The Hidden Ones: Sect of Assassins

In the Middle Ages, contact between Islamic cultures and Europe introduced many new things to the West.  Along with luxury goods that were acquired, so too new words were brought to Europe, words such as crimson, saffron, jasmine, taffeta, and musk. Comfortable new styles of silken garb were imported, as was the word for them, pyjamas. And new sweets were discovered, along with the word candy. Alongside such commodities, tales were also imported to the West through this commerce. One of the first Europeans to travel the Silk Road, that superhighway of commercial and cultural intercourse, was Marco Polo, an Italian merchant and also a spinner of fanciful tales. One tale he told was of a certain group of Muslims who followed a mysterious old man, whom he said had created a veritable paradise on earth, a bountiful garden into which he had channeled canals that carried not only flowing water, but wine, and milk, and honey. According to Polo, the Old Man of the Mountain commanded the absolute loyalty of his subjects, who truly believed that they resided in paradise on Earth. And when the Old Man wanted something done about an enemy of his, he plied some youthful follower with a drug that caused them to sleep, at which point he would take the youth out of his paradise. Upon waking, the youth believed he had been ejected from heaven and was told that in order to obtain reentry, he would have to do the Old Man’s bidding, to kill his enemy. Thus, Polo explained, the Old Man drugged and manipulated his disciples and transformed them into his personal legion of murderers. This tale illustrated the growing lore surrounding a distinct group of Muslims whom Europeans had encountered throughout the Crusades, when members of this Order began killing or attempting to kill European Crusaders at their Grandmaster’s command. Europeans quickly learned to fear their daggers, just as the Order’s other enemies in the region long had, and a black legend was developed. These were fanatics, it was said, who kept their secret conclaves in impregnable castles. They were deluded, it was believed, by a heretic cult leader and kept mad with intoxication on hashish. This was the origin of their name, the hashishin, it was claimed, and thus another word entered our lexicon, derived from this word: assassin, a noun, but soon a verb as well, assassinate, to murder suddenly, using subterfuge or surprise, for religious or political reasons. This Order of Assassins was no fairy tale, as some of Marco Polo’s stories were, and they had long been quite successful in destabilizing and defeating their enemies purely through assassination. Many were the military commanders, viziers, emirs, Imams who fell beneath their blades. Among the most famous of those was Conrad of Montferrat, the Crusader King of Jerusalem. It is difficult to always be certain whether an assassination was carried out by them or perhaps by others, and this was actually one of the benefits of their assassinations, that they destabilized by creating paranoia and confusion, but among the rumored and real assassination plots attributed to them were attempts on the lives of a Mongol Khan; multiple efforts to kill Saladin, the sultan who spearheaded the Counter-Crusade, and even a failed attempt on the life of Edward Longshanks, Hammer of the Scots and future King of England, during the Ninth Crusade, called Lord Edward’s Crusade. Real though the Assassins were, though, that does not mean they weren’t surrounded by myths and misconceptions.

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The reason I was drawn to discuss this topic directly after my post on the Thuggee should, I think, be quite obvious. It’s nothing to do with the era or the locale or the culture, as the strangler bandits of 18th and 19th century India have none of this in common with the 11th century Arab Muslim Order of Assassins active in Persia, Syria, and elsewhere for a few hundred years. Rather, I see a connection of theme. While the Thugs were not the organized, hierarchical religious cult that they were made out to be and the Assassins were followers of a specific creed who devoted themselves entirely to accomplishing the goals of their Imam, both were secretive brotherhoods among whom were members specially tasked with murder of a most intimate and gruesome sort. The names of both have entered the lexicon to represent those who commit similar crimes. And both became the storied boogeymen of European imaginations during the eras in which they were active. Indeed, it is the fact that Assassins have been so mythologized in fiction that they have become enshrouded in multiple layers of false history, much like Thuggee. The modern imagination has been quite drawn to the Order of Assassins, as they have appeared in numerous novels, by those of such vastly different talents as Umberto Eco and Dan Brown. They were the inspiration for the League of Assassins led by Batman’s nemesis Ra's al Ghul in DC comics, and they were the basis of the Faceless Men in George R. R. Martin’s unfinished A Song of Ice and Fire book series… that’s the assassin’s guild that little Arya Stark joins, as also depicted in the television series Game of Thrones. But the most in-depth treatment of the Order of Assassins in modern fiction, the reason it is so well-known today, and the source of the most creative fabrications about the group is the Assassin’s Creed video game franchise, from which I took the name of this episode. I’ll be the first to say I’ve enjoyed these games, and being a fan of historical fiction, I appreciate how they weave in real historical figures and events into their storylines. But if one were to confuse the story presented in these games as real history, one would believe that the Assassins were actually heroes fighting for freedom against the proto-Fascistic Knights Templar, and that actually both groups were, in fact, evolutions of even older secret societies going back to ancient Egypt, and that these groups were vying for control of ancient artifacts that contained the advanced technology of a long extinct species that was a pre-cursor to humanity. It’s a cool story, obviously science fiction/fantasy, not something to debunk but to enjoy. However, as it weaves in such myths as the existence of Atlantis and such mythical figures as Hermes Trismegistus, it might easily confuse someone as to what might be real, historically, and what false. But this question could have been asked about the Assassins long before the elaborate mythmaking of modern entertainment featuring them, as they were mythologized even from the beginning.

Marco Polo, mythologizer of the East.

A cursory understanding of the Muslim world and the conflicts within it must be achieved before anyone can really understand the origins of the Order of Assassins. I say cursory because this is a topic far too expansive and complicated to possibly do justice in one brief segment of one standalone podcast episode. So we will look, in admittedly broad strokes, at the background of the rise of the Assassins because we need the context. After all, the Black Legend of the Assassins propagated by Europeans purposely ignores the actual religious context of the sect and their beliefs. Before the Crusades, this could be explained by ignorance, but after the Crusades, when Europeans came to better understand the complex religious fabric of Islamic society, they then purposely ignored the distinctions between one sect or denomination and another, choosing to portray them all as godless infidels who worship an anti-Christ. This contributed greatly to the spread of myths about the Assassins, and we don’t want to be like Crusaders in this regard. We must first understand that the Prophet Muhammad unified the Arab world under the Islamic faith and also established a social and political order characterized by multiculturalism, religious freedom, and social justice, as represented in the Constitution of Medina. But we must further understand that, since his death, the Islamic world and faith had been long troubled by disunion and schism. Much of this had to do with disagreements over succession, as it was believed by many that the next ruler should be of Muhammad’s lineage, specifically his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, but instead the mantle of caliph passed to his father-in-law, Abu Bakr. This essentially political faction supporting Ali for the job, Shīʿatu ʿAlī, or “followers of Ali,” transformed through the years to become a doctrinal branch of Islam, Shīʿa or Shīʿism, the Shīʿite view being that Ali had been designated to succeed Muhammad as caliph and Imam, and that only those descended from Ali were divinely ordained to lead. Ali did eventually take up the role as leader, but this did not put an end to the internecine strife. A new Caliphate was established by the Umayyad clan in resistance to Ali’s sovereignty. The Umayyad Caliphate lasted about a hundred years before another revolution, led by the Shīʿite Abbasid clan toppled them and established a third Caliphate. Throughout these conflicts, the schism of Islam became more and more concrete, with Shīʿism on one side and Sunnism, a more orthodox camp who rejected the notion that Muhammad ever intended to establish a blood dynasty, on the other. But even within the Shīʿa branch of Islam, there was much diversity of belief and much disagreement, and it was from among these denominations that the Assassins would rise.

Many of the doctrinal disputes within Shīʿa Islam had to do, yet again, with the legitimacy of the succession of Imams. This was not only about Earthly power and legitimacy; it was about prophecy. During the Abbasid Caliphate, a number of secret religious societies appeared, and with them the notion of esoteric knowledge being present in the Quran. It was believed that the Islamic scriptures carried some secret, hidden messages, that only the true, divinely ordained Imam and his initiates could discern. Among the secrets of the Quran interpreted was the idea that there would only be twelve divinely ordained Imams, and the twelfth would be hidden away and mystically preserved, in Occultation, it is called, until such time as he returns, a messianic figure called the Mahdi, whose appearance will signal the end times. This remains the belief of Twelver Shīʿites to this day, and belief in the return of an Imam as the Mahdi has become a common feature of Shīʿa Islam generally. However, some other subsects have differed regarding the succession of Imams and the number of Imams. The second largest branch of Shīʿa Islam, after the Twelvers, believe that when the Imam Shīʿites recognized as the sixth true Imam died and passed the Imamate to the son recognized by Twelvers as the seventh Imam, it should have and indeed did actually pass to his eldest son, Isma'il ibn Jafar. The Isma’ili Shīʿa believe he was the true inheritor because of his great understanding of the hidden meaning of texts, and that he did not actually die, as was claimed, but rather was hidden away from the Abbasids. The fact that he was missing, presumed dead or in hiding, led some Isma’ili to believe that he was actually the last Imam, waiting in Occultation to return as the Mahdi, and they became known as the Seveners, as Isma’il was considered the seventh Imam. Whether proponents of Isma’il as simply the seventh Imam or as the last Imam and the coming Mahdi, Isma’ilism spread across the Islamic world through aggressive proselytizing. In the tenth century, an Arab dynasty called the Fatimids, who traced their lineage back to Ali and Muhammad’s daughter Fatima and were recognized as legitimate Imams by some Isma’ilis, began to wrest control of the Mediterranean coast of Africa and Western Asia from the Abbasids. The Fatimid Caliphate saw a further schism early in the 11th century, when upon the death of one Imam, the son whom he had publicly named as his successor, Nizar was thereafter prevented from succeeding to the Fatimid throne in Egypt as the next Caliph-Imam by a dictatorial coup. Thus the Nizari Isma’ilis were born. Nizar was later taken captive in battle against his usurper and executed, but one of his most devoted lieutenants, Hassan-i Sabbah, who had captured and made impregnable a castle called Alamut in the mountains of northern Persia, took Nizar’s son, whom the Nizari Isma’ili then considered the true Imam, under his protection and established a Persian Nizari Isma’ili state. Hassan-I Sabbah was the original Old Man of the Mountain who would enter legend centuries later, and his Nizari Isma’ili, a state with no army and many enemies, were the sect of Islam that would become known to the world as Assassins.

19th century engraving of Hassan-I Sabbah

The coup against Nizar in Egypt had been engineered by the commander of the armies there, and this has been seen as one of the principal reasons that Hassan-I Sabbah never gathered an army to the Nizari Isma’ili cause. Instead, he developed a three-pronged approach to war, the first being fortification. As Alamut Castle proved to be a safe refuge, he undertook to capture other castles and thereby expand his Imam’s territories without armed conflict. This he managed through the second prong of his approach, infiltration. There are numerous stories of the way that Hassan-I Sabbah captured Alamut. One is that he converted the owner to his creed, and another that he simply snuck so many of his men in that, slowly but surely and unnoticed by its current occupants, he was taking possession right under their noses. Such stories are impossible to credit with any certainty, but considering the kinds of stealth and subterfuge he would go on to utilize, such tactics must have been among his favorites. And his final approach to war was tactical murder, or what would be called today assassination. Hassan-I Sabbah did indeed train killers and send them out with daggers, directing them to use guile and disguise to get close enough to their targets to end their lives. And these agents did indeed expect to die in the completion of their tasks, and were indeed promised rewards in paradise upon their deaths. The policy itself, of effecting political and social change through strategic killings, can be seen to have evolved rather organically out of Islamic teachings and recent history. Passages in the Quran were long interpreted as approving of regicide in extreme cases, when leaders were wicked. And Hassan-I Sabbah was not the inventor of political murder. Indeed, of the first four Caliphs after Muhammad, the Rashidun Caliphs, three of them, including Ali, were assassinated. Hassan-I Sabbah was just the first to place such importance on assassination as opposed to field warfare, to strike terror into enemies who would gladly risk their lives in battle but feared an ignoble death in their homes. Hassan-I Sabbah did not invent assassination, but he perfected it.

Since I use the word terror to describe the effect that Hassan-I Sabbah’s tactics had on his enemies, I should address a certain analogy that has been made in modern times, likening his Order of Assassins to terrorists. The Assassins of Nizari Isma’ilism have not only been likened to Islamic terrorists, but also terrorists of the IRA, or Kamikaze bombers. Like the IRA, the Assassins relied on a constant threat of sudden violence to intimidate, and like the kamikaze, Assassins were fully expected and in fact intended to die in completion of their missions. But of course, the comparison to modern-day Islamic terrorists is the most obvious, being that they share cultural and religious backgrounds. There are other commonalities as well, in that, like the Assassins, suicide bombers intend to sacrifice their lives to get close enough to their enemy that they might inflict harm, again to intimidate and terrorize. Like the Assassins, they rely on this approach to warfare against militarily superior enemies, and they believe they will be rewarded in paradise for their acts of violence against those they see as the enemies of their faith. Like I said, the similarities seem obvious, even apt, but on closer consideration, the Nizari Isma’ili Assassins are far different, in both motivation and practice. First, as we have said, their choice to rely on assassination was part of a conscious refusal to gather armies and engage in traditional warfare, not resorted to because of military inferiority. And second, the Assassins used assassination out of a kind of chivalry that was borne out of Arabian culture. Even long before the rise of Islam, single combat was preferred to the destruction of war. “Pure” warfare, in the Arabian sense, avoided any unnecessary loss of life, and strictly prohibited the killing of women and children or the elderly. The Assassins were never known to target such vulnerable or innocent people, and in avoiding actual battlefield engagements, the Assassins were returning to the Arabian roots of pure warfare, eliminating leaders in a kind of forced single combat and thus saving the lives of the rank and file. This character of the Assassins’ tactics cannot be further from the reality of Islamic terrorism, which is all too accepting of collateral damage.

16th century depiction of the capture of the Assassin fortress of Alamut

One of the principal misunderstandings about the Assassins deriving from the myths surrounding them has to do with the group’s name. There was for a very long time a robust debate about the etymology of the word “assassin,” with numerous theories put forth to explain where the word came from. The word entered European languages via the Latin, assasinus, but it was long unclear where it had come from before that. One theory is that it was a corruption of the Arabic word for the weapon that Assassins chose as their sole means of killing, sikkin, or dagger. Another theory was that it was an application of the Arabic word for a night watch, asas. Others said it came from the ancient Persian word shahanshah, meaning “king of kings” in reference to their leader. Perhaps the most convincing is that the term was derived from the name of their first leader, Hassan-I Sabbah, such that the word is a corruption of the Persian hasaniyyun, or “followers of Hasan.” However, the truth of the matter was not figured out until the 18th century, by Baron Silvestre de Sacy, who in his study of Isma’ilis determined that the term was derived from the name of the drug they were said to use: hashish. Thus they were called the Hashishiyyun, or hashashun, literally “hashish-eater,” and the word simply evolved from there as it was taken into other languages. The fact of this etymology has done much to perpetuate the myth of the Nizari Ismai’ili Assassins as drugged stooges, as portrayed by Marco Polo and others. In fact, the use of hashish and other powerful narcotics, like opium, was widespread in Islamic society throughout the Middle Ages. But the truth is that this was a total misnomer. Crusaders and other Europeans heard the term being used not by the Nizari Isma’ili to describe themselves, but by the enemies of the Nizari Isma’ili. They read the term in anti-Isma’ili polemics written by Sunnis who despised the Nizari Isma’ili, not only for their success in converting Muslims to their creed, but also because they lumped all Isma’ili in together, whether Nizari or Sevener. Indeed there was one particularly militant subsect of Sevener Isma’ili, completely distinct from Hassan-I Sabbah’s Nizaris, called the Qarmatians, who in 930 CE sacked both Medina and Mecca, and who were hated for desecrating some holy sites and artifacts. Specifically, they are said to have dumped corpses into the Zamzam Well, which was said to have miraculously produced water during the time of Abraham, and they stole and held for ransom the Black Stone, a relic, thought to be a meteorite, that is said to have fallen from heaven to mark the place where Adam and Eve should build the first earthly temple. So Sunni writers generalized all Isma’ili as heretics bent on destroying Islam, and they used the term Hashishiyyun not literally, but rather to indicate that they were men of low social status and weak moral character. So we find that the word “assassin,” as a name for this sect, had nothing to do with the drugs and everything to do with an ad hominem attack on the sect. In fact, among the Nizari Isma’ili, only a select few were ever tasked with committing assassinations, and they called themselves fidai, meaning “devotee.”

So we see that the Black Legend of the Assassins was nothing but mythmaking all along. Even if we were to reject the evidence that Sunni polemics called Nizari Isma’ili “hashish-eaters” only metaphorically, logic tells us that any such accusation must have been a lie. The Nizari Isma’ili were highly disciplined and sober. The clearest evidence of their strict sobriety is that Hasan-I Sabbah is known to have actually executed his own son for drinking wine! Moreover, the fidai tasked with assassinations could not have been drugged-out pawns. Their role required a great deal of education, learning several languages so that they could infiltrate different cultural communities. And they had to be quick-witted, resourceful, and adaptable in order to get close to their targets. Indeed, there were some cases in which fidai insinuated themselves into the inner circle of their targets and posed as their closest advisors and friends for long periods of time before suddenly producing a dagger and revealing themselves to have been assassins all along. It is simply not credible that they were also abusing hashish the whole time. Some may hear hashish and think, “That’s not so powerful or harmful of a narcotic. It’s just cannabis.” But smoking a little hash today is quite different that eating hash back then. There is a 19th-century book called the Hasheesh Eater by Fitz High Ludlow in which he described his hallucinatory trips, ingesting higher and higher quantities of the drug, until, as he described it: “time [and] space expanded… The whole atmosphere seemed ductile, and spun endlessly out into great spaces surrounding me on every side.” All this to say, hashish eating would cause one to have an intense psychedelic trip, one that would certainly prevent anyone from competently disguising themselves and convincingly posing as someone else in order to get near a heavily guarded target. Like opium eating, it was more likely to cause someone to lie down than to leap into action. Anyone who has ever taken too many edibles knows exactly what I mean. So in the end we owe the legend of the Assassins to the ignorance of the Crusaders. The myth repeated by Marco Polo, of the Old Man of the Mountain and his earthly Paradise, reentry into which was promised in exchange for committing assassinations, would have been seen as obvious fiction if anyone spreading it had actually visited Alamut castle, the headquarters of the sect, which was no paradise flowing with milk and honey. And other such myths, such as that the Assassins were chosen as children, kept in isolation and manipulated their whole life, or that they would gladly leap to their deaths for no reason other than the simple command of the Old Man of the Mountain, could also have been easily dismissed if any European studying them had relied on written records other than those composed by the enemies of the Nizari Isma’ili. The problem was, the Nizari did not leave their own records behind. In 1256 CE, the Mongols massacred them, razing their castles, and burning their libraries. As a result, the Black Legend that their enemies had created about them would be accepted as truth for 700 years. And even today, with a new Assassin’s Creed video game releasing later this summer, the Assassins—if we want to still call them by that term, which they would have found offensive—live on in memory only through fantasy. 

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Until next time, think about this: they say that history is written by the victors, but rather, I’ve found that it’s actually myth that they leave behind, and historians are able to set the record straight.

Further Reading

Daftary, Farhad. The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma’ilis. I.B. Taurus & Co., 2001.

Hodgson, Marshall G.S. The Secret Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizârî Ismâî'lîs Against the Islamic World. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

Waterson, James. The Ismaili Assassins: A History of Medieval Murder. Frontline Books, 2008.

The Myth of the Thuggee Cult

In American culture, the meaning of the term “thug” varies depending on your background and the cultural context. By its modern dictionary definition, the word refers to violent criminals, or some kind of vicious ruffian, but among many who identify with urban street life and Black hip-hop culture, the term has taken on a different meaning, reflecting the idea that systemic racism creates gang culture. This use of the term was championed by rapper Tupac Shakur, who touted a “Thug Life” as a kind of determined response to the setbacks and obstacles that the disadvantaged face. For Tupac, “Thug” was an acronym deriving from “The Hate U Give,” referring to the idea that so-called thugs are created by hate and inequality, and that their very existence is an inspiring show of resilience in the face of great adversity. Interestingly, the word “Thug” entered the English language from Hindi, where likewise it referred to a subculture of violent criminals viewed as a savage threat by English colonizers but viewed quite differently in many Indian villages. The Thug, those who perpetrated a class of crime called Thuggee, would become legendary, not just in India where, during the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, their crimes were perpetrated, but across the Western world, where the word Thug could hardly be spoken without a shudder. The crimes of the Thuggee became well-known after English authorities in India undertook the task of wiping them out, when the world learned that they were not just bands of highway robbers, but actually a murderous sect that put to death every person they robbed, leaving none behind to witness against them, not even women or children. More than just ragtag gangs of bandits, they were an organized conspiracy that acted as one, it was said, controlled by some central authority. And not just thieves with a bloodlust, they were a cult, it was claimed, devoted to Kali, the goddess of destruction. It was explained that they strangled all their victims so as not to spill their blood but would afterward mutilate their corpses in their evil sacrificial rituals. On the lawless roads of India, it was said that Thuggee claimed the lives of 40,000 innocent travelers every year, until the 1830s, when British authorities began to stamp them out. But even after their suppression, the Thugs of India would loom large over European and American imaginations. They became the fabled villains of many  a work of fiction, and their name entered the lexicon, such that even today we talk about “thuggery” as a class of criminal behavior. And just as today hip-hop culture suggests that thugs are misunderstood or misrepresented, so too revisionist historians have looked skeptically back on the idea of Thuggee in India and suggested that it may have been a colonial construction, an exaggeration or misrepresentation exploited by colonizers to seize greater control of India. This revisionist view even goes so far as to suggest, in some arguments, that Thugs did not really exist, that Thuggee was only ever a lie promoted by the British.

