Belgian Crèche Attacked By "Joker"

Early on Friday, January 23, an unidentified male assailant, whose face was reportedly painted with black and white make-up, armed with a knife, went on a rampage in a childcare center near Brussels.

Sky News said the crèche was attacked by a knife-wielding man wearing black and white facepaint, "like a joker," who is allegedly extremely thin, with red hair. (Update: U.K.'s Independent reporter Vanessa Mock in Dendermonde, noted on Saturday, 24 January 2009, that the man has "his face painted like the Joker character in Batman.")

This crèche (French for "daycare") is located in northwestern Belgium.



Researcher Theo Paijmans, reporting via email to me, while watching the Belgian media, writes that the death toll is two (2) babies and one female daycare worker fatally stabbed, with 10 children and 2 daycare workers wounded.

Early alerts said five people have been killed. Flemish VTM television at first had said three children and two adults have been killed, and other reports said a further 20 people have been injured.



Reports have been confusing and breaking fast, all day.

At first, Belgian officials would only confirm an incident was taking place in Dendermonde, west of Brussels, but could not give any details of reported deaths or injuries.



A huge police operation took place in the town. The suspect was finally arrested, an hour after the stabbings, at a supermarket. What was he doing there?

+++
Update

Belgian and Dutch news reports indicate the attacker (wearing a bulletproof vest) had his "eyes painted black and cheeks painted white and carried a backpack. He rang the doorbell; said inside he wanted to ask something and walked straight through to the baby care dept. There he stabbed wildly around. Then he went to the childrens dept," according to Paijmans.

Upon his arrest, the suspect has been apparently "playing with the police," Paijmans mentions in translated media accounts. "The man does not want to divulge his identity to the police. He had no identity papers on him during his arrest. He gave the police various false names and addresses," says one of the latest dispatches. (The "Joker" is often a "Trickster" in folkloric motifs.)

Rumors that the accused escaped from a psychiatric ward or was high on drugs or alcohol have been proven to be baseless.

According to the Flemish newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, the man allegedly admitted to the killings after 10 hours of interrogation during which he laughed several times.

The newspaper also claimed that police prevented "a second bloodbath" as the man had on him the address of another child daycare center. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. In his backpack, he was carrying a second knife and an axe.

Theo Paijmans also points out a name game angle. The daycare center is named "Fabeltjesland" meaning: "Land of Fables" (Fairie?, Fairy?). "Fabeltjesland" was a popular children's television series in the 1970s, in the Netherlands. Later news reports merely noted the translation of "Fabeltjes" as "Fairytales." AFP recorded the daycare's name means "The Country of Fables."

This named location closely parallels the "LaFayette" ("Little Enchantment," "Little Fairy") monikers found in conjunction with onomatology (the study of names) and toponomy (the study of places) examples I have investigated elsewhere.

For more updates and the new drawing of the arrested suspect ("Kim D"), please click on "Dendermonde Joker."
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Meanwhile, earlier, a "school shooting" in Norway took place, which appears to be a policeman-related murder and his attempted suicide.

A police officer in northern Norway shot and killed his ex-girlfriend, then critically wounded himself Friday, January 23, outside the elementary school where she was a student teacher, police said. No children were injured.

The shooting happened in a parking lot between the Slettaelva elementary school and a kindergarten in Tromsoe, the main city in the Norwegian Arctic, police said.

Police initially said both victims had died, but Tromsoe Police Chief Truls Fyhn later corrected that information, saying the 53-year-old man was in "extremely critical condition" at a local hospital.

Fyhn told a news conference broadcast on national radio that the woman, who was in her early 40s, had been living with the police officer until they broke up last week. He said he could not release their names, pending notification of next of kin.
Fyhn said it wasn't immediately known whether the man had used his service weapon in the shooting.

Police said it was not clear how many children were nearby when the shooting occurred, but it was likely that at least some were in the vicinity. The shooting was reported to police at about 8:30 a.m. (0730 GMT).

Tromsoe is about 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of the Arctic Circle.

Also, on Friday, January 23, 2009, there was a total lockdown and search of the students at Lafayette High School, Lafayette, Louisiana, because a text message was received by many students saying a school shooting would occur on that day at that site. No school shooting took place.

Much appreciation to Theo Paijmans for translations from the European media.

Decapitation, Death and the Damned

On this, the first anniversary of the death of Heath Ledger, news of a decapitation, Mason County deaths, and the movie industry's recognition of The Joker are hitting the media.

Exactly one year ago today, on January 22nd, Heath Ledger, who played the Joker in The Dark Knight, was found dead in his fourth-floor apartment at 421 Broome Street, between Crosby and Lafayette Streets in SoHo, New York City, on the day of the Full Moon.



The link between the Joker and decapitations has already been made on this blog, often.

Last night, the horror of a decapitation merged with a familiar location in school violence history.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009, police reported a woman was slain on the Virginia Tech campus and decapitated, according to wire services including AP and Fox News. Xin Yang, 22, was killed Wednesday night after arriving at the campus from Beijing on Jan. 8 to begin studying accounting, Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said.

The first 911 call came into police around 7:06 p.m., saying a woman was being assaulted inside the Graduate Life Center, just outside the Au Bon Pain cafe.

A police officer who responded to an emergency call has told how she entered the cafe to find the male attacker holding the female victim's head in his hand. Police say the victim was decapitated with a kitchen knife while having coffee at the cafe with the suspect.

Responding officers found the woman had been stabbed to death and beheaded. They arrested the suspect, a 25-year-old Chinese graduate student named Haiyang Zhu. He is a Ph.D. student in agricultural and applied economics. The police also recovered a large kitchen knife they believe was used at the scene.

Haiyang Zhu was charged with first-degree murder and is being held in Montgomery County jail.

[Au Bon Pain-French for "place of good bread"- was founded by Louis Kane as a bakery in Boston's historically significant Faneuil Hall in 1978, known for Samuel Adams' revolutionary speeches and its famous grasshopper weathervane used to tell British spies from Patriots. In 1982 Au Bon Pain debuted a bakery cart at Logan Airport in Boston. Au Bon Pain Inc. (later renamed Panera Bread Company) went public in 1991, and today has 230 units worldwide.]

The Au Bon Pain decapitation was the first violence on campus since April 16, 2007, when Korean student Seung-Hui Cho killed two students at West Ambler Johnston Hall, and then two hours later, after walking across campus to Norris Hall, killed 30 others and himself.

Meanwhile, on January 22nd, the Academy Award nominations were rolled out, and as expected, Heath Ledger was named as a candidate for Best Supporting Male Actor for his work in The Dark Knight. (He already has won that award from the Golden Globes.)

Elsewhere, another horizon event is unfolding. For you see, it must be recalled that the movie The Mothman Prophecies began screening this Friday, seven years ago, as one group of the original witnesses, the Mallettes were attending a funeral in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Stephen Mallette, who was one of the first four witnesses, was mourning the passing of his brother, Charlie, due to a brain tumor. Charles Putnam "Charlie" Mallette, 43, of Point Pleasant, died on Thursday, January 22, 2002, at his home. This, of course, is the same date as Heath Ledger’s death date, which occurred six years later.

The last week in January 2002, during that same initial movie release time period, there were five fatalities in and near Point Pleasant, in two crashes involving four automobiles on January 26, and three other fatal wrecks in the next five days. For rural Mason County, the eight road deaths in six days was the most in 40 years, according to the State of West Virginia. In one major crash, two tractor-trailer rigs and a Volvo resulted in the death of truck driver Richard Clement, 61, of Mukwonga, Wisconsin.

Now comes word that two men were killed and a third man remains in a Huntington (West Virginia) hospital following a single-vehicle accident that happened near Point Pleasant late Tuesday, January 20, 2009.

According to a spokesman with the Mason County Detachment of the West Virginia State Police, Benjamin David Norvell, 32, of Point Pleasant, was driving his 1993 GMC Sonoma pickup truck east on Sand Hill Road with two passengers when his truck allegedly went off the right side of the road, causing him to lose control and strike a utility pole.

The accident happened around 10:20 p.m. on Sand Hill Road, near the intersection with Finch Drive (a location with a bird name, please note).

According to the state police, Matthew D. Scott, 21, of Columbus, Ohio, and Ryan Beckner, 32, of Point Pleasant, were pronounced dead at the scene. Norvell was taken to St. Mary’s Medical Center in Huntington by helicopter, where he remains in critical condition, according to Sharon Shaw, spokeswoman for the hospital.

The spokesman for the state police said none of the three men were wearing seat belts. According to investigators, the three men were celebrating Scott’s birthday and were on their way home when the accident happened.

Sand Hill Road was closed for a brief period of time as emergency crews cleaned up the scene. Members of Mason County Emergency Medical Services and the Point Pleasant Volunteer Fire Department responded to the scene as well.

Cpl. C.K. Zerkle and Cpl. K.M. Gilley are continuing their investigation of the cause of the accident, reports the Point Pleasant Daily Register, January 22, 2009.

Humm, Sand Hill Road.



