What Lies Below, Day Eighteen
Hello again, I’m Rob and this is What Lies Below: a daily bite-sized breakdown of the notoriously enormous Conspiracy Iceberg. It’s amazing how many things like this pop up all but daily now online, and how the pace only seems to be accelerating. While a lot tend to fall into certain archetypes, it’s still interesting to see the way the social media age has thrown this side of the world into a blender. Let’s go!
TUPAC LIVES — Every famous dead celebrity is still alive. In this case, the popular theme seems to be that he faked his own death for varying reasons. Every few years there’s a new alleged photo, or someone who knew him talking about this. I’m sorry I don’t have much for it, but even the most amateur weird-stuff fan knows how these celebrity-death rumors go. The Tupac one is definitely more widely believed than most, for what it’s worth.
DOLPHIN SQUARE — A big apartment block in Britain for rich people. It has stuff like a pool and a bar built right into it, which I guess made British people’s monocles pop right off in shock at the time. It has a history of housing a lot of spies, politicians, and royals as well as a lot of criminal behavior ranging from standard drugs/prostitution to murder and child abuse. That last bit has put it on the radar of the conspiracy community, as you might expect.
CODIFICATION — Why is this here? It means to make something into law or to arrange things into laws but uhhhh okay? I mean, people use it a lot(sometimes incorrectly) in discussions of politics or sociology or even religion, so maybe that? Like when your former classmate on facebook says “liberals used video games to codify communism!” and assumes they must have used it right because no one is willing to engage with them.
BLOOP — I am a proud member of the BLOOP gang. The BLOOP was a very strange, low-frequency sound scientists picked up somewhere in the Pacific during the 90s. It has a strong ‘a living thing made this’ vibe, and that was the (correct)leading conclusion for a long time. Eventually the “scientists” decided it was probably a geological phenomenon or ice or something but no it’s definitely a giant creature. Go listen to the BLOOP for yourself, it’s all over the net.
US FUNDS ISIS — Pretty standard(and almost assuredly true). We fund or supply them through dark money, third parties, etc. Depending on your flavor of theory, it’s to give the US a new boogeyman to replace Bin-Laden or it’s part of an illuminati plot to do one world government or whatever they’re up to these days. Has less steam these days since ISIS isn’t getting much airtime on US televisions.
CATCHER IN THE RYE INCEST SUBPLOT — Some people interpret the book as suggesting there was a lot of implied rape and/or incest. I don’t know; I haven’t read it in decades and I am too busy reading Professional Wrestling Newsletters to be bothered with it. People really like discussing it, though! Not that weird! Not sure why it’s here!
LYEFORD — I think we have another internet legend taken form here. Lyeford is a small town in West Virginia with a spooky past that is cursed. There’s stories of fires and mass murders and the like stretching back a long way, but I have never seen much actual documentation of these events. In faaaact, I can’t even find any listings that confirm Lyeford is a real town.
BLEEDING HOUSE — A bit vague but I think it’s referencing a house in Atlanta that had some weird stuff going on in the 80s. The owners of a home woke one night to find blood dripping on the floors, seeping out of walls, everywhere. There was no evident source, no intruder, they had no pets, etc. Police investigated and eventually confirmed it to be human blood, but never found a source. This did really happen, and the only explanation offered has been that it was perhaps a hoax carried out by someone in the family. There hadn’t been any prior weird stuff there and doesn’t appear to have been any weird stuff since.
AGATHA CHRISTIE’S DISAPPEARANCE — In the 20s, acclaimed author Agatha Christie vanished for 11 days. Not only cops got involved in the search, but fellow authors like Arthur Conan-Doyle! Her car was found after a couple days, but still no trace of her. She was eventually found in a hotel and claimed zero memory as to what had happened. She recovered but never talked about it and that was that! Most people think it had something to do with relationship issues she was having with her husband, but at this point there’s probably never going to be a conclusive answer.
ECSTATIC FLIGHT — A term that gets thrown around in new age circles that usually references some flavor of astral travel, temporary transcendence, etc. You can achieve it through all the usual means: meditation, drugs, ritual, so on.
YANTIC RIVER DWARVES — As far as I can tell, this is an obscure cryptid or bit of folklore stemming from indigenous folklore in North America. There is a story of someone traveling the Yantic River and being warned about dwarves(makia’wisag) who had strange powers and could be a bit troublesome but also could be helpful.
SECHRIST HYPERBARIC OXYGEN CHAMBERS — Hyperbaric chambers are used to treat certain illnesses and injuries, and some people think they can heal a great deal more. They’re considered fairly legitimate in some cases, but not for everything. As far as ‘Sechrist’, that seems to just be the name of a company who makes them. Not sure what the weirdness here is supposed to be, didn’t find anything particularly out of place!
‘THE PROCESS’ — ‘The Process Church of the Final Judgment’ was started in the 60s by a couple former Scientologists(again with these guys!) and lasted up until the early 2000s in one shape or another, and maybe even longer. Their beliefs were an evolving mish-mash of Christianity, Gnosticism, Scientology, and even Satanism. There was a lot of rumor about them being involved in murders or animal sacrifices, though none of this seems to have any substance. It changed names and shapes a lot over the years, apparently ending up as the ‘Best Friends Animals Society’ by the end when it was rebranded for the umpteenth time. It managed to be pretty influential somehow, always being associated with this or that(whether credibly or not) being instrumental in a lot of writing and music and even somewhat inspiring another odd group: ‘Thee Temple Ov Psychic Youth’ which may or may not have been associated with that AXIOM23 thing a ways up higher on the iceberg.
There’s also an artist collective by the same name that started in the 90s that took a lot of elements from the group and definitely worked with them to some extent. This group seems more or less defunct now as well.
‘The Process Church of the Final Judgment’ has seen a few half-hearted online revivals and still maintains a small semi-active social media presence. It would take a whole article to really look into it. That’s a good idea for when the Iceberg is melted, huh?
Oh and sometimes ‘The Process’ is also a nebulous thing sports coaches tell us we need to trust when their team is about to have a bad season, but that’s probably not why it’s on the iceberg.
TOR IS GOVERNMENT OWNED — If you’re not familiar, TOR is a very specialized anonymous internet browser. More importantly, though, it also lets you explore the ‘Dark Web’. A lot of funding for its creation came from government sources, and some of the coding was developed in government facilities. Now, none of this means for sure that the government ‘owns and operates’ TOR — but they’re probably using it. There’s a lot of conjecture as to whether or not it has secret backdoors and flaws that allow Alphabet agencies access to what folks are doing, but I don’t think this has been overtly exposed yet. That being said, it is pretty hard to believe that the darkweb isn’t riddled with alphabet agency people by now and that they don’t at least have a finger or two squirmed into TOR somehow.
That’s all she wrote! 13 more down, still about a thousand to go. Another nice broad mix today; I think the Iceberg is really hitting its stride now. You’re starting to see more and more things that touch on earlier topics, too, which I like. The weird leylines connecting certain conspiracies and paranormal topics are fun to watch.
