This week we're taking a look at a strange little book detailing the lore surrounding the fae folk of the Scottish Highlands. Written in 1692 by the reverend Robert Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth is one of the earliest works in the same tradition as the work of John Keel and a whole host of other weirdos who put on their Sunday best, go traipsing around the sparsely populated hills and forests, and start asking questions they maybe shouldn't. What's really remarkable about The Secret Commonwealth...
Jul 13, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 64
This week we're once again diving into the realm of hyper-paranoia and New Age conspiracy theories as we tackle the strange and disturbing story of The Nine. In 1953 at the Round Table Foundation lab in Glen Cove, Maine, parapsychologist Dr Andrija Puharich, channeler D.G. Vinod, and eight members of America's oldest, wealthiest, and most intelligence-agency-connected families made psychic contact with an entity or group of entities known only as The Nine. These nine principals of God (as they c...
Jul 06, 2022•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 63
We're doing something weird this week. With all the talk about artificial intelligence these days,(whether or not it's sentient, whether or not it will kill us all, and so on) we decided to explore the most important question we could possibly be asking: can AI write a podcast? AI Dungeon uses a variety of deep learning models to generate or assist in generating scenarios. So we fed it the scenario of "Willow and Sequoyah have an AI write a podcast episode for them." And, well, things get incred...
Jun 29, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 62
This week we're doing one of those episodes where we take a deep breath and try to unpack an absurd rabbit hole we fell down. And by deep breath we mean breathless ranting about conspiracy theories and absolutely massacring facts. See, after our psychic spy series we realized there's this whole insane and deeply disturbing web of lore behind the government's involvement with the paranormal. And not the surface level UFO lore either. It turns out that a ton of the people involved in the remote vi...
Jun 22, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 61
This week we're taking the time machine back to the filthy land of Europe circa 1100 AD to tell a couple stories of that most entertaining class of characters: nuns. Or to put it a cooler way, the stories of two women, Christian mystics and "anchoresses" both, deep in one of the absolute worst times to be alive ever. First we talk about Christina of Markyate, whose mystic visions led her to flee from her abusive family's constant imposition of sin and debauchery on young Christina to join a conv...
Jun 15, 2022•1 hr 51 min•Ep. 60
In the weird conclusion to the story of the remote viewers, we see how once the psychic program is a known quantity in the military and intelligence community, things get a bit silly. And very weird. Under the command of INSCOM's director Major General Albert Newton Stubblebine III, and under the magical tutelage of Ingo Swann, the program makes contact with a weird astral projection training center and sound lab in the blue ridge mountains called the Monroe Institute, which uses acoustics to in...
Jun 08, 2022•1 hr 54 min•Ep. 59
It's part two of the bizarre story of American psychic spying. This week we learn about some of the actual operational remote viewing conducted by the second group of psychic spies at the Fort Meade army base in Maryland. From 1975 until the mid 1980s, the psychics at SRI and Fort Meade used the GRILL FLAME remote viewers when there was actual stakes on on the line. Or steaks on the grill, if you prefer. We learn about Joe McMoneagle, who would take up Pat Price's mantle as the super-psychic in ...
Jun 01, 2022•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 58
This week we're starting our series on the strange, absurd, and true story of Project Star Gate, the C.I.A. and D.I.A. program utilizing "remote viewers" AKA psychic spies which , lasted from 1972 until 1993 under various names and with varying levels of usefulness. Often written off as "that time the C.I.A tried to use psychics", in reality the remote viewing programs had many years of incredible successes and produced some of the weirdest tales of high strangeness we've ever heard. In part one...
May 25, 2022•1 hr 46 min•Ep. 57
On part II of Project Monarch we learn about the man from whose dumb noggin this whole CIA sex slave nonsense sprang: Fritz Springmeir, a wannabe Christian terrorist and all around piece-of-work. Fritz is anouther one who claims to be an ex-intelligence agent now deprogramming Monarch slaves, and even published a helpful manual outlining just how the mind control programming works. We also see how another real winner named David Icke helped perpetuate the Project Monarch meme. So if you were won...
May 18, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 56
This one's a doozy, folks. We begin our look at the alleged mind controlled sex slaves of "Project Monarch" by digging in to Cathy O'Brien's book Trance Formation in America, co-authored with her husband Mark Phillips. Cathy alleges that, with the hypnotic help of her husband Mark, she recovered memories of her time in an MK ULTRA subproject in which she was turned in a mind controlled sex slave and victimized by lots and lots of presidents and forced to put American flags in all sorts of places...