In 1966, when the initial reports of the "Big Bird" (later labeled "Mothman" by an Ohio copyeditor who was a fan of the "Batman" TV series), one debunker said the eyewitnesses had seen nothing strange, only a sandhill crane (Grus canadensis). The "sandhill crane explanation" has become part of the lore of the early days of Mothman.

It is worth pointing out that the great intellectual anomalist Charles Fort, writing of the "Devil's Hoofprints" in his 1919 The Book of the Damned, Chapter 28, records:

"In the Illustrated London News, March 17, 1855, a correspondent from Heidelberg writes, 'upon the authority of a Polish Doctor of Medicine,' that on the Piashowa-gora (Sand Hill) a small elevation on the border of Galicia, but in Russian Poland, such marks are to be seen in the snow every year, and sometimes in the sand of this hill, and 'are attributed by the inhabitants to supernatural influences.'



(Thanks to tips from Todd Campbell, Brandon and Misty Tittel, Ben Fairhall, and others.)

Assassination Threat From Contactee "Trinity"

Today, sadly, President Barack Obama's Inauguration may have a strange, fringe "contactee" footnote to it. News is developing that an earlier arrest for an assassination threat has a deeper bizarre UFO connection.

Ben Fairhall's The Daily Behemoth posting, "Contactee responsible for Obama murder threat?" alerted me to this info.

Fairhall writes:

A man arrested for issuing threats against the life of President Elect Barack Obama did so on a UFO forum, sources claim. John Christopher, 42, has posted several video clips to You Tube describing the multi-dimensional nature of reality and the inner earth.

Several wire service stories, such as the following one, confirmed the arrest at the end of last week:

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - A Wisconsin man has been arrested in Mississippi for threats he allegedly made against President-elect Barack Obama on the Internet.

Steven Joseph Christopher, 42, was arrested Friday [January 16, 2009] by the Secret Service in Brookhaven, Miss., and was charged with threatening to assassinate Obama for what he claimed was "the country's own good," according to federal prosecutors. The criminal complaint was sealed until Christopher's appearance in federal court.

Judge James C. Sumner ordered Christopher held until a bail hearing next Thursday. Sumner suggested Christopher be held in isolation for his own safety.

A news release says Christopher made the threats Jan. 11 and 15 on the Web site www.alien-earth.org.

A more in-depth overview of the arrest is carried at the Huliqsite, including this:

Steven Joseph Christopher, age 42, has reportedly made the threats on January 11, 15, and 16 in a chat forum on the site www.alien-earth.org, a website about UFOs and aliens, the US Department of Justice said. He has created a new forum topic entitled, "ok we have 9 days until my Presidential Assasination[sic]." He referred to Obama as a 'sacrificial lamb.' "Yes, I have decided I will assassinate Barack Obama. It's really nothing personal about the man. He speaks well, has a loving although controlling wife and two cute daughters. But I know it's for the country's own good that I can do this. Barack Obama, I view more as a sacrificial lamb, but the sacrifice must take place," Christopher wrote on January 11.

* * *

As it turns out this man calls himself "Stevie the Playboy", "SHR," "Trinity" and in some cases "god". Christopher also spent time on the internet, using at least three different usernames to post about 70 different YouTube videos. The Alien-Earth Web site administrator notified a special agent with the U.S. Secret Service of the posted web messages.

* * *

"I'm trying to get people's attention, they were only bluffs. I'm trying to get everyone to listen to me because I have an important message from God," said Christopher. "Everyone needs to move to Florida by December 31st, this is the end of the world as we know it," he further warned in a video posting.

Some of Christopher's thoughts about planetary relationships sound more like the Heaven's Gate and Solar Temple cults (see pages 75-93, The Copycat Effect), than ufological, in nature, however.

Indeed, reading his rambling threats, Steven Joseph Christopher, a man with three first names, who sometimes called himself "Trinity," it turns out, seems to be deeply anti-semitic and mentally ill.

Death In Threes

Perhaps the idea is overblown, overstated, and overemphasized, but the notion does exist that "death comes in threes."

Let's look at three possible origins, expressions, or foundations for this idea that naturally reinforces a copycat mentality in reporting histories, tragedies, and breaking news:

Avery's Rule of Three

"Trouble strikes in series of threes, but when working around the house the next job after a series of three is not the fourth job -- it's the start of a brand new series of three."

Source.


The Rule of Three in Writing

The rule of three is a principle in English writing that suggests that things that come in threes are inherently funnier, more satisfying, or more effective than other numbers of things. From slogans ("Go, fight, win!") to films, many things are structured in threes. There were three musketeers, three little pigs, three billy goats Gruff, Goldilocks and the three bears, and Three Stooges.

A series of three is often used to create a progression in which the tension is created, then built up, and finally released. Similarly, adjectives are often grouped together in threes in order to emphasize an idea.

Source.


The Rule of Three in Wicca

The Rule of Three (also Three-fold Law or Law of Return) is a religious tenet held by some Wiccans. It states that whatever energy a person puts out into the world, be it positive or negative, will be returned to that person three times. Some subscribe to a variant of this law in which return is not necessarily threefold.

According to John Coughlin the Law posits "a literal reward or punishment tied to one's actions, particularly when it comes to working magic." The law is not a universal article of faith among Wiccans, and "there are many Wiccans, experienced and new alike, who view the Law of Return as an over-elaboration on the Wiccan Rede." Some Wiccans believe that it is a modern innovation based on Christian morality.

The Rule of Three has been compared by Karl Lembke to other ethics of reciprocity, such as the concept of karma in Dharmic religions and the Christian edict, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (Matthew 7:12), also called the "Golden Rule."

The Rule of Three has a possible prototype in a piece of Wiccan liturgy which first appeared in print in Gerald Gardner's 1949 novel High Magic's Aid:

'Thou hast obeyed the Law. But mark well, when thou receivest good, so equally art bound to return good threefold.' (For this is the joke in witchcraft, the witch knows, though the initiate does not, that she will get three times what she gave, so she does not strike hard.)

The first published reference to the Rule of Three as a general ethical principle may be from Raymond Buckland, in a 1968 article for Beyond magazine. The Rule of Three later features within a poem of 26 couplets titled "Rede of the Wiccae," published by Gwen Thompson in 1975 in Green Egg vol. 8, no. 69 and attributed to her grandmother Adriana Porter.

Source.

Trilogies of Death

BTW, this sense of a trilogy among death is found in various popular cultures and can be demonstrated by noting the following three collected works:

1) Three Deaths: A Tale (Russian: Три смерти, Tri smerti) is a short story by Leo Tolstoy first published in 1859. It narrates the deaths of three subjects: a noblewoman, a coachman and a tree.

2) Death Times Three is a collection of Nero Wolfe novellas by Rex Stout, published posthumously by Bantam Books in 1985. The book contains three stories, one never before published:

"Bitter End," first printed in the November 1940 issue of The American Magazine, and collected in the limited-edition volume Corsage: A Bouquet of Rex Stout (1977). The story is a re-working of Stout's Tecumseh Fox story Bad for Business.

"Frame-Up for Murder," an expanded rewrite of the 1958 novella "Murder Is No Joke" that was serialized in three issues of The Saturday Evening Post (June 21, June 28 and July 5, 1958) but never published in book form.

"Assault on a Brownstone," an early draft of the 1961 novella "Counterfeit for Murder".

3) Curse, Death & Spirit is a 1992 three-part anthology of Japanese ghost stories from popular director Hideo Nakata (Ringu, The Ring 2).

The movie consist of three storylines.

The Cursed Doll: Satomi is being called by someone in her dreams. Following this voice, the voice seemed to be coming from a doll in which she realize that there is a spirit of her dead sister inside of it.

The Spirit of the Dead: A woman takes her son camping after her husband's death but was disrupted when a ghost of a woman thinks that the boy is her child.

The Haunted Inn: A spirit forces three girls who are on a vacation in a traditional Japanese inn, in which a tragedy had occurred a long time ago, to repeat the events of the day.

JFK and Threes

Writings of a "twilight language" nature on the JFK assassination often mention the first Masonic Temple site in Texas, Dealey Plaza, as the location of the shootings. When they go on and note that the killing of the President (the symbolic "King") occurred near the banks of the Trinity River, next to the Triple Overpass, lined up on a map on the 33 degree parallel with the Trinity Site in New Mexico, therefore, these may also be an extension of the "death comes in threes" literature.

Material on the last point is extensive within the triple-decker works in conspiracy, synchromystic, and assassination thoughts, which are often remarkably scholarly in nature.

When The Wolfbane Blooms

What does tonight's first Full Moon of 2009 foretell? This one is called the Wolf Moon, a Full Moon in Cancer, and it is indeed a precursor to a year that will be full of werewolf news.

"Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright." - The Wolf Man, 1941.

The word is slipping out.

Todd Campbell takes a look at the interplay between hidden forces, the Moon, in a Sirius vein, in his new notes delivered in "Bark at the Moon", over at Through The Looking Glass.



