicable, you may face charges."

LaGrange turns out to be a Masonic Name Game just as much as Macon. I made the discovery a few years ago that LaGrange is an associated hot name, due to the fact the name Chateau de LaGrange was the French home of the Marquis de Lafayette, evolved during the last thirty years of our writings and mutual exchange on the subject. The Fayette Factor strikes again.

Phantom Clown incident now have come from South Carolina, North Carolina, Ohio, and Georgia.

Nervous NickName™ Game

In Jim Brandon's 1983 book, The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit, he wrote, regarding the "name game":

I'm not talking here of such spooky tongue-twisters as H.P. Lovecraft's Yog-Sothoth or Arthur Machen's Ishakshar, but of quite ordinary names like Bell, Beall and variants, Crowley, Francis, Grafton, Grubb, Magee/McGee, Mason, McKinney, Montpelier, Parsons, Pike, Shelby, Vernon, Watson/Watt, Williams/Williamson. I have others on file, but these are the ones which I have accumulated the most instances. 

In my 1983 Mysterious America, I observed:

Cryptologic or coincidence? Jim Brandon should be credited with calling attention to the name Watts/Watkins/Watson, and its entanglement with inexplicable things. Some other names involved in mysterious events pinpointed by Brandon are Bell, Mason, Parsons, Pike, Vernon, and Warren. The influence of such names as Mason, Pike, Warren, and Lafayette, for example, issues, in some cryptopolitical and occult way, from their ties to the Masonic tradition.

Nicholas Name Game

One of the hidden name games that seems constantly in battle for our attention, second only to the Fayette Factor, is the one with roots in the name Nicholas.

Jim Brandon, author of Weird America (1978) and The Rebirth of Pan (1983), emailed me on April 10, 2012,

I wanted to add a couple of candidates to the Names of Power list – which I’ve probably mentioned before: that would be Nicholas and permutations (from Old Nick and Santa Claus up), and U.S. presidential names.

Nicholas does have some interesting connections:

Nicholas = English and Dutch: from the personal name (Greek Nikolaos, from nikān "to conquer" + laos "people"). Forms with -ch- are due to hypercorrection. The name in various vernacular forms was popular among Christians throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, largely as a result of the fame of a 4th-century Lycian bishop, about whom a large number of legends grew up, and who was venerated in the Orthodox Church as well as the Catholic. In English-speaking countries, this surname is also found as an Americanized form of various Greek surnames such as Papanikolaou "(son of) Nicholas the priest" and patronymics such as Nikolopoulos.

For years, Brandon has noted the Nicholas name game. For example,  in 2012, he wrote:

I suppose y’all noticed that the successful walk over Niagara Falls brought a hot name-of-power into play, in this case Nervous Nick, which seems to be running a close second to Fateful Fay these days.
Nik Wallenda (aka Nicholas Troffer) reportedly made the only known walk directly over the falls, rather than over the river farther away. He wore a safety device at the insistence of ABC-TV. Incredible, nevertheless.

In recent years, Brandon has had fun with various catchy ways to characterize this special name-of-power, beyond "Nervous Nick" (June 16, 2012), to include "nasty nomenklatura" (October 8, 2012), "the Nicholas/Nick/Old Nick angle" (May 30, 2013), "Nickolauson" (April 29, 2015), and most recently, humorously, the "NickName™ nexus" (March 22, 2016).

Examining monikers, sometimes we find surprises. For instance, I discovered the name Nixon, which is an English baby name, is part of this name nexus. The meaning of the name Nixon is, literally, an abbreviation of Nicholas.

Nike (Winged Victory), Louvre, Paris, France.

The mythological Nike was a Greek goddess of victory and root origin of Nicholas. The Roman equivalent was Victoria. Depending upon the time of various myths, she was described as the daughter of the Titan Pallas and the goddess Styx, and the sister of Kratos (Strength), Bia (Force), and Zelus (Zeal).

Names stemming from Nike include among others: Nikolaos, Nicholas, Nicola, Nick, Nicolai, Niccolò, Nikolai, Nicolae, Nils, Klaas, Nicole, Ike, Niki, Nikita, Nika, Nieke, Naike, Niketas, Nikki, Nico, and Veronica.