May 11, 2022•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 55
Right now there is an object of unknown extraterrestrial origin in polar orbit around Earth transmitting signals to somewhere, something else. It's called the Black Knight satellite and it's been watching us for 13,000 years. Or so you'd be led to believe if you hung out in the same dumb places on the internet that we do. The Black Knight is some of the lowest hanging fruit of UFO conspiracy theories, but it's also truly weird. See, the Black Knight is an example of truly emergent folklore. It d...
May 04, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 54
Have you ever thought that your neighbors might be acting a little stranger than normal? That your house suddenly appeared bigger on the inside than the outside? That invisible dwarves were following you on your madcap escape from various intelligence agencies out to ruin your life, specifically? Well you might, unfortunately, be entirely correct. This week we're looking at Robert Guffey's book Chameleo: A Strange but True Story of Invisible Spies, Heroin Addiction, and Homeland Security, an ent...
Apr 27, 2022•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 53
It's time to catch up with our favorite villainous magicians. Between 1934 and 1939 Guy and Edna Ballard brainwashed and robbed blind upwards to a million Americans through the "'I AM' Religious Activity" using hypnosis, parlor tricks, force of will, and a bunch of members of William Dudley Pelley's Silver Legion - the most successful American Nazi organization - with the stated goal of overthrowing the government and installing Guy Ballard as ruler of America in Saint Germain's "Seventh Golden ...
Apr 20, 2022•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 52
This week we're bringing you a classic tale of aliens guiding a man named Ted Rice on his life's journey from rising in the ranks as a young professional at an exclusive Idaho resort to living in a trailer in Shreveport, Louisiana with a cat named grandma and yelling at lizard people. Ted Rice was a UFO experiencer since childhood, but coming from a psychic and spiritualist paradigm Ted didn't realize he might be dealing with aliens until much later in life with the help of his new age book club...
Apr 13, 2022•2 hr 30 min•Ep. 51
Are evil Nazi wizards running the world? No. Are a bunch of scumbag fascist occultists in positions of power trying to run the world? You betcha. This week we look at Aleksandr Dugin, sometimes referred to as "Putin's Rasputin", as well as a few other greasy occultists in positions of power such as Steve Bannon (seriously, dude describes himself as a mystic), Olavo De Carvalho, and Julius Evola. All of these terrible people fall under the philosophical banner of a confusing and stupid authoritar...
Apr 06, 2022•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 50
Concluding our series on the Oneida Community we finally find John Humphrey Noyes and the rest of all those sexy bible "communists" moving to Oneida, New York and setting up their utopian estate. Or is it a corporation? Or is it a sex cult? Whatever it is (definitely a sex cult), things go off the rails. With early eugenics experiments, the ghoulish worship of capitalism and money, trying to erase the concepts of romantic love and families, and glorifying sex while heavily regulating it (all sex...
Mar 30, 2022•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 49
It's an 1840's Quaker soap opera as we continue the story of the Oneida Community, the free love endorsin', romantic love despisin', silverware makin' (eventually, we promise, there will be forks) Perfectionist sex cult. This week we're taking a look at the small sexually repressed dramas of the members of John Noyes' Putney Community, the trial run for what would eventually turn into a capitalist nightmare and what sounds like the worst place in the world, and how they tried to navigate human r...
Mar 23, 2022•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 48
Have you ever wondered where your forks come from? Ever suspect they might come from a polyamorous, religious utopian commune in the mid 1800's? Or that your silverware might be the remaining legacy of hundred of self-described "Bible Communists" and their weird attempt at a nineteenth century Methodist sexual revolution through something called "complex marriage"? Probably not, right? Well if you've ever used Oneida silverware, that's exactly where tit came from. In Part I we look at the early ...
Mar 16, 2022•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 47
Just what exactly are we doing here? What is this? Who are we? Where have we been? And where are we going? This week we're taking a pause, taking a deep breath between two big miniseries to reflect on the weird world we've inadvertently found ourselves in, ponder the meaning of life and The Spooky, fill you all in on the investigations that have been happening under the radar, and to illuminate where we see The Nonsense Bazaar going from here. Where might that be? To the stars, through hardship ...
Mar 09, 2022•1 hr 48 min•Ep. 46
Concluding our look at the life of rocket scientist, occultist, and fascinating human being Jack Parsons, this week we see Jack actually summon a storm to deal with L. Ron Hubbard from a cheap Miami hotel room, writing one of the best essays on spiritual and political liberty that has ever been written, (briefly) declaring himself the anti-christ, and developing a new philosophy and magickal system in close collaboration with his wife Marjorie Cameron. And we learn about Jack Parson's truly trag...
Mar 02, 2022•1 hr 50 min•Ep. 45
In part three of our Jack Parsons series we find Jack kicked out of both Aerojet and JPL and turning to what every red-blooded American man turns to in times of crisis: ritual magick. Jack's life is further complicated by the arrival of a smooth talking sci-fi writer named L. Ron Hubbard who quickly becomes jacks closest associate and most bitter rival. He'll also completely ruin Jack Parson's life, very, very quickly. So they do what any two red blooded Americans do: months of intense ritual ma...