In the new edition of Entertainment Weekly, January 16, 2009, reporter Tanner Stransky gives us a hint about how some of this will be reflected in the popular culture via his ""Movie News":

In 2009, Werewolves Answer Hollywood's Call of the Wild

"The furry beasts are popping up everywhere, including the upcoming Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, New Moon, and more

"Take a gander at the big screen this year because you're likely to spy a full moon — and we aren't talking about Will Ferrell's bare butt. If 2008 marked a comeback for the vampire, the next 12 months belong to the werewolf. On Jan. 23, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans showcases the woolly beasts, while a furrier-than-usual Hugh Jackman returns in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (May 1). Later this year, Benicio Del Toro stars in The Wolfman (Nov. 6), and in the Nov. 20 Twilight sequel New Moon, heroine Bella moons over werewolf Jacob. TV loves a lupine too: Fox just ordered the ludicrously titled dramedy pilot Bitches — about a quartet of female werewolf friends in New York City — and it's rumored that season 2 of HBO's True Blood will get hairy."



"So what's with the comeback? 'The last time this happened was World War II,' notes Brad Steiger, author of The Werewolf Book. 'It's reflective. We want to worry about something that can get us besides bailouts. I'm eager to see [these projects]. Benicio, God bless him, looks like a werewolf without the makeup.'"

Steiger's book is one of several similar books that have shape-shifted into our world lately, indeed, returning some old words in new presentations.



The republished The Book of Werewolves by Sabine Baring-Gould is a new classic in hardback in a series from Cosimo Books.

Meanwhile, A Cryptozoological Study of the Shunka Warak'in by Mystical Mikal, published by BookSurge Publishing, late in 2008, looks at the overlap between one old saga of a werewolf-like creature and cryptozoology.

Yes, if Vampires seemed to rule in 2008, it appears certain the true Masters of the forests and the night, the Werewolves may be on the horizon.

Maleva: "Whoever is bitten by a werewolf and lives becomes a werewolf himself."
Larry Talbot: "Ah, don't hand me that. You're just wasting your time."
Maleva: "The wolf bit you, didn't he?"
Larry Talbot: "Yeah. Yeah he did!"

Stay tuned, for you have just been bitten.

Budapest School Shooting: Workplace Violence

A principal and teacher were killed Wednesday, January 7th, 2009, when a masked gunman opened fire in a private elementary school in Budapest, Hungary's capital city, police said.

The lone gunman entered the private school in the 21 district of Budapest at 6:40 p.m. (12:40 p.m. ET) and started shooting arbitrarily, Budapest police spokesperson Endre Kormos told the media. There were no children in the school at the time.

Both men were killed and a security guard was injured. The guard was shot in the hand and taken to the hospital, police said. Police set up checkpoints around the city to try to track down the gunman and issued a reward of 5 million Forints (about $26,000) for public assistance in the case.

The two male victims were shot in the head.

Csepel, the specific site of the shootings, is located on the northern tip of a large island in the Danube River and during the communist regime it was the hub of Budapest's heavy industry.

January 8th update:

Two suspects have been arrested in a Budapest, Hungary, school shooting that left a principal and a teacher dead, police said Thursday.

One suspect is a security guard who was injured in Wednesday's shooting at the private elementary school, CNN reported. He sustained a gunshot wound to the hand which police said could have been self-inflicted.

Police said the other suspect is the school's finance director.

Police indicated both suspects had been laid off about a week before the attack and indicated revenge may have been a motive, CNN said.

No children were in the school when a masked gunman entered and began shooting , police said.

######

The location: Budapest, Hungary, was the setting for the start of the "Gloomy Sunday" copycat suicide wave, beginning in 1936, which swept throughout Europe.

In two recent school shootings in Europe, January was the month of the event (e.g. Jan, Sweden, 2001, and The Hague, Netherlands, 2004). Both of those involved an individual young shooter.

This date in history: On January 7th, 1973, Black Liberation Army member Mark James Essex fatally killed 10 people. He also wounded 13 others at the Downtown Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge in New Orleans, Louisiana, before being shot to death by police, who launched an assault using 600 officers and a helicopter gunship. Most of the victims who were targeted by sniper Essex were Caucasian, and firefighters, military and law enforcement officers.

Panetta's CIA Think Tank?

Has Leon Panetta been connected to intelligence activities for years? Are the media overlooking the visible hints?

Panetta is President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for the Director of the Center of Intelligence Agency. People are acting shocked.

But is Panetta closely linked to having perhaps set up a military-intelligence university think tank in California?

Panetta's visible biography is well-known.

His seemingly military-related experience seems thin (but don't be fooled). In 1964, Panetta joined the United States Army as a Second Lieutenant. There he received the Army Commendation Medal, and was discharged in 1966 as a Captain. He was a Congressman from 1976-1993. While a member of Congress, he was Vice Chairman of the Caucus of Vietnam-Era Veterans in Congress, but he does not seem to be credited as being a member of any intelligence oversight subcommittees. On July 17, 1994, Panetta was appointed White House Chief of Staff by Clinton, a position he held until January 20, 1997. In 2006, he was part of the Iraq Study Group, also known as the Baker Commission.

No one denies that Leon Panetta is a member of the secretive Trilateral Commission. What other things has he done, quietly?

How well is it known that Panetta was involved in the planning and converting of the former military base of Fort Ord in California into "Panetta's University" and more?

Few realize that Panetta was instrumental in starting the California State University – Monterey Bay (CSUMB). Or that CSU Chancellor Munoz favored a different name for the location, the University of Fort Ord, which would have had the intriguing acronym, UFO.

But is what remains, around the edges at Fort Ord, a military secret of some import, thanks to Leon Panetta? What does the Panetta Institute really do? It certainly seems like it is often used as a CIA think-tank.

Interesting reading, furthermore, can by found in an article entitled "The Countdown to 9-11":

Let us get a firm grip on [what] we do know, so that when fresh facts arise we may be ready to fit them into their places.
~ Sherlock Holmes
The Devil’s Foot

Fort Ord takes its name for General Edward Otho Cresap Ord, whose military career spanned 1839 to 1881. Gen. E. O. C. Ord acquired for $40 the marble topped table, present when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee met with Gen. U. S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. The small wooden table, not to be confused with Gen. Ord’s table, went to Gen. Sheridan for $20, who gave it to “boy wonder” Gen. George Armstrong Custer. Today, that table rests in the National Museum of American History, Washington, DC. Whereas the marble topped table resides in the Chicago Historical Society’s Civil War Room. Controversy over which table sat Grant, and which sat Lee continues––but it is certain one of the signatures to the surrender terms was signed on Gen. Ord’s table. No word yet as to the disposition of the desk upon which Bill Clinton signed-off on his political career.

Leon Panetta, however, has offices and archives his congressional record on Fort Ord. He received $1,400 per day as an educational consultant, $350,000 from incoming CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed, for startup costs and salaries for the “bipartisan” Leon Panetta Institute for Public Policy, plus $50,000 in “materials” from Vermont gubernatorial hopeful, Peter P. Smith. According to the Otter Realm, CSUMB’s fledgling newspaper (sea otter: school mascot), the Panetta Institute also sought a permanent endowment of $10 million-dollars. Panetta to Otter Realm, “It is important for people to feel the reward of service.”

Little did the graduating seniors realize the event Panetta referenced at the first class graduation was a precursor. The incident he talked about had happened on September 11, 1994 (see the story of Frank Eugene Corder, pages ix-x in The Copycat Effect)!

In May 1997, CSUMB held its first commencement....Leon Panetta...gave the Seniors who stayed the course short shrift––but recounted the White House incident, in which a small plane crash-landed on the East Lawn during the predawn hours. Leon Panetta asked his startled staff, presumably by telephone, “Has anybody done anything yet?” Panetta pounded the podium. Without alluding to the specific protocols for such an event, his message to the gowned captives under the rent-a-tent: “Get it done.”

Today, California State University, Monterey Bay, is a small public university in the California State University system on the site of the former Fort Ord, on the Central Coast of California. CSUMB was founded in 1994 with a student enrollment of 654 students. As of 2007 the university had 4,080 students and 141 full-time faculty members.

In June 2006, Ed Salven, one of Ft. Ord's veterans from the Vietnam era, published a book, The Soldier Factory, chronicling his personal history as a soldier, and reflecting upon a return visit to the Fort in the late 1990s. Along with poetic reflections, the book includes color reproductions of paintings of soldiers that Salven found hung from barracks' windows as he explored the grounds, rendered by students from California State University, Monterey Bay.

An annual "Secrets of Fort Ord" tour is given, beginning from the campus of CSUMB. Locations are reached by bus, and the tour takes approximately two hours. Though much of the fort appears abandoned, "tourists" learn otherwise upon seeing the buildings in full use with soldiers in training within the broken down buildings. Much of the tour takes place beyond public reach, behind closed off limits. Some places are only viewable from the outside, though, such as the former prison, recently used for paintballing and now housing a concrete works and other industry.

A small portion of Ft. Ord remains under Army control and is now called the Presidio of Monterey Annex. It includes the Ord Military Community, California National Guard posts, the DoD Center, and the gunnery ranges.

The military still has a presence at Fort Ord, in the form of several California Army National Guard units, facilities administrated by the Presidio of Monterey, and the continued operation of the base PX and Commissary to cater for retirees who chose to settle in the area and are entitled to shop at such facilities. Management of the military housing has been outsourced to private firms, but the homes are still occupied by personnel stationed at the Presidio of Monterey and Naval Postgraduate School and retired military members. Ft. Ord's housing, PX, chapel, and Commissary are now called Ord Military Community.

