Twins, Name Games & Syncs In Overdrive

Things seem to be coming in twos, of late. The sync twins, we could call them.

The story of the man in Calais, Maine who decided on the evening of the 4th of July 2015, to put a fireworks mortar on his head and set it off, makes us wonder about folks and what they do on the 4th. But, despite the jokes about him being a Darwin Award winner, you have to remember the human element behind such news items.

Devon Staples had been drinking with friends Saturday evening and setting off fireworks, when Maine State Police say he put a mortar on his head and lit it. It exploded, killing Staples instantly. His friends and family grieve, his father said he thought it was a dud, and he was joking around. Looking deeper into the incident, it seems Staples might have not thought it was live explosive.

Turns out the 22-year-old (11 + 11) was an actor and something of a comedian. Devon Staples used to work at Disney World in Orlando and would dress up as Gaston and Goofy. The duality in his life may have ended it.

Other "celebrities" had fireworks accidents this 4th of July. A "twinning" event occurred this year when two NFL players lost fingers.

New York Giants NFL superstar Jason Pierre-Paul had his finger amputated dur to an injury to his hand during a fireworks show at his Florida home. In 2009, his junior year in college, he played for the University of Florida, Tampa, Florida, and then entered the NFL draft of 2010.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers cornerback C. J. Wilson lost two fingers due to a July 4th fireworks accident at his Lincolnton, North Carolina home.

Rarely do we see times like these.

The "name game" appears to be going wild with lexilinks and connections. The synchromystic world is ringing like a bell. And hidden twilight language abounds.

It is really too much for me to capture, so I'm going to rely on some friends and their hints to fill out part of the picture here.

"One measures a circle, beginning anywhere," as Charles Fort wrote.

The date 7-7 seems as good as anyplace to start. Various people who were 77 died around this day, but look what happened on the date.

On July 7, 2015, over Moncks Corner, South Carolina, a F-16 fighter jet collided with a small plane, a Cessna, killing two people and raining down plane parts and debris over a wide swath of marshes and rice fields. The two people aboard the smaller Cessna were the ones killed, and the plane was completely destroyed. The pilot of the F-16 ejected and "is apparently uninjured," he said.

Then Johanna Lenski pointed out: "I just found out the time of the crash was 11 am, 11 miles away from Charleston."

Sibyl Hunter said: 

The pilot, Maj. Aaron Johnson from the 55th Fighter Squadron [of Charleston] ejected and survived. Another 55/ISIS/1515 sync to go with the 77s and 11s. Also of note, the crash happened over Lewisfield Plantation where 178 slaves were once held. And I don't know if it's relevant at all but the story made the biblical rapture scripture pop into my head:
"After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." (1 Thes 4:17)

With the killing of 9 at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, much thought has been placed on the name "Charles."

JL shares: 

Charles \ch(ar)-les\ as a boy's name is pronounced charlz. It is of Old German origin, and the meaning of Charles is "free man". From "karl", similar to Old English "churl", meaning "man, serf" (slaves/blacks/ CHARLEStown). The first Holy Roman Emperor (seventh to eighth century) Charlemagne (Latin Carolus Magnus (Magus), meaning "Charles the Great") was a powerful German leader (Hitler?), who created a more ordered society out of the chaos that followed the fall of Rome. He united France and much of central Europe. His widespread fame gave rise to many forms of his name. Charles is the French variant of Carolus or Karolus, adopted by the English especially since the 17th-century reigns of kings Charles I and II. Charles and its variant forms have been favoured by the royalty of several countries, including the present Prince of Wales. Charlie and Charly are occasionally used for girls. See also Arlo. Naturalist Charles Darwin (Eugenics); French president Charles de Gaulle; author Charles Dickens; actor Charlie Chaplin; basketball player Charles Barkley.

Later, on July 7, 2015, the Fayette Factor collided with the day. Near the University of Maryland, there was a quadruple shooting, in the 900 block of W. Fayette St, West Baltimore, at 11 PM, 7-7-15, that left 3 dead, 1 injured.

There appears to be a good deal of duality, twins, and repeating situations going on. This happened during the animal attacks, when sharks and sturgeon appeared to be repeating attacks in the same spots. There have been others. As RS wrote me: "[Besides the] two false calls of gunshots reported on two different military bases, we should keep in mind this recent run of occurrences that take place before and then re-occur again only this time fatally. Plane crashes on the same street, a stairwell collapses again, flying sturgeon...."

JL writes:

Another twins reference, one of the prison escapees from upstate NY is being held in ROMULUS, New York. Source. 

As of July 8, 2015, there have been 17 lightning fatalities in the lower 48 states.

John A. Keel's 1970s' newletter, The Anomaly News often carried one of his favorite obsessions, his reports of the less-than-random intersection of lightning and the name game. Similar overlaps continue today.

7-7

Morgan (calling William Morgan) and Nichols (calling Jim Brandon) Name Game

At Fort Morgan, Alabama, a 12-year-old girl, Megan Nickell of North Little Rock, Arkansas, was killed by lightning on July 7, 2015. She was playing soccer on Fort Morgan peninsula beach.

National Weather Service lightning specialist John Jensenius says Nickell's death is the third lightning fatality this year in Alabama and the 17th in the country.

Charles Name Game

7-5

Enki King writes: "The odds of all these Charles syncs happening must be the same as four people getting struck by lightning in the same storm. Oh wait, that just happened. The two survivors were taken to Prince Charles Hospital."

Two men (one said to be carrying a selfie-stick) died who were hit in separate lightning strikes on the Brecon Beacons (a mountainous area of Wales), while two other men were hospitalized with their injuries at "nearby Prince Charles hospital."

One of the dead men was identified as Jeremy 'Jez' Prescott, 51, from Telford, Shropshire, (shown here with his dog Charlie), a Duke of Edinburgh Award expedition leader.

6-1

Fayette Factor (see more recently here)

Jacob Bryan Russell Neff, 17, of Ansted, West Virginia, died on June 1, 2015, after being struck by lightning. Neff and two other boys were fishing at a pond when a tree they took shelter under was struck by lightning. The call came in around 3:30 p.m. on the 1st, in an area of Elverton Road near Fayetteville. Neff was killed and the other boys were injured. Neff was an 11th grader at Fayetteville High School, according to Charleston, WV media.

+++

Finally, we need to mention that on July 8, 2015, three "coincidences" happened with the shut down of the United Airlines flights (all were grounded), the New York Stock Exchange (trading was suspended for about 4 hours) and the Wall Street Journal's website (was down). Homeland Security said it was not a cyberattack.

But you could not convince the social conspiracy community of that.

Those with a sense of humor felt it was Bane's fault! And here we are, full circle, back to The Dark Knight Rises.

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)