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I am once again exploring a topic from the Indiana Jones film franchise in my quest to immerse myself in the real history and folklore behind the films ahead of what is likely the last film in the series this summer. When it comes to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the sequel to the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is actually a prequel, the macguffin itself, the Sankara Stones, are rather light on actual historical background, and at first I didn’t think I would make a full episode having to do with Temple of Doom, beyond perhaps a patron exclusive minisode. But that was before I started looking into depictions of India and Indian culture in the film. I was inspired to take a second look at the film because my wife, who is Indian by way of Fiji, has spoken more than once about how this film, which incidentally she loves, caused her some grief growing up in California because of its totally incorrect depiction of Indian culture. Specifically, she says that other kids would ask her if, because she is Indian, she eats monkey brains. This of course refers to the famous dinner scene in which Indy and his companions are disgusted by a dinner of live snakes and beetles, soup floating with eyeballs, and chilled monkey brains eaten directly out of the skull for dessert. Obviously the scene serves only as comic relief in the film, but a 2001 study conducted by the University of Texas does indicate that, as my wife experienced, a majority of Americans believed it to be an accurate portrayal of Indian cuisine. In fact, there is no historical evidence of such foods being eaten in India. Nor was my wife the only Indian to be troubled by this depiction, as the film was initially banned in India because of its misrepresentation of Indian culture, specifically because of the dinner scene. But as I looked further into the cultural representation in the film, a much larger problem revealed itself: that of the Thuggee cultists who served as the film’s villains. As indicated, there is historical debate over the very existence of such a group. I struggled a bit to access the research materials I needed to make this episode, but I was helped out by friend of the show Mike Dash, whose work on such topics as the missing lighthouse keepers of Eilean Mor, the Devil’s Footprints, and Spring-Heeled Jack I have relied on before, and whom I interviewed for the podcast some years ago. Mike Dash wrote an exhaustively researched book on this topic, Thug: the True Story of India’s Murderous Cult, and when I couldn’t get a copy in time, he generously sent me the galleys of the book. I really recommend listeners interested in this topic check it out for themselves. It is a fascinating read, and that is why it’s somewhat unsurprising that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas chose to feature the Thugs of India as the bogeymen of Indy’s second outing: they are and have long been a fascinating and terror-inducing group. Ever since the early 19th-century novel about them, Confessions of a Thug, appeared in 1839, they became a mainstay villain of literature. They appeared in the popular French novel, The Wandering Jew, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, even featured them in a story. Most notably, a series of swashbuckling stories by Italian novelist Emilio Salgari cemented them as apt villains for an adventure tale. Into the 20th century, they continued to crop up in novels and were featured in numerous films, including the 1939 adventure film Gunga Din, in which characters discovered that the Thugee cult was still active even long after its supposed suppression. It is this film that appears to have inspired their use as villains in Temple of Doom, but really, if the filmmakers were looking for a villain in India as iconic as the Nazis in Europe, then Thugs were the obvious choice. But to what degree were the filmmakers, knowingly or unknowingly, perpetuating a historical myth?

The poster for Gunga Din

First, we must understand the context in which a Thuggee cult supposedly operated, which means a few words about India and the establishment of British imperial interests there. Before the rise of British power in India, the last great dynasty was that of the Mughals, Muslim rulers who built an empire of such wealth and grandeur that it grew to be too much for lesser rulers to handle. The last of the great Mughal emperors was Aurangzeb, and after his passing in 1707, the Mughal Empire disintegrated into a patchwork of rival princedoms, with the governors of rich provinces ruling as independent monarchs, paying only lip service to later Mughal emperors. This chaotic state of affairs was further complicated by the conquests of bellicose Hindu tribes from Central India called Marathas who began seizing territories for themselves. At this time, the merchants of the British East India Company, who had established themselves over the preceding centuries as buyers of spices and other goods and had establishecd a network of warehouses and forts across India, began to view all these recent civil wars as bad for business. With muskets and artillery at their command, they realized they could subdue the subcontinent and improve their bottom line, which they set about doing, taking possession of city after city and establishing themselves as an imperial power. In 1784, parliament passed the India Act, placing company directors under government supervision, and thereby nationalizing the entire colonial venture. Thus the British came to rule numerous cities and regions of India, collecting taxes and charging exorbitant rents of area villagers and essentially monetizing the populace. It was in one such town in northern India, Etawah, about 300 kilometers southeast of Delhi, that the British first caught wind of the dreaded Thug menace. Thomas Perry, a British Magistrate struggling to bring order to the lawless area, began to receive reports of corpses being discovered in wells and roadside pits. It was a mystery that he seemed unable to solve. He knew that there were highway robbers in the area, as there were on the roads throughout India, but this was unprecedented. These murderers seemed to be mutilating and hiding corpses, and leaving no one alive, for no witnesses could ever be found, and the bodies themselves, assumed to be those of travelers, could not be identified locally. The horrifying conclusion was that some band of prolific killers resided nearby, or even among them.

Perry and other British, as well as the Indian people they had essentially conquered, were perfectly familiar with the threat of banditry. As Mike Dash points out in his book, some of the earliest of Indian texts, such as the Sanskrit hymns the Vedas, which are some 3000 years old at least, portray a certain Hindu deity, Rudra, as the lord of all highway robbers. And in one of the first accounts written by a foreign visitor to India, that of the 7th-century Buddhist monk Xuanzang, we see a traveler nearly being killed by pirates who haunt the rivers. British merchants reported in the 1600s that they could not travel with their goods on the roads without a large contingent of armed men because the country was “so full of outlaws and thieves that a man cannot stir out of doors without great forces.” The kinds of highwaymen that they were accustomed to, however, did not murder entire parties and hide the bodies like this. There were, though, organized bands of thieves who would not shrink from murder called dacoits. These gangs of robbers typically attacked their victims in town, however. They would target a rich man and fall upon his house without warning, invading his home and terrorizing all the residents and servants within. Indeed, dacoits were active in the area around Etawah, and an increase in banditry could be blamed on the British themselves. There was a region nearby, the Chambal, a maze of ravines that was difficult to navigate unless you were native to the area, and the men of the Chambal had long worked as soldiers for hire because the land of the Chambal did not support much agriculture. With the coming of East India Company, though, who refused to hire them as mercenary soldiers, they had little choice but to turn to highway robbery and to join dacoit gangs to support their families. But like most highwaymen, these dacoits did not typically set out to murder. They used fear, and when they were forced to attack those who did not cooperate with their robbery, they aimed to injure rather than kill. Indeed, dacoity was considered an honest profession by many, as dacoits served as a kind of informal militia for some villages, and they tended to rob the rich and share with the poor. As Thomas Perry looked into the murders occurring in his territory, he was quite certain that they were not being committed by run-of-the-mill highwaymen or dacoit gangs. And eventually, he confirmed this conviction when some of the murderers were arrested and confessed, identifying themselves not as dacoits but as Thugs. 

A family of dacoits

Through Perry’s investigation and the confession of captured Thugs, as well as through the numerous East India Company records of later prosecutions, we can know a great deal about the practices of the Thugs. Unlike dacoits or other highway robbers, they worked in absolute secrecy. As already established, they left no one alive to witness against them, but they did not fall on their prey like a raiding party. Rather, they insinuated themselves, just a few at a time, into the travelling parties they targeted, convincing their marks that they were friendly and trustworthy fellow travelers and that it would be best for them to travel together to reduce the chances of highway robbery. This is one part of the horrific practices of the Thug, that they befriended and traveled with their victims, sometimes for days and weeks, always intending to murder them all when they could steer them toward an out-of-the-way location, at which time the rest of their band, which might be trailing behind on the road or even riding in advance, would converge to share the spoils. First, however, came their other horrible practice, the murder itself. Thuggee bands distinguished themselves again from other bandits in the methods of their violence, which were equally as intimate as their inveigling of targets: they strangled their victims to death. There were men among them whose specific job it was to do the strangling, cold-blooded killers who sometimes used nooses or special garrotes, but as these could easily identify a strangler, most instead began using scarves with a knot tied in it that could be used to mercilessly tighten it around a victims throat with a twist. Some wrapped a coin in their scarves that proved effective at crushing windpipes. These stranglers were callous executioners, murdering entire retinues and convoys full of people, whole families, men, women, and children, though sometimes a child would be kept alive and raised to become a Thug themselves. Strangely, they did not shrink from stabbing and cutting open their victims before burying them, but they only did this after they had strangled them to death, and this practice would be the cause of some myths about Thuggee, as will be seen. But the Thuggee were already, even among themselves, it seems, surrounded by myth. It became clear during the earliest investigations that Thuggee gangs had been operating beneath the nose of the East India Company for many years without their even being aware of the group’s existence. According to the oral traditions of the Thugs themselves, given under interrogation in later campaigns against them when many turned King’s evidence against their fellows, Thuggee tribes had existed since great antiquity, all the way back to the time of Alexander the Great, and they claimed to be descended from Muslim families of a high caste. However, the word “thug” does not appear to have been used to refer to murderers before the 1600s, and other traditions trace Thug tribes to 16th-century Delhi, when a clan was exiled by the Mughal Emperor for killing one of his slaves. Other ideas were that the practice of Thuggee started among destitute Mughal army soldiers, or among poor herdsmen driving cattle on the roads. In short, Thugs did not themselves agree on the origin of their way of life, but some of their boasts about their ancient heritage, and some of the consistent practices among even distant bands, such as their secret communication by coded phrases and signs, and their very particular murder rituals, fed into later claims that they were an ancient secret society, a murderous cult operating as one, its crimes coordinated by some sinister overseer.

The first of the campaigns against Thuggee gangs began in the Chambal ravine country, as British forces commanded by Magistrate Perry’s assistant followed some leads to that area, where they ended up being first poisoned by local villagers and then ambushed by Thugs in the ravines. Concerned about an all-out rebellion against their government, the British returned with artillery and leveled the Thug stronghold in the area. For several years, then, the British approach to Thugs was just to pursue them if they plied their grisly trade too close to British-controlled towns and cities. This seemed amenable to Thugs, who were travelers by nature and simply began murdering farther afield, on roads where it was safe to operate without rousing the ire of the British. However, the view of the threat they posed changed over the next several years as British citizens more and more became the victims of these highway killers, and as Thugs chose to target many soldiers-for-hire who had sold their service to the British, not so much because of who they served as because they were a perfect target when they took their leave and traveled home with all their back pay on their person. And when the Thugs began robbing the treasure parties of powerful Indian bankers, all tides finally turned against them. British Company men began pursuing and trying Thugs regardless of where they were operating, and one officer, William Sleeman, an ambitious man, saw in the hunt for Thugs the cause of a lifetime. He felt strongly about the evil of Thuggee and believed wiping them out entirely would be a boon to the Indian people, but he also saw that he could make a name for himself doing it and earn a comfortable political position. He threw himself into the campaign with religious fervor, greatly relying on a tactic he had seen was working elsewhere, that of turning captured Thugs into informers, or what were called “approvers.” This was somewhat necessary, since by the very nature of their crimes, Thugs did not leave witnesses alive. By promising that Thugs who turned King’s evidence could keep their lives, he found many eager to cooperate in identifying other Thugs. As he developed his tactics in 1829 and 1830, Sleeman jailed hundreds of alleged Thugs, but his suppression of Thuggee did not kick into high gear until he pursued and captured an influential young Thug leader named Feringeea, who had been raised a Thug and knew everything about how they worked. With Feringeea as his principal approver, Sleeman was able to identify and arrest more than 700 Thugs in 1831 and 1832, and more than that, Feringeea was able to predict the movements of Thug gangs like no other informant before him. By the mid-1830s, with Feringeea’s help, Sleeman had produced charts marking known Thug routes as well as their favorite places to dump bodies. And more than that, he had mapped the homes of all identified Thugs and, believing based on the confessions of Feringeea and other approvers that Thuggee was a hereditary profession, he compiled genealogies in order to identify and arrest Thugs simply for familial association. We begin to see here the potential for egregious miscarriages of justice.

An 1857 drawing in the Illustrated London News depicting Thugs and other classes of Indian criminals

It is easy to take the side of the British in this story, as on the surface, they are pursuing and bringing to justice bands of brutal murderers. But of course, we should also look at the entire imperial presence of the British in India as morally and philosophically wrong, and thus any law enforcement campaign of theirs, administered as it was on their unwilling subjects, as being inherently unethical. And that is the lure of historical revisionist views of the Thuggee, some of which deny Thuggee’s existence altogether and see it as a kind of witch hunt used as an excuse by the British to brutally crack down on those they had imperially dominated. From a postcolonial view, it is a tempting position to take, and it certainly illustrates well the true evils of imperialism. Indeed, revisionist historians are not even the originators of this view, as in the beginning of anti-Thug campaigns, even many British in India were skeptical, finding it hard to believe that such a mighty evil as Thuggee could possibly have been at work right beneath their noses for years without them knowing it. And just as historical revisionists focus on Sleeman’s reliance on the testimony of approvers, approver testimony was viewed as unreliable hearsay by many even at the time, and in the beginning, Thugs were usually acquitted simply because they categorically denied what approvers said about them. Much of what critics point out is absolutely accurate. The motives of approvers should be questioned. They turned King’s evidence to save their own necks, and they knew that, to receive clemency, they would need to provide what Sleeman was looking for, and that might have meant telling him what he wanted to hear. Moreover, there certainly were miscarriages of justice. Innocent and guilty alike were arrested in the sweeping anti-Thug campaigns of the 1830s. Sleeman’s genealogies of Thug families included men who had chosen not to become Thugs like others in their families, so certainly many innocents were detained. And he served warrants and prosecuted suspected Thugs based on hearsay evidence from known criminals with reliability problems. There is the clear possibility that approvers simply accused innocents of Thuggee because they had some personal ax to grind with them, much as in a witch hunt. All of this is true, but it does not amount to the British inventing the entire phenomenon.

Company records, which Mike Dash researched exhaustively, reflect that great care was actually taken to marshall convincing evidence due to the very fact that Sleeman had to overcome skepticism about Thuggee. His approvers must have been giving mostly reliable information, and there are a few indications. First, they viewed turning King’s evidence as a valid change in career path; just as previously they viewed Thuggee as a legitimate occupation, changing their allegiance to serve the British was viewed as just a change in profession, nothing dishonorable about it. Many, like Feringeea, appeared earnest and eager to serve Sleeman to the best of their abilities. And the threat of losing their privileges, or even losing their lives, hung over them if they were caught lying. Also, we know that they provided accurate information in most regards, as their depositions led to hard evidence. They routinely led Sleeman to the places where they and others had hidden bodies and helped exhume the remains of these victims to be identified. Likewise when they fingered fellow Thugs, stolen loot was frequently recovered from those they identified, confirming that they were indeed involved with Thug murders. Furthermore, as Mike Dash shows in his research, Sleeman and others did not trust approver accusations blindly; they pitted approvers against each other, cross-examining them to ensure their claims could be believed, and having each of them pick suspects out of line-ups, or identity parades as the British call them. And whatever we might say about the ethics and fairness of the British, their tactics certainly worked, for Thug murders plummeted amid the anti-Thug campaigns. Some historical revisionists who claim that there never were any Thugs, that the whole thing was made up as a cudgel to keep the Indian people down, might say the reduction of Thug crimes was a further lie, but their position is simply insupportable. Thuggee gangs certainly existed. The British were not alone in pursuing them, as Indian bankers had also undertaken anti-Thug campaigns. These bands of stranglers left a wake of bodies behind them, and the records of the East India Company attest to the discovery of these corpses even before the threat of Thuggee was properly identified. And early reports about and investigations into these highway murders demonstrate that this was no conspiratorial lie spread by the East India Company. The Thugs of the Chambal ravines were viewed as a local threat at first, but unbeknownst to Magistrate Perry at the time, about a thousand miles away to the south, near Madras or what is today Chennai situated on the Bay of Bengal, another Company administrator had been recording his own struggles to bring a tribe of highway murderers to justice, these called Phansigars, or “stranglers.” But while the existence of Thuggee stranglers cannot be denied, their nature was certainly misrepresented, and while Sleeman’s practices in bringing them to justice may have been effective, though unethical and imperfect, he certainly was responsible for the creation of the lasting myth of a Thuggee cult.

As William Sleeman waded through so many approver depositions and testimonies, learning all he could about Thuggee methods, including their customs and their beliefs, he latched onto frequent mentions of the goddess Kali as being protector of Thugs, and he developed a notion that Thug bands were not actually thieves, that their looting of corpses was an afterthought, and that in fact they were sacrificing their victims to Kali. In his mind, this explained why they did not shed blood until after they had strangled their victims, because they intended to offer that blood to Kali, thus the post-mortem stabbing and mutilation of corpses. This seed of an idea grew in his mind, added to with further speculation, until he imagined that all Thugs across the subcontinent served some central Thug priesthood, funneling money from their highway robberies to a certain temple that he believed was their headquarters. This notion was almost certainly engendered by the typical Christian British view of Hinduism as a barbaric religion. Many were the misconceptions about Hinduism among the British, who believed false claims that Hindu sacred texts actually encouraged some of the terrible things they heard about Indian customs, such as the murder of unwanted infant daughters, the sacrifice of children, and the practice of suttee, in which widows were thrown onto their husbands’ funeral pyres. In fact, these practices were uncommon, if they existed at all, and were forbidden by the tenets of the Hindu faith. But British could not get over their view of the Other as savage and backward. Every year they saw Hindus pushing massive wooden carts carrying gargantuan statues of Hindu deities to a temple in Puri on the Bay of Bengal dedicated to the god Jagganath, and often some faithful were crushed to death beneath the huge wheels of these wagons. Indeed these massive Jagganath wagons that rolled right over people are where we derive the English word “juggernaut.” The British learned of these deaths, and saw the sun-bleached bones that lined the roads to this temple, and believed that Hinduism encouraged a religious madness, murder, and suicide. In fact, the bones on the road were those of the terminally ill people who had died making pilgrimage to the temple, and crushing deaths beneath the wheels of juggernaut carts were rare and accidental. But the British came to view Hinduism as a death cult, and Kali, who is depicted with blood on her hands and a blood-drenched sword, wearing a necklace of severed heads, was the most horrifying aspect of the religion. Thus it is not that surprising that William Sleeman would latch onto mention of Kali by his approvers and invent this dark and horrifying backstory for the Thugs he pursued.

It seems, however, that William Sleeman was so steeped in the massive files and endless records he was keeping that he simply could not see the forest for the trees. Study of his own records, undertaken by scholars like Mike Dash and another academic whose work I’ve relied on, Kim Wagner, demonstrate that religious belief was not central to Thuggee culture. Certainly Thug approvers mentioned their belief that Kali protected them, but this was little more than common folklore. In fact, many Hindus thought of Kali as a protector, and that belief was especially common among criminals of all stripes. Nor was this the only kind of superstitious belief common among the Thugs, who put great stock in portents and omens that had nothing to do with Kali or Hinduism, such as believing that the movements or cries of certain wild animals, like owls, may mean bad luck, necessitating a change in plans. The Thugs had no official religious texts, no uniform ritual of worship; in fact, there was great religious variety among them, as some were Hindu but others were Muslim and Sikh. It is possible that some of Sleeman’s approvers emphasized the Thuggee connection to Kali as a kind of excuse for their murders, to suggest it was Kali who really killed, and not them, but the bulk of all testimony makes it abundantly clear that they killed in order to rob and leave no witnesses. There was even among the many confessions of Thugs a clear reason given for why they strangled and only afterward stabbed and mutilated corpses. In the Mughal empire, under Islamic law, murder by strangulation did not incur the death penalty, thus they likely strangled just so that they wouldn’t be put to death if caught. Afterward, they stabbed only to make sure their victims were dead, or in some cases, they disemboweled in order to minimize bloating during decomposition, which often caused the soil of the shallow mass graves they used to rise, revealing the hiding places of bodies. But even though Sleeman’s speculations about a Thuggee cult could be refuted by his own research, he became the mouth of the anti-Thug campaign and spread these rumors. He sent anonymous letters to the Calcutta Gazette, published as a series called “Conversations with Thugs,” and in it he promulgated his view of the Thugs as a vast secret religious society devoted to performing blood sacrifices to Kali. Soon his version of the criminal band was generally accepted among the British, and the 1839 novel Confessions of a Thug, inspired by Sleeman’s accounts and depicting Thugs as being somehow both Muslim and devotees of a Hindu goddess, became a bestseller in Britain. Thus the myth of the Thuggee blood cult, brought so vividly to life in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, was born.

Image falsely depicting Thuggee as a cult of Kali.

By 1840, the practice of Thuggee had effectively been wiped out by the aggressive policing and prosecution of William Sleeman and other Company administrators. But there would always be rumors that some Thug enclaves, perhaps in the foothills of the Himilayas, had evaded capture. This is what served as the core notion of adventure films like Gunga Din and Temple of Doom, the idea that, after its supposed suppression, the cult had survived and remained secretly active. It is not unlike fiction in which escaped Nazis scheme to bring about a Fourth Reich in the 1970s, like the novel and film The Boys from Brazil, or the current streaming series Hunters. In truth, there are records that indicate some Thugs escaped the anti-Thug campaigns, but since Thuggee was not a cult that might grow in secret and rise again but rather an occupation resorted to due to socio-political and economic circumstances, when it was no longer safe nor profitable to practice Thuggee, former Thugs just went into other work, becoming soldiers-for-hire or even merchants. The real mystery that remains is not whether they survived their suppression, but how many victims they claimed. William Sleeman’s grandson published a book about a hundred years after the anti-Thug campaigns called Thug, or a Million Murders, in which he asserted that Thuggee claimed in the neighborhood of 40,000 lives a year, and since he believed the claims that Thuggee had been practiced since the 13th century, he claimed it must have been responsible for something like 20 million murders. Mike Dash, however, is skeptical. Pointing out that Thugs may not have really existed, as such, so long before the British noticed their trail of dead, and further pointing out that their activities were seasonal, only undertaken in the cold season, and that Thug confessions were extremely inconsistent vis-à-vis the number of dead, that they were possibly inflating numbers out of braggadocio or to please their captors, Dash estimates a far more conservative fifty to one hundred thousand victims… and yet this too is staggering and stomach-turning. In the end, we find multiple layers of false history surrounding the Thugs of the Temple of Doom. They were misrepresented by the British at the time in such a way as to mischaracterize and defame Indian culture generally, representing it as a cesspool of evil pagan blood cults, and then the historical reality of Thuggee was erased by revisionist historians who sought to use them as an example of the evils of imperialism, which of course can be easily demonstrated without resorting to historical negationism. And in between, they were made into the nefarious villains of a blockbuster eighties adventure film whose depictions of Indian culture should rightly cause us to cringe today.

Further Reading

Dash, Mike. Thug: The True Story of India's Murderous Cult. Granta Books, 2005.