What is really going on at Fort Ord? And how important was Panetta's involvement in the development of "his" university in keeping all of this out of the limelight?

Why should we be surprised that Leon Panetta is going to be the Director of the CIA?

Police Kill Nazi-Uniformed Man

Occasionally genius is misunderstood, and every death like the one described here is not suicide-by-cop.

Miles Allen Murphy was a bright, eccentric man, who sometimes dressed in historically correct uniforms and clothing. He was shot dead on January 1, 2009, because Seattle police felt threatened by his actions.

If the facts are as stated, Murphy appears to have acted irresponsibly while celebrating the New Year, and law enforcement officers were placed in an untenable position.

Nevertheless, the tragedy is widespread, for Murphy's family, the police personnel, and their families.

Nick Perry and Emily Heffter, reporters for the Seattle Times, have written a comprehensive essay on Murphy's death:





Miles Allen Murphy

Seattle police shot and killed a University of Washington senior who was dressed in a World War II-era German uniform and who officers say was brandishing a long rifle with a bayonet early Thursday [January 1, 2009] in his University District apartment.

The student, identified by friends as Miles Allen Murphy, was well-known on campus as a smart, eccentric history buff who loved to participate in WWII re-enactments and would even show up to class, at times, dressed in a historic uniform.

Friends said Murphy, 22, would entertain at parties by playing everything from old German folk songs to Britney Spears tunes on his accordion.

Murphy was killed about 2 a.m. Thursday when police responded to neighbors' complaints that several men were shooting vintage, military-style rifles and shotguns into a dark alley near the 5200 block of 17th Avenue Northeast, police spokesman Jeff Kappel said.

When police were called, Kappel said, neighbors pointed out an apartment in a large white house. When police knocked on the door, one of the suspects opened the door brandishing a long rifle with a large bayonet attached.

Uniformed police officers warned the man several times to drop his weapon. He didn't, Kappel said, and he pointed it at one of the officers. Two officers shot him several times. He died at a hospital Thursday morning, Kappel said.

Spencer Bray, a UW senior, was one of about 20 friends who gathered Thursday night to share stories about Murphy. Bray said Murphy — a German cultural-studies major — had amassed a large collection of WWII memorabilia from the Internet, goodwill stores and from antique dealers.

"He was one of the most peaceful guys I have met. He was really just a nice guy," Bray said. "I never heard him espousing any Nazi ideology; none of that interested him. He liked the physical stuff from WWII because he was such a history buff."

Bray said Murphy sometimes would wear kilts or uniforms to class — including German and U.S. gear from WWII — but would make sure the outfits didn't have symbolic additions such as swastikas.

"He had this Russian snow coat that he'd been wearing recently," Bray said. "It was military issue from WWII."

He said Murphy spoke good German and Swedish, as well as some Finnish, and wanted to be a professor of German literature.

"He was eccentric, but he was very well-liked," Bray said. "It's a huge shock. I read the news today and ... it was really, really hard to hear for all of us."

Murphy worked part time at Red Mill Burgers on Phinney Ridge, Bray said, and always would tip well when he ate out as a result of his experience in the hospitality trade.

On the social-networking site MySpace, Murphy wrote, in a joking fashion, that he lived in a 1920s room and only entered the 21st century when "absolutely necessary." He wrote that he collected vintage clothes and never turned down a well-mixed martini. He listed "Mr. Bayonet" as his lucky charm and said he was "kind of impulsive."

Bray recalled one party when Murphy entertained the crowd on his accordion with everything from old folk songs to "Les Miserables." Murphy also could play piano, violin, banjo and guitar, his friend said.

"He could figure out just about any song on any of the instruments that he played," Bray said. "It was really cool. It was fun to have him play and sing."

The shooting took place in a quiet neighborhood of large homes near the university.

The man who lives in the apartment next door, Mark Kedziora, said that before Thursday night he hadn't seen his neighbor wearing a full German military uniform, but said the man wore a black mustache, combed-over hair and military boots.

Kedziora said he saw his neighbor and two other men with guns standing in the alley at about 1:30 a.m. Thursday. He looked outside when he heard a loud bang, thinking the guns were fake. But when he watched the men reload, he realized the guns were real and said to his friend, "That guy's an idiot."

One of the men was wearing an olive uniform and a military helmet, Kedziora said, and his neighbor was wearing a Nazi military uniform.

"I didn't know he had the whole get-up," he said. A third man was wearing street clothes. It wasn't clear if either of the other two men live at the apartment.

Kedziora said he heard confusion outside and could hear police warning the man to drop his weapon. A few minutes later, they watched out the window as the wounded neighbor was taken away and SWAT teams searched the neighborhood.

Police searching the apartment after the incident found the large collection of German military regalia and a lot of alcohol, Kappel said.

At one point, police evacuated the building, waking tenants.

A few scraps of yellow police tape remained in the alley Thursday afternoon.

No one answered the door at the apartment where the shooting occurred, although the lights were on. Cardboard partially covered a pool of blood on the landing outside the door.

The police officers who fired at the man are on paid administrative leave, which is standard procedure.

It is a sad opening to 2009.

Top Ten Evil Clown Stories of 2008

During the last year, coulrophobic reality was in evidence through events that actually did occur. Here are my top choices for the most sinister of synchromystic clown news items of 2008.



(1.) The Joker Is Dead.

There is no bigger symbolic story for the year than the death of Heath Ledger on January 22, 2008. The actor would appear in The Dark Knight, which opened 07.18.08, in the most significant and iconic evil clown role of the year, The Joker.

(2.) Jokawild Is Decapitated.

On July 30, 2008, Tim McLean, who called himself Jokawild, was beheaded on a Greyhound bus in Alberta, allegedly by Vince Weiguang Li, 40.

The MySpace head shot of the victim McLean is below. This is where he told about how he called himself "Jokawild," had three tattoos, owned an iguana and loved loud music and motorcycles.



Todd Campbell writing of McLean at Through the Looking Glass revealed the victim was a big fan of Insane Clown Posse. Most fans of Insane Clown Posse call themselves "Juggalos."

[One repeating theme this year is the increasing presence of the Juggalo (male or female) and/or Juggalette (more commonly used for a female) in these incidents. These individuals are members of the fanbase of the Detroit hip hop group Insane Clown Posse and related recording artists at Psychopathic Records.]





(3.) Slipknot Clown Killer Strikes.

On September 1, 2008, in Johannesburg, Morné Harmse, an 18-year-old pupil in his final year of high school in South Africa allegedly killed a fellow student with a sword and then hacked up three others. Harmse wore a clown mask and carried other masks inspired by the group Slipknot. The killer also spoke in a voice to mimic the Joker in The Dark Knight.

(Not specifically clown-related, but it is worthy of noting that this school event was proceeded by the Valentine's Day, February 14th, 2008, shooting on the campus of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, United States, which left five plus the shooter dead, and wounded eighteen. Steve Kazmierczak came to NIU with his gun in his guitar case, yet another scenario seen in cinema, such as Desparado. Kazmierczak, the dark knight dressed all in black, felt, it appears, he was in a movie. Kazmierczak had on his right arm a tattoo depicting the masked, clown-like character, the Jigsaw Killer, from the horror movie, Saw.)

(4.) Juggalos Attempt A Kidnapping.

On September 9, 2008 in West Valley City, Utah, two men with clown painted faces, identified as Juggalos, were arrested in an attempted kidnapping of a young boy.



(5.) Phantom Clowns Return.

During mid-October 2008, new sightings of "phantom clowns" in Chicago occurred near Wicker Park, which has a symbolic name linked to New York City's Son of Sam killings of 1976-1977. In the new Illinois incidents, the scary man was seen wearing clown make-up (in one report, with a teardrop on whiteface) and a wig. Allegedly, he used balloons to attempt to lure children into his vehicle (i.e. a white or brown van with the windows broken out) on the South Side. Police issued an alert about a week after a man with a similar description was spotted on the West Side, also trying to snatch kids.

(6.) Juggalos Throw Man Off Bridge.

In Washington state, Joshua Smith was hit on the head with beer bottles, stabbed and thrown off of a bridge. Smith, a Juggalo, was attacked for breaking "gang rules." Smith was attacked by two other Juggalos and a skinhead, who were arrested after the incident. Trench Reynolds on crimene.ws said on November 8, 2008, "Talk all you want about family and carnival but I can’t think of any other music fans that enforce ‘gang rules.’"

(7.) Juggalos Almost Decapitate Teen.

Two 21-year-old men were arrested late in November 2008, by Salt Lake County sheriff's deputies after investigators said they attacked a 17-year-old Kearns youth with a medieval mace. The key to catching the men was their apparent affiliation with Juggalos, as some jewelry they dropped matched a symbol found on the bumper of their car.

During the altercation with the victim, one man stabbed the teen with a knife and the other man struck him with a medieval battle ax type of weapon in the back of his neck, said Salt Lake County Sheriff's Lt. Paul Jaroscak. Doctors needed about 300 stitches to close the wound, he said.

