What Lies Below, Day Forty Three
Welcome back! We’re still trucking along through Tier Eight, so let’s not waste time getting right into it.
MURPHY’S LAW(STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE) — This is just like, an idea people talk about sometimes? I’ve honestly rarely heard of it even worded this way. It’s Murphy’s “anything that can go wrong will go wrong” Law writ large, but with the added suggestion that the universe is specifically set up to be an infinite suffering generation machine. Whether this is due to simulation theory or a gnostic version of mysticism or what have you is up to the individual.
PRO-WAR BUDDHISM — Just with any religion that is ostensibly pro-peace, you’re going to have factions or followers who are warlike. The distinction is a bit more pronounced given how peaceful Buddhism is meant to be in theory, but people wilded out by this seem to have a weird idea that all members of any religion are strict adherents of all its tenets.
KUBRICK WAS KILLED FOR EYES WIDE SHUT — If you’re unfamiliar, “Eyes Wide Shut” was Kubrick’s last film. It released shortly after his death in the late 90s, and is most famously known for the main character stumbling into a masked orgy being held by some sort of secret society. It’s not a popular belief, but some people think he revealed a bit too much and was killed for it — meaning his heart attack was either a cover story for something else, or induced somehow. This usually goes along with people reading very deeply into the film and finding all sorts of references and suggestions that may or may not have been intended, and most of the writeups I read about this leave me feeling like the theorists are leaning a bit harder into confirmation bias than usual. It’s not that Kubrich wasn’t a brilliant directory who layered a lot of things into his films, but the story doesn’t exactly hang together. Exactly WHO killed him, according to the theories, seems to vary. Anything from a loose configuration of powerful figures to the illuminati themselves. Why these incredibly powerful groups allowed the film to be made, released, and continuously aired and sold even today is often not explained.
ANIMISM — A little low on the iceberg, in my opinion, but I suppose this is a bit more obscure than most spiritual beliefs. In short: everything is alive. There are varying levels of animists in terms of exactly how far they take this, i.e. some limit it to anything organic having a type of soul, while others extend this to inorganic things like rocks, and others even attach it to less tangible things like a storm or music. There’s a lot of variation in animism, and it is rarely something devoted to alone but instead a part of someone’s larger spiritual(often Pagan) belief systems.
UFOS=ATMOSPHERIC LIFE FORMS — This is an old one that exists on the periphery of the UFOlogy world, but it’s persistent. It’s what it sounds like: sometimes UFOs aren’t ships of some sort, but they’re living animals(sometimes sentient, sometimes not) that usually hang out in the upper atmosphere but sometimes dip lower. Sometimes they’re usually all but invisible, but atmospheric conditions light them up. Sometimes they’re less a cryptid and more some sort of interdimensional traveler.
CONNIE CONVERSE — A stage name for “Elizabeth”, Connie was a musician in NYC active in the 50s. She toiled in relative obscurity. It wasn’t until the early 00s when her work was rediscovered that she started to get some notice. The rub is that in 1974, she vanished. She’d been dealing with depression and other issues and eventually used letters to inform family and friends that she was leaving. She did indeed leave and that’s that, no one ever found her. The family looked for a while, but nothing tangible turned up. I guess it’s weird but it seems a little deep on the iceberg!
LANE BRYANT SHOOTING — In 2008, someone opened at a Lane Bryant clothing store in Illinois. Five people were killed when the shooter pulled them into a room and apparently executed them. Descriptions of the killer were given, sketches released, and his voice is even audible on the 911 call recording. Still, he remains at large — and as a result, the case has become a pet project for a lot of online sleuths and crime-solvers.
I’m not aware of any big conspiracies about this one, to be honest. I guess it stands out a bit because the regular mass shootings in the US are generally solved immediately or soon thereafter, and generally aren’t part of a retail chain robbery.
TOMMYKNOCKERS — Not the Steven King story. Tommyknockers, in this context, are either cryptids or spirits who live in mines. They seem to be largely attached to American folklore but may have been imported from Europe during America’s gold-rush and subsequent boom of immigrants seeking mining work. The Tommyknockers are small green dwarf-type things, sometimes helpful and sometimes malevolent without much rhyme or reason. Sometimes they’d appear in homes near mines, as well. They’re around if you hear tapping or knocking on walls.
AQUA TOFANA MANIA — ‘Aqua Tofana’ was a poison popular in the mid 1600s, named after a woman named Tofana who sold it under the guise of harmless cosmetics. Allegedly, it was really being used by women with abusive husbands to solve their problems(and possibly making its way into less moral uses as well, some people even thought it was used on Mozart).
The ‘mania’ could be referring to how widespread its use became, or how much panic there was once she got busted. After a customer confessed and the authorities came for Tofana, she was tortured into all sorts of confessions which led to a witch-hunt phenomenon. Not only was Tofana killed, but lots of her alleged customers and allies were as well.
VLADIMIR PETROVICH’S DOG EXPERIMENTS — Soviet scientist who conducted grisly, unusual medical experiments in the 40s and 50s. He was talented, and offered great contributions in the field of organ transplant — but continued pushing the limits of the research. This culminated with him transplanting the heads of dogs, creating two-headed animals that did survive for several days after. While people recognized his other medical contributions, this was widely considered far too unethical by most people and peers alike.
SENTIENT CLOUDS — This isn’t too different from the “UFOs are life forms” thing a few items back, in my experience. It’s not one specific theory, just the general idea that maybe clouds are a living thing unlike anything we consider life. This isn’t particularly widespread and is mostly born of the *hits bowl* “bro what if like-” brand of theory. A more recent use of the term also has been applied to Clouds as in the online storage method, suggesting these databases are becoming some sort of artificial intelligences. Again, more a speculative idea than a hardened theory.
LELAND MELVIN SIGHTING — Melvin is an astronaut who started a small conspiracy via answering a few questions on Twitter. At one point, he mentioned having seen something ‘organic looking’ through a window — but that ground control cleared up that it was just ice, with the curved transparent appearance seeming alien. People were a little iffy, and Melvin gave a “hey you never know” response.
That’s really it, unfortunately. There’s no images of what he saw or much else to work with!
DUGWAY PROVING GROUND — Huge US military base in Utah. All kinds of military maneuvers go on there, as well as “defense” tests regarding chemical and biological weapons. There have been a few odd incidents in or around the place: a NASA ship landed there, the base went into sudden lockdown due to an alleged misplacement of a chemical nerve agent, anthrax was shipped out of it to random locations in the US as some sort of “accident”, and thousands of nearby sheep were found dead due to exposure to a nerve agent — to name a few.
On top of all that, it is surrounded by a fog of UFO rumors and speculation. It’s not terribly far from Area 51, and there’s conjecture that it’s the “real” site of all the sketchy experimentation and whatnot, or where the stuff from Area 51 wound up, or so on. It’s a huge tract of land that is highly restricted and has been forever, so you’re always going to wind up knee-deep in conspiracies. Whether or not the UFO stuff has merit, the base is wrapped up in extremely dangerous research of biochemical weapons that they manage to have “accidents” with a little too often for comfort.
Not many pictures today, sorry! Gonna level with you, I have a headache and didn’t feel like it! See you tomorrow!