Wagner, Kim A. Thuggee: Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

The Key to the Secrets of King Solomon (an Encyclopedia Grimoria volume)

The push today by the religious right to remove so many books from schools and libraries has many parallels throughout history, stretching much further back in time than any curriculum controversy I have previously discussed. While Nazis are known for their burning of books, their actions, at least in this regard, are likely dwarfed by those of the Catholic Church, whose history of inspecting libraries, removing offending literature, and banning and burning books is unparalleled. In 1966, Pope Paul VI discontinued a longstanding and frequently updated list of authors and works that were forbidden by the Catholic Church. This Index Librorum Prohibitorum included the names of many playwrights, novelists, philosophers, and theologians, specifically any whose works were deemed morally objectionable or heretical. This index, and others like it, have a long history, going all the way back to the Inquisition, when many of the works included in their earliest versions were more magical in nature. Many of the books banned by the Spanish inquisitor Fernando de Valdés y Salas in 1559, for example, were books believed to be instruction manuals for the practice of black magic—grimoires, they were called. Among the most popular of these magic handbooks was one attributed to the biblical King Solomon, the son of King David, thought to have reigned in ancient Israel sometime between 970 and 920 BCE. Indeed, there have been numerous books of magic attributed to King Solomon, each with a variety of different names, some said to be separate works and others believed to be variations of the same. In the 17th century, a book called the Secrets of Solomon was seized by the Venetian Inquisition and said to be a handbook for practicing witches. This may have been a version of the Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, the Lesser Key of Solomon, thought to have been authored in the 1600s, or it may have been a version of an earlier work, which inspired the Lesser Key, Clavicula Salomonis, The Greater Key of Solomon. This work appears to have been authored not in antiquity but during the Italian Rennaissance, in the 14th or 15th centuries. Certainly earlier pseudepigraphal works had inspired this one as well, such as the Hygromanteia or Magical Treatise of Solomon, which may date back even to the thirteenth century. Some version of this book, under the name “The Book of Solomon,” is said to have been ordered by Pope Innocent VI to be burned during the 1300s. The various versions of the Keys of Solomon provide instructions for the practitioner of magic, directing them in purification rituals and how to prepare the tools they will require. They collect incantations like recipes, demonstrating how to cast spells that invoke rain, conjure gold coins, make oneself invisible, instill love, and curse enemies. And perhaps most offensive to the Church, they name and describe many demons and teach the magician how to summon them and how to compel them to do their bidding. The question this begs is not why the church would ban such literature, but how the figure of Solomon, presented in the Bible as a wise and holy king favored by the Judeo-Christian God above all other men, came to be associated with black magic.

According to the lore of magic, King Solomon was not only a master magician, he was the originator of some magics. Just as Zoroaster is viewed as the first magus and inventor of astrology, and Hermes Trismegistus the first alchemist, King Solomon is thought of as the originator of more than one form of magic, such as Ars notoria, the magical art of supernaturally achieving knowledge, and perhaps most importantly, Ars goetia, the ritual magic used to summon and bind demons and thus obtain favors from them. As we will see, though, much like those of Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus, the legend of King Solomon’s contributions to magic prove impossible to credit upon closer examination. This should be apparent even at the outset, as we see the legend evolve into folklore about King Solomon that rivals even the most fantastical of fairy tales. Anyone who attended Sunday school knows that the wisdom of King Solomon is legendary, and we already know that he is associated with magical artifacts, for he had possession of the Ark of the Covenant, for which he built a permanent Temple in Jerusalem. But according to the magical myth of Solomon, which developed out of numerous traditions in multiple cultures, God granted him supernatural wisdom like a superpower, including even the ability to talk with animals and to command spirits. From angels he received four magical stones, one that gave him power over the animal kingdom, one that empowered him to move heaven and earth, one that granted him dominion over all angels, and one that enabled him to bind even demons to his service. Like Thanos, he united these stones into a ring that made him the most powerful human of all time. He possessed also the philosopher’s stone, it was believed by others, and thus was able to create gold and riches. And with this great wealth and power, he built many wonders, forcing demons to complete the labor on his behalf. Not only did he build the Temple of Jerusalem in this manner, but also mythical constructions like the walled city of copper, a vast and secret city built to contain all his treasures and books of arcane wisdom. Even if the city were ever found, as it is said has happened before, no mortal can penetrate its walls without dying of laughter. How King Solomon himself might have visited this marvelous place is clear, though, for like a tale out of the Thousand and One Nights, he rode a flying carpet, carried aloft either by the demons at his command or by the winds that he could tame, depending on what source you read. In total, he was an ancient superhero, and his legend would provide the background for quite the adventure story. But where does this all come from? As mentioned, those who only know Solomon from the Bible know him only as the wise king, a writer of songs, lauded for his clever judgments, the builder of the First Temple, arrayed in riches and luxuries, and known for his sexual escapades. Unsurprisingly, there is no biblical basis for these fanciful legends, but perhaps more surprisingly, there is little scriptural support for any claims of Solomonic magic. To find the origin of this pseudohistory, we must revisit these scriptures, the earliest of sources recording the life of Solomon, and trace the evolution of his legend from there.

A depiction of Solomon’s dream, when his celebrated wisdom was imparted by God.

The books of the Bible that give us a portrait of Solomon are the first book of Kings and the second book of Chronicles. Additionally, the book of Proverbs is attributed to him, as is, of course, the Song of Solomon. The story told of Solomon in the Bible centers around his wisdom and his building of the Temple, as well as his lusting after foreign women, like the Queen of Sheba. It is emphasized that his great sin was not so much his marrying of foreign women, but that he thereafter built temples for their foreign gods. This is given as the reason for the secession of the northern tribes and the division of his kingdom into the Kingdom of Judah, ruled by his son Rehoboam after his death, and the separate northern Kingdom of Israel, inhabitants of which would later be deported after its conquest, thereby creating the idea of the Lost Tribes of Israel, as I spoke about in my series on the subject. The image of Solomon in the Bible gives no indication of the esoteric magus he would later become, but there are present the seeds of the idea, which would later be developed through exegesis and adaptation to the values of future eras and cultures. For example, Solomon receives his wisdom in a divine vision, during which he requests it of God. Already here we find the idea that he was gifted some supernatural faculties in a kind of celestial encounter, and it is easy to see how this would later be transformed into the fantasy tales I have already described. While millennia later, this wisdom would be interpreted as arcane knowledge, in Kings and Chronicles, it is very clearly the practical wisdom to be a just ruler, depicted in the stories of his judgments, such as the famous example when two women come to him both claiming to be the mother of a certain child and Solomon suggests cutting the child in half simply to discern who the real mother is by their different reactions. But even these scriptures, the earliest of records about Solomon, cannot be relied on as accurate historical portrayals, as we already see a process of shaping his legend to suit the authors’ purposes and the tendency to attribute to him works he did not write. Scholars agree that the Book of Kings was not authored by the prophet Jeremiah, as tradition suggests, but rather was composed, compiled, and edited by the same authors as the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Jeremiah, during the Babylonian exile, hundreds of years after Solomon’s reign. There is even analysis of Kings that suggests it was redacted from some unknown source material, edited to depict Solomon as a kind of idealized universal king of all humanity, but also to emphasize his sin and blame him for the division of the kingdom. Likewise the book of Chronicles is believed to have been written by a single person even later, post-exile, during the Achaemenid Empire after Cyrus the Great liberated the Hebrews and allowed them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild. This author presents an even more mundane version of Solomon, idealizing him as the best of Jewish kings, but not so much as the perfect king of kings. As for the Book of Proverbs, which appears to display the preternatural wisdom of Solomon, and Song of Solomon, also called Song of Songs, which is basically an erotic poem that demonstrates Solomon’s lustful nature, debate rages regarding whether these were unified works or collections, with most scholars agreeing that they are certainly later pseudepigraphal works attributed to Solomon. Thus even in the Bible, among the very first pieces of writing related to Solomon, we already see him being credited with writing things he did not write.

This rewriting of Solomon’s life continued in the postexilic Second Temple period, when much “parabiblical literature” was produced that adapted the history and lessons of the Bible for Hellenistic sensibilities as the known world came under the influence of ancient Greece. Works such as The Wisdom of Ben Sira, Eupolemus’s work Concerning the Kings in Judea, and of course Flavius Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities again emphasize the wisdom of Solomon, but in a more Hellenized sense, this wisdom is conceived of not just as a practical political skill, but also as a knowledge of physical sciences and of divine and philosophical truths. We must remember that the Hellenized world was the hotbed from which emerged all the lore about the beginnings of magic. I traced the claims about Zoroaster’s invention of magic to the Hellenized Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, and I further traced the lore of alchemy to the syncretistic transformation of the Egyptian god Thoth into the Greek figure of Hermes Trismegistus during the Hellenistic period. Likewise, in Second Temple literature and Hellenistic culture, the figure of Solomon was transformed into a kind of Hermetic sage. This reinterpretation of his character reflects the philosophical milieu of the late Hellenistic period, the 1st century BCE, and beyond. It can be seen in the aforementioned work of Josephus as well as in the deuterocanonical Book of Wisdom, also called the Wisdom of Solomon. Again, “deuterocanonical” means this work is part of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox canon but tends to be viewed as apocryphal by Protestants. In it, Solomon is not only wise, he is also a teacher of wisdom, a revealer of secrets. The secrets to which he is privy are those of the structure and elements of the earth and the heavens. We see here the root of later folktales in that he bears knowledge regarding the nature of animals and how to tame them, as well as sorcery in that he understands all there is to know about plants and what can be done with them. Thus in the Wisdom of Solomon, and also in Jewish Antiquities, he is depicted as a master of occult knowledge, and specifically two areas of knowledge: astronomy, which would further link him to the magical art of astrology, and demonic exorcism, which would contribute to the tales of his power to bend all spirits to his will.

A depiction of Solomon planning the Temple’s construction.

The 1st century BCE author of The Wisdom of Solomon and Flavius Josephus, writing about a hundred years later in the Common Era, were presenting reinterpretations of Solomon that were entirely extra-biblical. However, they were likely deriving their portraits of the king from Jewish traditions that had developed during the Second Temple period, especially among Jews in Hellenized Egypt. The portrait of Solomon as a powerful exorcist certainly goes hand in hand with the portrait of him as being endowed with esoteric knowledge like a hermetic sage, as his power over demons was said to come from his knowledge of their nature and their names. However, there already existed some Jewish traditions connecting kingship with exorcism in the story of Solomon’s father David, who in the Book of Samuel soothed an evil spirit in King Saul by playing his harp, thereby setting him on the path to succeed the king. This was likely not the only source of the depiction of Solomon as an exorcist, though. In part it must have been derived from the tendency in Hellenistic culture to portray kings as divine and capable of performing miracles. And in even larger part, it represents a syncretism of ideas that were very popular in the Hellenized world regarding the hierarchies of demonology and angelology. In short, it just made sense, if Solomon were a great king endowed with divine wisdom, that he be a demonologist and be capable of performing the miracle of exorcism. The oldest Second Temple literature portraying Solomon as an exorcist was not found until modern times, in a cave in Qumran. These apocryphal Psalms, which date to between 50 and 70 CE, read somewhat like instructions for casting out demons and talk of Solomon invoking the name of God and asking the name of the demon in order to command it. A few decades later, in the 90s of the 1st century CE, Josephus included in his Jewish Antiquities an account of an exorcism performed by a man named Eleazar who cast out demons in the name of Solomon, speaking incantations the text says were written by Solomon, and pressing a ring said to bear the seal of Solomon to the possessed man’s nose. Clearly by this point, the exorcism rituals attributed to Solomon had become a kind of folk healing remedy, and his name and seal an apotropaic protection against evil spirits. Interestingly, we see here a ring, though not the magical ring gifted by angels to endow Solomon with power over all things. Rather it seems perhaps many such rings may have been made and used in such rituals, their power thought to derive from the “seal” engraved on it. Here we find the myth of Solomon’s ring and his power over demons in its infancy. Over the following centuries, many apotropaic amulets would be inscribed with the names of demons, following the Solomonic exorcism ritual, and would even claim to bear the seal given to Solomon to ward off demons. Sometime after the first century CE, likely in the period of Late Antiquity between the 3rd and 6th centuries, we find this legend fully formed in the fragments later collected in the Middle Ages as the pseudepigraphal work called the Testament of Solomon, which not only has him wielding his magic ring but also compiles an entire demonology, with the names of each offending spirit, the nature of their activities, and specific prescriptions for exorcising them.

Present in the demonologies later attributed to Solomon are also some elements of astrology, identifying spirits with certain heavenly bodies. While incantations and seals for warding against and exorcising demons certainly was a kind of miracle and magic, and would develop through the centuries to be represented as a different kind of magic—the binding and commanding of spirits to do one’s will—it may seem rather less occult today, since priests still claim to cast demons out of people. Such is the case as well with astrology, a kind of divination magic, which as we discussed in my previous volume in this series, on Zoroaster, was thought to be one of the oldest forms of magic, invented by the magi, from whom we derive the word for magic. In the Testament of Solomon, the view of Solomon as astrologer is definitely present. In it, he refers to planets and their identification with demons, and he even refers to the signs of the Zodiac. The tradition is further developed in the Hygromanteia or Magical Treatise of Solomon, a work that appears to bridge the Hermetic sage and exorcist Solomon of Late Antiquity with the all-out sorcerer and alchemist Solomon of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance. In some ways this portrayal of Solomon also has its roots in the Bible, as in 1 Kings 5:10, it is claimed that “Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the East and all the wisdom of Egypt.” As Midrashic commentaries have emphasized, the wisdom of the East and Egypt was astrological in nature, so it would only make sense then that Solomon’s surpassing wisdom also partook of this kind of divination and augury. And in the Magical Treatise, we can even find evidence of the further evolution of this depiction of Solomon as magus. The Hygromanteia is a Greek work, but portions of it appear to have Italian influence and to have been added later, in the early Middle Ages. In these sections, Solomon is not only a practitioner of astrology, but also of other forms of magic, such as hydromancy, the summoning of demons in a water basin to create a kind of crystal ball that would show him things he desired to see. Here we have the notion of his control of demons that had evolved from the view of Solomon as exorcist combined with a form of divination evolved from the view of Solomon as astrologer, syncretized in such a way that we see Solomon compelling demons to do him favors. Thus the image of Solomon the commander of demons, master of Ars goetia, is forged.

A magic circle used in the summoning of demons, according to the Lesser Key of Solomon

Since by the Middle Ages, Solomon had already picked up these extra-biblical magical trappings, like a snowball gathering mass as it rolls downhill, growing from a wise king and builder to a magician endowed with a magical ring that allows him to bend spirits to his will, it is unsurprising that medieval alchemists and Renaissance magicians, many of them Christian, focused on Solomon as the originator of some of their esoteric beliefs and even attributed new works on magic to him. In Hellenistic Egypt, the alchemists and writers who immortalized alchemical lore looked not just to the mythological figure of Hermes Trismegistus as the progenitor of their art, but also to biblical figures. They were very familiar with the Greek translation of the Bible, and as their Hermetic perspective taught them to seek mystery and symbolism in everything, they looked to the scriptures, seeing in the Genesis narrative of Creation an analog for their Great Work of transmuting base metals into gold. They even went so far as to write the protagonist of their mythos, Hermes Tristmegistus, into the lineage of antediluvian heroes, claiming he was a grandson of Noah who preserved the ancient knowledge of alchemy revealed to mankind. This adaptation of the Bible to suit the purposes of alchemists began in Alexandria, toward the end of the 3rd century CE and into the beginning of the next, by Zosimos of Panopolis, a Gnostic mystic and alchemist who invented entire traditions in his prolific writings, which survive only in fragments today. Zosimos combined Hermetic ideas with the Gnostic view, prevalent during his time, that the secrets of the universe, including alchemy, had been shared with humanity by the fallen angels who lay with human women mentioned in Genesis as well as various apocrypha. If you want to learn more about Gnosticism, check out my post Gnostic Genesis, and for more on the wild traditions about these fallen angels, find my 2-part series No Bones About It, on giants, as well as my post on The Secrets of Enoch. Much of what we know of Gnostic tradition comes from the Nag Hammadi library, a trove of ancient codices whose discovery rivals that of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and some of the demonological and astrological material that has been attributed to Solomon seems to be echoed in or even have been derived from these Gnostic traditions about the spiritual forces in the world and their identification with certain planets. Thus already, in Zosimos’s time, the traditions surrounding Solomon were being incorporated into new belief structures. The writings of Zosimos, who combined Christian Gnosticism with Hermeticism and sought to tie the practices of alchemy to the Old Testament, talk of Solomon binding demons not with a ring or a seal or even in a water basin, but in sealed bottles that he specially made, on instructions from angels, by mixing silver, copper, gold, and a mystery metal called “orichalcum” into a magical kind of electrum alloy. Thus Zosimos takes the myth of Solomon the demon-binder and turns him into an ancient alchemist. He even in one work refers to some supposedly ancient and conveniently lost book purportedly written by Solomon that is said to have detailed the many uses of quicksilver. As the legend of Solomon grew among alchemists, they saw hidden meaning in every part of his story. His songs, they said, must have been incantations, and he must, they reasoned, have had possession of the Philosopher’s Stone, for only that could explain how rich in gold he was said to have been. So scouring the scriptures, they fell on a verse in 1 Chronicles that talks of King David collecting wealth for the future Temple Solomon was to build, which mentions “all sorts of precious stones,” whose original Hebrew referred to “stones of pukh,” a term whose true meaning has been lost to time, and they said that was the Philosopher’s stone. Alternatively, some looked at 1 Kings, which tells of the Queen of Sheba gifting him jewels or precious stones, and they invented an entire story about Solomon recognizing the Philosopher’s Stone among the jewels. Regardless of what version of this story they believed, the idea stuck. Solomon was not just a wise king, not just a sage mystic, not just an exorcist, not only a diviner, he was among the most powerful of wizards, an ancient practitioner of alchemy, and if you wanted the grimoire you were writing to be taken seriously and be copied down through the centuries, you might just want to slap his name on it.

The legend of King Solomon and his place in the vast myth complex about magic is a truly global phenomenon. It had its beginning in ancient Israel, with what must have been a real man, and his memory was edited and redacted for political and cultural purposes in the Second Temple Period. Thereafter, with the Greek influence on the Hellenized world, his legend continued to evolve, and to incorporate new views of wisdom and kingship along the way, until he came to be viewed as a kind of esoteric guru like Hermes Trismegistus, and an astrologer like the ancient Zoroaster, and an exorcist, like another great sage of the era, Jesus Christ. Indeed, the connections between Christ and these depictions of Solomon are many. Both were exorcists, and both were teachers of sage wisdom. Indeed, both were called the “Son of David,” Solomon because he was literally the successor of David and fruit of his loins, and Christ because he was said to be of Davidic descent. Indeed, some apocryphal texts go further in identifying the two, such as the Questions of Bartholomew, sometimes thought to be the lost Gospel of Bartholomew, which describes Christ binding demons in fiery chains and torturing them, and even name dropping Solomon as he does so. It has led some scholars to question whether the development of Christian lore may not have borrowed from the emerging lore of King Solomon in an effort to legitimize Christ as a kind of new Solomon, King of the Jews and king of kings. Certainly the evolution of the Solomonic legend is a story of one tradition borrowing from another throughout time, resulting in a syncretistic amalgamation. Other figures that are suggested to have been amalgamated with King Solomon are the legendary Indian king Vikramaditya, or the much mythologized Greek philosopher Apollonius of Tyana, whose legend has also been suggested to be the true origin of the story of Jesus Christ—a theory sometimes called the Jesus Myth Theory that I may have to explore in more depth in the future, perhaps in my annual Xmas episode. But the legend of Solomon does not belong to the Jews or even the Christians alone. Certainly the myth complex that depicted him as a mage and alchemist proved quite popular among Jewish mystics and Christian alchemists of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but from the hotbed of syncretism that was Hellenistic Egypt, his legend also spread to and was further developed in the Arab and Muslim world, where he was called Nabi Sulayman and was said to be master of their version of demons, the djinn. Indeed, the entire notion of Solomon keeping demons in a bottle and forcing them to do his bidding may explain much about the development of stories featuring wish-granting genies kept in bottles. But as with all mythology about magic, it is nearly impossible to discern if one legend gave birth to others or was itself born of them.

 Further Reading

Lecouteux, Claude. King Solomon the Magus: Master of the Djinns and Occult Traditions of East & West. Translated by Jon. E. Graham, Inner Traditions, 2022.

Schwarz, Sarah L. “Reconsidering the Testament of Solomon.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, vol. 16, no. 3, May 2007, pp. 203–37. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.ezproxy.deltacollege.edu/10.1177/0951820707077166.

Torijano, Pablo A. Solomon the Esoteric King: From King to Magus, Development of a Tradition. Brill, 2002.