"The detective investigating the case said the ax could have very well have decapitated him," Jaroscak said. The weapon used has also been described as a four-sided "warrior's ax," according to the sheriff's office.



(8.) Juggalos Kill on Olive Branch Lane?

Adolescent Matthew Silliman’s (= “silly + man”) allegedly was killed by his four teen friends in a trailer hangout on Olive Branch Lane, rural New Hill, about 10 miles from Apex, near Raleigh, North Carolina. Silliman disappeared two days before Thanksgiving, and may have been killed a few days later, after being held as a captive. Search warrants noted that before someone used a hammer to beat Silliman, the suspects read him his fate in tarot cards.



The four suspects are (1) Drew Logan (= “megalithic rocking stone”) Shaw, 16, who describes himself as a Juggalo (Insane Clown Posse devotee); (2) Aadil Khan, 17, whose My Space page includes Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf among his favorite books; (3) Ryan Patrick Hare ("going down the rabbit hole"?), 18; and (4) Allegra Dahlquist, 17, a reportedly suicidal woman whose is a expert equestrian from the exclusive neighborhood near the Prestonwood Country Club.

(9.) Clown City Shooting Kills A Baby.

Miami detectives arrested two teenagers on December 18, 2008, for killing a police dispatcher’s baby, in an apparent gang-related shooting. A masked gunman ran up to a group of men playing dominoes on the porch of their home, and began firing, hitting ten-month-old Derrick Days II who was sitting on his father's lap when he was killed. Pierre Roche, the apparent primary target, an alleged member of a rival gang named Clown City, was also fatally shot.

(10.) Juggalos Fear Spreads

Members of the Juggalos are often seen wearing shirts bearing the Insane Clown Posse's "hatchet man" logo.

Police Detective Calvin Walker was quoted in the Las Vegas Sun of December 23, 2008, as saying, "Not every child wearing those shirts is a gang member. They will tell you 'Mom, I just listen to Insane Clown Posse.' But unfortunately, the Juggalos are a documented gang."

Police estimate there are between 3,000 and 4,000 Juggalos in Utah, and 15 percent of them are associated with criminal activity.

Juggalo vandal activity, likewise, is high in Washington State. For example, late in 2008, in Lynden, Washington, two self-described Juggalo boys, 13 and 14, were convicted of starting the fire (June 9, 2008) that completely destroyed Lynden's historic landmark block-long Delft Square Building. W. H. "Billy" Waples opened his general store there in 1897. [This is not to be confused with the Nieuwe Kerk (English: New Church), a landmark church building in Delft, the Netherlands, located on Delft Market Square. In 1584, William the Silent was entombed in a mausoleum there.]

Special Footnote:

Not to be overlooked, in the ultimate evil twisted clown-like ending to the year of 2008, 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. Multiple episodes of the hit television series "Knight Rider" were filmed in Covina, and the city has the largest and busiest movie multiplex in the USA, the AMC 30. The television series "Roswell" was filmed in Covina, at various spots that served as locations for the fictional version of the town of Roswell, New Mexico, the 33° north latitude site of the alleged crash of a UFO and reported finding of alien bodies in 1947.


Top Ten Evil Clown Stories of 2008
© Loren Coleman, 2008



For more on "Phantom Clowns," see Mysterious America (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2006). For more on symbolic criminal behavior, see The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004).

Santa Kills At Least 9 + Self In LA

December 27th update: Police recovered a second vehicle believed to have been rented by Pardo in recent weeks from a Pasadena company.

A sheriff's bomb squad robot examined the RAV4 and did not find any explosives, officials said. Investigators did find a canister of gasoline, water bottles, wrapped Christmas presents, two computers and a map of Mexico, police said.

A Dodge Caliber Pardo used to flee the scene Christmas Eve was found abandoned near his brother's home in Sylmar, boobytrapped with explosives and ammunition.

Buchanan said Pardo's body was found at his brother's home with $17,000 in cash and a plane ticket to Moline, Ill., with a stop in St. Paul.

From there, Pardo had planned to get picked up at the airport by a friend in Iowa, Buchanan said.

The friend knew nothing of Pardo's plans, he added.

December 26th, pm update: A ninth body had been found in the rubble, according to CNN.

Update: Stinging from an acrimonious divorce, a man plotting revenge against his ex-wife dressed up like Santa, went to his former in-laws' Christmas Eve party and slaughtered at least eight people before killing himself hours later.

Bruce Pardo's ex-wife and her parents were believed to be among the dead. Investigators planned to return to the scene Friday and sift through the ashes of the home, which Pardo set ablaze using a bizarre homemade device that sprayed flammable liquid.

Pardo chose to exact his revenge at the annual Christmas party his former in-laws held at their two-story home on a cul-de-sac in a quiet Covina neighborhood 25 miles east of Los Angeles.

[Covina has a connection to Roswell, of all things, writes author Robert Schneck. The television series Roswell was filmed in various location in Covina including the downtown area on North Citrus Avenue. City Hall, Charter Oak High School and several other businesses and residences served as locations for the fictional version of the town of Roswell, New Mexico (the site of the alleged crash of a UFO and finding of alien bodies in 1947).]

The massacre began when an 8-year-old girl answered Pardo's knock at the door. Pardo, carrying what appeared to be a large present, pulled out a handgun and shot her in the face, then began shooting indiscriminately as about 25 partygoers tried to flee, police said at a news conference.

A 16-year-old girl was shot in the back, and a 20-year-old woman broke her ankle when she escaped by jumping from a second-story window. Those two, and the 8-year-old, remained hospitalized Christmas Day. All were expected to recover.

The gift-wrapped box Pardo was carrying actually contained a pressurized homemade device he used to spray a liquid that quickly sent the house up in flames. Police said Pardo had recently worked is the aerospace industry.

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Earlier Update:

Police say six bodies have been found in the ashes of a Christmas Eve party shooting at a house in a Los Angeles suburb that the alleged gunman subsequently set ablaze.

Police Chief Kim Raney says three people believed to have been at the party in the city of Covina remain missing.

The only suspect in the incident, 45-year-old Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, killed himself at his brother's house earlier Thursday.

The missing people include the couple who own the home and Pardo's ex-wife.

Police say the gunman wore a Santa Claus outfit during the shooting. Raney says he used a homemade incendiary devise to start the blaze after opening fire.

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Original Information:

At least three people were found dead after a man dressed as Santa Claus started shooting at a Christmas Eve party in suburban Los Angeles. The suspect, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, 45, later took his own life, police said Thursday, December 25th, CNN & AP reports.

It was hours later when police found the body of Pardo, at the home of his brother early Thursday in the Sylmar area of Los Angeles. Police said he died by suicide, but would not say how.

"He was going through some type of marital problems, and we believe that this residence is a relative's residence," Lt. Pat Buchanan said.

Police initally said three people were dead in the shootings and fire late Wednesday. Ed Winter of the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office said Thursday that investigators sifting through the ashes of the house found more bodies, but would not say how many.

The bodies were too badly burned to immediately determine whether they died in the shootings or the fire, Winter said. "We have multiple bodies inside," Winter said. "They're extremely charred and burned."

The gunman arrived at the party in Covina late Wednesday and immediately opened fire with a handgun, Buchanan said. Witnesses told police that the man took off the Santa suit and left the scene of the burning house in street clothes.

Winter said the search through the destroyed home would take at least until the end of the day.

An 8-year-old girl and a woman in her 20s were hospitalized with gunshot wounds that authorities do not consider life-threatening.

Crews took a third person to a hospital with an injury that wasn't life-threatening and wasn't caused by gunfire, said police in Covina, a city about 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

The shooting started around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday.

When police arrived at the two-story house, they discovered a fire that caused "significant damage." Authorities found three people dead inside but said they do not know how the three died. Their identities had not been released Thursday morning.

"There was some source of ignition that caused the fire," Covina police Lt. Pat Buchanan said at a news conference Thursday morning. "We've not been able to identify it yet."

Jan Gregory, a neighbor, said about 25 people were at the party when the gunshots rang out and people started running by the house.

She said she saw a teenage boy run from the house screaming, "They shot my family."

Buchanan says three other people were injured. A woman in her 20s and an 8-year-old girl had gunshot wounds that were not life-threatening, and a third person had a broken ankle.

Police received several 911 calls with reports of shots fired at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday night, and were still hearing gunshots after they arrived and found the house in flames, Buchanan said.

At first, firefighters were held back by police because shots were still being fired, though it may have been ammunition burning in the blaze, fire Captain Mike Brown said.

Firefighters had extinguished the blaze by about 1:30 a.m. Thursday, fire Captain Mike Brown said.

The two-story home on a cul-de-sac was destroyed in Covina, a quiet suburb 25 miles east of Los Angeles.

"This neighborhood is really quiet," said Jeffrey Barrientos, who lives half a block from the house that burned. Barrientos said the neighborhood's residents were mostly retirees and elderly people.

Lt. Pat Buchanan said Pardo was "going through some type of marital problems."

Police believe the residence where the shootings occurred belongs to one of Pardo's relatives, Buchanan said.