Nicholas in the News

How do names aligned to "Nicholas/Nick" slip into some of the violent stories we track?

Let's take the shooting on Sunday, May 29, 2016, on the west side of Houston, Texas. An active shooter began firing shots around 10 a.m. at 13200 Memorial Drive, at the corner of Memorial Drive and Wycliffe. (See more details, here.)

When the story was first published, no names of the shooter or the victims were published. A day later, the identities began surfacing in the media.

The gunman fired 212 rounds during a rampage at an auto detail shop as he killed one and injured several. He was shot dead in the event, and was identified as Army veteran Dionisio Garza III from Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino County, California.

In and of itself, "Dionisio Garza" is quite a name.

Garza is a Galician and Basque noble surname and the Spanish language equivalent of Heron (bird). Garza has also become a part of many placenames. Garza was the surname of many Sephardic Jews that settled in Monterrey, Nuevo León and the name is still found in many famous people from that Mexican state.

Dionisio is the Spanish and Italian form of Dionysius. The Greek name Dionysius, deriving from the name of the Greek god Dionysus, was exceedingly common, and many ancient people, famous and otherwise, bore it. It remains a common name today in the form Dennis (Denys, Denis, Denise). The modern Greek form of the name is Dionysios or Dionysis. The Spanish form of the name is Dionisio.

The cult of Dionysus was closely associated with trees, specifically the fig tree, and some of his bynames exhibit this, such as Endendros "he in the tree" or Dendritēs, "he of the tree". The original meaning is suggested as "he who runs among the trees," or that of a "runner in the woods". Some analysts propose the more cosmological interpretation of "he who impels the (world-)tree." This interpretation explains how the name could have been re-interpreted from a meaning of "tree" to the name of a mountain: the axis mundi of Indo-European mythology is represented both as a world-tree and as a world-mountain.

Dionisio Garza III, 25, was an Army vet and had spent two tours in Afghanistan.

The owner of the auto detail shop saw the bare-chested man with a crew cut (Garza) stride calmly up to his wife Sunday morning as she chatted with a longtime customer at their family-owned car wash off Memorial Drive. He reached around her, shooting Eugene Linscomb in the head while the 56-year-old sat in his Mercedes. (Linscomb is an English name from a Devon location called Lincombe, named in Old English with lin "flax" or lind "lime tree" + cumb "valley.")

"That man's the devil," the gunman declared.

The owner's wife sank to the ground, reciting the Lord's Prayer.

"Y'all calm down. I'm not going to kill y'all, y'all are Christians," Garza said.

Railing against gays, Jews, and Walmart, Garza then walked back toward his car to grab an AR-15 assault rifle, yelling that the world was coming to an end. The owner, who has run Memorial Hand Car Wash for the past 13 years, seized the opportunity to escape. Grabbing his wife's hand, they sprinted across the street to a Chase Bank and jumped a residential wall.

A law enforcement officer shot and killed Garza.

The names of the owner and his wife, who survived this event: Paris and Felicia Nichols.

The Nicholas/Nick/Nike/Nichols phenomenon was in evidence again. The NickName™ Game lives on.

33s: The Rebirth of Pan

These are the times of 33s, and the rebirth of Pan.

On August 1, 2015, the so-called Chorro Fire started just after 1:00 p.m. in the area of California Highway 33 and the Chorro Grande Trail, the fire department said. Highway 33 was closed at Lockwood Valley Road on the north end of the fire and at the Wheeler Gorge Visitor Center on the south end. More than 300 firefighters (was it 333?) and 11 air tankers were brought in to extinguish the fire.

A cargo ship missing since Thursday, October 1, 2015, with 33 crewmen aboard was lost at sea and believed to have sunk in the swirl and stranglehold of Hurricane Joaquin. This almost appears to be a plot for another Bermuda Triangle story. Now debris has started to be found.

The ship is named El Faro. The common translation for this name from the Spanish to English would be "the lighthouse." But there are many alternatives: anchor - beacon headlamp - headlight - light -lighthouse - torch - torchbearer - lodestar - polestar - headlight housing - and - lightship.