The Whereabouts of the Lost Ark of the Covenant

According to the biblical narrative, about a year after the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, thought to be around 1200 BCE, God appeared to them at their encampment at the foot of Mt. Sinai. The description of His visitation sounds like little more than a thunderstorm to modern readers, but the Israelites believed Moses was called up the mountain to confer with God. After Moses ascended, he returned and explained that no one else was to likewise ascend the mountain in an effort to see God for themselves. He also told them that, on the mountain, God had given him a new law, not just the well-known Ten Commandments, but also an entirely new covenant, detailing a social and civil legal code. God even allowed some other priests to see him, and afterward it is said that Moses spent 40 days and nights on the mountain alone with God, during which time he was provided with further detailed instructions for priestly ordinances the Israelites were to keep as well as directions for how to design the Tabernacle, a portable sanctuary to be constructed as a place of worship. Along with these instructions were detailed designs for a cask to be built of acacia wood and overlaid with gold. This cask or chest was intended to carry the tablets of the law, which would be written by the very finger of god. On its lid, two cherubim were to be carved, facing each other, extending their wings so that the tips of them met above the center of the chest, and it was in this place, between the two cherubim, a place that was called the Mercy Seat, that God would reside, invisible. As the very throne of God, it was too holy an object to be touched by man, so rings were to be crafted on its feet, through which poles could be passed so that it could be carried aloft without being touched. This object, called the Ark of the Covenant, was considered the most sacred relic of the Israelites, kept in the Holy of Holies, the most secure central chamber of the Tabernacle, approached only by priests. Legend of the Ark grew over the ages. In the Letter to the Hebrews it is said that it contained not only the tablets of the law, but also the Rod of Aaron, a talisman endowed with the power to perform miracles, as well as a pot of manna, the supernatural substance that fell from the sky to sustain the Israelites during their travels in the desert. But most importantly, it was the very seat of God’s power on Earth, and as such, it was the symbol of their power as well. They carried it aloft before them as they marched into the Promised Land. It miraculously made victory possible for their armies on more than one occasion, drying up the River Jordan so that they could cross, and simply by carrying it in a circuit around the walls of the fortified city of Jericho, it made it possible to bring the walls crashing down with the just the sounding of several trumpets. But as mentioned, this artifact, which carried their invisible God aloft and housed their most sacred relics, was too powerful for a mere mortal to touch. At one point, the Philistines captured the Ark and reveled in the idea that they had stolen the Israelite God, but when plagues of rats and tumors were inflicted on them, they sent the Ark back, and in 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles, it is described that one of the drivers of the cart carrying the Ark was struck down simply for laying a hand on it to steady it when the oxen pulling the cart caused it to lurch. Likewise, when the inhabitants of a certain city did not greet the return of the Ark enthusiastically enough, some seventy of them were struck dead, though by some interpretations, the Ark may have laid waste to something more like fifty thousand people that day. The Ark of the Covenant has grown in legend to become the most powerful sacred object in history, a talisman of untold power, a symbol that confers legitimacy, and a weapon. When King Solomon the Wise constructed his Temple, a permanent version of Moses’s Tabernacle, the Ark was placed in its Holy of Holies and was not officially ever heard of again. In 587 BCE, Solomon’s Temple was sacked, along with the rest of Jerusalem, by the Babylonians, and there are only rumors and conflicting accounts of what became of it thereafter.

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I was inspired to cover this topic by one of my favorite films of all time, the first installment in the Indiana Jones franchise, Raiders of the Lost Ark. I credit these films and the character of Indiana Jones with my lifelong interest in historical mysteries and arcane knowledge. In fact, as the release of the fifth and likely final Indiana Jones film, the Dial of Destiny, approaches, I had the idea to focus in a series of episodes that won’t necessarily be contiguous, on the macguffins and historical mysteries central to the Indiana Jones films. A lot of the episodes of this podcast have already touched on notions from the films, most notably my series on Nazi occultism, but I haven’t entirely focused on the mysteries explored in the films, and of course, I had to start with the Ark of the Covenant. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the stakes are high to find the Ark. As it was believed to be a supernatural weapon that could tip the balance of power, the Nazis are after it, and Indy must keep it from falling into evil hands. Today, the search for the lost Ark of the Covenant likewise carries far greater import than simple archaeological significance. Don’t get me wrong, though. If it were ever discovered that the Ark of the Covenant first of all was real and not just a fabled legend, and more than that, that it had survived to modern day like the Dead Sea Scrolls, it would be an earth-shaking revelation, academically speaking. Not all scholars agree that the Ark actually existed, or that it existed as described in Exodus, but many do, and its discovery would go a long way toward demonstrating the historicity of certain passages in the Bible, which of course would then be touted by biblical literalists as evidence for the historicity of the entire bible, even if it were shown not to possess supernatural powers. But more than this, the discovery of the Ark of the Covenant would have massive repercussions for peace in the Middle East. There are those who believe that discovery of the Ark would not only prove the truth of scriptures, but also the existence of God and the validity of Judeo-Christian faiths. Some orthodox Jews have hoped that its discovery might somehow heal the rift between Islam and Judaism by somehow proving the political legitimacy of Israel. However, as with most aspects of Middle Eastern conflict, the matter may not be so simple. While the discovery of the Ark in modern times might convince some to set aside their differences or even to convert, more likely it would exacerbate the conflict. One place where the Ark is rumored to have been hidden away is in a secret chamber beneath the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine built atop the Temple Mount in Old Jerusalem, perhaps the most contested holy place in the region or on Earth. To both Jews and Muslims, this place is believed to be the site of the creation of the world. To Muslims, it bears further significance as the place from which Muhammad ascended into the heavens on his miraculous Night Journey, and it is their third holiest site, known to them as the “Farthest Mosque.” To Jews, it is the place where God created Adam, where He asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, and where the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple was located, where the Ark, the seat of God on Earth, was kept. To really delve into this conflict and the significance of this site is beyond the scope of this episode, but what is important to know is that the rebuilding of the Israelite Temple on that site has been foretold as a precondition to the end of days, the resurrection of the dead and the last judgment for the Jews, Armageddon and the Second Coming for Christians. Indeed, there has long been a desire, among some Jews but perhaps even more so among Evangelical Christians, to relocate, or even to destroy, the Dome of the Rock in order to kickstart the end times by rebuilding the Temple. Certainly the prospective discovery that the Ark of the Covenant was real, that it had been recovered and was waiting to be restored to its place on the Temple Mount would raise the already high temperature of the region to a fever pitch. This scenario would prove the fiery power of the Ark, for it would be like tossing a match into a tinder-box.

The first photograph of the Dome of the Rock, c. 1842

This assessment of the explosive prospect of the recovery of the Ark of the Covenant is proven by an incident in 1911, when a British expedition intent on digging for the Ark under the Temple Mount nearly resulted in a Middle Eastern crisis. It began with a Finnish scholar named Valter Juvelius, who had convinced himself and others that by deciphering some ancient code in the Bible, he had discovered the location of the long sought after gold treasures of Solomon, including the Ark of the Covenant, believed by many to have been hidden away before the arrival of the Bablyonians. Juvelius engaged a wealthy English socialite, Montagu Parker, to help him bankroll his expedition, and in 1909, still some forty years before the State of Israel would be created, they traveled to Jerusalem, which at the time was controlled by the Ottomans. Excavation beneath the Noble Sanctuary Mosque on the Temple Mount was forbidden even then by the Sultan in Istanbul, but Juvelius believed that they could begin their dig outside the walls of the Old City and penetrate through to the ancient tunnels that would take them to the treasure they sought. It was the largest and most expensive excavation in the history of Jerusalem at the time, and indeed, they did break through into dark subterranean passages that honeycombed the area. What they did not find was any treasure beyond a few pieces of pottery. Finally, desperate to succeed after years of effort, in 1911, they bribed the sheikh in charge of the Noble Sanctuary Mosque to send his guards away to a ten-day festival that was then being held outside the city, and they set about digging numerous holes on the raised platform of the mosque, and even beneath the Dome of the Rock—the ultimate desecration. On April 12th, 1911, the tenth night of their secret dig, they were discovered, and word swiftly spread through the city that some Western Christians were despoiling their holy site. Muslims flooded the streets, enraged and searching for the offenders, and the Englishmen hopped on the first train out of Jerusalem, back to their yacht in Jaffa. Thousands of demonstrators continued to march the streets of Jerusalem, and Turkish soldiers had to be deployed to quell what looked like impending riots. Around the world, the leaders of Islam condemned the act. It was no exaggeration that they were on the precipice of a global holy war. Eventually, though, the sheikh who had accepted the bribe was arrested, as was the governor of the city, though he had had nothing to do with it. Investigators determined that nothing had actually been looted by the Englishmen, and trouble subsided. However, the expedition’s hasty retreat had led to numerous rumors, spread in the Western press, that Montagu Parker and his men had actually made off with the Ark of the Covenant. This was completely false, however, and indeed, Parker even tried to return later that same year to continue his excavations. Because of the scandal, however, he would never be tolerated to set foot again in Jerusalem. His expedition, though, would go on to inspire others who dreamed of digging up the Temple Treasure and specifically the Ark in Jerusalem, but they would never have the opportunity to excavate beneath the Dome of the Rock again. For about a month in 1967, during the Six-Day War, the site was wrested from Muslim control, but jurisdiction was ceded back before anyone attempted any organized search for the Temple treasure. Once, in 1981, a rabbi broke into a catacomb while constructing a synagogue beyond the Western Wall and organized a secret dig to reach the Holy of Holies, but the news media exposed their excavation and an angry mob put a stop to it, sealing the cavern. Besides these attempts, most other expeditions for the Ark of the Covenant sought the relic outside of Jerusalem, and some even claimed to have found it.

Perhaps the most outrageous of these adventurers was Ron Wyatt. This American nurse from Tennessee, a devoted Seventh Day Adventist, belongs among the biblical literalist fraudsters I previously discussed in my episode on the seekers after Noah’s Ark. He first entered the field of “biblical archaeology,” which is most of the time just amateur archaeology or often pseudoarcheology, because he believed that the Durupinar site, a kind of boat-shaped rock formation that I mentioned in that previous episode, was Noah’s Ark. Starting around 1977, he began organizing various Middle Eastern expeditions designed to recover biblical relics and thereby prove the historicity of the Bible. He had the idea of searching the bottom of the Red Sea for traces of Egyptian chariots, which he would tout as evidence of the scriptural account of the sea having parted for the Israelites and afterward swallowed the Pharaoh’s army. He claims that he discovered the exact place of the crossing and recovered the chariot remains of the army that he sought, but he provided no evidence that the artifacts had actually come from the bottom of the Red Sea, and professional divers have argued that he would not have been physically capable of diving to the depth he claimed. This is rather typical of Ron Wyatt’s adventures. When he provided evidence, it was always suspect, and he dismissed valid criticism as being the efforts of Satan to cast doubt on the truth. He claimed to find everything he looked for, and far too easily. He said he had discovered the true locations of Mt. Sinai, Sodom and Gomorrah, and even the site of Christ’s crucifixion. And here is where his most fantastical claims were made. According to Wyatt, the site of Christ’s crucifixion was just outside the Old City of Jerusalem’s walls, and he further claimed that an ancient earthquake had cracked the hill, an act of God to allow access to a chamber beneath, where the Ark of the Covenant had been hidden. By Ron Wyatt’s reckoning, God had opened the earth there to allow Christ’s blood to flow down onto the Mercy Seat of the Ark, making official the notion that Christ’s death was the ultimate sacrifice and marked the beginning of a new covenant between God and humanity. He further claimed to possess evidence of the find, including video and photographs and even samples of Christ’s blood, which remained upon the Ark and which through DNA analysis showing an absence of a Y-chromosome, proving he had been born of a virgin. But, with Wyatt, there was always an excuse. The Israeli government conspired, he claimed, to cover up the discovery, fearful that it would result in a mass conversion to Christianity. According to him, Israelis had been killing anyone who got close to discovering the site, and it was for this convenient reason that he could not release his evidence. But one day, he promised, he would reveal all to the world. Ron Wyatt passed away in 1999, and no such evidence has ever been shared.

Valter Juvelius, photographed during his and Montagu Parker’s excavations.

In 1946, Bedouin shepherds made the discovery of the century when they found numerous scroll fragments in the Qumran Caves of the Judaean Desert. This very discovery lends some hope to the otherwise far-fetched notion that an artifact like the Ark of the Covenant might be rediscovered today. In 1952, an archaeologist further searching the Qumran Caves discovered a scroll unlike the others in that it had been inscribed on a copper sheet. This “Copper Scroll,” as it has been called, was not a work of literature or a religious manuscript, but rather a list, detailing 63 locations at which gold and silver treasure had been hidden. Some scholars have suggested the scroll was a hoax, but as it has been dated to the 1st century CE, it would have had to have been a very ancient hoax, which doesn’t hold up to logical scrutiny. Some believe the Copper Scroll to be a list of treasures hidden by those at Qumran, others that it may be a key to the location of the treasure of the Second Temple, hidden away before the Roman invasion. But some, including John Allegro, the first scholar to study the Copper Scroll, believed it could refer to the treasure of the First Temple, taken out of the Temple by priests to prevent it falling into Babylonian hands. Allegro pointed to one passage that indicates a silver chest was buried under a hill “in the desolations of the Valley of Achor,” a location northwest of Jericho and thus far outside of Jerusalem, and that this chest contained “all the gold and silver of the Great Tabernacle and all its Treasures.” All the treasures of the Great Tabernacle certainly would include the Ark, but it is unclear how the Ark, which itself is supposed to be four feet long and 2 and a half feet wide and tall, would fit within another chest and still have room for further treasures. It would have to be quite a large silver chest indeed. Whether or not the simple question of how the Ark might fit within a silver chest puzzled him, he mounted a series of excavations to search for the Temple treasure in the West Bank and Jordan, following clues from the Copper Scroll. He never found a thing. Allegro would eventually go on to discredit himself in the eyes of many with some rather bizarre later work in which he claimed that Jesus had been a fictional character dreamed up by early Christians who were really just a sex cult that consumed a lot of psychedelic mushrooms, but Allegro’s work on the Copper Scroll would inspire others to search for the Ark in caves and other locations outside of Jerusalem.

One Vendyl Jones, an American archaeologist who had moved to Israel in the 1960s, claimed to have used the directions in the Copper Scroll to find some of the hidden treasures it told of, including a small jug of the oil used to anoint the kings of Israel, called the balm of Gilead. Vendyl Jones believed that the Copper Scroll was one key to the mystery of the Ark, but that another could be found in the book of Second Maccabees, a deuterocanonical book, meaning it is considered canon by Catholics and certain Eastern churches, but is disregarded as apocryphal by others, in this case both by Jews and Protestants. In Second Maccabees, it is stated that the prophet Jeremiah, having been warned about the impending Babylonian invasion, absconded with the Ark and hid it in a cave on Mount Nebo, well east of Jerusalem, past the Dead Sea, and that its location would remain unknown until the Gathering of Israel. This foretold event, also called the Ingathering of the Exiles, is an eschatological milestone, prophesied as a precursor to the reign of the Messiah, and so Vendyl Jones, who made some efforts to find the Ark, believed that when he discovered it, he would be ushering in the End of Days. Vendyl Jones claimed that he may have been the inspiration for the character of Indiana Jones, asserting that someone who had joined him on his digs wrote a screenplay about an archaeologist named Endy Jones based on him, and that the makers of Raiders of the Lost Ark had cribbed ideas from that script. This claim has been vigorously disputed, however, and Vendyl Jones’ involvement with Kabbalist mystics and fundamentalist rabbis seeking to re-establish a national rabbinical court in Israel, along with his inflated sense of himself as being the person who will usher in the end times by discovering the Ark, rather undermine his credibility as an archaeologist. For example, he announced in 2005 that he would bring forth the Ark on the anniversary of the Temple’s destruction in August of that year, but then didn’t, claiming much like Ron Wyatt and probably just to save face, that he had been prevented by the government, though not because of a conspiracy but rather because of some bureaucratic constraints.

The Copper Scroll.

The notion that the Ark was hidden away in a cave on Mount Nebo, where Moses is said to have died, was not a new one in the 1970s and 80s. Back in the 1920s, a Californian named Antonia Frederick Futterer followed the verse from Second Maccabees to Mount Nebo and claimed that he found a cavern entrance closed with stone and engraved with some sort of ancient glyph, which he claimed his Hebrew translator interpreted to mean “Herein Lies the Golden Ark of the Covenant.” The only evidence he ever offered was a sketch of the entrance, which of course is no evidence at all, and considering the fact that he could have reproduced the hieroglyph and named his Hebrew interpreter as corroboration and never did, it’s pretty safe to dismiss this as a hoax. But in the 1980s, another American, Tom Crotser, took Futterer’s claims seriously and mounted a new expedition to Mount Nebo in Jordan. Unsurprisingly, Crotser could not find the cave entrance described by Futterer, but on a nearby mountainside he claims to have discovered a ravine closed off with a tin metal sheet. According to Crotser, his team penetrated this barrier and discovered a crypt beyond, in which lay a gold chest that perfectly matched the description of the Ark of the Covenant. Unbelievably, he states that he only took photos of it rather than bringing it back with him. Crotser’s claims too can be easily dismissed based on his general lack of credibility. He has devoted his life to finding artifacts that prove the historicity and literal truth of the Bible, and he further claims, without convincing evidence, to have discovered the stone on which Cain murdered Abel, the Tower of Babel, and Noah’s Ark. Furthermore, he refused to make his photographs of the Ark of the Covenant public, only circulating them among a select few of his supporters. Eventually, he made the mistake of showing them to Siegfried Horn, a Bible scholar who was a genuine archaeologist and antiquities expert, and Horn promptly revealed that Crotser photos were of a brass-plated chest that appeared to have been manufactured in modern times using machine-cut materials, with a regular, modern-day nail protruding visibly from it. In short, it was just another hoax.

Many seekers after the lost Ark of the Covenant set their eyes farther afield than Israel, and there is some compelling reason to consider that the Ark was at some point in its history taken out of Israel. Some claims, however, are rather ludicrous. In my series on the Lost Tribes of Israel, I spoke of the failed excavations at the historic Hill of Tara in Ireland by Anglo-Israelists or British Israelites, who rather foolishly believed the Ark of the Covenant had been buried there and would prove that the British were descended from the Lost Tribes. In fact, they only damaged a historical site and found nothing, proving only that they were destructive and wrong. Other theorists point to the Knights Templar, a Christian military order organized to protect pilgrims to the Holy Land during the Crusades in 1119. I have spoken about the Templars before in a patron exclusive episode back in February of 2020 called Philip the Unfair and his Unholy War. In short, the Templars grew extremely wealthy over the nearly 200 years of their existence, and the French king Philip the Fair conspired to steal their wealth by making dubious claims about Templars being sodomite Satanists. In 1307, they were arrested, some of them burned alive, and their wealth seized by the crown. In that exclusive minisode, I refuted the notion that the Templars secretly survived in the Freemasons, but there are countless other conspiracy claims about the Templars, such as that they discovered the New World before Columbus, and that they removed the Temple treasure and brought it to Europe. This last claim derives from the fact that they made their headquarters at the Temple Mount. As the brotherhood became extremely wealthy, legend had it that they had dug up the treasure some believe was or is still buried beneath the Dome of the Rock. In fact, Templar wealth derived from the many donations made to the order across all Christendom, as well as the vast trade network they established. But rumor breeds myth, and today there is no shortage of conspiracists who will tell you with unfeigned certainty that the Templars brought back and hid away such mystical treasures the Spear of Destiny—about which I spoke in my series on Nazi occultism—the Holy Grail—about which I spoke in my episode on the Secret of Rennes-le-Château and Abbé Saunière's Riches and which I intend to explore further in our adventures into Indiana Jones lore—and finally, the Ark of the Covenant. Common is the speculation that the Ark may have been hidden in the south of France by the Templars, or even farther afield. One claim has it that the Templars carried it to the New World and buried it on Oak Island, and that’s a whole other rabbit hole that some patrons have actually requested I excavate. I do intend to dig into that morass of pseudohistory eventually, but for now, suffice it to say that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the Templars found the Ark of the Covenant or stashed it anywhere. In fact, logic would dictate that if they had discovered it, they would have announced it to the world as a symbol that God was on their side of the conflict, just as they certainly would not have kept secret the discovery of Christian relics as important as the Holy Grail or the Spear of Destiny.

The photograph of what Tom Crotser claimed was the Ark. Reproduced according to the Fair Use doctrine.

And now we come to the seemingly more credible but, in reality, just as unreliable claims of Graham Hancock, who in his 1992 tome The Sign and the Seal also traces the paths of the Knights Templar and engages in speculation about their carrying of the Ark of the Covenant out of Jerusalem, though he focuses more on Africa. Several listeners have asked when I will be devoting an episode exclusively to refuting Graham Hancock’s claims, especially since his Netflix series premiered. The thing is, the ideas that Hancock resurrects in his pseudohistorical, pseudoarcheological Netflix series, which I won’t amplify by naming it, are old racist ideas that I already refuted in detail in my episode on the Myth of a Lost Mound Builder Race. Likely I will refute Hancock again whenever I get around to producing a series about Atlantis, which he has written a lot about, but in the meantime, I’ll just talk here about his Ark claims, which like his other claims are not original. He is not an archaeologist, and actual experts recognize him for what he is: a journalist engaged in popular writing. So to argue that he is a conspiracist or a fringe lunatic would be unfair. He writes lucidly about a lot of real scholarship, and in some ways he is an effective science communicator in that he makes very complicated and esoteric academic material digestible and accessible to wider audiences. The problem is that he is not as concerned as a real academic about credibility and truth. His are elaborate stories that err on the side of entertainment rather than fact, and as such, he tends toward the fantastical rather than the accurate, and in the process he resurrects and propagates sometimes harmful narratives, like the racist idea that Native Americans could not have constructed the American earthworks. In the case of the Ark of the Covenant, he finds himself part of a rich tradition that suggests the Ark of the Covenant was carried out of Jerusalem and into Africa, and not necessarily by the Templars. Indeed, this path was even suggested in canonical scriptures, as the Book of Kings speaks of an Egyptian king named Shishak assaulting Jerusalem and carrying away “the treasures of the House of the Lord.” Indeed, this verse is referred to in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark and is the reason its story is largely set in Egypt.

Although it made for a ripping yarn in the first Indiana Jones film, there is no evidence that the Ark of the Covenant was ever brought to Egypt, and in fact, the verse in Kings mentions only vague treasures. However, one mysterious document, the Tractate of the Temple Vessels, does appear to lend some credibility to the claims that the Ark and the Temple treasures were brought to Arabia by priests hoping to hide their most sacred object before the Babylonian invasion. It must be acknowledged, though, that the origins of the Tractate are extremely suspicious. It did not appear until the Middle Ages, the 10th century CE, to be more specific, and thus in all likelihood is a medieval fantasy. Graham Hancock favors more the notion that the Ark of the Covenant was carried out of Jerusalem a hundred years before the coming of the Babylonians, to protect it from a sacrilegious king: Manasseh, the fourteenth King of Judah. According to one of the several theories Hancock entertains, these priests would have carried it to the Egyptian island of Elephantine, where a replica of the Temple had been constructed. This too is pure conjecture, though, and even if it were true, 2 Chronicles records that Josiah, the 16th King of Judah, restored the Temple and specifically ordered that “the sacred ark” be put into it, indicating that if it had been taken to Elephantine during Manasseh’s reign, it would only have been as a brief sojourn and was back in Jerusalem before the Babylonian invasion. There is the further possibility that priests may have brought it to the Temple replica on Elephantine, again or for the first time, ahead of the coming of the Babylonians, but as one of my sources, The Lost Ark of the Covenant by Tudor Parfitt points out, the record that provides us with the most information about the ancient goings on at Elephantine, the papyri discovered in the 19th century by American journalist Charles Edwin Wilbour, makes no mention of the arrival of the Ark of the Covenant, and as Parfitt I think wisely points out, if the temple there had ever held such a relic, it would have been something they bragged about rather than hid. Such is the case with temples and churches generally. They tend to make a big deal about possessing miraculous objects in order to draw more visitors to them and thereby collect more money. So despite what Raiders may have led us to believe, all claims about the Ark of the Covenant residing in Egypt suffer for lack of evidence.

