PW: Ritual America

Publishers Weekly has published this review:

Ritual America: 
Secret Brotherhoods and Their Influence on American Society: 
A Visual Guide

Adam Parfrey and Craig Heimbichner, foreword by Loren Coleman. Feral House (Consortium, dist.), $29.95 paper over board (380p) ISBN 978-1-936239-14-6

There have been hundreds of clandestine clubs in America, but as Coleman notes in the foreword, we “[do] not know much about the hidden landscape in which we live everyday.” In unmasking this “widespread covert reality”—a motley group of secret societies from Elks and Masons to the Ku Klux Klan, the Bohemian Club, and the Rosicrucians—Heimbichner, a contributor to Paranoia magazine, and Parfrey (editor of Apocalypse Culture) survey secret passwords, garments, handshakes, songs, and initiations to show how these offbeat orders and brotherhoods have shaped America. The pages are packed with unusual images, many not previously printed, in paper ephemera, postcards, cartoons, sheet music, and art by numerous illustrators, along with kooky costumes and helmets. Controversial figures such as Scientology’s L. Ron Hubbard and “Masonic Pope” Albert Pike are profiled. One bizarre section has ads for items (like axes) used in hazings and sadistic initiation pranks. The military is described as “a bastion of Masonic membership,” and a dubious connection is drawn between waterboarding and “fraternal traditions.” The total effect is that of a tattered, bulging scrapbook of outré oddities on high-quality slick paper with an attractive graphic design. (Mar.)

Top Ten Evil Clowns of 2011

Top Ten Evil Clowns of 2011
by Loren Coleman, Author of The Copycat Effect. (New York: Paraview Pocket-Simon and Schuster, 2004.)

Following in the tradition of my list from 2008, my notes on evil clowns (and Joker clones) that turned up in 2009, and my documenting of real killer clowns in 2010, here is a random "top ten" gathering of "evil clown" stories for 2011.


(1) Clown Caught on Tape Stealing Cash Register


An evil clown stole a cash register on December 8, 2011, from the K-Mart at Mohawk and Huron streets, Corpus Christi, Texas.







(2) Insane Clown Hits Hobo Pantry

According to a Dothan, Alabama police statement, a robbery took place around 12:45 a.m. on Tuesday, April 26, 2011, at the Hobo Pantry store. The police reported a man armed with knife stole some cash and ran from the store toward Westgate Parkway.The robber as a white male, about 6 feet tall, who weighed 175 to 180 pounds, had blue or green eyes, wore desert camouflage pants, a black hooded sweater with red and green animated pictures on it along with the black and white Insane Clown Posse mask over his head.

(3) Kent Clown Caught At Chatham




Mitchell Woods, 17, of Thrasher Close, Haggerston, East London, was sentenced at Maidstone Crown Court on Monday, May 9, 2011, after pleading guilty to possessing a prohibited firearm and possessing ammunition without a certificate, to three years in jail. On January 29, 2011, Woods was arrested by a Kent Police Armed Response unit at Higham rail station, after officers were called to the station by a concerned member of the public, who, while waiting for a train at Chatham, overheard Woods talking to some friends about carrying a gun. The Hackney teenager was caught carrying a loaded gun and a clown mask (seen above) on a train in Kent. The gun had been previously used in three gang-related shootings in London, one in which someone had been shot three times with the weapon, according to media accounts.




(4) Clown Uses Car To Hit & Drag Person

On Tuesday, May 10, 2011, Andrew Joseph Davis, 20, was arrested for running down a person with his car and dragging the individual 100 feet.  The Oklahoma incident resulted in the above mug shot of Davis, which was published by Smoking Gun.

Police were called after eyewitnesses saw a driver wearing the distinctive face paint swerve across the road near Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and hit a pedestrian before accelerating. Nearby residents reported that the two men in the black-colored sedan shouted "Woop! Woop!" as they zoomed away from the scene.

(5) Northern Irish Clowns Attack

At about 8 PM local time (2000 GMT) on Tuesday, March 22, 2011, two men with baseball bats called to a flat in Barnagh Grove and assaulted the 42-year-old who lives there. The man's arm was broken and he suffered other injuries. He was taken to a hospital for treatment, according to the BBC.