Jim Brandon also reminds me, "Meanwhile, back on land, Charleston, SC, is battered by the 'thousand-year storm,' striking this historic – and uber Masonic – spot on 33 degrees latitude. Recall that Fort also took note of many fateful events hitting the area."

Brandon, probably unknown to him, has inspired many people, including a group of Fortean investigators who are making videos, and using his two books as bibles.

In "Top Ten American Bridgewater Triangles," I introduced you to the gentlemen (Bill, Ryan, Kyle, Marc) of Mandate33, who filmed a short indie documentary on "The Ossipee Triangle, New Hampshire." It is #10 on that randomly numbered list.

Mandate33 has since started a journey of discovery, and they are in the midst of filming interviews across the country. They began with me, in Portland, Maine, before they ventured to California, and may, in part, end with me. But who knows? That's what being on a quest is all about. They are using the working raw title, Weird War: Exploring America's Left Coast.
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Mandate33 also stopped by and interviewed my Fortean friends, Adam Gorightly and Greg Bishop. Will Chris Tian, Patrick Huyghe, Adam Parfrey, Matthew Bell, Jim Brandon, and various synchromystics be hunted down too?

It seems as the times of the rebirth of Pan are upon us. Even the movie Pan is to be released in the USA, on October 9, 2015. 9 = 3 x 3.

Jim Brandon, of course, is the author of 1978's Weird America and 1983's The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit. (The Rebirth of Pan is not in print, and yet illegal reprints selling for $175 are shown on Amazon.com. Do not give into temptation and undermine Brandon's copyright.)

The Mandate33 filmmakers took their name from Brandon's work. His legacy lives on and grows.

Jim Brandon penned his thoughts in his 1983 book, The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit that, indeed, there are "certain numbers entangled with certain phenomena," just as he talked of power names.

Of course, Brandon's special moniker "candidate is the name Fayette and its variants Lafayette and Fayetteville." The Fayette Factor is probably one of the strangest mysteries in American Forteana, first discovered by the author, back in 1977, and written about in "Fateful Fayette," Fortean Times, No. 25, Spring 1978.

Namely, the "Fayette Factor" has been the finding of a surprisingly high incidence of Fortean (inexpliable) events linked to places named after one of the USA's Founding Fathers--the Marquis de Lafayette.

 

Since Grimstad's discovery, several items on this lexilink between Fayette (as well as its related forms - Lafayette, La Fayette, Fayetteville, Lafayetteville) and high strangeness have been published. In his book, Weird America (New York: EP Dutton, 1978), Grimstad mentions several Fayette hot spots but did not dwell on them. In exchanges with Bill, a small group of Forteans discussed the Fayette Factor privately throughout the late 1970s. It was not until Brandon's (now extremely rare) The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit (Firebird Press, 1983) and Mysterious America (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1983) that more in-depth analyses of the Fayette "coincidences" seriously occurred. These examinations were followed by updates and other comments in Mysterious America (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2006), and Mothman and Other Curious Encounters (NY: Paraview, 2002). Furthermore, the appearance of widely available material on the Fayette Factor started routinely being posted online during the 1990s-2010s.

Popular cultural outlets, such as Robert Anton Wilson's works (e.g. Cosmic Trigger), the music of Marilyn Manson (e.g. King Kill 33), and the various books and movies about the numbers 23 and 33, have Downard's insights influencing a broader audience. My own books, including The Copycat Effect, show the readers various purple shades of Downard.

Developing from this, then, is that severals writers have the sense they "discovered" the significance of certain names or dates or numbers, which relate to such factoids as Dealey Plaza being near the 33° north latitude and it being the first Masonic temple in Texas. Remarkably, most of the hints to these revelations track directly back to Downard.

Downard showed clearly the linkages between the mystical landscape and the 33° latitude. Intriguingly, the longterm knowledge of the 33° parallel and of 33 as a harmonic digit is on the rise. While more people may follow the 23 "coincidences," in the numbers arena there is a decidedly new increase in those would are intrigued by "33."

The top new numerical candidate, coming into its own, has to be 33.

Thirty-three turns up in some remarkable places.

The unnatural nature of the 33° alignments is well-discussed in the synchromystic world.