Historical image of the original church in Ethiopia believed by many to have housed the Ark of the Covenant. Courtesy The Digital Collections of the National WWII Museum.

Finally, because it is such a fun story despite reliability problems, Graham Hancock falls back on an age-old belief that the Ark had perhaps been stolen from ancient Israel long before the Babylonian sacking of the Temple or even before the reign of Manasseh or the invasion of the Egyptian king Shishak. By this telling, King Solomon the Wise, who built the first Temple to house the Ark, lost it to a thief who carried it to Ethiopia, where it has resided ever since. But it’s far more interesting than only that. So the tale goes, when the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon to partake of his wisdom, she lay with him and returned to her homeland—Ethiopia, according their national legends—pregnant with his son, whom she named Menelik. Menelik returned years later to meet his father, and in a show of alliance, Solomon sent the sons of members of his court back with Menelik in an effort to recreate the wisdom and greatness of Israel in Ethiopia, known as Abyssinia at the time. However, one of these young men, disgruntled at being sent away, stole the Ark and took it with him. Since the Ark did not destroy the thief or the rest of the party, it was believed that God willed for the relic to reside thenceforth in Ethiopia, and the claim is that, ever since, as kings of a Solomonic dynasty reigned and even as foreign invasions and modern revolutions changed the political landscape, the Ark of the Covenant has remained in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion at Aksum, protected by a virgin priest who is the only person alive who is allowed to see it. This narrative is supported by their national epic, the Kebra Nagast, or The Glory of Kings, which purports to be an account of a dialogue at the First Council of Nicaea that then shares what is ostensibly a far older tradition from more ancient sources. To be very clear, Graham Hancock’s work The Sign and the Seal is not a work of historical scholarship, but insofar as he supports the story of the Ark being in Ethiopia, it must be acknowledged that this is not a new tradition, and it is one that many faithful in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church believe in to this day. A detailed exploration of the evidence refuting this myth is far beyond the scope of this episode, but if you are interested in researching it for yourself, I recommend reading Stuart Munro-Hays’s The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant: The True History of the Tablets of Moses, or if you’re looking for something a bit easier to digest, listen to the Our Fake History podcast’s 2-part episode, “Does Ethiopia Have the Ark of the Covenant?” Suffice it to day here that historians and scholars mostly find that, first, there is no evidence that the Queen of Sheba ever existed except as a literary character; second, despite claims that the Kebra Nagast’s contents are a retelling of ancient traditions, there is no evidence that the work or the legends about Menelik and the Ark existed prior to the Middle Ages; and third, the story appears most likely to be a medieval fiction fabricated as propaganda to legitimize the divine right of Ethiopian kings and enhance the glories of the Ethiopian church.

Even if we were to credit the claims of Graham Hancock and the Ethiopian church, even by their own legend, the relic they revere as the Ark sounds less like the Ark itself and more like the stone Tablets of the Law the Ark was said to contain—or rather, their replacement, since Moses broke the originals and had to get God to remake them. Indeed, every church in Ethiopia possesses such tablets, or tabots, claiming they are replicas of the real ones that, of course, no one is allowed to see. And in their long history, they too tell of times when their priests took their Ark out of its Holy of Holies and hid it elsewhere in order to protect it from invaders, making it further questionable whether whatever it is they actually have now is what they claim it was long ago and whether whatever they had then may now also be lost. Further complicating the matter is the fact that they are not the only African people to claim to be descended from Hebrews or Jews. There are the Beta Israel and the Qemant, also in Ethiopia. There are the Lemba of Zimbabwe, and the Nyambo of Tanzania, the Igbo of Nigeria, and the Ibro of Somalia. Some of these groups have genetic evidence to support their claims of having being descended from Middle Eastern semitic peoples, and more than one has their own tradition about carrying the Ark into Africa long ago. Add to this further legends from Arabic texts that claim the Ark ended up in Mecca after Arabs defeated the Israelites in battle and that it was thereafter sealed in some cave somewhere in the Arabian desert, and we come to a dizzying conclusion that the Ark, if it ever existed, and if it survived the ravages of time, could be secreted almost anywhere: under the most hotly contested holy site on earth, buried somewhere in modern day Israel or Jordan, in some ancient Egyptian catacomb, or in some church anywhere from Ethiopia to the South of France. Rather than lead us to take any such claims more seriously, this preponderance of competing claims should cause us to view all of them more skeptically. Instead of driving anyone to take on a costly expedition that would in all likelihood end in failure and could very well disturb what fragile peace we may have in the world, it seems rather that it should be enough to convince us that, whether it’s ancient history or ancient myth, it’s certainly nothing to chase after now.

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Until next time, remember, when it comes to legendary magical artifacts, it is far more likely that, if they ever existed, they weren’t magical, and they have likely been destroyed by people or the elements and in fact are not filed away somewhere among endless crates in a top secret warehouse.

Further Reading

Munro-Hay, Stuart. The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant: The True History of the Tablets of Moses. I.B. Tauris, 2005.

Parfitt, Tudor. The Lost Ark of the Covenant: Solving the 2,500 Year Old Mystery of the Fabled Biblical Ark. HarperCollins, 2008.

Ricca, Brad. True Raiders: The Untold Story of the 1909 Expedition To Find the Legendary Ark of the Covenant. St. Martin’s Press, 2021.

InfeKtion: Operation DENVER and the Engineering of AIDS Conspiracy Legends

(This blog post is not an exact transcription of the podcast episode, which contains a great deal of material from my interview of Dr. Douglas Selvage. I encourage you to listen to the podcast for a full sense of the what was discussed. Additionally, Patreon supporters have been granted access to the entire interview).

In 2020, early in the Covid-19 pandemic, the Trump administration, amid criticism of its response to the crisis, asserted without evidence that China was to blame for the virus. Certainly the original epicenter of the outbreak occurred in Wuhan, but as a way to deflect blame from their handling of the situation, the Trump administration promoted an emerging hypothesis that the virus had been released upon the Chinese population in a “lab leak.” Medical scientists and the scholarly community were quick to decry this assertion, as study of the virus, a variant of the coronavirus that caused the severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS epidemic in the early 2000s, showed that it had likely crossed the species barrier much like its predecessor. What their research was showing was that what was most likely to blame were the conditions of the wet markets and the practices of the wildlife trade in China. However, the existence of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the fact that it had been studying coronaviruses that cause respiratory infections ever since the 2003 SARS outbreak was viewed by many as a kind of smoking gun. Rumors about researchers at this institute falling ill with flu-like symptoms late in 2019 further encouraged the lab leak hypothesis, though there is no evidence that any researchers at the institute had Covid-19. Since that time, it has become a mire of conspiracy speculation, with the institute being depicted as a U.S.-funded bioweapons development site and with further claims that Anthony Fauci, a public health spokesman during the first year of the pandemic and chief medical advisor to the President during the first two years of the Biden administration, was himself personally responsible for “gain of function” research to develop a more transmissible virus. While the scholarly community and the intelligence community worked slowly but surely to assemble evidence for a natural origin, the conspiracist community latched onto any gaps in their evidence as if it proved the opposite. Most recently, a declassified report by the U.S. Department of Energy that claimed with “low confidence” that the lab leak theory was correct, along with the FBI director’s comments indicating that his agency agreed, has resulted in numerous major press reports that act like it had been proven, even though this conclusion runs counter to the findings of most other federal agencies and intelligence services and scientific consensus. The fact is that it is still too early to make draw such a conclusion, which is exactly why they have been drawn with “low confidence.” Even as I wrote this, President Biden signed the Covid-19 Origin Act to declassify intelligence on the subject, which has been deemed inconclusive. And this announcement came on the heels of a further revelation that samples deposited by Chinese researchers in a virology database show that the novel coronavirus was present in civets and racoon dogs sold at a Wuhan wet market. Yet these developments will not likely not be trumpeted with quite the same gusto by the press, which often amplifies conspiracy claims simply because it gets them clicks and views. When the recent conclusions of the Department of Energy were making headlines, a disgruntled listener who insisted he was “not an idiot,” emailed me to say that, since “COVID-19 is thought to have escaped a lab,” he hoped I would “reconsider the possibility of HIV having been foisted upon us.” But of course we know that the notion of HIV having been created as a bioweapon is a baseless conspiracy claim, widely spread by the KGB. Really, the story of how this myth appeared and was propagated for political purposes serves as the perfect example from history of why we must reserve judgment about the origin of Covid until the evidence is more conclusive.

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Before I continue with this story, since I have heard that the best way to combat misinformation is not to tease the accurate information until later but to state the truth at the outset of your discussion, let’s start by talking about the natural origin of AIDS. Just as medical scientists have been studying the natural origin of Covid since its emergence, ever since the 1981 recognition of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome as a new disease and the subsequent identification of the causative retrovirus now called the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV, scientists studied it and hypothesized about its natural origin. Early on, even though it seemed to have emerged in America, it was believed to have come “out of Africa” because of the discovery of its similarity to a simian virus known to affect primates in sub-Saharan Africa. With far more time spent studying this pathogenesis than has been spent studying Covid, it has been borne out with consistent evidence that HIV passed naturally to humans through a cross-species transmission, that it actually first appeared in west central Africa, then came to Haiti before emerging in America, all long before the years when it would subsequently be claimed that the CIA was developing it as a bioweapon. And the intelligence services that were responsible for legitimizing and spreading these baseless claims have since confessed! In 1992, the head of the post-Soviet intelligence service, successor of the KGB, explicitly admitted to the existence of the KGB’s disinformation campaign to convince the world that HIV was created by the U.S. as a biological weapon, and that same year, former members of the Stasi, the East German intelligence agency, further confessed to their participation in the campaign. As for hard evidence of the workings of the KGB’s program, and the Stasi’s involvement in it, that was lacking for a long time, causing some to doubt, but eventually, it was discovered in the archives of Bulgaria’s secret police. In the podcast episode, you can hear more about this from Dr. Douglas Selvage, historian at the Humboldt University in Berlin, who along with Christopher Nehring published a German language study irrefutably proving not only the existence of the KGB disinformation campaign but also the nature and details of the significant involvement of East German intelligence in spreading the myth. He has published major papers on the topic in the Journal of Cold War Studies, as well as on openDemocracy and the Wilson Center website. Dr. Selvage generously agreed to chat with me on this topic, and you can hear a great deal of additional information from him throughout the podcast episode, so I encourage you to listen and not just read this blog post.  

Dr. Douglas Selvage. Listen to the podcast for material from his interview. Check out the citations under Further Reading below for research and articles on this topic published by Dr. Selvage.

It would be inaccurate to suggest that Russian disinformation is entirely responsible for the invention of the conspiracy claim that HIV was developed by the U.S. government. Before the first known insertion of the narrative into the media by the KGB, some form of the conspiracy theory had already arisen among the community most affected by AIDS during the first years of the epidemic. More than a week before the first known use of the conspiracy claim by the KGB, Boston’s Gay Community News and New York’s Native, another newspaper focused on gay issues and the gay community, printed and repeated the erroneous claim that HIV was a variant of the African Swine Fever virus, and pieces in these papers argued, without evidence, that it had been brought across the Atlantic by the CIA for biological warfare purposes in Cuba. The fact that the conspiracy theory originated in a marginalized and oppressed community is no surprise. When the spread of AIDS elicited mostly homophobic sentiments by legislators and the Reagan administration seemed to be purposely dragging their feet in responding to the crisis, one can hardly blame them for beginning to suspect some sinister intentions. Likewise, as the Black community came to be greatly affected by AIDS later in the eighties, it seemed pretty reasonable to many that they may be the victims of some sort of “ethnic weapon,” especially since history showed the U.S. government was entirely capable of such atrocity, the most obvious example being the Tuskegee Experiment, the 40-year study in which 400 African American men were purposely infected with syphilis. Also fresh in the minds of the American public were the Church Committee revelations about Operations MKULTRA, the CIA search for mind control drugs, and MKNAOMI, which developed biological and chemical warfare technology. These revelations led to Richard Nixon’s 1969 executive order banning the military use of biological weapons. Certainly the Soviets had agents in America observing the media for any social and political conflicts they could leverage in their disinformation, and having recently been accused of developing biological weapons themselves, the opportunity to deflect such allegations and simultaneously discredit the Reagan administration by suggesting it had been ignoring this ban and engaging in biological warfare against America’s own citizens was too great to pass up.

If one looks up the Soviet AIDS disinformation campaign today, on the Internet, one finds that it is widely called Operation INFEKTION, when in fact, as Dr. Selvage has shown in his work, the campaign was actually called Operation Denver. There are a few reasons for that. The first is that one of the former Stasi members who first revealed that agency’s involvement in the operation, an individual whose other revelations have been shown to be mixed with falsehoods, thus discrediting him to some degree, actually claimed it was called Infektion. The other reason is that it’s just a better name. It is more evocative of the actual nature of the program, and it has led to a useful metaphor, describing the spread of conspiracy theories and disinformation as a kind of viral infection. Indeed, the New York Times even produced a great nearly hour-long documentary on the topic, complete with engaging animation, that calls the operation by this incorrect name and makes much use of that extended metaphor. It’s for that reason and for search engine optimization, that I’ve used it in the title of this episode, in order to catch those keyword searches. While he has argued against the incorrect designation of the program, Dr. Selvage has himself made clever use of the metaphor, acknowledging that conspiracy claims spread like a viral infection, especially on the Internet, where they spread as memes. He makes the fantastic point, however, that the KGB did not invent this “virus” but rather, since they modified conspiracy claims that had already appeared in order to make them spread more virally, it can be said that they engineered this claim to make it more infectious, a process Selvage cleverly calls “memetic engineering.” In order to draw a more modern parallel to the spread of Covid misinformation, it might be said that Soviet and East German intelligence performed “gain of function” research on existing conspiracy claims, and as a result, turned a small outbreak of conspiracy theory into a disinformation pandemic.

On July 17th, 1983, the very same month that this conspiracy claim appeared in newspapers serving the gay community in America, a newspaper in India called the Patriot, published an anonymous letter purporting to be from an eminent U.S. scientist. The letter claimed that the Pentagon had not abandoned its biological weapons program after Nixon’s executive order to do so, and that the CIA and the CDC had discovered and developed HIV at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Maryland, a facility known for its research into biological warfare and defensive countermeasures against it. This would prove to be the principal Soviet contribution to the conspiracy claim. The fact that the anonymous author claimed to be an anthropologist, not an infectious disease expert, and cited sources like the magazine Army Research, Development & Acquisition, not your typical reading for an anthropologist but just the sort of publication the KGB monitored, went a long way toward demonstrating that the letter was KGB propaganda, as did the poor English of the supposed American academic who wrote the letter. But beyond these tells, the intelligence community was aware that the KGB actually helped establish the Patriot in 1967 and regularly used it as their mouthpiece to circulate propaganda. This was a tried and true method for the KGB: plant the seed of a story in an Indian newspaper and watch it get picked up and spread in other papers. For example, in 1968, during the Vietnam War, the KGB likewise forged a letter claiming that the U.S. was using biological weapons in Southeast Asia, and they spread it by placing it in a Bombay newspaper. The Patriot story did not spread far, but a couple years later, as AIDS became a global crisis, and as accusations were made of the USSR engaging in biological weapons development themselves, the KGB resumed their campaign with a vengeance. In 1985, they published a story in the Literary Gazette, their principal mouthpiece, which cited the fake Patriot letter as if it were evidence. This article argued that HIV’s spread in America was the result of experiments on unsuspecting citizens, suggested AIDS victims should sue the CIA, and warned the nations of the world not to host the U.S. Armed Forces because American soldiers were surely carriers of the scourge.

Even though these news articles, which mixed fact with baseless conspiracy fiction, were illegitimate, they could then be cited to seemingly legitimize further articles, some likewise placed by the KGB and others written by people who were unwittingly helping them spread their narrative. But what the KGB campaign really needed was an academic to lend their claim scholarly clout, and their partner agency, the Stasi, or Ministry of State Security of East Germany, provided it to them. His name was Jakob Segal, a committed Communist who had been born in Russia and studied biology in Germany. As a Jew, he had been forced to flee Nazi Germany for France, where he completed his doctorate. When the Nazis invaded France, he joined the resistance, where he likely first came in contact with Soviet intelligence. He returned to Germany after the war, becoming the head of the Institute for Applied Bacteriology in East Berlin and, according to former Stasi agents, acted as an operative or informer for the Stasi. Likely at the behest of the Stasi and KGB, or perhaps just with their sly encouragement, Segal began to produce scholarly-style literature that argued against the African origin of HIV, suggesting that the virus was an artificial synthesis of the human T-cell lymphotropic virus and a retrovirus that affects sheep—even though the technology required to recombine parts of viruses did not exist at the time and those two viruses are too distinct to even be synthesized—and asserting with no evidence whatsoever the truth of a very specific scenario: that at Fort Detrick, HIV was tested on convicts, and because of its long incubation period, it was believed to have no effect, causing the subjects to be released into the population, whereupon they made their way to New York and spread the virus through sexual contact with others. His claims relied not only on complete speculation, but also on two dubious assumptions. First, he asserted that these ex-convict test subjects must have made their way from Fort Detrick in Maryland to New York City, where the first outbreak occurred, because they were criminals, and there simply was no criminal community to accommodate them in nearby Washington, D.C., when the truth is Washington’s crime rate was extremely high at the time. And second, he claimed that, because the test subjects must have been convicts who had spent a long time in prison, they must also have become homosexual, thus explaining why they introduced the virus specifically into the gay community. Considering the stereotypes relied on and the lack of evidence provided by Segal, it is unsurprising that the scientific community largely ignored him or scorned his claims, as was the case with one AIDS expert who called it “nothing but a hypothesis, and not a very original one at that” in popular German magazine Der Spiegel. However, while the academic world never took him seriously, the press in the third world and the tabloid press in the UK, became unwitting stooges for Soviet intelligence by spreading Segal’s thesis far and wide.

A brochure by Jakob Segal and his wife. Courtesy Dr. Douglas Selvage and the Wilson Center.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., some useful idiots did their part to strengthen the resolve of Soviet propagandists and promote aspects of their disinformation by spreading a variant conspiracy theory that blamed the Soviets for engineering HIV. Dr. Selvage cleverly calls this a different “strain” of the same viral conspiracy claim, and it was promulgated by Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouche is a fascinating character that everyone in America should know about, though I suspect he is largely forgotten. LaRouche became involved in far-left Marxist politics in the 1950s and ‘60s, while working as a management consultant in New York City, but as his conspiracist worldview evolved, he gradually drifted to the far-right, growing anti-Semitic. History might have forgotten him as just another voice on the lunatic fringe, if not for his surprising political career. Lyndon LaRouche ran for president in every election for about thirty years, from the mid seventies to the mid-aughts. While he never had the numbers to come close to a nomination, he had a devoted following, sometimes described as a cult, who in the mid-eighties infiltrated the Democratic party by winning some primaries for state office. Today, no less influential a figure than Roger Stone has expressed admiration for LaRouche, and I can’t help but find parallels between LaRouche and Trump, who himself drifted from the left to the right during the course of his political career and over the course of his several failed presidential campaigns and single successful campaign espoused numerous conspiracy claims. As for the LaRouchite cult infiltrating the Democratic Party, I find it very similar to Qanon wackos consuming the Republican Party from within, though the latter have proven far more successful, as they currently hold some sway over the Republican Majority Leader in the House of Representatives. LaRouche’s principal mouthpiece was his magazine Executive Intelligence Review, which in 1985 supported the claim that HIV was engineered at Fort Detrick, but with one crucial twist. It claimed that it had been developed by the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization, whom they asserted had been infiltrated by the Soviets, so it was not the CIA but actually the KGB who had developed the virus. Of course, this only launched a disinformation war, with the Soviets citing parts of LaRouche’s claims as further support for their own allegations. But LaRouche’s conspiracy mongering went further. Much like Covid conspiracy claims decades later, his AIDS conspiracy claims involved anti-vaccinationism.  Furthermore, his publications endorsed the notion that AIDS could be spread through even casual contact, like through insect bites, through the exchange of saliva in kissing, and the old myth about toilet seats. On the basis of these groundless fears, he organized support for a 1986 ballot initiative in California that, if it had passed, would have enforced the HIV testing of every Californian and resulted in the removal and forced confinement of those who tested positive. Frighteningly enough, almost a full third of Californians voted for this.

Eventually, the AIDS disinformation campaign seems to have been officially discontinued. When the disease began to spread more widely in the Soviet Union in the late eighties and suddenly the Kremlin was more interested in trading medical research about it, Mikhail Gorbechev found the U.S. Secretary of State less than cooperative because of the known KGB campaign to blame the disease on America. Suddenly official organs of the state, like the newspapers Izvestia and Sovetskaya Rossiya, disavowed the HIV-as-US-bioweapon thesis, and of course, within a few years, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the active measure would be admitted to, as I shared earlier. Nevertheless, Jakob Segal would continue to promote his claims until his death in 1995, and media outlets continued to amplify his misinformation through interviews. It is hard to imagine that he truly believed all the claims he made, such as that aspirin was the cure for HIV and the pharmaceutical industry was covering up this simple remedy. But there is a sense that many of those involved in the KGB campaign believed that, while they may have been spreading unproven claims, the claims were likely true or at least reflected a broader reality about the corruption and immorality of the U.S. government. Thus it is possible that, though he knew his thesis rested on assumptions, he still believed it likely, and looking at his later claims, we get the sense that eventually he came to truly believe his arguments and simply sank further and further into conspiracist delusions. For example, he would eventually finger a specific scientist, someone who had actually done a great deal to fight the AIDS epidemic, as the central villain of his narrative, responsible for the creation of HIV. Dr. Robert Gallo co-discovered HIV as the cause of AIDS in 1984 and during his long career, most of which was devoted to ending the epidemic, he developed the HIV blood test. But in Jakob Segal’s fevered imagination, since Gallo was head of the National Cancer Institute’s Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology in the seventies, and since in 1971, after his ban of biological weapons, Nixon converted Fort Detrick into a cancer research center, Segal saw this as de facto proof that Gallo had synthesized HIV at Fort Detrick. In fact, the NCI was extremely transparent about the cancer research conducted at Fort Detrick, and the Soviet Union’s Minister of Health even toured their lab in 1972. Interestingly, Jakob Segal’s obsession with Robert Gallo, his scapegoating of a respected scientist who was fighting the disease as being the actual person responsible for the creation of it, seems to me to parallel the bizarre and insupportable Covid conspiracy claims that have surrounded Dr. Anthony Fauci for the last few years.