Police said the attackers were wearing "clown-type masks" and black clothing. This assault by two men wearing clown masks took place in Donaghadee, a small town (population about 6,500) in County Down, Northern Ireland. The town lies about 18 miles (29 km) east of Belfast. Donaghadee is known as a significant site from the Irish Rebellion of 1798. On the morning of Pike Sunday, June 10, 1798, a force of United Irishmen (a guerilla force, not unlike the revolutionaries contemporary in America and France), mainly from Bangor, Donaghadee, Greyabbey and Ballywalter, Ireland, attempted to occupy the town of Newtownards. They met with musket fire from the market house and were defeated.

(6) Clowns Want To Be Plez'ed

Law enforcement officials in Anderson, South Carolina, said a robber wearing a clown mask held up a convenience store at gunpoint on Wednesday night, December 28, 2011. Employees at the Plez U on Concord Road were playing cards when a 5' 7" person with a male voice walked in around 9 p.m. wearing a green and white mask with red hair, a brown hoodie, and gloves.

The person showed a silver revolver and demanded money from the cash register. The person then left after telling everyone inside that they had five seconds to get on the floor.

The robbery is one of three during December 2011, in Anderson County, involving someone wearing a mask and holding up a store at gunpoint. On Old Williamston Road, a High Volume convenience store was robbed Dec. 14 by a man also wearing a clown mask. Investigators say the mask is similar to the one worn by the person at the Plez U. Surveillance video also shows that on Dec. 8, a Stop-A-Minit in Belton was robbed by a man wearing an alien mask and carrying a gun.

(7) Serial Killer Clown's Paintings Go On Sale

In May 2011, it was announced that the paintings of John Wayne Gacy were trying to be sold. Gacy is the Evil Clown come to Earth; he raped and murdered 33 young men and boys in the 1970s. Yes, he also did some art in prison. During 2011, according to the Big Picture, "an art gallery in Las Vergas [sic] is trying to selling [sic] the paintings to raise money for the National Center for Victims of Crime."


The organization, however, petitioned to have its name removed from any connection to this auction, to the Las Vegas gallery, and to the artwork.

(8) Californian Kier Charged With Attempted Montana Murder

Dante Kier called himself "Refry Demon" online.

A California man faces three felony charges, including attempted murder, after police say he stabbed a Kalispell, Montana, homeowner during a December 12, 2011, home invasion because “it felt good.”

Prosecutors with the Flathead County Attorney’s Office have charged Dante Kirpal Kier, 19, of Santa Barbara, Calif., with attempted deliberate homicide, aggravated burglary and assault with a weapon. All three charges are felonies.

Homeowner Brian Bay was fixing the dishwasher in his southeast Kalispell house when he went out to the garage to get a tool. His wife and children were home as well.  When he returned inside, Bay said he saw Kier in the hallway. Bay confronted the intruder, who had a weapon in his hand. During the confrontation, Kier allegedly stabbed Bay in the upper arm and inside his mouth. Kier then tried to stab Bay in the ribs numerous times with what turned out to be a wood-handled steak knife. Investigators said the blade was “bent severely” after the stabbing. Bay wrestled Kier to the ground and held him while his wife called the police at about 9:35 p.m. Officers arrived and arrested Kier. Police say Bay’s wife and children were unharmed during the incident.

When police officers canvassed the neighborhood, several of the Bays’ neighbors said they found notes on their windows that said, “Your house is being watched tonight by … the creeps.”

Kier also allegedly told police that he is a member of the Insane Clown Posse gang, and referred to himself as a Juggalo. (There's a long documented history and debate about ICP-inspired crime, see here and here, but this specific list is about the clown aspect, please note.)

(9) Clown Arrested On Rape Charges


A cold case of a clown raping a young girl was solved in Fullerton, California, in October 2011. 


See the video report here.




(10) Killer Santa Strikes Again





My 2008 list ended with the ultimate evil twisted clown-like finale to the year of 2008, when a costumed man, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, 45, plotting revenge against his ex-wife, dressed up in a Santa Claus suit, went to his former in-laws' Christmas Eve party and slaughtered nine people. He then burned their house down before killing himself hours later. The Killer Santa killings took place on East Knollcrest Drive, Covina, California.