All kinds of associations have been made with the 33rd Parallel: pyramids, death rows, ufo crash sites, Trinity Atomic Bomb test site, the starting site of the Scottish Rite in America, the first shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter, and various assassination-assassination attempt locations (from Jesus to JFK & RFK, from Captain William Morgan to Gabrielle Giffords). Some of the linkages do have a basis in fact.

Take for instance, the name "Hobbs," which is a "devil's name," a word based on a demonic origin. Hobbs had been the location of UFO sightings in the 1950s and 1960s. Hobbs, New Mexico, near the 33 degree latitude, has experienced a never-ending stream of UFO encounters since Bill Watson's April 1955 sighting became known in ufology as the "Hobbs Incident." This Southwest corner of New Mexico is a hotbed of so-called flying saucer activity with the most famous event being the "Roswell Incident."

Allegedly, as is well-known today, a UFO crashed in nearby Roswell, New Mexico, on July 8, 1947, and the US Air Force recovered small bodies from the craft, according to numerous ufological researchers. The entire use of the term "little green men" appears to have been added to American slang by way of the incidents taking place in the Hobbs-Roswell area in 1947.

Trinity Site Obelisk - National Historical Landmark

Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear device. This test was conducted by the United States Army on July 16, 1945, in the Jornada del Muerto ("single day's journey of the dead man") desert about 35 miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico (site of Lonnie Zamora CEIII 1964 incident - pictured) at the White Sands Proving Ground; Trinity took place on the 33rd Parallel. Considering the background to the name "Hobbs," such events are not too shocking.

Even, in the past, I've mentioned how Tom Cruise and Scientology appear to have realized the synchromystical magic of the number 33 and the 33° latitude? The twilight language was at play for it was the jersey number of Tom Cruise's character in the 1983 film All The Right Moves.

The word "synchromysticism" was first coined by Jake Kotze in August 2006, on his website-at-the-time, Brave New World Order. Kotze defined the concept as: "The art of realizing meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance."

Who are we to deny the fact these things come to us in all kinds of different ways? And sometimes through the landscape of 33s:

MediaMonarchy.com tweets (via @mediamonarchy) #ThirtyThree / #33 occurrences routinely.
The number of deities in the Vedic Religion is 33.The highest degree in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.
The divine name Elohim appears 33 times in the story of creation in the opening chapters of Genesis.
Lag Ba'omer is a minor Jewish holiday which falls on the 33rd day of the Omer
Jesus's age when he was crucified in 33 A.D.
According to Al-Ghazali the dwellers of Heaven will exist eternally in a state of being age 33.
Jesus performed 33 recorded miracles.
Islamic prayer beads are generally arranged in sets of 33, corresponding to the widespread use of this number in dhikr rituals. Such beads may number thirty-three in total or three distinct sets of thirty-three for a total of ninety-nine, corresponding to the names of God.
Thirty-three is not only a numerical representation of “the Star of David,” but also the numerical equivalent of AMEN: 1+13+5+14=33.
Pope John Paul I, the 33-day pope. One of the shortest reigns in papal history, and it resulted in the most recent 3-pope year.
A religious image of the Virgin Mary from the 18th century is known in Uruguay as "Virgen de los Treinta y Tres" (Virgin of the Thirty-Three); it was consecrated by Pope John Paul II in his visit to Uruguay in 1988.
There are several churches dedicated to this Marian devotion, being the most important the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of the Thirty-Three in Florida, Uruguay.

One of the symbols of Ku Klux Klan. (K is the 11th letter of the alphabet, 3 times 11 is 33, KKK).

Thirty-three is the atomic number of arsenic.

Thirty-three is, according to the Newton scale, the temperature at which water boils.
A normal human spine has 33 vertebrae when the bones that form the coccyx are counted individually.

A significant number in modern numerology, one of the master numbers along with 11 and 22.

Let's Talk About Pan

Note the panpipe or pan flute around the neck of this new Peter Pan?

I'd like to commence a conversation involving the considered conclusions of Forteans and synchromystics. Specifically, I wonder how we all are feeling about the new Pan film? The movie is placing itself to the forefront with the use of the subtle marketing of the old Greek god of the wild, rustic music, and companion of the nymphs, Pan.