Lyndon LaRouche. Public Domain image.

Despite the fact that the inner workings of the Soviet disinformation campaign have been exposed and its thesis proven false, the conspiracy claim has gone on to do serious harm, especially in Africa, which was and is ravaged by the disease and because of that has proven to be fertile ground for the propagation of the myth. The fact that the consensus of the scientific community remains that AIDS spread to humans from monkeys in Africa has made Africans and even African scientists defensive and more open to alternative narratives that do not seem to lay blame on them, even though of course no blame is actually being placed on African peoples, since it was a matter of natural cross-species transmission. As AIDS has ravaged African nations, we again have seen the tendency of those most marginalized and most effected by an epidemic giving the most credence to conspiracy claims that offer some explanation of their suffering and lay blame on an oppressive villain. For example, one newspaper in Zimbabwe in 1991 added to the myth complex the wild allegation that the CIA had spread the disease by distributing “AIDS-oiled condoms” to other countries. Major African political figures and social activists even publicly promoted the notion that AIDS was an ethnic weapon created by white powers-that-be to destroy Africa, long after this was refuted, such as Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Kenyan Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai. Of course, the continued spread of these conspiracy claims has variously discouraged safe sex practices and contributed to AIDS denialist claims that effective treatments like antiretrovirals are ineffective and alternative treatments, like Segal’s aspirin doses, are preferable. The fallout of these false conspiracy claims has been deadly.

Although the Soviet AIDS disinformation program was eventually ended and even acknowledged after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russian intelligence has continued to make similar claims about other diseases. Using the same playbook, epidemics such as SARS and Ebola were routinely asserted to have been engineered by U.S. scientists at Fort Detrick as bioweapons, and among the many justifications for his invasion of the Ukraine that Putin threw at the world to see what might stick, one was the accusation that U.S. sponsored biological weapons research was being conducted at Ukrainian facilities. In fact, it has even been claimed that Covid was developed by the U.S. at Fort Detrick, in what appears to be a Chinese disinformation campaign intended to throw the lab leak theory back in American faces. This long history of disinformation campaigns and false accusations lobbed back and forth, with nations accusing and counter-accusing each other of engineering and releasing diseases that actually spread naturally should teach us, if we aren’t affected by a bad case of historical blindness, that we should be cautious and disbelieve any such claims until there is irrefutable evidence about the actual origins of diseases. As Dr. Selvage expressed to me in our interview, any notion that the U.S. developed Covid, or that it was created as a bioweapon by China, or even that it leaked accidentally from their lab, really in a way exonerates the Chinese government for their secrecy about the initial spread of the disease and their lack of international cooperation since.

*

Until next time, remember, just because a newspaper prints a claim doesn’t make it true. But that doesn’t mean that claims about the free American press being controlled in a massive conspiracy of silence and official cover-up are the least bit tenable.

Further Reading

Boghart, Thomas. “Operation INFEKTION: Soviet Bloc Intelligence and Its AIDS Disinformation Campaign.” Studies in Intelligence, vol. 53, no. 4, Dec. 2009, pp. 1-24. Defense Technical Information Center, apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA514366.

Geissler, Erhard, and Robert Hunt Sprinkle. “Disinformation Squared: Was the HIV-from-Fort-Detrick Myth a Stasi Success?” Politics and the Life Sciences, vol. 32, no. 2, 2013, pp. 2–99. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43287281. Accessed 17 Apr. 2023.

---. “Were Our Critics Right about the Stasi?: AIDS Disinformation and ‘Disinformation Squared’ after Five Years.” Politics and the Life Sciences, vol. 38, no. 1, 2019, pp. 32–61. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26677588.

Selvage, Douglas. “Memetic Engineering: Conspiracies, Viruses and Historical Agency.” openDemocracy, 22 Oct. 2015, www.opendemocracy.net/en/memetic-engineering-conspiracies-viruses-and-historical-agency/.

---. “Operation ‘Denver’: The East German Ministry of State Security and the KGB’s AIDS Disinformation Campaign, 1985–1986 (Part 1).” Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 21, no. 4, Fall 2019, pp. 71–123. EBSCOhost, doi-org.ezproxy.deltacollege.edu/10.1162/jcws_a_00907.

---. “Operation ‘Denver.’” Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 23, no. 3, Summer 2021, pp. 4–80. EBSCOhost, doi-org.ezproxy.deltacollege.edu/10.1162/jcws_a_01024.

Selvage, Douglas, and Christopher Nehring. “Operation ‘Denver’: KGB and Stasi Disinformation regarding AIDS.” Wilson Center, 22 July 2019, www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/operation-denver-kgb-and-stasi-disinformation-regarding-aids.

Breaking News: The Hitler Diaries Fiasco

On April 20, 1945, while the stooped and shuffling Adolf Hitler, reticent to celebrate his birthday, received his usual regimen of injections and presided over a war conference in which he came to grips with his dire situation, Operation Seraglio was elsewhere underway. This operation was what many had been looking forward to, an evacuation of numerous members of Hitler’s entourage from the bunker, bound for Berchtesgaden. Aside from some evacuees, the operation was also packing up and flying out a fortune in valuables and a library’s worth of government documents. Around ten heavy trunks were carried out of the bunker and loaded onto a truck that day, and the convoy made their way to an airfield north of Berlin, dodging Allied air strikes along the way. These trunks with their mysterious contents were loaded onto a waiting plane, along with sixteen passengers. But their flight was doomed. No one knows exactly what struck them. Whether it was friendly fire from German anti-aircraft guns or an American fighter pilot who took them down, down indeed they went, crashing near the border of Czechoslovakia, outside a village called Boernersdorf. Villagers ran to the scene to find the transport burning and to hear the screams of one occupant inside. According to Hans Baur, Hitler’s pilot and one witness to his eventual suicide, when he informed Hitler of the disappearance of this flight, Hitler grew pale and appeared greatly disturbed, saying, “In that plane were all my private archives, that I had intended as a testament to posterity. It is a catastrophe!” After the fall of Berlin, the US Counter-Intelligence Corps, or CIC, searched for such private archives and documents, all of which would have great historical value. Some of these already resided in Berchtesgaden, at Hitler’s vacation residence, the Berghof, including Hitler’s love letters to Eva Braun, which had been hidden in a cave by Nazis. Eva had ordered them to be posthumously burnt, but instead a certain SS captain kept them. Additional correspondence stolen by this individual included letters between Hitler and Himmler. Despite the CIC catching wind of this document hoard and raiding the SS captain’s family home, they never recovered either set of letters. Afterward, rumors of the existence of Hitler’s personal diaries cropped up, and when the CIC investigated, they always considered it a possibility that the documents they were chasing were actually his letters to Eva Braun or Heinrich Himmler and not diaries. Historians came to the consensus that Adolf Hitler, who hated writing and much preferred to give dictation, never actually kept a diary, and as the decades passed, researchers learned of certain troves of dictated material that might also have sparked the rumors of Hitler having left private diaries behind. The first were the Bormann Notes, transcripts of conversations had at Hitler’s dinner table, published in 1953 as Hitler’s Table Talk. Some of these notes, covering 1943 to 1944, were missing, and considering their nature, with Hitler’s long and boring monologues on whatever topic arose, these could easily have been mistaken for diaries. Finally, in the 1970s, as journalist James O’Donnell researched the mysterious ten trunks lost in the plane crash for his book, The Bunker, he came to the conclusion that the historical documents that Hitler was mourning the loss of were likely the transcripts of his war conferences, which Hitler demanded be transcribed by stenographers in order to establish for posterity what he believed to be his military genius. But one particular passage from O’Donnell’s book would be latched onto and used to resurrect the rumor of Hitler’s diaries: “[D]ocuments have a way of surviving crashes,” O’Donnell wrote. “One is left with the nagging thought that some Bavarian hayloft, chicken coop, or pigsty may well have been waterproofed and insulated with the millions of words of the Führer’s unpublished, ineffable utterances, simply hauled away at dawn as loot from a burning German transport plane.”

Previously, I introduced the character of Hugh Trevor-Roper, the historian who was tasked by British intelligence with establishing the fate of Hitler, and whose work, The Last Days of Hitler, went a long way toward establishing the historical certainty of Hitler’s demise in his air raid shelter. Go back and read the previous blog post/podcast transcript, The Specter of Hitler’s Survival, for more on that. In the decades since the 1940s, Trevor-Roper had become one of the most respected historians and essayists in the world. His expertise was actually 16th and 17th-century England, but because of his work during the war, he remained an authority on Nazi Germany. He had taken the noble title of Baron Dacre of Glanton, and served as a director of the mostly respected British Times Newspapers. In the 60s and 70s, he began to seem like something of a dinosaur, receiving staunch criticism from postcolonialist historians about  some of his outmoded and frankly racist comments regarding African history. Thus, when the editor of The Times called him in 1983 to say the private diaries of Hitler had been discovered and they wanted him to authenticate them, he came to view it as a way to make himself relevant again. But at first, he thought it was a joke. It was April Fools Day, after all, and Trevor-Roper knew quite well that Hitler had stopped writing by his own hand for the last decade of his life, finding it actually painful. Thus he had always dismissed any claims of the existence of his diaries. When it became clear that the Times editor was serious, and that the paper’s new owner, the Australian newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch, was prepared to pay a large sum for English publication rights of the diaries, Trevor-Roper began to see possibilities. After all, his most popular book since The Last Days of Hitler, The Hermit of Peking, had involved the debunking of a diary as a forgery. In the book, Trevor-Roper exposed oriental scholar Sir Edmund Backhouse as a fraud and specifically discredited one of his principal sources, a supposed Chinese diary describing the Boxer Rebellion firsthand, claimed to have been recovered from a burned building. And back in the fifties, when the Bormann Notes were discovered and authenticated, he was given the opportunity of writing the introduction for them when they were published as Hitler’s Table Talk. Thus, whether or not these supposed Hitler diaries were genuine, Trevor-Roper could benefit from being involved, either by debunking them or by introducing them to the world. So what at first he took for an April Fools prank he began to view as an opportunity.

Hugh Trevor-Roper (detail of an image dedicated to public domain, courtesy Dutch National Archives)

Hugh Trevor-Roper had no love for Rupert Murdoch. As a director of the Times, he had opposed the media mogul’s acquisition of the paper, fearing he would tarnish the reputation of the Times and the Sunday Times by turning them into tabloids like his other papers, which eventually he did. Indeed, when Murdoch was negotiating the purchase of the papers, Trevor-Roper and the rest of the directors forced him to sign a pledge to preserve the integrity of the publications, though this would prove entirely toothless. Despite his dislike for Rupert Murdoch, Trevor-Roper agreed to authenticate the diaries, but only as long as he wouldn’t be rushed. He was not fluent in German, so he would have to be given the complete transcript and be given time to evaluate the diaries’ contents. Of course, he was assured, he would have all the time he needs, but a week later, before boarding a flight for Zurich to see the diaries, he was informed that Murdoch was against the clock and competing with other newspapers for the publication rights and would require Trevor-Roper’s assessment of their authenticity immediately, which was not what they had originally agreed to. Nevertheless, Trevor-Roper remained hopeful that he could take advantage of the occasion. On the plane to Zurich, he examined a transcript of a portion of the diaries that were of especial interest. These entries appeared to settle a historical mystery, indicating that Hitler did indeed know about Rudolf Hess’s secret peace mission to Britain and Hitler’s intention to disavow knowledge of the effort only if it failed. Listeners may recall me talking about Nazi Party leader Rudolf Hess and his unauthorized 1941 solo flight back in my episode on supposed psychic spies, because of Hess’s reliance on astrology and the notion that British intelligence may have gulled him into flying off to arrange peace talks using phony horoscopes. The version of events contained in the diaries caused Trevor-Roper to be even more certain that they were a fraud, since he knew of multiple accounts recording Hitler’s shocked reaction to the news of Hess’s flight, all of them contradicting the notion that he knew about it beforehand. Yet despite all these doubts, when Trevor-Roper appeared to examine the diaries at a bank in Zurich, he was taken aback to find not only a diary, but 58 volumes of a diary, along with an entire trove of Hitler’s personal things, his paintings and sketches, even the helmet he wore in the First World War. The directors and editors of the German magazine Stern, who were selling the rights to publish the diaries to the English-speaking world ahead of their own publication of them in German, assured Trevor-Roper that the diaries were genuine, telling him that three handwriting experts had authenticated the writing, that they had confirmed the provenance of the artifacts, that they had been salvaged from the plane that had crashed in 1945 in Boernersdorf, that they had confirmed the identity of the diaries’ supplier, and that the paper of the diaries had passed chemical testing to demonstrate its age. Considering all of this, as well as the reputation of the magazine Stern, and further believing that no forger would spend so much time forging so many volumes when just a few would do the trick, Trevor-Roper began to believe. He signed a non-disclosure to the effect that he wouldn’t discuss the diaries with anyone, and when the Times editor called him at his hotel room later, he said the fateful words, “I think they’re genuine.”

Later that month, Trevor-Roper observed further red flags that should have piqued his suspicions when he returned to Germany to meet the investigative journalist from Stern who had turned up the diaries. This reporter, Gerd Heidemann, was an odd fellow. He waited for Trevor-Roper at the airport, and at first, Trevor-Roper mistook the man for his driver. After this awkward start, they drove off to view Heidemann’s archive of historical artifacts that he had turned up during his investigations. As it turned out, it was a massive collection of Nazi memorabilia. The historian in Trevor-Roper was delighted by all the seemingly genuine historical objects, and he remained enthralled as Heidemann presented his further collection of Mussolini artifacts. He didn’t start to realize Heidemann had an unhealthy obsession with violent despots until his host showed him a further object: the underwear of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Still, a fanatical collector like Heidemann, called “The Bloodhound” by his colleagues, would be just the sort of person to sniff out new finds like the Hitler diaries in the illicit Nazi memorabilia market. But when Heidemann began showing him photos of a man he claimed was Martin Bormann and saying he had spoken to him, that Borman was still alive, Trevor-Roper realized that Heidemann may have been something of a gullible fellow. It was Heidemann’s own magazine, Stern, that had recently proven to the satisfaction of the world that Bormann, Hitler’s personal secretary, had never escaped Berlin. Still, though, Trevor-Roper thought that surely Stern’s editors and directors knew Heidemann was this unreliable and had properly vetted the diaries. They had assured him of the handwriting’s authentication, the confirmation of the provenance, and the supportive chemical test results. Once he’d returned home, he received a phone call from Phillip Knightley, a respected special correspondent for The Sunday Times, who voiced serious concerns about the authenticity of the diaries. Knightley had written a memo after learning of the burgeoning story, urging caution, questioning how thoroughly the diaries had been examined by experts, questioning the narrative of their provenance, and reminding everyone at the paper, and specifically Rupert Murdoch, of times when journalists had been duped by similar forgeries in the past, hopeful that The Times would not now allow themselves to be made fools of in the same way. Murdoch had ignored the memo. Finally, when The Times was about to publish breaking news of the diaries’ discovery along with Trevor-Roper’s assertion that they were genuine, Knightley called him, mostly to be reassured by the venerable historian that his anxieties were groundless. Trevor-Roper obliged, assuring Knightley that the diaries were certainly real, but when he got off the phone, all his former misgivings reoccurred to him: Hitler’s known aversion to writing, the ludicrous notion that the cunning and obstinate Hitler would have approved of Rudolf Hess’s doomed solo mission for peace, and the indication that Heidemann, the man who had brought the diaries to Stern, was a credulous fool. Suddenly, Trevor-Roper had a sinking feeling that he’d made a terrible mistake, but already papers were coming off the presses linking his reputation to the diaries forever.

Gerd Heidemann. Image credit: AP (fair use)

When news of the diaries’ discovery was trumpeted to the English-speaking world, it was met with much skepticism, but this was to be expected. Indeed, one of the loudest critical voices was that of David Irving, a Holocaust denying historian whom I discussed in my episode on Holocaust denialism, “The Wrong Side of History.” In fact, David Irving was recognized as something of an expert at uncovering and authenticating historical documents, as well as debunking forgeries, so his qualms that he was aware of these diaries and that they were fakes should have been taken more seriously. However, Irving’s reputation as a historical negationist, using specious arguments to exonerate Hitler of his war crimes, meant that his objection didn’t carry the weight it might have otherwise. Behind the scenes, though, as The Sunday Times prepared their blockbuster edition, publishing actual excerpts of the diaries, Trevor-Roper, to his credit, had begun the painful process of backpedaling. He called the editorial staff just as they were celebrating the edition going to press and indicated, to their horror, that he not only had become uncertain about the diaries’ authenticity, but that he was “doing a 180-degree turn,” as those who remember the telephone conversation put it. Editor Frank Giles, stoic in the face of a great scandal, hung up and called Rupert Murdoch to tell him that their principal authenticator, the man on whose reputation their entire story was staked, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Lord Dacre, had changed his assessment of the diaries, and asked if they should stop the presses. Murdoch answered in his Australian accent: “Fuck Dacre. Publish.” That Sunday, as 1.4 million copies of the paper were circulated, Trevor-Roper flew to Hamburg to meet with Heidemann again and clarify some details about his discovery of the diaries. Heidemann had always insisted on keeping his source anonymous, and that in itself was understandable. Smugglers of Nazi documents might face consequences if their identities were divulged, and in the past, the sources of other finds, like the papers of Goebbels and Bormann, had remained unidentified to the public. But Trevor-Roper was further troubled when Heidemann actually changed his story about provenance and suddenly stated that the other items in the archive, the artifacts that had been displayed with the diaries and had gone a long way toward convincing Trevor-Roper of their authenticity, had come into his possession separately, from a different source. Trevor-Roper came away from the meeting even more certain that he had blundered in giving his assessment without taking the proper time to be certain. The next day, he attended a press conference at the Stern offices, and when he spoke, much to the discomfort of the magazine representatives present, he admitted that the provenance of the diaries was “shaky” and that he regretted that “the normal method of historical verification [was] sacrificed to the requirements of a journalistic scoop.” As if this admission were not explosive enough, suddenly the Holocaust denier David Irving burst into the press conference waving photocopies of the diaries that he had obtained and declaring them to be forgeries. He challenged Trevor-Roper and the editors of Stern to say whether the ink had been tested for age, a question that they could not answer. The reporters present began to chant the word: “Ink! Ink! Ink!” One can hardly imagine a more humiliating end to the career of Hugh Trevor-Roper than this, being made to look like a fool on television by a Holocaust denier.

Sure enough, the news came out shortly afterward. The diaries were a fraud, and as a further stain upon Trevor-Roper’s reputation, they weren’t even a very sophisticated fraud. The forger had apparently used regular school notebooks, the paper of which contained a whitener that proved it was not as old as it was purported to be. Moreover, it seems the forger had given the notebooks an artificial look of aging simply by dipping them in tea. But this was not the end of the obvious tells. The notebooks’ binding contained polyester and viscose, which did not exist at the time the diaries were supposedly composed, and the ink in which the entries were written, which David Irving had rightly insisted be tested, also proved to be of post-war manufacture. And numerous typed labels for volumes comprising thirteen tumultuous years had all been typed on the same typewriter. Hugh Trevor-Roper was immediately suspicious of the content of the single passage given to him in transcription, that of the Hess flight, but if he had been able to read the entire diary, the truth would have been utterly apparent. The forger clearly had no historical training, as the entries contained chronological inconsistencies throughout. As it turned out, nearly the entirety of the diaries was a first-person retelling of the events chronicled in one work, Hitler’s Speeches and Proclamations, 1932-1945 by Max Domarus, and reproduced the inaccuracies of that book. As for the handwriting, there is no doubt that the forger had mastered Hitler’s signature, but authentication of the handwriting by three experts was misleading. First of all, it was more like two experts, and unbelievably, these handwriting analysts had been given separate forgeries from the same source to use as comparison! Unsurprisingly, they found all these forgeries to be consistent because of course they were forged by the same hand. As the affair unraveled later, it turned out Trevor-Roper had been egregiously misled when he examined the diaries in the Zurich bank. The Stern editors told him the paper had been chemically tested, but that was not true. In fact, it was still in the process of being chemically tested, and preliminary results had shown that other items in the trove of artifacts, such as Hitler’s artwork, contained paper whitener and were thus forgeries. Indeed, this was why Heidemann had changed his story to suggest the diaries had come from a different source. And it was a further lie that the Stern editors had confirmed their provenance and the identity of their source. In truth, only Heidemann had dealt with this mystery individual, if he even existed.

The forger, Konrad Kujau. Image via Museum of Hoaxes.