Feb 23, 2022•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 44
Continuing the saga of John Whiteside Parsons (AKA Jack), this week we see Jack and the rest of the suicide squad get their bonafides as the first official, government funded rocket research group in the USA and found both the Aerojet Corporation and Jet Propulsion Laboratories at Caltech. Meanwhile back at the ranch, Jack and Helen Parsons are officially inducted into the world of magick as Frater T.O.P.A.N. and Soror Grimaud (respectively) in the Agape Lodge of Ordo Templi Orientis. We also me...
Feb 16, 2022•1 hr 55 min•Ep. 43
Pioneering rocket engineer, founder of Jet Propulsion Laboratories, occultist, and disciple of Aleister Crowley, Jack Parsons is one of the most fascinating, compelling, and misunderstood counter-culture figures of the 20th century. Over the next four weeks, we're going to be taking a deep dive into the incredible, strange, often hilarious, and tragic life of John Whiteside Parsons. In part I we learn about Jack's early life in Pasadena, blowing up rockets in the desert with fellow miscreants an...
Feb 09, 2022•1 hr 59 min•Ep. 42
In 2020, a person armed with a flashlight, 4 cans of beans, two bottles of water, a bandolier of vials containing turpentine, blood, and holy water, and no extra batteries allegedly entered the Catacombs of Paris to seal a "dimensional breach" they were led to believe was the source of all the world's misery as well as the voices in their head. They were never heard from again. This week, we're putting on our detective caps and looking into the story of Reddit user u/snappedfingers and the dimen...
Feb 02, 2022•1 hr 41 min•Ep. 41
Way back on episode 10, when we were but babes in the woods, we covered a dude named Harry Horse and the ultra-weird pan-conspiracy adventure game he designed called Drowned God. That story has not gone away, and in fact has only gotten stranger. On this episode, the first of our likely recurring follow-ups, we're joined by friend of the pod, Drowned God expert, and absolutely lovely human being Joseph, AKA Mr. MIGS, to talk about all the things we missed in the game, correspondence he had with ...
Jan 26, 2022•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 40
This week we look at the inspiring story of a man who went from stripping naked in an airport and battling demons in a psych ward to becoming not just a living Eck Master, but the last living Eck Master: Sri Harold Klemp, the current leader of Eckankar. According to former members, Klemp spends his days astral projecting himself to the other side of the world to conjure shadow demons and cause poor former eckists to poop their pants while they sleep. Nothing about that is an exaggeration, this o...
Jan 19, 2022•1 hr 41 min•Ep. 39
This week we're bringing you spaghetti fights, country music, diarrhea curses, and corn-fed masters as we jump back into the world of American New Age religions and begin our look at Eckankar, which boasted tens of thousands of adherents in its heyday and continues to exist. While Eckankar shares quite a few similarities with some other groups we've covered, it's a bit different. They have Eck Masters, you see. Not ascended masters, Eck masters. And in fact they even have a living Eck Master. On...
Jan 12, 2022•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 38
In 1945, Amazing Stories editor Ray Palmer shocked the young world of science fiction by publishing the totally, completely, 100%, absolutely-no-foolin' true story I Remember Lemuria! by the unknown author Richard Sharpe Shaver. The story was allegedly a past life recollection of one Mu-tan Mion, a citizen of the ancient Lemurian civilization some 12,000 years ago. I Remember Lemuria! told of ancient, wise titans, sexy fawn hybrid humanoids, magical "rays", and a mutated, evil race of undergroun...
Jan 05, 2022•1 hr 54 min•Ep. 37
This week we're taking a look at a currently unfolding modern day alien abduction case. AJ is a young woman experiencing "classic" symptoms of alien abduction and currently posting about it on Gab. So we made some burner accounts and got the scoop. While it's clear that AJ has certainly experienced something horrible, what's even more frightening is the "support structure" she's found herself surrounded by. A support structure which has her wearing a chastity belt, a leather motorcycle hat, and ...
Dec 29, 2021•2 hr 4 min•Ep. 36
In November of 1967, on a dark and rainy night night on Route 77 in West Virginia, traveling salesman Woodrow Derenberger had an encounter with a UFO and the odd, overly friendly pilot of said UFO. A man named Indrid Cold. Reported as a side story in John Keel's now legendary book The Mothman Prophecies , which chronicled all the high strangeness happening in West Virginia in those days, the legend of Indrid Cold has taken on a life of its own. And for good reason. In this episode we focus on Wo...
Dec 15, 2021•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 35
