What Lies Below, Day Thirty Six
Welcome back to WLB! We’re diving into Tier Seven today and it’s a little all over the place. Couple of duds today in my opinion, but that’s going to happen now and again. My working theory is that the iceberg is an evolution of other versions I’ve seen of it that were far less dense, and I’m guessing as time went on people were just adding any old weird thing they’d heard of in passing.
SLAVEMASTER — This appears to be referencing a pseudo-hoax that was all over the early internet in the form of chain e-mails. The letters, which later started appearing on early social media, would breathlessly repeat an alleged warning from “State Police” about a man luring women to their deaths via the internet. His primary monikers were “Slavemaster” or “MonkeyMan935”, but people soon began inserting all sorts of usernames into there. The body of the message was often otherwise unchanged, however. The killer had already racked up anywhere from a couple dozen to 50+ victims, according to the letter, and was still active.
This one has a seed of truth, however. A guy named John Robinson was busted in 2000 for assaulting two women he’d lured using the internet, and the name he’d been using online had indeed been “Slavemaster”. During the investigation, police found the bodies of five women on Robinson’s property — and he was eventually arrested and sentenced to death. How the number became as larger as 50 or how the other usernames got attached is hard to say, as is whether or not there ever was a genuine warning put out. Still, there was a murderer named Slavemaster using the early internet to lure victims!
THE ‘WHITE WOMAN OF GIPPSLAND’ — In the 1840s, it was reported that aboriginal people in Australia had made off with a European woman. No one ever came close to proving it, though, and the rumors it was based on seemed pretty flimsy. Nonetheless, this gave gave early Australians every excuse to hunt and torment the Aboriginal people for years. Almost like they were eager to do so in the first place, you know? Like they had just been waiting for any tiny excuse to manifest itself or conveniently fall into their laps?
UPWARD CAUSATION — This is just a sort of basic concept that big events are caused by smaller ones. Not super dissimilar from the “butterfly flaps its wings, and eventually there’s a tidal wave” ripple effect thing. Think of biology as a science, but how anything going on in the field of biology would ultimately also be the result of things that happen in the realm of physics as a science. This is…not that weird, but I guess it’s a base term for the way we think about how magic works, or how time travel might impact things, or so on.
ORANG MEDAN — The Ourang Medan(misspelled on the iceberg) is a ghost ship; reported on at various times by various sources which tend to have different dates and other details. As a result, it’s hard to pinpoint the real origins(or if the ship even really existed). The main gist is that sometime in the 40s(probably) an SOS was received from this vessel. When rescuers got there, everyone was dead without any apparent cause and in the process of towing the vessel back, it caught fire and sank.
INCORRUPTIBLE SAINTS — This is generally considered a Catholic belief, though the idea of ‘Incorruptibility’ isn’t exclusive to them. In short, it means a body doesn’t decompose. Not all Saints are incorruptible, but it is usually seen as a big sign of sainthood. There’s quite a few cases of this, many of which are now or have at some time been visible to the public. The ‘Odor of Sanctity’ further up the iceberg ties into this, as Incorruptible Saints often allegedly emit it. There’s a lot of conjecture about what causes this, though it’s suspected it can be a wide variety of things and individual cases may have different causes. That said, the lack of an official scientific explanation after all this time is…something to consider.
FOUR HUMORS — This is just old Greek medicine(and sometimes alchemy)?? Why is it here??? Blood, Phlegm, Yellow Bile, and Black Bile. The mixture and balance of these was thought to explain most medical situations, and various methods were used to add to or detract from how much you had of one or the other. There’s nothing really conspiratorial here unless people somewhere think this is all real and there’s a hidden agenda to keep it secret. Probably there is at least one guy who thinks that. If he makes a youtube he could probably net a few Qanons at least. Might be lucrative!
JACKALOPE ECONOMY — I’m honestly not sure here. A Jackalope is, I suppose, technically a cryptid. Basically a big jackrabbit with antlers. The story goes that some guys invented the whole thing in the 30s as a tourist trap, and it worked. This created a cottage industry of people selling alleged pelts and antlers and so forth, which in turn led to it becoming a bigger sensation, which led to fake photos and people making merchandise and so on. So I guess it’s a lesson in microeconomics, but I mean it’s not really that weird. NEXT!
‘NEW WORLD AIRPORT COMMISSION’ — As you can guess, this is a New World Order thing. It originates with the Denver International Airport, which is a whole mess unto itself that we covered further up the iceberg. There’s a plaque(with a Mason symbol on it, no less!) at the airport crediting its construction to the ‘New World Airport Commission’ — but there’s no such organization. The closest thing to an explanation is that it was a made-up term meant to generate publicity or something. Sounds weak. Then again, why would the NWO invent a special organization to build airports and then hide all record of it but then credit a huge airport to it?
KAOMA RIVER CAVERNS — There’s like one reference to one book suggesting that in or around the Kaoma River in Africa are vast underground tunnels. It’s an old book, and I’ve never seen anything about this mentioned in any source in the last century or so. Sorry!
PARASITIC RAIN CLOUDS — I guess this is referring to a study that shows a significant amount of ‘rain producing’ bacteria are spread around the earth? Not quite the sort of thing I’d expect for the iceberg, but interesting. They live on plant matter and stuff and through a biological process can kind of kickstart the condensation/precipitation cycle, “tricking” rain into forming around them and getting them back to the ground. Maybe this refers to something else, but I don’t know of anything.
AIRSHIP ANCHORS — I mean, this would just be an anchor for an airship like a blimp or something. Unless this is talking more about ‘ghost airships’ which are sighted here and there; especially in a big spurt around 1900~. I may be way off the mark here; but if it’s talking about something else it must be some particularly opaque and obscure reference that I’ve never heard of. Sorry!
AIRQUAKES/MISTPOEFFERS — Also ‘Skyquakes’. This is a real thing that’s been reported for many many years up until current day. It’s more or less what it sounds like: very loud and abrupt sonic rumbling or booms or similar sounds coming seemingly out of nowhere in the sky; enough to feel the vibration. Science guys think they’re probably natural phenomenon caused by gas or solar wind or whatever, other people think they’re created by aircraft(possibly superfast or stealthed or otherwise experimental), or a host of other things from avalanches to distant storms. There’s a lot of conjecture but no sure fit. The ‘Bell Island’ thing we covered earlier is a case of this. Entirely likely that there’s a bunch of different explanations that cause a similar phenomenon at different places and times.
LOVELOCK CAVE — A smallish cave in Nevada that just so happens to have very good conditions for preserving matter inside. Likely used as shelter by people several thousand years ago, it’s a prime site for archaeology and anthropology. It’s not super duper weird, though. I’ve never heard of it being attached to like, lost civilizations or ancient aliens or any of that jazz.
And that’s it for today. A number of things slipped in here that didn’t really have much meat to them, but this Tier feels promising overall. Onward!