When the diaries were revealed to be forgeries, Rupert Murdoch was unapologetic. He had increased the readership of his papers with an entertaining though false story, and now he could also refuse to pay Stern for the rights to the fraud. He buried an mea culpa blurb in the next edition and opted to shift all blame on Stern with a new headline, emphasizing the “Hunt for the Forger.” During the course of the Times investigation, a few conspiracist claims emerged about who was behind the diaries, many of them based on the fact that the contents of the diary tended to paint Hitler in a somewhat positive light. It was thought that the diaries were a plot by surviving Nazis to rehabilitate Hitler’s image, or that they were a plot to raise money by aging former SS soldiers who no longer had a pension, or they were a plot by East Germany to destabilize West Germany by stoking Neo-Nazism. Not to be outdone by such conspiracy speculation and always on the lookout to throw some disinformation that may color perception of their rivals, the Soviet media apparatus jumped in, insisting it was all a plot by the CIA to exonerate the Nazis. While this mudslinging went on, the disgraced editors at Stern went about the real business of tracking down the forger. Suspect number one was Gerd Heidemann himself. As Trevor-Roper suspected, his colleagues did indeed know he was a kook. He had begun his career as a photographer for the magazine, taking on the occasional dangerous assignment, but had transitioned into investigative journalism. He had a tendency to go off the rails and grow obsessive when digging into a story. For example, he previously worked on a piece about the anonymous German novelist who used the pseudonym B. Traven, and eventually came to the dubious conclusion, based on a resemblance in a photograph, that Traven was the son of Kaiser Wilhelm II. He likewise fell down the rabbit hole when he began taking an interest in Nazi memorabilia. It started when he bought Hermann Goering’s yacht, the upkeep of which proved to be very expensive, but the ownership of which put him in a peculiar position to draw out old, nostalgic Nazis and get them talking. He began hosting soirees on the yacht and recording his Nazi guests chatting over champagne, and he eventually convinced his editor that he was on to something, that he could maybe parlay this into a scoop about escaped Nazis. So he took money from the magazine, as well as from book publishers, buying memorabilia and coming to identify more and more with the Nazis he spent so much time with. Indeed, Stern’s managing editor had forbade him to continue his investigations, especially when Heidemann became so utterly convinced (again based on a dubious photograph) that Martin Bormann was alive even though Stern had proven his death. It seemed as though Heidemann had lost his mind, or that he had gone full Nazi. He’d even invited his elderly Nazi friends to his wedding, which was officiated by a couple of SS generals! Nevertheless, when Heidemann told them that he had come across the Hitler diaries during the course of his investigations into the Nazi collectibles market, one news editor in charge of historical stories secretly encouraged him and funneled more money his way. Gradually, as the affair grew larger and more money was required, other editors were taken into their confidence, until finally the magazine was entirely invested in the project despite some editors’ misgivings. And when the whole thing came apart, it was Heidemann they turned to, making it clear that he must reveal his source or it would appear that he had forged the diaries himself.

Heidemann, for his part, continued to insist on the authenticity of the diaries even despite all the evidence that they had been forged, and over the course of one grueling night, his bosses grilled him and wore him down. He claimed that he was in touch with someone who was communicating with Martin Bormann, and the elusive Nazi was going to fly to Germany from South America on a Lear jet to authenticate the diaries. But Lear jets at the time could not cross the Atlantic, and besides that, Bormann was dead, they angrily shouted at him. Obviously Heidemann was a fool who was being duped by con men. Eventually, Heidemann’s resistance began to fade and he gave them a name and address. He had received the diaries from an antiques dealer named Fischer who told him that they had come into his possession from an old villager in Boernersdorf, where the transport had crashed in 1945. In reality, this antiques dealer was an incorrigible criminal named Konrad Kujau, a deserter from the East German army and convicted counterfeiter and forger who had served time in prison for evading a jail sentence. It does seem that Kujau, who had been dutifully producing the diaries for years, undertook the forgery solely for the money, but just this year, the diaries were finally published in full, and it certainly does also appear that Kujau purposely depicted Hitler as not having planned the Holocaust. Whether he truly wanted to spread this denialist view of history or whether he simply thought it would make the forgeries more valuable, perhaps to someone like David Irving who wanted to believe such a thing, remains unknown. Kujau never spoke on this. As soon as he read in the papers that his work had been exposed as forgeries, he fled his home. But with the pressure on, and his forgery workshop having been raided, he eventually surrendered himself. Despite all the other forgeries they took out of his home, Kujau lied his face off, insisting that he was just the middleman and had no idea he was dealing forgeries. However, at one point, when his interrogators discussed the amount of money Heidemann had paid him, Kujau realized that Heidemann had been skimming off the top, embezzling from the funds that Stern had allocated to pay for the diaries. Knowing that he was on the hook for the crime while Heidemann, who also had profited, was out there free, he finally confessed. He had forged them, but, he said, intent on taking some revenge, Heidemann was in on it and knew they were forged all along.

Rupert Murdoch. Image credit: David Shankbone (CC BY 3.0)

The forgery of the Hitler diaries was perhaps the greatest hoax of modern times. Certainly it was one of the most successful forgeries in that it fooled many and was only exposed as a fraud when it achieved global attention. Stern paid nearly the equivalent of $4 million for them, which accounting for inflation would today be around $11 million, and that’s not even considering the money Stern almost earned from selling the rights to the fraud. The affair destroyed the reputation of many involved. For example, Frank Giles, editor of The Sunday Times, who boasted a long and illustrious journalistic career, died in 2019, and even though he can hardly be blamed for the scandal considering the farce of its authentication and Rupert Murdoch’s decision to publish despite rising suspicions that the diaries weren’t authentic, Giles’s obituaries were devoted almost entirely to the Hitler diaries fiasco. When he learned that the forger Kujau had implicated him, Gerd Heidemann’s first concern was for his own reputation. “I don’t want to be remembered as the man responsible for the greatest flop in newspaper history,” he confided to a friend. He and Kujau were tried together, and they both were sentenced to around four and a half years in prison, Kujau for defrauding Stern and Heidemann for his embezzlement. As for Hugh-Trevor Roper, even though it can be argued that he was lied to and forced to rush his judgment, he also suffered a grievous blow to his reputation as a shrewd and diligent historian. Indeed, his error in judgment in the Hitler diaries affair is frequently used by purveyors of the myth of Hitler’s survival as a way to somehow discredit all of his previous work investigating Hitler’s suicide. Thus the hoax had repercussions on history and misinformation far wider than one might expect. For example, while Heidemann was ruined, Kujau, the real culprit, parlayed his lies into a career. He opened a successful shop, selling his forgeries to the public as “genuine fakes,” and his forged artwork can still be found in books published after the scandal, attributing them falsely to Adolf Hitler. And worst of all, we find that Rupert Murdoch came out of the scandal entirely unscathed. He ended up losing no money on the forgeries and actually profiting from the affair, as his Times newspapers recorded a boost in circulation. One can tentatively draw a line between this affair, which seems to have taught Murdoch that entertainment trumps journalistic integrity and truth, to the propagandistic practices of Murdoch’s NewsCorp and specifically his FOX Corporation and Fox News Channel in America. The Hitler diaries showed him that he can knowingly publish falsehoods, ignore experts and science, and simply change the narrative when lies he has amplified are ultimately exposed. In his zeal for breaking news, he has broken the news. This same greed and cynicism was on full display when Fox News promoted election fraud lies even though Murdoch has said under oath that he thought such claims lacked merit. It remains to be seen whether the current defamation lawsuit in which he is embroiled will change the way he distorts reality with his media empire, but I, for one, am not holding out much hope.

Until next time, remember, if you or someone you love still clings to election fraud claims because Fox News promoted them, the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit has proven beyond doubt that neither Murdoch nor the worst of the Fox hosts, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, ever actually believed these conspiracy lies. Not that definitive proof ever swayed folks from believing nonsense.
*Deep sigh.  

Further Reading

Harris, Robert. Selling Hitler: The Extraordinary Story of the Con Job of the Century—the faking of the Hitler “Diaries.” Pantheon Books, 1986.

McGrane, Sally. “Diary of the Hitler Diary Hoax.” The New Yorker, 25 April 2013, www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/diary-of-the-hitler-diary-hoax.

Steers, Edward. Hoax: Hitler’s Diaries, Lincoln’s Assassins, and Other Famous Frauds. University Press of Kentucky, 2021.

The Specter of Hitler's Survival

In spring, 1945, as Allied powers encroached on German soil, Soviets from the east and the Western Allies from the west, Adolf Hitler and some of his closest advisors took refuge in the Führerbunker beneath the Reich Chancellery. At first, Hitler did not intend to remain underground there, in his small quarters with his lover Eva Braun. He intended to leave Berlin on his birthday, April 20th, and regroup in the more defensible Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden, but on the 19th, upon hearing that Soviet tanks had broken through the lines and were approaching Berlin, he changed his mind, enraged that his generals could be so incompetent and deciding that he would have to remain in Berlin in order to ensure the city would not fall. His birthday party, typically celebrated as a national holiday among Nazis, was a bleak affair as the fellow occupants of the bunker realized they may not make it out of Berlin alive. Shells shook the bunker faintly from their impact almost thirty feet overhead, and Hitler, who had once seemed supremely confident and commanding to his cult of followers now was stoop-backed, shaky, pale, and bleary-eyed. All of his lieutenants and officers feared telling him that hope was lost for Berlin, that the series of new counterattacks he initiated were all doomed to failure. Loyalists remained vigilant for any signs of disloyalty, which would have gotten them shot. Even leading figures of the party were deposed for some perceived treachery during Hitler’s final, paranoid days in the bunker—Hermann Göring, holder of the highest military rank in the Wehrmacht, a rank created just for him, was expelled from the party for even suggesting that Hitler may have been unable to lead from the embattled bunker, and Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS, about whom I spoke in nauseating detail in my series on Nazi Occultism, was declared a traitor for attempting to negotiate a separate peace with Western Allies while Hitler remained in his bombarded bunker, unwilling to flee the city. As the military reality of their situation became apparent and formerly loyal party members appeared to be betraying him, Hitler began to openly talk about dying there in the bunker. “Now I shall remain in Berlin and die here,” he is reported to have stated. And it was more than just idle talk. Hitler began to talk to others in the bunker about using the cyanide capsules they had on hand to commit suicide when the Soviets came nearer the bunker, and as they did not have enough capsules for everyone, he spoke of some having to shoot themselves. He even tested the cyanide on his beloved dog, Blondi, forcing a broken capsule between the German Shepherd’s clenched teeth and watching her die. The more fanatical of his followers resigned themselves to sharing his fate. Chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, though he was to be made the leader of the Reich after Hitler’s suicide, was such a deluded ideologue that he could not imagine a world without his Führer. He had brought his family into the bunker, and he and his wife Magda began to make arrangements not only to kill themselves, but also to murder their six children. Eva Braun was eerily reconciled to her fate, happy only that Hitler finally agreed to marry her, right there in the bunker, the day before they took their lives together. She told one woman present in the air raid shelter that she chose poison because she wanted to leave a beautiful corpse behind. We know that, as Allied forces took Berlin and pushed toward the bunker, Hitler and Eva Braun killed themselves in their private quarters, were carried, wrapped in blankets, out of the bunker, doused with gasoline, and burned in a bomb crater near the exit. Those present buried their remains before withdrawing back below ground to escape the shelling that continued. There, others, including the Goebbelses, also killed themselves, but not before ensuring that the Goebbels children were dead. We have knowledge of all these events from declassified files recording the interrogation of numerous eyewitnesses who were present and after the suicides tried to flee the city but were caught, as well as from several memoirs later written by the same witnesses. And yet, Hitler’s ghost would continue to haunt the world in the form of numerous rumors, persisting even to today, that he did not die in that bunker in 1945.

To many, it may seem like conspiracy theories and claims about Hitler’s escape from Germany are a relatively recent phenomenon. There is a reason for that. The Soviets were the ones who first reached the bunker, who captured most of the witnesses to Hitler’s final days, and who even claimed to have recovered Hitler’s remains, and much of the evidence and documentation of what happened was long locked up in Russian archives, with minimal access being granted to Western historians throughout the Cold War. This did not prevent British and American intelligence services from conducting their own investigations and interviews of witnesses, both in the aftermath of Berlin’s fall and ten years later, when Soviets released the last of their Nazi prisoners to face justice in German courts. The most prominent of these investigations, conducted by British historian and intelligence officer Hugh Trevor-Roper and published in 1947 as The Last Days of Hitler, determined without any need for physical evidence of his remains that Hitler had killed himself in the bunker. Trevor-Roper’s conclusions remained consensus history, with only some minor disagreement about whether Hitler had shot himself or taken poison. In the year 2000, after the collapse of the USSR and the rise of young KGB lieutenant Vladimir Putin to power, some effort was made to open the archives, specifically those relating to the death of Hitler, in order to remind the world that they had Russia to thank for his downfall. In a Moscow exhibition called “Agony of the Third Reich – the Punishment,” they displayed numerous Top Secret reports and photographs to recreate the events in the bunker, and their pièce de resistance, a skull with a bullet hole in it claimed to be Hitler’s, appeared to settle the matter of whether Hitler had shot himself. However, in 2009, on behalf of a History Channel program called MysteryQuest, University of Connecticut archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni examined a fragment of this skull, provided by the producers of the program, and determined that it actually belonged to a woman. From there, the floodgates to conspiracy were opened. The most popular book to claim that Hitler escaped the bunker was and remains Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, and its success has spawned others, like that of far-right conspiracist Jerome Corsi, prominent proponent of the swiftboat claims about John Kerry, birther claims about Barack Obama, and claims of Deep State conspiracy against the Trump administration, and most recently, a whole book full of climate change denialism, a book distributed by Simon & Schuster –come on, Simon & Schuster. If you’re going to sell harmful garbage like that, at least try to balance it out by giving me a book deal! And not to be outdone by conspiracist book publishers, the History Channel has been back in the game with Hunting Hitler, which they gave three full seasons and a feature-length special between 2015 and 2020. If there is anything that making this podcast has taught me, it’s that the History Channel is perhaps the world’s biggest promoter of pseudohistory and conspiracist nonsense, second only to that one aunty who shares fake news on social media, perhaps, but far more sinister because of their perceived authority. The truth of the matter is, though, that rumors of Hitler’s survival, many of which these books and programs repeat as though they represent evidence, go all the way back to the immediate aftermath of the fall of Berlin, and ironically, they seem to have originated with the very people who have claimed to possess physical evidence of Hitler’s death: the Soviets themselves.

The Fuhrerbunker before its destruction. Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-V04744 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

On the 1st of May, 1945, Russians received an official message from Goebbels to the effect that Hitler had taken his own life and that power had been transferred others, including himself. He made no mention of the fact that he intended to kill himself as well. Stalin’s reaction is recorded in a reply message to his general in charge of the siege of Berlin: “So that’s the end of the bastard. Too bad he couldn’t be taken alive.” Efforts immediately turned to recovering his body. The next day, the Red Army finally penetrated the bunker and discovered the bodies of those who had killed themselves after Hitler and Eva Braun’s funeral: Generals Wilhelm Burgdorf and Hans Krebs, a head bodyguard of Hitler’s, Franz Schädle, and Joseph and Magda Goebbels. They also found the corpses of the six Goebbels children. The next day, they discovered more bodies in an oak water tank, and one of them, who had been shot right between the eyes, looked remarkably like Adolf Hitler, with the little mustache and everything. Soviets sent this corpse to Moscow, presuming it to be the Führer’s body. The day after that, as they sifted through the crater near the bunker exit, some legs were seen, but believing they had already recovered Hitler’s corpse, these burnt remains, which are now believed to have been Hitler and his wife, were covered back up. Only on the 5th of May did the search resume, after learning that the body they had discovered in the tank was probably that of Gustav Weler, a lookalike who had previously been arrested for impersonating Hitler and may have been executed and left as a decoy. So the burnt remains of a man and woman were removed from the crater. Russian intelligence services, who would capture and interrogate all the most important witnesses to Hitler’s death, would confirm that these bodies were those of Hitler and Eva Braun, and would collect further evidence, based on the testimony of Hitler’s dentists, to positively identify his corpse. Their forensic examination would assert that they both died of cyanide poisoning. All of this was kept as a state secret, however. The bodies themselves were spirited away by the Soviet counter-espionage group, SMERSH, and after their identification and autopsy, they were buried anonymously in the little German town of Rathenow. And then, strangely, despite accepting intelligence reports that confirmed Hitler’s death as well as the recovery and identification of his corpse, Joseph Stalin started telling the world that Hitler had escaped. He told the diplomatic representative of the new U.S. President, Harry Truman, that Hitler was in hiding, along with Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann, all of whom had escaped the bunker, something he must have known was certainly not accurate in the case of Goebbels. Then, at the Potsdam Conference in July, he suggested Hitler was hiding in Spain, or Japan, or perhaps in Chile or Argentina. His claims were carried to the world via sensational news reports. We see the birth of a myth here, as Stalin’s claims were thereafter trumpeted to the world by the eager press, and soon belief in Hitler’s escape from Berlin was widespread.

Why would Stalin start this rumor, knowing that his intelligence services believed they had discovered Hitler’s body?  Some have suggested that Stalin really believed what he claimed, that he doubted his own intelligence services’ reports or felt the autopsy results could not be relied on. However, the fact that he made similar claims about Goebbels, whose remains were certainly identified, and that he never even mentioned the existence of the remains as possibly being Hitler’s suggests he held some other motives. He treated the burned remains believed to be Hitler as a state secret from the beginning. His anti-espionage agency, SMERSH, actually stole the remains from the Soviet forces who had unearthed them, and the autopsy was conducted in secret. And later, he would have the remains secretly destroyed. All signs indicate that Stalin determined to use the knowledge of Hitler’s death as a disinformation tool. By suggesting he was being harbored by Franco in Spain or Perón in Argentina, he could direct the attention of his Western Allies against other dictators, fascist dictators that he disliked. At one point, when one of his generals slipped up and indicated that Hitler’s body had been identified, Stalin forced him to retract the statement, and had him instead state that “Now it is up to you British and Americans to find him.” He was purposely sending the Allies on a wild goose chase, keeping them busy and pitting them against other dictators. The Cold War was begun, and he wanted to destabilize his capitalist rivals. Eventually, Stalin even suggested that the British were harboring Hitler themselves in their zone of Berlin, and that was the last straw for British intelligence, who organized Hugh Trevor-Roper’s investigation in response. Even without the bunker witnesses, whom the Soviets still held, the British were able to discern that Hitler had killed himself and that the Russians were not telling all they knew. So they released their findings, hoping to force the hand of the Russians to acknowledge that they had evidence of Hitler’s demise. And it worked, though not exactly how they anticipated. The Soviet intelligence service, the NKVD, launched a new inquiry, returning to the Fühererbunker to photograph everything and search for further evidence. This initiative was called, in translation, “Operation Myth.”

The Fuhrerbunker after the fall of Berlin. Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-M1204-318 / Donath, Otto / CC-BY-SA 3.0

The name of this Soviet operation itself has created plenty of confusion. Some have erroneously stated that “Operation Myth” was the name for Stalin’s disinformation campaign to make the world believe Hitler had survived, but that is not the case. Some suggest that the name indicate that the operation was intended to produce further disinformation, casting doubt on their findings, but more likely the name was meant to suggest that the operation would finally refute the growing myth of Hitler’s survival. In any case, their investigation collected further evidence of Hitler’s death, much of which contradicted the claims of their rival intelligence branch, SMERSH, who had asserted in their report that Hitler had killed himself with poison. They collected pieces of a couch with blood stains on it, which they tested and asserted were of Hitler’s blood type. Sifting through the earth of the crater from which the burnt remains believed to be Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had been unearthed, they also discovered the skull fragment with the bullet hole in it that would cause such controversy years later. Finally, they hauled key witnesses out of their Soviet prisons to interrogate and cross-interrogate them again: Heinz Linge, Hitler’s valet, Hans Baur, his personal pilot, and Otto Günsche, his aide-de-camp. These were the witnesses in the bunker whom Hugh Trevor-Roper most wanted to question, and from them they confirmed that Hitler and Eva Braun had withdrawn to their room to kill themselves, that there was blood on the floor and wall afterward as well as the strong smell of almonds indicating the presence of cyanide poison, and that they afterward were carried out in blankets to be burned outside the bunker. Not all the witnesses recalled hearing a gunshot, but still, much of the evidence indicated perhaps some combination of poisoning and self-inflicted gunshot wound had occurred. But this did not accord well with SMERSH’s supposed autopsy findings that both had poisoned themselves, which findings may only have been what they believed Stalin wanted to hear, that Hitler had taken a coward’s death rather than a more soldierly death. When the NKVD operatives conducting Operation Myth requested access to the burnt remains so that they could conduct a new autopsy, their rivals in SMERSH refused, and since the remains would later be destroyed on orders from the Kremlin, it seemed it would be impossible to ever discern whether the skull fragment with the bullet hole in it found outside the bunker was indeed from the burnt remains discovered in the same place. And so, despite his own intelligence services conducting two separate investigations that both demonstrated that Hitler and Eva Braun killed themselves, using either poison or a pistol or both, Joseph Stalin single-handedly created the myth of Hitler’s survival, and Russia would not share its findings until long after the myth had spread across the world.

Starting later that summer, the Hitler survival rumor turned into something of a hysteria across the Atlantic, when Americans, believing the sensational news reports about Hitler’s escape filtering in from overseas, began suspecting everyone around them of being Hitler. The man next most responsible for the spread of the Hitler survival myth after Stalin was J. Edgar Hoover, who since we last left him had built up his BOI into a very powerful domestic surveillance and policing organization that had been renamed the FBI. As I noted in my previous episode on the Business Plot, Hoover was a fearmonger, constantly building up anxieties about an “enemy within” the country to justify his bureau’s existence and expand its investigatory powers. Some have suggested that he really was a paranoiac, citing his interest in UFOs, his promotion of the second Red Scare, et cetera, but it is not at all clear whether he really was paranoid about these supposed threats or if he only viewed them as useful threats he could point to when justifying the powers of his FBI. Like Stalin before him, it’s not certain whether he really believed Hitler was still alive or just used the rumor for propaganda purposes. What we do know is that as newspapers began printing articles about Hitler sightings in America, he devoted a great deal of manpower to investigating them, and when everyday people started writing to him personally about their supposed sightings of the Führer, he responded to them and investigated. He tasked something like a thousand agents with running down these supposed leads on Hitler, many of which can be read today from declassified FBI files obtained through Freedom of Information requests. Some were as simple as pet theories, like someone’s hunch that Hitler must be in New York because that would be a good city in which to hide, and some were just the sharing of newspaper articles that speculated about his survival. The National Police Gazette, which was something of a combination of what today we would consider a men’s lifestyle magazine and a tabloid rag, was the biggest purveyor of these theories and sightings. Then there were genuine leads, from people who claimed to know someone who had seen him or helped him, or to know where he was, though he looked different, having shaved his signature mustache or undergone plastic surgery. Conspiracy books like Grey Wolf make much use of these declassified FBI reports, as if each provides evidence of Hitler’s escape, when in fact, each contradictory report goes to prove that such sightings were false. And while conspiracists love to point to the tips the FBI received, they don’t typically follow up by discussing the FBI’s findings. Agents ran down every lead they received and never found convincing evidence of Hitler’s presence in the U.S. Rather, as with their intelligence services counterparts, who were also investigating such rumors, they found that each lead could be attributed to hysteria, a desire to create a sensation, a sympathy for Nazism leading to attempts to create a myth about Hitler triumphing by surviving, a hope of receiving money for false information, the intention to falsely accuse someone that was disliked as in a witch hunt, and good old-fashioned mental illness.

