What Lies Below, Day Fifteen
Welcome back to What Lies Below. As a refresher: I’m Rob, and we’re going to chip 13 more items off the enormous ‘Conspiracy Iceberg’ meme every day until we finish all 1,100+. We’re entering the third of twenty tiers today, so let’s get to it! As always: some items may contain sensitive subjects so consider that as a broad content warning for every WLB. Please reach out if you are a vampire, alien, possessor of ancient lore, or just someone who wants to yell at me.
ARCHONS — This term is so overused in every fantasy and sci-fi universe that it can basically mean anything, and this winds up carrying over into contemporary occult and religious talk. You’ll see the term thrown around a lot for various entities, and you can decide for yourselves how valid it is. It’s probably here, though, because Archons are a major figure in Gnosticism, which was covered a ways up the iceberg. Archons are more or less bad guys of gnosticism, keeping people in the physical universe and building it. The ‘Agents’ of the Matrix. This gets interpreted in a lot of ways depending on your flavor of theory.
MARS WAS THE GARDEN OF EDEN — Some of these don’t really need much description huh? Easy one for me! There isn’t much steam behind this one but it will never go away because it sounds cool! Every so often someone will write an article suggesting it based on some old piece of Scripture, it’ll do the rounds on the internet, and then disappear.
AMBER ROOM — There’s a ‘modern’ version of this currently in the Catherine Palace near St Petersburg, but it’s just a reproduction. The original was built hundreds of years ago: a whole chamber built of amber and gold, just obscene decadence. During WW2 it vanished, apparently stolen by nazis. But then, poof, no one knows. There’s some speculation like “they buried Hitler in it” and stuff, but the main thing is that it’s a big topic for real-life treasure hunters who spend a lot of time trying to pin down where it is.
7 NATIONS US WON’T ATTACK — I honestly don’t know. I mean, there’s no end of chit chat about which countries the U.S. couldn’t or wouldn’t invade, but I’m unaware of any specific list. I bet you can guess a couple of the countries that are definitely on there, though!
TAMAN SHUD — Dead guy who was found in the late 40s in Australia. They found a piece of paper with ‘Tamam Shud’ in his pocket(which people always misspell as ‘taman), which was torn from a book of poetry. The phrase means ‘end’. Recent DNA analysis has helped people maybe figure out who he was, but it’s still debated. They apparently did find the book he’d torn the page from, and it had a bunch of handwritten notes in it — coded messages, numbers, weird stuff. Early on, people thought he was a spy, and this since ballooned into all the usual conjecture.
OCCULTISTICS — Apart from it being used interchangeably with ‘occult’ and ‘occultists’, I honestly don’t know and didn’t find anything. Part of me wants to believe anything on this iceberg has to have some hidden meaning, but it seems inevitable that some are just weird words someone saw on an imageboard once.
OWEN PAFITT — Misspell of ‘Owen Parfitt’, a man who allegedly vanished in the late 18th century. At the time of the disappearance, Owen was elderly and supposedly too infirm to do much more than sit in a chair. He was known for telling stories, allegedly having said he was involved in the occult, piracy, possibly some criminal dealings. There’s not a lot of hard documentation, and the story twists and turns with embellishments depending on where you hear it. Never solved.
ODOUR OF SANCTITY — This is a real thing! Or at least, the term is a real thing the Catholic Church officially uses! The dead bodies of certain saints smell nice, and that’s what this is called! The best known case is Padre Pio’s stigmata wounds supposedly smelling like flowers.
STIGMATIC RIB DISPLACEMENT — Sorry folks, I don’t know! I tried looking, too! I have to guess that it regards people showing the traditional hand/foot wounds of the stigmata also having some sort of rib thing where the spear would have been forced in? Please tell me if you know!
OCTOPUS PANSPERMIA — A few years ago a paper came out, with real scientists attached, suggesting that octopi didn’t evolve naturally on earth. It’s basically the same ‘panspermia’ theory as discussed higher on the iceberg, but specifically for one type of creature. To shorten the scientifics of it: octopuses are too weird to be normal, bro! Most scientists disagree, btw.
DEMON’S ALLEY NJ — New Jersey is absolutely loaded with weird stuff. It seems to have more urban myths and creepy sites and local legends per square mile than anywhere else in the US. Demon’s Alley is a little road in West Milford, which sits up on the northern edge of the state. Most(or maybe all) of it is gone now, in part thanks to arson, but at one time there was a weird little abandoned neighborhood there — as if people had just up and left abruptly for some reason. This came with all the obligatory rumors, including a Satanic-Panic flavored one, and became one of those creepy places any self-respecting weirdo in the area had to go see. The longer this went, the more beat-up and vandalized the abandoned places wound up looking, which led to more local legends about what went on there. Lots of stories of people encountering unusual activity of one sort or another, and it was of course featured in Weird N.J. magazine.
DARK KINGDOM PARK — There’s a big theme-park subculture, and in this corner of the net lie a great many urban legends about specific parks and attractions. There’s a persistent one about an alleged Disney plan to build a villains-themed ‘Dark Kingdom’ park that has been retold and speculated about more than most. It’s actually got some legs, too! Disney saw how well a villain-themed attraction in Tokyo Disney did and tooled around with the idea of expanding on the idea in the US, but it never panned out. Someday!
TEXAS STILTWALKER — Texas cryptid that may or may not be just a campfire story critter willed into existence. Creepy shadowy dog/horse thing with very long slender legs. Pretty sure no photos/video of it exist, just some reported sightings. Pretty obscure in terms of cryptids, as far as I know.
That’s another one in the books! I liked today’s list a lot. Getting lots of neat obscure stuff, now. Bodes well for the future!