According to police, the gunman arrived at the party wearing a Santa Claus outfit but changed into regular street clothes before leaving.

Target: Orleans

Nine shooting incidents have occurred in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom in the last month. While the authorities remain in the dark as to the pattern behind the spree, is there an obvious link that connects the dots?

The shootings began on November 21st. They have included three Christian evangelical churches, specifically, the Grace Brethren Church of Coventry/Irasburg, the Assembly of God Church and Cornerstone Evangelical Church, both in Derby.

"It's disturbing, but we're not fearful," said the Rev. Scott Libby, pastor of the Grace Brethren Church, which was hit with 11 rounds.

The spree also targeted three homes, a vehicle, and then, on December 20th, the Vermont State Police barracks in Derby (hitting a display case). Most recently, a shooting occurred on December 22nd, at the Newport Country Club.

Seven of the shootings have occurred in Derby, with one each in Coventry and Newport. There have been no injuries, but lots of rattled nerves now exist in rural northern Vermont. The suspect or suspects remain at large.

Overtly, all the shootings seem to be aimed at symbolic auctoritas targets.

The Associated Press ran a national story on the Vermont shootings on Christmas Eve, December 24, at 2:25 PM EST.

All of the incidents have occurred in Orleans County, Vermont. It was in part of Orleans County where Gerald Bull infamously tested his giant guns.

In 1967, researcher and scientist (the so-called "supergun inventor") Gerald Bull constructed a laboratory for his Space Research Corporation (SRC) in Highwater, just north of Orleans County, Vermont's Canadian border. The property overlapped into the county in North Troy. His intent was to fire research packages into orbit using heavy artillery.

SRC was a corporation founded by Gerald Bull, after the budget for his research at Project HARP (for High Altitude Research Program, not to be confused with HAARP) for the United States and Canadian federal governments was cut in 1967, in order to commercialize the technology of long-range artillery. Project HARP's assets were then given to the newly formed SRC, the main facility of which straddled the U.S.-Canadian border between Highwater, Quebec, and North Troy, Vermont.

SRC's positive history was tied to selling ammo to Israel in 1973 for use in American-supplied artillery pieces. Bull was rewarded for the success of this program by a Congressional bill, sponsored by Senator Barry Goldwater, making him retroactively eligible for a decade of American citizenship and high-level American nuclear security clearance. With the change of administration in 1977, the US's policies on arms sales changed dramatically, and Bull ended up serving six months in a US jail in 1980. When he got out, he moved to Belgium.

Shown above is Dr. Gerald V. Bull. Image: M. Wade, Encyclopdia Astronautix, and Berliner-Ultrasonics. As Berliner notes, clearly with one of the 16" guns and, equally clearly, NOT in the Barbados!

Gerald Bull designed the Project Babylon "supergun" for the Iraqi government. Bull was assassinated, when shot five times in the back of the neck, by a gunman as Bull opened the door to his home in Brussels, Belgium, on March 22, 1990. Bull had been working on Scud missiles for the Iraqis.

Three theories as to the source of the assassin are most often mentioned: 1) Israeli Mossad; 2) Iranian Intelligence VEVAK; or 3) Iraqi agents of the Mukhabarat, under orders of the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, because Bull was no longer useful.

Synchromysticism's Godfather

Adam Gorightly's newest book documents the remarkable phantasmagoria that was the person named James Shelby Downard, an American theorist and pamphleteer who shared his thoughts about conspiracies, coincidences, synchronicity, and symbolism.

James Shelby Downard's Mystical War was released by Virtual Bookworm Publishing, in November 2008. The subject of the book, Downard, lived from March 13, 1913 to March 16, 1998, unless, of course, his death was a disappearing act and he's still alive somewhere, writing under an assumed name. (I'm joking, right?)

Downard appeared on the scene when many of my contemporaries and I were just beginning to have lexilinked thoughts and overlapping insights into coincidences. His influence, as Gorightly notes, today has spread far beyond this strange man's life and death.

I easily understand the reach of Downard's impact within my own life from this twilight realm. In the 1960s and 1970s, first in correspondence, and then later in Fortean Times columns, I wrote about the connections I found between names and weirdnesses. Some of those writings appeared (see Devil Names and Fortean Places) in my 1983 book, Mysterious America, along with another chapter, entitled "Name Game."

In the beginning, I pointed to names such as Devil, Diablo, Manitou, and Hockomock for locations, and people names like Hobbs and Wetzel to watch. These were early explorations on the edges of what today is a vast journey in onomatology (the study of names) and toponomy (the study of places).

In the 1960s, John A. Keel carried on a lively correspondence with me and others, in which he examined the frequent appearance of certain proper names, like Reeves/Reaves, McDaniel, Hill, Allen, Maddox, and Heflin, as eyewitnesses of anomalistic incidents.

Soon, I was corresponding with Bill Grimstad and Michael Anthony Hoffman II (both known for their alleged Holocaust denier views, btw), who were close associates of Downard. Many people feel they got letters from Downard, but mostly, it was Hoffman and Grimstad who were assisting in getting Downard's thoughts and words to the rest of us.

Exchanging ideas with Grimstad, about locations linked to Fayette and LaGrange, and names like Bell, Mason/Macon, Pike, Warren, and Lafayette, all went hand in hand with being a Fortean in the 1960s-1970s, especially if an interest in assassinations and strange suicides fit into the mindset.

Hoffman, who authored the modern notion of the twilight language (versus the ancient Buddhist understanding of the phrase) and Grimstad, who was the source of the Fayette factor, were interesting and stimulating correspondents who nicely intellectualized many of Downard's ideas. Hidden meanings were there for the finding, and Hoffman, Grimstad, and Downard were the miners.

James Shelby Downard, who wrote short tracts, which later were published in various anthologies from Adam Parfray at Feral House, examined his own perceived decodings behind historical events in the 20th century, on a parallel track to what was happening with Forteans, anomalists, and demonologists. Downard's approach was mostly cryptopolitical, and some of us drifted over into his world, as often happens in attempting to get a holistic view of history and current events.

How does a biographer working with a secretive subject capture the life of the hidden one? That was Gorightly's task.

As you begin to read this new book about Downard, you might think that you have opened a cryptocomedic LSD trip about a conspiracy-oriented Forrest Gump-like character, who amazingly finds himself in all the wrong places at the wrong times.

Gorightly escorts the reader abroad a rollercoaster ride in which Downard is a Freemason scapegoat being ritualistically abused, watching the KKK hang a person at a crossroads, seeing Alexander Graham Bell receiving homoerotic sex magik fellatio, visiting J. Edgar Hoover's office, and getting a phone call from FDR.

The opening sections of the book are so breathlessly delivered that by the time I arrived at the chapter noting that Downard was at the "first ever meeting of the Baker Street Irregulars on July 5, 1934" in a New York City eating establishment, I hardly was startled by the statement.

All of this made me flashback to what Gorightly observed in his second paragraph of the book: "Some cynics have gone so far to suggest that Downard never actually existed, the group creation of Michael Hoffman, William Grimstad and Adam Parfrey."

Indeed!

The publisher's tagline for James Shelby Downard’s Mystical War, tells us that author Adam Gorightly "chronicles the famed conspiracy researcher’s life long battles against Masonic Sorcery as an investigator and exposer of the Science of Symbolism, Onomatology and Mystical Toponomy."

Well, yes, but what is real and what are Downard's fantasies? We clearly can't tell from Gorightly's text, because, of course, who knows?

The book is an odd mix, at points, of biographical tales about Downard's unbelievable life, his intellectual perceptions in symbol decoding, and details of specific historical milestones along the twilight highway.

When you realize that James Shelby Downard's first published work was only released in 1979, via the short work, The Masonic Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, you do come to grips with the fact his overall output was limited, but powerful.

Downard's refined and well-edited King-Kill 33° had everything to do with the skills of Michael Hoffman channeling Downard. Combined with Grimstad's Sirius Rising reel-to-reel tapes of conversations with Downard, the two works had a ripple effect. “King-Kill/33: Masonic Symbolism in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy” eventually was published by Adam Parfrey in the first edition of the book Apocalypse Culture. The essay theorizes the Freemasons were responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Grimstad, writing even before it was published, was able to walk a wonderfully skeptical open-minded fence, as he passed along the following summary of Downard's JFK insights in Weird America in 1978:

Would you believe John F. Kennedy as a ceremonial king-who-must-die? I'm afraid there is a certain body of opinion, undoubtedly the farthest-out brain wave of assassinology yet, that maintains the killing was pulled off, not by the Russians, the Cubans, the CIA, or the Mafia, but by alchemists.

As I understand the hypothesis, President Kennedy was for some reason chosen as The King (remember "Camelot," "Macbird" and all that?) after the fashion of James G. Frazer and Mary Renault whose "The King Must Die" he had been given to read before his death. This killing of the king in Dallas was related somehow to the touching off of the world's first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site in New Mexico 18 years earlier. Apparently the Bomb was the "destruction of primordial matter" stage of the grand alchemical working, but these conspiracy buffs aren't much more specific on details than were the early alchemists in their recipes. Anyway, Kennedy represented the next stage of the process - the "Death of the White King" - when he was immolated on a trinity site of his own. For, aren't Dealey Plaza and the ill-famed Triple Underpass on the bank of the old Trinity River?