In the world of new movies, Pan is an forecoming synchrocinematic effort, directed by Joe Wright and written by Jason Fuchs. It stars Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Amanda Seyfried, and Levi Miller as the title character. As an anonymous writer put it, Pan is "an invented origin story for Peter Pan and Captain Hook."

Pan is scheduled for release in the USA on October 9, 2015, and in the United Kingdom on October 16, 2015. I'm assuming worldwide distribution will follow.

I asked the author of The Rebirth of Pan and Weird America, Jim Brandon, to share some thoughts about the forthcoming Pan film:

Looks a bit misleading to me, since it's really about Peter Pan, of which there have been around ten versions, starting with Walt Disney’s in 1953, according to Netflix. Of course some are spinoffs like Hook (1991, with Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams) and Finding Neverland (2004, with Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet).
The best treatment of the mythological character that I’m aware of would be the Spanish-made Pan’s Labyrinth (2006, with unknown players but good special effects). 

Craig Heimbichner, the co-author of Ritual America, forwards his reaction to Pan:

To the cognoscenti, Pan is not a benign or benevolent member of the Hellenic pantheon--Wiccans to the contrary--but a dark figure and a betrayer. The encoding of Pan symbols in the Group Mind fits the general pattern of the ignorant, seemingly playful, self-destructive behavior of the human race as the Kali Yuga winds down. 

Adam Parfrey, the lead coauthor of of Ritual America, notes that he once wrote about the modern-day manifestation of "Pan" in what I feel is today a classic article, "Pederastic Park?".

Also, he mentions an extension of his "Pan" sense of such cinema by Jimbo X in "Steven Spielberg: The King of Child Exploitation Cinema?"

As far as is known, Steven Spielberg is unattached to this version of the story.

Insights from others are shared by Matthew Bell:

According to the one of the 20th century's leading experts on ancient Rome, R. E. A. Palmer: "In Rome Pan, an old Greek god ..., was thought of as a deity of good health."
(Robert Everett Allen Palmer II, "Northern Campus Martius" [Studies of the northern Campus Martius in Ancient Rome], Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 80, no. 4, 1990, p. 36)

Here is the famous "Pan is dead," as cited in Hamlet's Mill: "Everyone has once read, for it comes up many times in literature, of that pilot in the reign of Tiberius, who, as he was sailing along in the Aegean on a quiet evening, heard a loud voice announcing that 'Great Pan was dead.' ...On the one hand, it announced the end of paganism: Pan with his pipes, the demon of still sun-drenched noon, the pagan god of glade and pasture and the rural idyll, had yielded to the supernatural. On the other hand the myth has been understood as telling of the death of Christ in the 19th year of Tiberius: the Son of God who was everything from Alpha to Omega was identified with Pan = 'All.'"
(Giorgio De Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet's Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time, paperback ed., 4th printing, Jaffrey, N.H.: David R. Godine Publisher, 1998, p. 275.)

There is a Socratic angle that is personally interesting to me. In his dialog Phaedrus, Plato has Socrates report that he could not remember his own past remarks on "love" (see also the Symposium): "...I can't remember at all because I was completely possessed by the gods..." (Socrates, Phaedrus, 263d; John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson, eds., Plato: Complete Works, Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publ., 1997, p. 540.)

Which "gods"? "Then I perceive that the Nymphs of Achelous and Pan the son of Hermes, who inspired me, were far better rhetoricians than Lysias the son of Cephalus." (Socrates,Phaedrus, 263d; B. Jowett, ed., Dialogues of Plato: Translated Into English With Analysis and Introductions, 3rd ed., vol. 1, New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1892, p. 472.)

Don't forget James Shelby Downard's "All that is hidden will be made manifest."

"All" in Greek is of course pan. Therefore, we may say: "Pan that

is hidden will be made manifest." ~ Matthew Bell.

In the realm of stream of consciousness linking of one thought to another, where Pan and Peter Pan turn up in the middle, Wayne J. Bush's Tricked by the Light blog captured an array of good illustrations and associations for the 2013 illustrated "Tricksters & the Trickster God."

What are your thoughts?

