What Lies Below, Day Twenty Two
Welcome back to What Lies Below! I’m tackling a massive collection off oddities and mysteries entitled the “Conspiracy Iceberg” in daily installments. 1,100 total topics, 13 a day. We’re somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% of the way down, so let’s see what’s in store today!
YONAGUNI MONUMENT — An underwater ‘rock formation’ near Japan that looks wayyyy too much like the ruins of a city or something to not get attention. Oddly little scientific analysis has gone on with it, but there are lots of pictures out there so feel free to take a look. It’s been dismissed as a natural phenomenon but people aren’t convinced. This doesn’t fit with the supposed locations of places like Atlantis or Shambala so theorists don’t seem to agree on exactly what it is, only that it’s definitely a lost city or site of some kind.
ADAM AND EVE WERE REPTILLIANS — This tier of the iceberg is really all over the place, huh? Sometimes, as outlandish a theory as they are, the weirdest stuff is fairly self-explanatory. Honestly, I didn’t find many coherent writings on this specific thing — but it’s what you’d expect. Ancient alien stuff, or sometimes interdimensional foofoo. Sometimes there were other humans too, sometimes not. Sometimes it’s all a conspiracy. What do you want from me!
HYPERREALITY — Sort of tied in to simulation theory. Hyperreality is when simulation and reality become either indistinguishable from one another, or just the same thing. Singularity theory plays on this sometimes, too. Ad companies, entertainment companies, video games, VR and AI tech, etc are all chasing this dragon and uh it’s probably coming!
COLUMBINE THIRD SHOOTER — This is based entirely on witness testimony, but is generally dismissed quickly because there’s little other evidence. The shooters did try to recruit a third person, but that didn’t work out. Witnesses report seeing a third or even fourth person with them, though this sort of testimony from kids during a chaotic event is dicey and it’s also possible that this was due to seeing police detaining people during the chaos. Some people go really wild with this one for some reason, suggesting there were several other shooters and basically the entire story we’ve been told is a fabrication — not a false flag so much as a coverup. Why the powers that be would go to the trouble of all that is rarely spelled out clearly, and most of the ‘evidence’ winds up being the “you can’t prove it DIDNT happen this way” thing — i.e. the third shooter is there but just so happens to never be on camera, is in on it but just so happens to never be mentioned in the Basement Tapes, is seen by tons of people but is able to easily escape somehow and then just rejoin the community.
BIELEFELD — Bielefeld is a city in Germany that some folks think doesn’t exist. This may actually be the first ‘this place is not real’ conspiracy, a trope which has now become all but a mainstream meme as people claim different places don’t exist. This one started in the ancient UseNet days and is now jokingly accepted as part of the town’s character.
I miss UseNet by the way. That was a better time. I’d trade Twitter for Usenet in an instant.
SOLIPSISM — Why is this here? This is just normal philosophy stuff! This is just the idea that the only thing you can truly know is real is your own mind. This is tied to a lot of other philosophies and theories but usually it’s just a cool way to describe yourself if you’re kind of self-centered but want to sound thoughtful. “I’m a solipsistic loner…*taps cigarette*”
DOD/IIC INFIGHTING — DoD being Department Of Defense and IIC being International Intelligence Community, I think. Alphabet agencies are often seen by conspiracy theorists as this seamlessly integrated unit, so I like this one because it touches on the much more realistic idea that such agencies don’t trust or care for one another. I don’t know of what specific DoD vs IIC situation this is talking about, or even if IIC means something else in this context and I just made myself look dumb! Moving on!
THE M9 GIRL — In 2013 the body of a teenage girl was found on the M9 in the UK. She was identified and believed to have fallen from a higher bridge. I can’t find any information on the circumstances of the death, however, and I guess the conspiracy is tied to that? This is one of the first I’ve never ever heard of, so I tried digging into it and couldn’t find much. It looks like there’s been other deaths on the M9 as well, but nothing that appears tied to this one.
TULPAS — If you spent any time on any occult discussion forum over the last several years, especially the imageboard variety, you’re probably sick of this word. Back in my day, these were called ‘thoughtforms’ or even ‘egregores’(though that’s not quite the same thing). A tulpa is a semi-sentient or fully sentient construct that a practitioner creates via either elaborate magical ritual, intense visualization/meditation, or by merit of pure will/belief. ‘Tulpamancers’(yes this is the word for it, though I’ve yet to meet one who would actually call themselves this) squabble about methods all the time. Some people think you can even create a tulpa accidentally, or that they can ‘get loose’ if not created carefully enough, or that they can be created and set wild, etc. Their purpose can be, in theory, a lot of things — from carrying out specific tasks to a general sort of ‘guardian angel’ to a companion. That last item is very popular among contemporary tulpa folks. Some will even try to make their tulpa basically an incarnation of a fictional character(i.e. a My Little Pony, and yes this is a thing that really happened). Tulpas gone rogue are also the source of a significant amount of online urban legends and scary stories.
CRYPTOTERRESTRIALS — This theory was popularized in fairly modern times but has been around for a long time in one form or another. The idea is that the aliens we deal with are actually from Earth, and either evolved alongside us and still cohabitate(often underground) or advanced and left the planet long before we came around, and now occasionally drop in for one reason or another. This is less so much its own thing and more often a chunk of other theories. Good band name.
BLACK POPE PROPHECY — This is kind of a comedy of errors conspiracy, and it’s been around long enough to keep reshaping to suit each new pope. As a result, it’s kind of hard to pin down. The gist is that there’s a prophecy, often attributed to Nostradamus, saying a ‘Black Pope’ will be either a symbol of the end times or instrumental in their coming. Nostradamus didn’t actually say this, so it’s a sort of…interpretation of things he said, popularized and then retold 100 times, and then given life of its own. Right now, the conspiracy has new legs because the current pope is a Jesuit and the ‘leader’ of the Jesuit order is known as, you got it, the ‘black pope’. Of course, the current pope wasn’t and isn’t the leader of the Jesuits but hey, can’t win ’em all. Every pope in modern history has been ‘the black pope’ according to one source or another, and political figures are sometimes also interpreted as being what the prophecy actually means. Also a good band name.
PUBLIUS ENIGMA — Back in the 90s on Usenet(See? It was better! Restore all internet social media to mid-90s levels now!) someone named ‘Publius’ started posting about an alleged contest. This was posted to the Pink Floyd group, and claimed to be tied to an album of theirs which had just come out. The band themselves have both said it wasn’t official and have teased that it may have been official, so who knows. No one ever ‘solved’ the publius enigma to this day, but it shows that viral marketing and ARGs aren’t as new as we think they are. I like wholesome conspiracies like this; they break up all the heavy angry ones.
MONSTER OF GLAMIS CASTLE — Glamis is a castle in Scotland, and basically any castle has an obligatory ghost story or something attached to it. There are a couple tellings of this because it’s an old story that’s been reshaped over the years, but allegedly the ruling family had a child -a male heir, no less- who was very deformed and as such had to be hidden away in a secret chamber where he eventually died(perhaps after being sealed in). Alleged sightings of this ‘monster’ pop up here and there and some people connected with the castle still suggest it’s true, or at least based on truth.
Well, that’s it! I dig the Usenet stuff. It would be fun to go back and track how many current internet legends find their roots back there. See you tomorrow!