It happened again, in 2011.

Grapevine, a Dallas suburb, is dubbed the "Christmas Capital of Texas." It was there where a Christmas Day rampage occurred. A gunman who killed six people and himself at a family Christmas celebration was dressed in a Santa Claus suit when he opened fire, local police said. The dead were four women and three men, ages 15 to 59. The victims appeared to have just opened Christmas presents when the shooting started in the Lincoln Vineyards, a middle-income complex near Colleyville Heritage High School, one of the area's most highly regarded schools.

Authorities later identified the shooter as a 56-year-old Persian man, Aziz Yazdanpanah, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His wife, with whom he was having marital and financial problems, like Aziz, was born in Iran; their children were American-born.

(+ 2012) Santa Again

The Daily Star is reporting that on Christmas Eve, Friday, January 6, 2012, (the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem is one of the Orthodox churches that celebrate Christmas on January 7th, following the Julian calendar), there has been another Santa suit murder.

Six Israeli Arabs have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the Christmas Eve killing of a prominent Christian leader in Jaffa by a man reportedly wearing a Santa suit, police say. Lawyer and accountant Gabriel Cadis was stabbed fatally on Friday after a parade in the historic Mediterranean port district marking the day before Christmas, according to the calendar followed by the Greek Orthodox Church in the Holy Land.

Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri noted, "The killer could have been disguised as Father Christmas but we're not sure."



"Initial inquiries suggest that there was not a nationalist motive to the murder, that is to say that it was not connected to the Arab-Jewish conflict. We are following all leads, including rumours of a dispute within the Greek Orthodox community in Jaffa over the victim's recent re-election as leader of the Jaffa Orthodox Church Association," she said.

Top Ten Evil Clown Stories of 2011

© Loren Coleman, 2012

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P.S. Hopkinsville

P.S. Hopkinsville


After finishing my earlier posting (see here), about Hopkinsville and Budd Hopkins having temporal links for August 21st, a postscript presented itself about other people links and "coincidences," regarding that situation.

"Hopkinsville hobgoblin" attacks a member of the Sutton family, 1955.

Budd Hopkins during his early lectures, as in this one from 1967, began to develop the concept of "missing time" and "alien abductions" due to the "intruders."

"Hopkinsville," as the tagging label grew to be known, is all about the Kelly-Hopkinsville "hobgoblins," reported in 1955.

Two of the most mentioned investigators linked to that incident are (1) J. Allen Hynek (May 1, 1910 - April 27, 1986), ufologist who developed the close encounter scale and consulted on the making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (released on November 16, 1977), and (2) Isabel Davis, ufologist who authored Close Encounters of Kelly and Others of 1955 (1978).

Davis was from New York City, and investigated the Kelly-Hopkinsville event a year after it happened. Hynek, living in the Chicago area, examined the details of the case by talking to Davis and one other investigator.  Who was that person and how did Hynek and Davis learn the most about the Kelly incident? They received their most credible firsthand data from an individual they would call a friend years later: Andrew "Bud" Ledwith, an announcer-engineer at a Hopkinsville radio station.

Yes, another Bud.

Bud Ledwith was there first. On August 22, 1955, it was Andrew "Bud" Ledwith of WHOP radio who interviewed the seven adult witnesses in two different groups. He judged their accounts as consistent, especially in their descriptions of the strange glowing beings. It is Bud Ledwith's drawings that are most often reworked and used when talking about the Kelly creatures.

Bud Ledwith's sketches were made under the instructions of the eyewitnesses.

Now here is the strange part. Years later, in 1977, I met Bud Ledwith, face-to-face. He was working as the host of a small Boston-area radio station talk show. He invited me to come into his studio so he could interview me about the April 21-22, 1977, sightings of the Dover Demon. Only after I was there, after we began to talk, did I discover that he was the same Bud Ledwith who was in Hopkinsville in 1955.