The Charleston Massacre and the Name Game

The name game and twilight language have been visible to readers of this blog for years. In the wake of the June 17, 2015, killing of nine in Charleston, South Carolina, the rest of the world seems to have been awakened to the symbols in their midst.

Dylann Storm Roof is the root of this awareness, in many ways, due to his overwhelming employment of overt items like the Confederate flags, Nazi-employed numbers (14, 88, 1488), and even the Othala rune.

Roof was apprehended on June 18, 2015, after a motorist spotted his black Hyundai Elantra, which displays an apartheid “Confederate States of America” license plate on the front bumper, while driving near Shelby, North Carolina.

On June 24, 2015, in a flash fire across the South, of breaking news alerts, one state after another, one business after another, talked of removing Confederate flags, directly due to them being used as symbols of racist and hate.

Dylann Storm Roof, alleged Charleston gunman

Adam Lanza, Newtown gunman

James Holmes, Aurora gunman

Jared Loughner, Tuscon gunman

Nidal Hasan, Fort Hood gunman

Symbols. Eyes of hate. Now names too are being mined for significance in the aftermath of the massacre. We have mentioned the names of streets for a long time. Now others are noticing, and it is enlightening to see how far afield this is going.

John C. Calhoun, 1849

In all the news coverage of the shooting at Emanuel AME Church, it’s rarely been mentioned* that it’s located at 110 Calhoun, a street named after John C. Calhoun.
That’s right: family members of those killed have to go to memorial services at Emanuel AME and look at street signs honoring one of the most rabid supporters of slavery in American history.
Calhoun was vice president from 1825 to 1832, during the administrations of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, and then became a powerful U.S. senator from South Carolina. Calhoun himself owned a plantation and lots of people. He pushed not just for the preservation of slavery but its expansion into new territories to the west. And he was a major advocate of 1850’s Fugitive Slave Act. Source.

The whole South is the grave of Calhoun. ”                                              — Yankee Soldier (1865)

*"Rarely mentioned": In actual fact, several news sites have mentioned the address and talked about the unfortunate reality of the address for the Mother Emanuel Church being on Calhoun Street.

The examination of the use of the name even spread to a debate regarding Lake Calhoun in Minnesota, noted on June 23, 2015, in the Star-Tribune.

The perennial question of renaming Lake Calhoun has been revived with a new directive to Park Board staff to look into the issue again as an online petition against the name topped 1,700 signatures.
Park Board President Liz Wielinski announced at a special board meeting Monday that staff had been directed to report back to the board by its first September meeting on the issue on the naming process....
The petition was launched by Mike Spangenberg of Minneapolis after last week's killings of nine people at a Charleston, S.C., church, He said the petition represents confronting the nation's past and addressing systemic racism. Park Commissioner Brad Bourn also has advocated for a name change.
During his 30 years on the national stage as a lawmaker, vice president and secretary of war, John C. Calhoun argued that slavery was a positive good for those enslaved, and espoused such states rights doctrines as the ability of a state to nullify federal acts with which it disagreed.
His tie to the area now known as Minneapolis comes from his action as secretary of war to President James Monroe to establish Fort Snelling at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. Source.

Calhoun is also linked to an early "going postal" event. On December 2, 1983, in Calhoun County, Alabama, James Brooks, 53, entered the Anniston, Alabama, post office with a .38 caliber pistol, killing the postmaster, and injuring his immediate supervisor. Subsequent to killing the postmaster, James Brooks ran up the stairs of the building pursuing his supervisor and shooting him twice.

Meanwhile, the bust of a Confederate general and leading figure in the early days of the Ku Klux Klan - Nathan Bedford Forrest - was being being proposed to be removed from the Tennessee statehouse, top Tennessee Democrats and the state Republican Party chairman said on June 23rd.

Some of the discussion has been extreme, such as CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield questioning whether the Jefferson Memorial should be taken down because Jefferson owned slaves. "There is a monument to him in the capital city of the United States. No one ever asks for that to come down," Banfield said.

Infowars blogger Paul Joseph Watson compared taking down the Jefferson Memorial to the logic of Islamic State terrorists "who have spent the last year tearing down historical statues and monuments because they offend their radical belief system."

Anything taken out of context can be questioned. George Washington, Andrew Jackson and James Madison also owned slaves.