William Grimstad

Popular cultural outlets, such as Robert Anton Wilson's works (e.g. Cosmic Trigger), the music of Marilyn Manson, and the various books and movies about the numbers 23 and 33, have Downard living onward into the morrow. My own books, including The Copycat Effect, show Downard influences.

Everyone has the sense they "discovered" the significance of certain names or dates, or even factoids like Dealey Plaza being the first Masonic temple in Texas, but remarkably, most of these revelations track back to Downard.

Adam Gorightly, who authored the underground classic, The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture (with its foreword by Robert Anton Wilson), is a good person to be at the wheel for this biography of Downard. Oh, I wish it would have been twice as long, but I understand how difficult it is to write biographies of people that do not wish to be known.

Gorightly's book does an excellent job, nevertheless, in opening the door to a comprehensive world of symbol decodifications that may be new to many people. Today, there is much 21st century intrigue involving Downard's legacy, in new areas such as synchromysticism.

Several writers and commentators, including Todd Campbell, Robert Schneck, Theo Paijmans, SMiles, Michael Janitch, Mike Gos, Goro Adachi, Greg Bishop, Ben Fairhall, Henrik Palmgren, Richard Hendricks, Craig Heimbichner, Christopher Knowles, Fredrik Palmgren, Anthony Sutton, Kenn Thomas, the late Jim Keith, the late Ron Bond, and Jake Kotze inhabit the netherworld of conspiracies and synchromysticism, with the later being "an emerging field of study and subculture existing on the fringe of areas already considered fringe – primarily mysticism and Jungian psychology."

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."

Downard's modern influence on Forteana, assassination studies, occult symbolism decoding, twilight language research and synchromysticism is so deep that he must be acknowledged as the Godfather to many of the points of view that inhabit those arenas.

I'm not sure if I take even half of what Downard wrote about as reality, but to get caught up in that intellectual side trick in critical thinking misses the point. In realizing the reality behind the twilight language, the metaphor is the method and the Downard as revealed by Gorightly is the message.

Greg Bishop, Farah Yurdozu, Nick Redfern, and Adam Gorightly somewhere near Roswell, on 07/09/07. Photo by Sigrid Hudson.

Glossary ~ James Shelby Downard examined the world through a variety of methodologies, including the following:

Onomastics or onomatology is the study of proper names of all kinds and the origins of names. The word is Greek: ὀνοματολογία (from ὄνομα (ónoma) "name").

Toponymy or toponomastics, the study of place names, is one of the principal branches of onomastics.

Anthroponomastics (or Anthroponymy), a branch of onomastics, is the study of anthroponyms (anthropos, 'man', + onuma, 'name'), the names of human beings.

Etymology is the study of the history of words — when they entered a language, from what source, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. In languages with a long detailed history, etymology makes use of philology, the study of how words change from culture to culture over time. The word "etymology" itself comes from the Ancient Athens ἐτυμολογία (etumologia) < ἔτυμον (etumon), “‘true sense’” + -λογία (-logia), “‘study of’”, from λόγος (logos), "speech, oration, discourse, word."

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If you have questions about the identity of Bill Grimstad: 

 See The Dirty Little Secrets of Twilight Forteans.

Toole, Jonestown and Bundy?

What does Ottis Toole have to do with Jonestown, Ted Bundy, and Satanists? Or with the name "wood" and the Tescumseh Curse? A little or a lot? Who knows?

A press conference was held in Hollywood, Florida, on Tuesday, December 16, 2008, to close the Adam Walsh case. As you will recall, the six year old Adam was abducted from a Sears department store at the Hollywood Mall in Hollywood, Florida, on July 27, 1981. Adam's mother, Revé, had left him playing in a video game section of the store with older boys. When she returned, he was gone. Adam's severed head was found in a Vero Beach, Florida, canal on August 10, 1981.

At the news conference today, the murder was blamed on serial killer Ottis Elwood Toole (March 5, 1947 – September 15, 1996). Toole had confessed and withdrawn his confession to the Walsh twice each, and did the same kinds of confessing and recanting with other killings throughout his life.

For more on the initial Adam Walsh "Case Closed" report, see here. For more on the questions being raised, days later, see here.

Ottis Elwood Toole has a bizarre history, including these quick tidbits from Wikipedia and other sources:

1) His father's name was Elwood Toole;
2) Ottis Toole claimed his mother was a religious fanatic who often abused him and dressed him in girl's clothing;
3) Toole's maternal grandmother was a satanist who exposed him to various satanic practices and rituals in his youth and gave him the nickname "Devil's Child";
4) In 1976, Toole met serial killer Henry Lee Lucas* (August 23, 1936 – March 13, 2001) while working at a soup kitchen in Jacksonville and they reportedly became lovers; [*Lucas also had been dressed as a girl as a child, Lucas at one time lived in Tecumseh, Michigan, Lucas claimed to have delivered poison to cult leader Jim Jones in Jonestown prior to the notorious mass murder/suicide of Jones's group, & Lucas's sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1998 by then-Governor George W. Bush. Lucas's was the only death penalty case among the 153 that came across Bush's desk in his tenure as Texas Governor in which he intervened and commuted the death sentence.]
5) Toole and Lucas claimed to have committed hundreds of murders, sometimes at the behest of a secret cult called "The Hand of Death Cult";
6) Toole briefly shared a cell with serial killer Theodore Robert Bundy (November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) in Florida's Raiford Prison, according to Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me.

Various "experts" feel that most, if not all, of what Toole and Lucas told authorities were fantasies of two mentally ill men. Some, in the law enforcement community, feel what they were saying were partial or full truths. As is obvious from what occurred today at the news conference, Toole is a strong suspect as a killer in various murders.

I find the timing of this news quite bizarre, considering what we have been hearing lately about the Tecumseh curse, the names Reeves (Revé), Wood, and all.

Oh, yes, and there's one more twist to the story. Some eyewitnesses identified Toole as the weird man they saw at the mall the day Adam disappeared. Years later, others said they recognized the kidnapper the second he first appeared on TV - infamous Wisconsin serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who lived in South Florida in 1981. Some in the community still believe the case is stronger against Dahmer, who was killed in prison 14 years ago.

Make of it what you will.

Harvey Milk's Kool Aid

Gus Van Sant's Milk does not deal overtly with the fact that Harvey Milk's assassination occurred only days after Jonestown. In the Sean Penn starring film, it is mentioned that there was Kool-Aid at Milk's funeral, but that's about the only reference.

Recently, I posted extensively here about the links between Jonestown, Milk, and Moscone.

The massacre at Jonestown was the precursor to the assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, which took place nine days after the Jonestown events, on November 27, 1978.

Milk certainly realized what was in the wind, as I note in The Copycat Effect and prepared for the link: "[Harvey] Milk’s less-than-a-month-old will requested that his body be cremated, and by his direction, the ashes were enshrined with a mixture of bubble bath (to denote his gay lifestyle) and Kool Aid (to signify the People’s Temple victims)."

To read this passage in context, see here.

© Loren Coleman 2004 ~ from The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004).

Curses! It Is Almost December 12th!

Something is in the wind for December 12-19, but how does one prepare when you know a disaster might be coming? It seems forty years ago, when the Mothman curse supposedly began, it was treated with mostly disbelief. Please note that. Or, perhaps more correctly, it was viewed with total absence of knowledge that something might be amiss.

Today, I guess, there are limited exercises in writing about curses, more attempts at writing about them and some warning of others.

Take Mothman and the horrors associated with that phenomenon. Of course, the "Curse of Chief Cornstalk" has been linked with the disasters of Point Pleasant, West Virginia: Mothman sightings, cattle mutilations, kidnapping attempts, the collapse of the Silver Bridge, and the dynamite explosion at the Mason County jail. I am not saying there is a connection. I am merely pointing out that people have tied all these together, demonologically, sometimes. No judgments, merely an observation.

Think about it. It was a newswoman who was the source for John A. Keel of the tale of her nightmares of floating Christmas presents in the Ohio River. Did she ever write about those dreamworld appearances, before the event? Not to the best of our knowledge. But Keel made much of them, after the fact, in his books and the nightmares show up cinematically in the Richard Gere movie.

What of other curses, the ones today, that need to be discussed, before things happen?

Another Native American curse is out there, in a related vein, which may have foreshadowed tragedies as its underlying theme. Yes, the Curse of Tecumseh. This specific curse has now been mentioned especially for a period linked to a temporal window beginning on 12.12.08.



Earlier, last Friday, December 5th, I wrote elsewhere about "December Omens."

A research associate Philip Levine has now shared word that author/astrologer Gary Cohen has recently written about "The Curse of Tecumseh."

As most astrologers know, every 20 years from 1840 the U.S. President elected during that year has died in office. At least that was the case until Ronald Reagan, who was shot but, although nearly died, managed to survive. Some think the curse ended with him, while others, myself included, think not.

It is my belief that George Bush is in great danger of not living out his term of office. Let me say right away that based on astrology I think there are three main possibilities indicated: assassination, accident, or a serious heart problem.