What a strange coincidence, I thought. The Dover Demon was so very bizarre in description, I had already researched seemingly similar isolated historical cases of small creatures. Naturally, I had compared the Dover Demon with the Kelly hobgoblins. And then I find I stumble into the primary investigator in that case? It all seemed rather unbelievable.

Walt Webb, then the Assistant Director of the Hayden Planetarium at Boston's Science Museum, would write, in his special report, about this overlap that all of us were discussing back then: "Loren was the first to note some resemblance between the Dover entity and the famous Kelly, Kentucky, 'little men' incident of 1955," (see page 55, in Mysterious America).

So, there I found myself, sitting with Bud Ledwith, 22 years after he interviewed the Kentucky creature witnesses.  I was talking about the bright orange Dover Demon, and then we discussed the silvery Kelly creatures. It all seemed a little weird at the time, and still does today.

To think now of the links between Budd Hopkins/Hopkinsville, and Bud Ledwith/Hopkinsville, in the context of Bud, me, the Dover Demon, and Budd, is beyond strange.

I met Bud Ledwith in April 1977, because of the Dover Demon, and met Budd Hopkins for the first time at the Mass UFO Show/Mass Monster Mash in 2008. I had spoken at the previous Mass Monster Mash, presenting a 30th Year Anniversary Dover Demon PowerPoint presentation in 2007.


Digging a bit, the links from Isabel Davis, through Bud Ledwith and Hopkinsville, to Budd Hopkins are rather direct, historically. It all has ties to the old CSI.

The Civilian Saucer Intelligence (CSI) was an independent unidentified flying object research group founded in New York City in 1954. It was initially called Civilian Saucer Intelligence New York, but the "New York" was quickly dropped from their name.

Jerome Clark writes, "Though its membership was small, what the organization lacked in quantity it made up in quality of its personnel," (Clark, Jerome, The UFO Encyclopedia: 2nd Edition; Volume 1, A-K; Omnigraphics, Inc, 1998, page 188). CSI's core personnel were Ted Bloecher, Isabel Davis, and Alexander Mebane.

Though the group never formally disbanded, CSI was defunct by 1959. However, Davis and Bloecher were active in UFO research into the 1980s, Davis as a NICAP associate. Notably, Bloecher investigated an early 1970s UFO sighting made by young New York City painter, Budd Hopkins; in later years, Hopkins would become a key figure in the alien abduction scene.

I truly am not sure what any of it means, but it is worth a little Fortean pondering.

Kelly-Hopkinsville hobgoblin (1955)

Dover Demon (April 1977)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (November 1977)

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Gremlins (1984); Gremlins 2 (1990)

Hopkinsville + Budd Hopkins / August 21st

Peter Park sends along the following:

One curious twilight-language coincidence I myself have long noticed but which I've never to my recollection seen in accounts of the 1955 Sutton farmhouse alien siege is the fact that Hopkinsville, KY, was the birthplace and home town of famous psychic and "sleeping prophet" Edgar Cayce. I've long been a little surprised that Christian fundamentalists who see anything "occult," "New Age," or "psychic" as "of the Devil" haven't picked up on the Sutton case, with its decidedly demonic-looking "goblins," as just some of Edgar Cayce's buddies paying a rerturn visit to his home town!

Several twilight insights can be said about this.

First off, in January 2008, Mac Tonnies (pictured above) looked at the Hopkinsville + hobgoblin 1955 invasion + Edgar Cayce "name game" link, here. 

(Mac Tonnies was found dead on October 22, 2009, the same day that American comedian and television personality Soupy Sales died. October 22, 362 is remembered for a mysterious fire that destroyed the Temple of Apollo at Daphne outside Antioch.)

One of the 1955 creatures attacks. Illustration from Mysterious America.

The time period of the Kentucky sightings occurred between 8:00 p.m. and 4:45 a.m Central Time. This "attack" occurred on, please note this date, August 21, 1955, through the morning of August 22nd. Tonnies also mentioned Budd Hopkins in conjunction with the Hopkinsville event.  The name game is a natural with Hopkinsville and Budd's last name.