At the University of Texas, Austin, a public statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, was reportedly vandalized this week with the words "Black Lives Matter" and "Bump the Chumps." Another Davis statue at the Statehouse in Frankfort, Ky., has come under scrutiny, with some calling for the work of art to be taken down.
One of those advocating for its removal is Republican gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin, who was quoted in the Hill newspaper as saying, "It is important never to forget our history, but parts of our history are more appropriately displayed in museums, not on government property."
Statues on the Austin campus of Robert E. Lee, who commanded the Confederate army, and Albert Sidney Johnston, a Confederate general who died during the Civil War, were also vandalized in recent days, according to reports. Source.

Are Jefferson, Madison, Forrest, and Lee some of the names we need to follow? Why haven't we paid more attention to Calhoun?

The idea of the "name game" became very formalized with "the Fayette Factor?" It was first discovered by researcher William (Bill) Grimstad (a/k/a Jim Brandon), back in 1977, and written about in "Fateful Fayette," Fortean Times, No. 25, Spring 1978.

Since Grimstad's discovery, several items on this lexilink between Fayette (as well as its related forms - Lafayette, La Fayette, Fayetteville, Lafayetteville) and high strangeness have been published. In his book, Weird America (New York: EP Dutton, 1978), Grimstad mentions several "power name" hot spots but did not dwell on them.

Concurrently, I was writing of other name games. In 1978, I wrote and had published afterward, in Fortean Times, no. 29, Summer 1979, my "Devil Names and Fortean Places."

The Rebirth of Pan (1st edition, Firebird Press, 1983)

Mysterious America (1st edition, Faber & Faber, 1983).

In exchanges with Bill, a small group of Forteans discussed the Fayette Factor and name game privately throughout the late 1970s. It was not until Grimstad's (now extremely rare) The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit (Firebird Press, 1983) and Mysterious America (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1983) that more in-depth analyses of the name game "coincidences" seriously occurred. These examinations were followed by updates and other comments in Mysterious America (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2006), and another book of mine (NY: Paraview, 2002). Furthermore, the appearance of widely available material on the name game (including from John A. Keel) started routinely being posted online during the 1990s-2010s, including in this blog.

The idea was to raise awareness for the "twilight language" behind names - for example of the town you lived in, the street on which you lived, and those names heard on the news.

In The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit, Grimstad writes, regarding the "name game":

I'm not talking here of such spooky tongue-twisters as H.P. Lovecraft's Yog-Sothoth or Arthur Machen's Ishakshar, but of quite ordinary names like Bell, Beall and variants, Crowley, Francis, Grafton, Grubb, Magee/McGee, Mason, McKinney, Montpelier, Parsons, Pike, Shelby, Vernon, Watson/Watt, Williams/Williamson. I have others on file, but these are the ones which I have accumulated the most instances. 

In my 1983 Mysterious America, I wrote:

Cryptologic or coincidence? Jim Brandon [Bill Grimstad] should be credited with calling attention to the name Watts/Watkins/Watson, and its entanglement with inexplicable things. Some other names involved in mysterious events pinpointed by Brandon are Bell, Mason, Parsons, Pike, Vernon, and Warren. The influence of such names as Mason, Pike, Warren, and Lafayette, for example, issues, in some cryptopolitical and occult way, from their ties to the Masonic tradition.

One of the missions of the abolitionist and Freemason John Brown during his raid of Harper's Ferry, was the capturing of a Masonic sword. In 1859 he led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry. During the raid, he seized the armory; seven people were killed, and ten or more were injured. He intended to arm slaves with weapons from the arsenal, but the attack failed. Within 36 hours, Brown's men had fled or been killed or captured by local pro-slavery farmers, militiamen, and U.S. Marines led by Robert E. Lee. 

A concentration of attention in the past has been on the names of the Founding Fathers and their friends - Washington and Lafayette coming to the top of the list. Other names from the 1812 era, for example, like Stephen Decatur, surface too (see here).  

Perhaps some attention will now be given to Civil War and Confederate names - like Calhoun, Albert Pike, and others - in the "name game."

Painting at top: 

John Brown in Tragic Prelude (1938-40) by John Steuart Curry (1897-1946)