During the course of Bush's term of office, I and others felt that the President had faced danger. He has survived many stressful times, although his prestige has steadily waned. The techniques that I use are to be considered as indications when a given set of energies have the strength, when taken together, to be a warning for all those who realize the value of astrology.

Around the Full Moon this December 12, 2008, there are indications in Bush's chart, the USA chart, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) chart, and the ACG lunation chart that all point to some major, tragic event in this country.

Cohen gives his reasons, quite technically, in private correspondence, which I will not share here. Let it be noted, certainly, his calculations overlap with what others are "seeing."

As rains, freezing rains, sleet and snow hit the East Coast of America, it will be intriguing if we discover there also have been some recent Mothman/Thunderbird sightings too.

Please, everyone be careful. This is significant data that indicates bridge jumpers, suicides, hostage situations, domestic violence, mall shootings, and workplace violence do increase during these times of spring tides, full moons, and the close approach of the moon to the earth. Tidal forces are strong during the next week. Humans are animals, and all animals are influenced by the tides.

Sadly, humans are left with the question, something horrific may occur for the period around and after this Friday's full moom, but how does one prepare when you know a disaster might be coming? Do blogging banshees and cursing curses really warn people or create crises? Of course, at least, I've taken the chance to mention all of this before the date versus recording this after the fact, as you will find, mostly, has happened in some of the so-called paranormal lore.

December Omens

As we ride a bumpy road into the last month of 2008, precursors all around seem to be pointing to troubling times immediately ahead. Twilight language read with care sometimes can give an indication of what may be in our futures. Sometimes chasing the dragon can be a fool's game. But there is no reason to ignore its fiery breath if you wish to not be burned.

On the evening of December 1, 2008, a 39-year-old man called a friend at 2:30 pm local time (twilight number = 23) and left a voice mail message, saying goodbye. It took the friend about 20 minutes to get through to the original caller, at which point, the suicidal man said he was "at the cathedral and I'm going to kill myself."

Moments later, running to the Guildford Catherdral in Surrey, UK, the friend found that the police had shot dead his suicidal friend. It appears clear that the victim had died by "suicide by cop." A fake gun was being carried, and the situation forced the police into shooting the man dead.

Several intriguing twilight details must be considered in this incident. The site is the Cathedral Church of the Holy Spirit, Guildford, the Anglican cathedral at Guildford, Surrey, England. It stands in a commanding spot on Stag Hill, so named because the Kings of England used to hunt here.

The Guildford Cathedral was used in the filming of the classic Satanic/demonic movie The Omen as the setting for several scenes.

The 1976 film about the childhood of Damien Thorn (as in a "crown of thorns"?) was directed by Richard Donner. It followed a cycle of "demonic child" movies, including Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist, and was itself followed by sequels and a number of copycat films such as the Italian-made Kirk Douglas movie Holocaust 2000. A remake of The Omen premiered on June 6, 2006, with a release date chosen to reinforce the "666" (6/6/06) motif.

As Ben Fairhall has noted over at The Daily Behemoth, regarding the use of the site for the movie The Omen: "When a young boy sees the spire and the building comes into view he is thrown into a rage. He foams and the mouth and tries to bite his mother."

While the Guildford Cathedral is used throughout the film, there is one pivotal scene at the end that somewhat bizarrely foreshadowed what happened on December 1st.

On a mission to end the life of the demonic 666-birthmarked Damien, his father, Robert Thorn takes the child to the cathedral. He lays Damien on the altar for a ritualized killing. Robert reaches for the daggers he must use and pulls the first one out. But just as he is about to stab Damien, the police arrive and order him to stop. When Robert does not comply and tries to stab Damien, he is shot dead by the police.

The police on Sunday, December 1st, asked David Sycamore, 39, to drop the gun they saw he had. He refused and was hit twice by gunfire, once in the right arm and once in the chest. The second bullet killed him. It was learned soon after that Sycamore's gun was non-lethal, one of the pellet guns the man had collected.

That this man who died in The Omen's churchyard was a Sycamore is noteworthy.

Since ancient times, the significance of the sycamore tree and its spiritual/predictive nature has been acknowledged. The use of the names "sycamore" and "sycomore" in the Old and New World is linked to the "specialness" of these trees.

The sycamore (or sycomore) of the Bible is a species of fig, Ficus sycomorus, also called the sycamore fig or fig-mulberry, native to the Middle East and eastern Africa. This tree was used in Ancient Egypt for medicine and mentioned in Egyptian mythology.

The Egyptian goddess Hathor was known as the Lady of the Sycamore. Many artifacts made from sycamore are known from the New Kingdom period.

The Bible says that when Joseph and Mary made their flight into Egypt they rested under a sycamore tree. The sycamore is mentioned in the Bible several times, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament (e.g. Amos 7:14, Jeremiah 24:2, Luke 19:4).

A tree in El Matareya near Cairo called the Virgin Mary Tree is said to be a resting spot of Mary, Jesus and Joseph and is a pilgrimage spot for Christians. The tree died in the 17th century and a new sapling in 1672 was planted. That died in 1906, and a new one was planted, which is what is present today. The tree is enclosed in a compound and the government charges admission fees to it. Both Coptic Christians and Muslims visit the site for healing by the Virgin (a practice that is unorthodox in Islam).

The sycamore of Britain and Ireland is a European maple tree, Acer pseudoplatanus, also called sycamore maple, great maple, or, inaccurately and leading to confusion, the plane tree in Scotland.

A sycamore tree is said to be the oldest tree in Cyprus, planted in the 13th century, making it more than 700 years old.

In the November 21, 1922 issue of The New York Times an article was published entitled "Raven of Ill Omen Reappears in Paris; Superstitious See Danger for Millerand in Return of the 150-Year-Old Bird. Heralded Many Disasters ~ Marie Antoinette, Marie Louise, Carnot and Faure Saw It Before They Fell."

The news item told of how the appearance of a certain famous raven in the gardens of the Élysée Palace (Palais de l'Élysée) - a bird of ill omen which for a hundred and fifty years has heralded various kinds catastrophes to the chief of State each time - had been seen again in 1922. Where had the bird specifically appeared? It had perched in a special sycamore tree in the President's ground. (Today, nearby Avenue des Champs-Élysées is one of the most famous streets in the world, and is lined with sycamore trees.)

American sycamores (Platanus occidentalis) have touched United States history, as well.

Besty Ross' sycamore tree is famed.



In November 2007, in California, eyewitnesses said they could see the image of the Virgin Mary, in a sycamore tree that had been burned by recent wildfires, on the side of the Sierra Highway in Los Angeles County. The tree was a victim of the Buckweed Fire. Its trunk was then saved by county road crews.

Considering these times of dire predictions related to the Stock Market, perhaps it is worthy of mentioning that the terms under which the New York Stock Exchange was formed is called the Buttonwood Agreement, because it was signed under a Buttonwood tree (an early name for a sycamore tree in the USA).

Has a "Sycamore" shown up on the radar via the media, on December 2, to send out a twilight telegraph?



As I was reviewing all this on December 2nd, I received an email from a friend and colleague.

Former psychosynthesis psychotherapist and founder of Sirius Astrological Services, the insightful and creative Philip Levine wrote me that he sees "that this month of December 2008 is anything but quiet. It would appear the gods and goddesses are in conflict this month and that we can expect a higher degree [than normal] of hostility, conflict, struggle, and tension."

Levine points to the details of his prediction on his site, here.

One of the items he pinpoints for this "tough month" is the Full Moon on December 12th, 2008, at 11:38 AM EST/ 8:38 AM PST. For anyone that has been watching the sky, you have visibly seen what is occurring.

The Full Moon intensifies the Saturn-Uranus opposition as the Sun and Mars square Saturn and Uranus for a Mutable Grand Cross.

Other sites are talking about what is upcoming, as well. In 2008, the moon's closest perigee occurs on December 12 and coincides with a powerful Full Moon. At 9:48 p.m. Universal Time on December 12, 2008, the moon will be closer to Earth than it’s been in the last 15 years. It is the nearest and largest full moon since March 1993.

It signals "red-alert” dates, which cluster around very high tides (perigean-spring tides) that peak 1–2 days after this Full Moon when the Moon is in its perigee. When a Full Moon coincides with perigee, the Sun, Earth and Moon make a line in space, and the tidal forces are intensified.

During such events, it has been shown that this is a scientifically verified time of coastal flooding, strong storms (like a Nor'eastern in New England USA), and earthquakes any place around the globe.

It might be time to prepare for something big that is going to happen, in terms of human behavior or geodynamically. Clearly, tidal influences do have an impact on humans, so do not neglect this warning of "tough times" coming between December 12-19, in merely a few days.

Full moon: December 12, 2008 at 16:37 Universal Time

Moon at perigee (356,566 kilometers): December 12, 2008 at 21:48 Universal Time

Extreme Perigees: The last time the moon was less than 356,400 kilometers distant was on January 15, 1930 (356,397 kilometers) and the next time will be on January 1, 2257 (356,371 kilometers), p. 39, More Mathematical Astronomy Morsels, by Jean Meeus.