Tonnies wrote at his blog: "Skeptics will point out that 'Hopkins' is hardly an unusual name. But there are enough cases of synchronicity within UFO research alone to justify a closer, more rigorous analysis. Perhaps Fortean events unfold in a barely glimpsed 'Matrix,' their manifestations only partially perceptible to baseline human consciousness."

In my book Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation's Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures, I dealt with the 1955 events, the name game (like Lafayette = “the little fairy” or “the little enchantment”), the devil meaning behind "hob" and "hobgoblins," and my further interest in links to dates. 

William Mott, rephrasing and extending my notes, shared the following at Mac's blog, 

"Hob" is an ancient appellation for a demon, goblin, or devil. The stretch to "Hobkin" or "Hopkin," i.e., "goblinkind" or "devilkind," is another connection in all this. Hobyahs, hobgoblins, etc. bear this out.

We have here a Fortean case of names and dates colliding across time and space.

Budd Hopkins died on, get this, August 21, 2011, at 1:35 p.m. ET.

What gives with August 21st? Hopkinsville hobgoblins in 1955 and Budd Hopkins' death in 2011.

Dipping into the events of August 21st, I find these quick examples:  In 1945, on August 21st, physicist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. is fatally irradiated in a criticality incident during an experiment with the Demon core at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, near the 33 degree north latitude. In 1968, Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia. In 1971, Black Panther George Jackson was killed (some say "assassinated") in a shootout with police at the Marin County Courthouse, the last commissioned building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1983, Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. is assassinated at the Manila International Airport. 

For more on Tonnies's ideas, see his book, The Cryptoterrestrials: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and Aliens Among Us (NY: Anomalist Books, 2010), which was published soon after his death.

I have to point out that the "Hopkinsville invasion" actually took place in Kelly, Kentucky, located 8 miles north of Hopkinsville, and Cayce was born 10 miles away, in Beverly, south of Hopkinsville, straight down Lafayette Road.  

Nevertheless, Cayce is most often said to have been born in "Hopkinsville," and the "little silver hobgoblins" were remembered as having attacked in "Hopkinsville," because of the 1955 newspaper and Air Force accounts associating that town with those events.

Meanwhile, Happy Winter Solstice everyone. In Hopkinsville, Kentucky, this year, that's December 21st. In 2011, the December solstice takes place on Wednesday, December 21 at 11:30 p.m. CST (Thursday, December 22 at 5:30 UTC).

Korea's 9/11 Twin Towers: What Were They Thinking?

Will these two buildings appear in Seoul, South Korea in 2016? What were the people that put together these plans thinking? A mere coincidence? The twilight language working overtime in a Dutch firm? What's going on here?


South Korean developers may be backing down from plans to erect two luxury apartment buildings that some say resemble the World Trade Center buildings exploding as they were hit by planes on 9/11.


The building design had been pitched by Dutch architecture firm MVRDV for erection in Seoul, South Korea.


But according to new reports, the design is on hold now.


After the uproar online and beyond, telling of the controversy about the design of the buildings, MVRDV issued apologies on its website and Facebook page. The Facebook entry reads as follows:

A real media storm has started and we receive threatening emails and calls of angry people calling us Al Qaeda lovers or worse.

MVRDV regrets deeply any connotations The Cloud projects evokes regarding 9/11, it was not our intention.

Florence Attack by Author of The Key of Chaos

Leige, Belgium, was shaken by a seemingly random lone individual's attack on the city. Something similar happened in Florence, Italy, on the same day.

Photos from Leige (above) and Florence (below) looked eerily similar on 13 December 2011 (13.12.11). 

The killer in Italy was a right-wing author who published a newsletter for fans of J. R. R. Tolkien.

An Italian far-right author shot dead two Senegalese vendors and wounded three in Florence on Tuesday (13 Dec. 2011) before killing himself in a daylight shooting spree that prompted outpourings of grief in the historic city.

Witnesses said they saw the gunman calmly getting out of a car at a street market on Piazza Dalmazia, north of the city centre, and firing off three shots that instantly killed two vendors and seriously wounded a third.

The white assailant was identified by authorities as 50-year-old Gianluca Casseri. 

The International Business Times ran this profile of Casseri:

Expert of right-wing European culture and passionate about fantasy and conspiracy books, the middle-aged man published many articles on the Germanic folklore, before founding literary magazine La Soglia or The Threshold in 2001. Issues included monographic volumes about Conan, Dracula, Tolkien, Lovecraft and other fantasy authors.
His favourite authors were Ezra Pound, Friedrich Nietzsche and Julius Evola. In 2010 he wrote along with Enrico Rulli Le chiavi del caos or The Key of Chaos, described as "a kind of alchemical play in the magic Prague of Emperor Rudolf II".
Initial reports suggest that he belonged to Casa Pound movement.
Named after the American Fascist poet Ezra Pound, Casa Pound is a neo-fascist movement born in Rome in 2003, when it squatted a state-owned building in the central neighbourhood of Esquilino. It soon developed as a national organisation and then proceeded to branch out into numerous cities in the country.

After Casseri's initial attack, he moved on to the San Lorenzo market in the centre -- a popular destination for the thousands of tourists who visit Florence every day -- where he wounded two more vendors.

Casseri then turned the gun -- a Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver according to news reports -- on himself after he was surrounded by police.

Around 200 Senegalese marched through the city in an angry protest after the shootings, shouting "Shame!" and "Racists!"

Hundreds of immigrants were later seen praying on their knees in tears in front of Florence's famous cathedral.

"The heart of Florence is crying today," Florence Mayor Matteo Renzi said in a Twitter message, declaring the city would hold a day of mourning Wednesday and would pay to repatriate the bodies to Senegal.

"I think the pain for the lives that have been cut short is not only for the Senegalese community but for all the citizens of our city," Renzi said.

International Cooperation and Integration Minister Andrea Riccardi and a Senegalese imam will attend a ceremony at Florence city hall on Wednesday.

"The Senegalese are good people, people who never get into trouble, who work every day," one Senegalese man told news channel SkyTG24.

Another man said: "These lads who were killed were only earning money for their wives, their fathers, their children."

Roccangelo Tritto, a spokesman for local Carabinieri police, told AFP that the man wounded at Piazza Dalmazia would live but remain paralysed for life.

The other two men were also in a serious condition -- one with a wound to the abdomen and another shot in the chest.

Casseri was the author of fantasy novels including "The Key of Chaos" about a wizard, a mathematician and an alchemist, which enjoyed some popularity.

He also wrote an academic paper about Dracula folklore and was the editor of a niche magazine about fantasy and horror fiction and comics.

Casseri lived on his own in the Tuscan countryside near Pistoia.

He was also a member of Casa Pound, a right-wing community group that is seen as more intellectual than other far-right organisations.

"He was a bit strange, a bit of a loner but he didn't seem crazy. He was living in his own world," said Fabio Barsanti, a regional coordinator for Casa Pound.

"He didn't seem capable of doing something like this," he said, adding: "We are against any type of violence. We consider the Senegalese humans like us."

Barsanti said Casseri was known locally mostly as a World War I buff.

While Casa Pound distanced itself from Casseri's actions, left-wingers were quick to pin the blame on a climate of racism in the country.

Walter Veltroni, a lawmaker from the centre-left Democratic Party, said the shootings were "a terrorist attack by a right-wing extremist."

"What happened in Florence is the product of a climate of intolerance against foreigners that has grown over the years," he said.

Nichi Vendola, leader of the Left, Ecology and Liberty party, condemned what he said was "a racist and fascist Italy that sows hatred."

At the scene of the first shooting in Piazza Dalmazia, eyewitnesses quoted by Italian media said they were in shock and a newspaper seller said the gunman told him: "Get out of the way or I'll bump you off next."

"I heard the shots but I thought they were fireworks. Then I turned around and I saw three men on the ground in a pool of blood," one vendor said.

Another man said: "There are often Senegalese guys here who sell the usual stuff, they don't bother anyone and no one was expecting this."

African vendors can be seen on the streets of Italy's main cities selling sculptures, trinkets and fake designer handbags. They are often selling their wares illegally but are popular with tourists and local residents.

Last summer in Norway, a Norwegian man apparently motivated by a hatred of immigrants went on a bomb and shooting spree that killed 77 people.