Photo of the skull fragment purported to be from Hitler’s remains. Courtesy University of Connecticut.

Many of the supposed Hitler sightings from that era and the conspiracist scenarios that abound in media today revolve around Argentina, where the dictator Juan Perón, who had received money from the Nazi regime, might have been amenable to harboring them, and where there was a thriving German expatriate community in place. So numerous were the rumors that Hitler had been smuggled by submarine to Argentina and was living in lakeside luxury in Patagonia that J. Edgar Hoover actually sent FBI agents to Argentina to investigate. On its surface, this theory hold some merit because there were known escape routes, known as ratlines, for Nazis fleeing Europe, and Argentina did harbor some extremely high level Nazis, including Adolph Eichmann, a major architect of the Holocaust, and Joseph Mengele, a ghoulish doctor who performed horrifying experiments on concentration camp prisoners and was called the Angel of Death. However, in order to even entertain the notion that Hitler escaped via ratline to Argentina, we must disregard the evidence for his suicide that came to light following Hugh Trevor-Roper’s investigation and has continued to come to light ever since, which I will try to sum up shortly. It is true that some present in the bunker did flee after the suicides, but none actually escaped. For a long time, it was rumored that Martin Bormann, the head of the Nazi party chancellery, who did indeed flee the bunker, had escaped the Allies. Because of this, he was tried for war crimes in absentia at Nuremberg, but eventually, this rumor too was laid to rest with the discovery of his remains in 1965, remains that were confirmed by DNA testing to be Bormann’s in 1998. Thus there is no evidence that Hitler or other major figures present in the Führerbunker escaped to Argentina, and as the FBI and historians since have determined, all the accounts of Hitler’s presence in Argentina were unreliable hearsay reports about some suspicious German expatriate or other, perhaps even an escaped Nazi like Eichmann or Mengele, but not Hitler himself. Yet that has not stopped conspiracists like the authors of Grey Wolf or the producers of Hunting Hitler from spinning yarns about Hitler and Eva Braun settling in some picturesque lakeside mansion and raising a daughter together while Hitler plotted a “Fourth Reich,” all of which is pure fantasy.

The evidence overwhelmingly favors Hitler dying by suicide and being burned outside his bunker, as Linge, Baur, and Günsche all independently swore under grueling interrogation to have happened. Beyond this eyewitness testimony, though, there is the further record of Hitler’s will, dictated inside the bunker and recovered by British and American intelligence in the aftermath of the fall of Berlin, which specifically states his intention to die, or “to choose death voluntarily,” rather than be taken by enemies and being tried in some sort of “a spectacle arranged by Jews.” Witnesses in the bunker also describe Hitler’s dread at learning what had become of Benito Mussolini, whose corpse had been hung by its feet in Milan and mutilated, a fate that, according to Hans Baur, he greatly feared. Psychologically, it seems, Hitler was quite capable of suicide. As we have seen, he encouraged it among his followers. Surely Joseph and Magda Goebbels, for example, would not have taken their lives of their six children and killed themselves if they were not certain that their beloved Führer was already dead. And this Nazi tendency to suicide was not just a product of the dreadful situation within the bunker. The SS were known for their use of cyanide ampoules, and Hitler even encouraged soldiers on the front to turn their weapons on themselves rather than surrender. Suicide was viewed as a loyal act by the Nazis. Add to this Hitler’s unimaginable ego, which many believed would not allow him to go from being the belligerent dictator of millions to living the obscure life of a country hermit, and we may see the further appeal that suicide held for him. Lastly, Hitler was not a well man, and the statements of witnesses in the Führerbunker emphasize his dramatic deterioration during his last days. He had long suffered from digestive problems, perhaps due to IBS or colitis, and there are indications that his tremors, his stooping, and his shuffling walk may have been the result of Parkinson’s or late-stage syphilis. These issues cause us to doubt that Hitler was physically well enough to escape by fleeing through the city, beset as it was by Soviet forces. We further know that he was something of a hypochondriac and drug addict, taking a great many narcotic medications, including cocaine solutions and intravenous methamphetamines, along with testosterone injections, which in combination could very easily have contributed to suicidal ideation under these extreme circumstances.

Images of the teeth and jaw fragment held in Russian archives. Fair Use.

Finally, we must remember that, despite those who cry “produce the body,” the fundamental right of habeus corpus actually refers to producing the body of a prisoner being detained to allow claims of unlawful imprisonment. It does not mean that physical remains are the only way to prove a death. Nevertheless, even though Soviets destroyed the remains believed to be Hitler and Eva Braun, Soviet records of the bodies remain, as do some crucial pieces of physical evidence. First, the skull fragment with the bullet hole. It is true that we haven’t absolutely confirmed this fragment belonged to one of the corpses recovered, but it’s also true that the 2009 claim that it belonged to a young woman has been challenged. Russian archivists assert that the History Channel was never permitted to handle or take a sample of the skull, even providing evidence in the form of their visitor logs, and History Channel representatives have been cagey about the provenance of the sample tested by University of Connecticut archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni. Moreover, famed French paleopathologist Philippe Charlier did later examine the skull fragment, as chronicled in the 2018 work The Death of Hitler: The Final Word, and rejected the notion that Bellantoni could possibly determine the sex or age of the remains based solely on the density and sutures visible on the skull fragment, and confirmed that the bullet hole looked consistent with an exit word from a bullet being fired into the temple, as Heinz Linge had stated, and that the skull fragment showed definite signs of having been burned at high temperatures and buried beneath soil for some time. He also determined, based on the witness testimony, the photographic evidence, and analysis of the blood spattered furniture fragments in Russian archives, that evidence from the scene of the suicide corroborates the idea that Hitler shot himself in the side of the head, further suggesting that there may be a way to make certain of this and to determine once and for all whether the skull fragment belonged to the burned corpse that had been destroyed decades earlier.

As it turns out, the teeth and a portion of the jaw taken from those burned remains that were recovered from the crater and identified by Hitler’s dentist as belonging to him remained in a separate archive of Soviet records, further demonstrating how divided the investigation had been between rival Soviet intelligence agencies. Charlier suggested that the teeth could be matched to the skull fragment, and if there were no trace of gunpowder on them, a case could be made that Hitler shot himself, not in the mouth as some said, but in the temple as Linge had said, and that the teeth could further be tested for traces of cyanide. With the help of the authors who had worked to get him access to the separate archives, Charlier was able to examine the teeth and jaw fragment as well. His findings were published in 2018 in the European Journal of Internal Medicine. Morphological analysis showed that the jaw may belong to the same remains as the skull fragment, that no gunpowder residue was present on the teeth, and that there is evidence consistent with the interaction of cyanide with the fillings. These findings are not certain, as DNA testing would be required to determine with any certainty that the skull fragment and jaw were from the same individual, and that individual’s cause of death still cannot be pinpointed as either self-inflicted gunshot or cyanide poisoning, but it must be remembered that the teeth were identified, in detail, by Hitler’s dentists, who drew pictures of not only his teeth but also the unusual dental prosthesis they installed for him. Furthermore, Charlier was able to compare them to x-rays of Hitler’s face that had since been discovered, allowing him to confirm they were Hitler’s teeth and jaw. This, in conjunction with the overwhelming amount of witness testimony, is enough to prove to any but the most congenitally distrustful that Hitler did not effect some daring or triumphant escape, but rather that he died a coward’s death in a hole in the ground, taking women and children with him. And it is very telling that Bellantoni, the archaeologist who claimed to have debunked the skull fragment, as well as the “experts” interviewed on Hunting History, all publicly denied actually believing that Hitler survived the bunker after the 2018 publication of Charlier’s findings. According to them, they weren’t actually saying Hitler had escaped. They had been careful not to say that. Rather, they were just happy to pour fuel on the fires of conspiracy delusions and to enjoy the publicity and the money with which the History Channel rewarded them.

The x-ray of Hitler that allowed the final definitive identification of his remains. Courtesy the National Library of Medicine.

Until next time, remember that the History Channel can be ranked alongside Joseph Stalin as one of history’s biggest promoters of lies. Come at me, History Channel… unless you want to give me a lucrative programming deal. Then let’s talk.

Further Reading

Brisard, Jean-Christophe, and Lana Parshina. The Death of Hitler: The Final Word. Translated by Shaun Whiteside, Da Capo Press, 2018. 

Charlier, Philippe, et al. “The Remains of Adolf Hitler: A Biomedical Analysis and Definitive Identification.” European Journal of Medicine, vol. 54, no. 2, May 2018, DOI:10.1016/j.ejim.2018.05.014. ResearchGate, www.researchgate.net/publication/325220862_The_remains_of_Adolf_Hitler_A_biomedical_analysis_and_definitive_identification.

Daly-Groves, Luke. Hitler’s Death: The Case Against Conspiracy. Osprey Publishing, 2019.

Evans, Richard J. The Hitler Conspiracies. Oxford University Press, 2020.

McHale, Donald M. Hitler: The Survival Myth. Scarborough Books, 1983.

The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping - Part Two: Cemetery John

In September of 1934, a bank teller in the Bronx checked a gold certificate he’d received against the key provided by the Bureau of Investigation and discovered that it was one of the Lindbergh kidnapping ransom bills. He contacted the BOI. This was not in itself a major break in the Lindbergh case. Numerous gold certificates had been passed in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, such that investigators had a map of New York City up and had placed pins in all the places where the kidnapper seemed to have spent the ransom money. Most had been in either the Bronx or Upper Manhattan. What made this incident different was that a license plate number had been written on the bill. It had been passed at a gas station, and BOI investigators assumed that the attendant had been following the instructions sent out earlier that year to take down the license of anyone passing a bill whose serial number matched the list of ransom bills. In fact, when they spoke to the attendant, he actually hadn’t checked the note against the key to see if it was a ransom bill. He had written down the license number merely because he didn’t see many gold notes anymore and suspected it could be counterfeit. Either way, authorities had the license, and it led them to Richard Hauptmann, a German-born carpenter living in the Bronx. Everything fit. They knew that Cemetery John spoke with a German accent, and they suspected, based on the pattern of where the ransom bills had been spent and the fact that he had chosen Condon as intermediary presumably after reading Condon’s ad in the Bronx Home News, that he lived in the Bronx. They even suspected that he may have been a carpenter, because of the homemade ladder and the drawing he had provided for the construction of the moneybox for the ransom payoff. In fact, a forensic botanist had even traced the wood used to make the ladder to a lumber mill only 10 blocks from Hauptmann’s address, and his home was very centrally located in regards to all the meeting places that Cemetery John had chosen. They obtained a warrant and staked out Hauptmann’s home, waiting to arrest him when he left the house in hopes that he may have some ransom bills on his person. They followed his Dodge sedan as he drove toward Manhattan, and then stopped him, pulling him from behind the wheel and searching him at gunpoint. Sure enough, he had one of the ransom bills on him. “I was afraid of inflation, like in Germany, so I saved them,” he said regarding the gold certificate, private possession of which had become officially illegal back in December. Taking Hauptmann back to his home, the officers commenced searching the residence while Hauptmann’s frightened wife demanded to know what he had done. It was only because of some gambling trouble he had run into, Hauptmann reassured her in German, unaware that one of the police officers present could understand him. Hauptmann and his wife had a nearly one-year-old boy, whom his wife, Anna, took to a neighbor’s house while investigators ransacked his nursery. While they searched the house, Hauptmann’s landlady turned over some more ransom bills that he had passed to her, explaining that he had been paying his rent in gold certificates for around nine months. This would prove to be just the tip of the mountain of evidence that would eventually be accumulated to convict Richard Hauptmann. And added to it was the fact that he looked strikingly like the facial composite sketch based on John Condon’s memory of the man they called Cemetery John.

Those who believe Hauptmann to have been innocent point to the fact that the case against him was circumstantial, that John Condon would not identify him in a lineup, and under grueling and endless interrogation, during which he was denied food and sleep, he maintained his absolute innocence and gave a ready answer for anything investigators had on him. However, much of what was learned about Richard Hauptmann, whose first name was actually Bruno, seemed to cement his guilt. He had come to America from Germany, after more than one failed attempt, by stowing away on a ship. He insisted he had no criminal record in Germany, but eventually the German authorities informed investigators that he had been arrested numerous times for burglary and had done time in prison for grand larceny. Indeed, one of his burglaries involved using a ladder to climb into the second story window of a well-known person’s home, the house of the mayor of Bernhruch. In America, Hauptmann found work as a carpenter, and indeed, he admitted that he had for a time worked at the lumber mill to which the wood used to make the ladder had been traced, and that he had also bought wood from there. He told interrogators that he was doing carpentry work at a hotel on the day of the kidnapping, but investigators discovered that he actually didn’t start working there until 20 days after the kidnapping and that he quit on the very day the ransom money was paid to Cemetery John. Moreover, Hauptmann himself admitted that he had not worked as a carpenter since then but instead had been investing money in the stock market. It was his broker’s office in Manhattan to which he so frequently had driven. He had invested some $25,000 into stocks, money he supposedly had come by in buying and selling furs with a partner named Isidor Fisch, another German who conveniently could not corroborate Hauptmann’s explanation, as he had recently died of tuberculosis back in Germany. This mysterious Fisch fellow would prove to be very important to Hauptmann’s defense

Hauptmann smiling for cameras in his jail cell.

These simple circumstances of Hauptmann’s life may have looked quite bad for him, but worse than these were the pieces of hard evidence discovered in his home. He claimed never to have built or used a ladder in his work as a carpenter, but investigators found a sketch of his depicting a design for just such a ladder, showing how a rung might be attached to two rails. Moreover, police later discovered that in Hauptmann’s attic, one of the floor planks had been cut, and the wood grain matched one of the rails of the ladder used in the kidnapping: it appeared Hauptmann had scavenged some of the wood for the ladder from his rental. In his tool chest, Hauptmann had a set of chisels like the one found at the scene of the kidnapping, and more than that, the three-quarter inch chisel, the very size found beneath the nursery window, was missing from his set. Police seized notebooks with many examples of Hauptmann’s handwriting and had him write out numerous samples while in custody. It was apparent by the way his handwriting was inconsistent even within the same paragraph that he was trying to disguise his writing style, but regardless, more than one handwriting expert declared with certainty that he had written all the ransom notes, including the one left at the scene. And on the side of a closet door frame in his home, the smudged telephone number of John Condon was discovered, written in pencil. But of course, most damning of all was his possession of ransom bills. Investigators had found only a few on Hauptmann’s person at the time of his arrest, but were given a few more by his landlady, and knew he had passed one bill at a gas station. Hauptmann claimed the bills must have come into his possession through his business dealings, so it was important to tie him more unambiguously to the rest of the ransom money or by witnesses to the ransom payoff or the crime itself. While Condon equivocated about identifying Hauptmann in a lineup, the box office attendant at a theater where some ransom notes had been passed did positively identify him, as did the taxi driver who had delivered one of Cemetery John’s messages to Condon’s house. Moreover, two witnesses from Hopewell who claimed to have seen a vehicle near the Lindbergh property with a ladder in the backseat both identified Hauptmann as the driver. But the coup de grâce came when investigators searched the detached garage in which Hauptmann kept his car. He had painted the building fresh and padlocked it, and he had even run a wire from the garage all the way to his bedroom, where he could flip a switch and illuminate the little structure, seemingly as a kind of alarm. Investigators suspected the ransom money was in this garage from the start, as Hauptmann kept glancing nervously out the window at it while they were searching his home. At first, finding loose floorboards and disturbed soil beneath, they thought he had buried the money, but they found only an empty jar there, perhaps a former hiding spot for some of the money. Eventually, though investigators noticed some boards attached between joists, behind which had been constructed hidden shelves holding parcels of gold notes, wrapped in newspaper or hidden in cans. And later, after dismantling much of the garage, they found a two-by-four with holes drilled into it containing a pistol and more ransom bills, all in all totaling more than $14,000. When Hauptmann had been arrested and interrogated, the general belief had been that he was probably just one member of a kidnapping gang, but as his assets were tallied, including his stock market speculations, his bank deposits, the bills known to have been passed and circulated already, and the thousands found in his garage, it appeared that the entirety of the $50,000 ransom had been in his possession, making it very likely that he was the sole kidnapper.

When confronted with his possession of the ransom, Hauptmann said that it belonged to the enigmatic Isidor Fisch, his partner in fur trading. He said that when Isidor had gone to Germany, he had left behind a shoebox full of the gold notes, and that Hauptmann had only been spending money from it that Fisch owed him from loans. No one was buying this story, though, which since Fisch’s death in Europe could not be corroborated. Even confronted with so much evidence, Hauptmann remained steadfast under continued interrogation and did not confess. But by this time, authorities felt they had a strong enough case against Hauptmann even without a confession. The Trial of the Century began less than four months after Hauptmann’s arrest. The prosecution presented the evidence of the ransom money in his possession, the proof that he had constructed the ladder, the evidence that he had written the notes, which relied not only on handwriting analysis but also linguistic evidence in the form of Hauptmann’s consistent misspelling of words, and his positive identification by numerous witnesses—including Condon, who waited until the trial to identify him. Although a defendant found guilty of kidnapping would not typically have been sentenced to death, the prosecution argued that, even if the child’s death were accidental, since it had occurred during the committing of what was essentially a burglary, Hauptmann should be found guilty of first-degree murder. Hauptmann’s defense team challenged the validity of witness testimony and handwriting experts, further alleging police negligence in the investigation. Concentrating on his alibi, Hauptmann claimed that, though he wouldn’t actually start his job at the hotel for a few weeks, he had reported there on the day of the kidnapping, now saying he had mistaken his start date, which his employer could not confirm. To explain why he quit this job the same day Lindbergh paid the ransom, he said it had been due to a dispute over his salary. As for his whereabouts on the night Condon handed the money to Cemetery John, he said he was home playing music with his wife and a friend, which his wife and the friend confirmed, though under cross-examination his wife seemed less convincing and his friend admitted he wasn’t certain of the exact day. The defense insisted that police had coerced Hauptmann into creating the handwriting sample that would match the notes, though many of the samples used had been taken from existing pieces of writing and even in the courtroom Hauptmann continued to misspell words in such a way that they matched the ransom notes. The ransom money in his possession had been Isidor Fisch’s, he maintained, and in addition to Fisch, the defense named others they believed were more likely to be conspirators, such as the nursemaid, Betty Gow, or perhaps a certain servant at Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s family estate in Englewood, Violet Sharpe, around whom had swirled numerous rumors. And lastly, what about John Condon, the retired schoolteacher who had insinuated himself into the case and had been the only one to actually see Cemetery John, who had refused to identify Hauptmann in a lineup but then during the trial had changed his tune and fingered him as Cemetery John. The doubts cast by his defense team did not work on the jury, who found Hauptmann guilty of murder, but they convinced some following the case that he may indeed be innocent, such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Harold Hoffman, the Governor of New Jersey, who would postpone Hauptmann’s execution, urging further investigation. Eventually, though, more than a year after the verdict, Hauptmann’s appeals all failed and he was executed by electric shock.

Newspaper clipping with picture of witnesses who came from Germany to testify that Isidor Fisch had nothing to do with the kidnapping.

Hauptmann’s claims about Isidor Fisch have been roundly refuted. While the defense managed to find some witnesses to suggest he might have been Cemetery John, it was clear that the feeble, ailing Fisch did not match Condon’s physical description of the man who could so agilely jump graveyard fences and take such fast flight when spooked. Meanwhile, the prosecution produced multiple witnesses who swore that Isidor Fisch was at a certain friend’s house on the night of the kidnapping. Moreover, in the spring of 1933, when he would have been riding high on the hog like Hauptmann certainly seems to have been, Fisch appears to have been destitute. Fisch’s landlady testified that he consistently had trouble paying his rent and the BOI discovered that he had been sleeping on Manhattan park benches. Thereafter, increasingly ill, he left the country for Germany, and his sister, who also testified at Hauptmann’s trial, swore that he arrived in Leipzig with little money and only a few belongings. Add to that the fact that no ransom bills ever turned up in Germany, and it becomes an impossible-to-believe claim. It was not just far-fetched that Fisch had been involved, but also extremely implausible that he had absent-mindedly forgotten to take all of the ransom money with him when leaving the country. Even if he knew he was dying, you’d think he would take it with him to leave to his sister, who was taking him in. And Fisch’s poverty casts further doubt on Hauptmann’s claims of having made significant money with him, speculating in furs. And what’s more, the Fisch story falling apart proves that Hauptmann was coolly lying not only under interrogation, but under examination at the trial as well. His casting of doubt on John Condon, however, is a bit less easily dismissed. Many had been and continue to be suspicious of John Condon, who insinuated himself into the drama and then became the only person to have seen Cemetery John. Indeed,  police at one point leaned on Condon, trying to get him to confess to lying about the whole ransom exchange and the phantom boat, the Nelly, which had never been found. Patrons of the show know from a recent exclusive minisode that another man, John Hughes Curtis, who had also claimed to be in contact with kidnappers and had similarly led Lindbergh on a wild goose chase after a schooner off the coast of Virginia, did confess to having perpetrated a hoax. However, unlike Curtis, Condon had received letters with Hauptmann’s telltale handwriting and spelling errors, signed with the distinct symbol to prove it was from the kidnappers. Moreover, after the payoff, there is no evidence that Condon ever had any of the ransom bills in his possession or was passing them, whereas there is ample evidence of Hauptmann having received the ransom, spent much of it, and hidden the rest. Even if Hauptmann was not suggesting Condon was involved, though, he was making much of Condon’s refusal to identify him, claiming this proved he was not Cemetery John. However, there is some explanation of this. Condon actually did indicate during the lineup that Hauptmann resembled Cemetery John, but he declared that he would hold his identification “in abeyance for the present,” which of course, is not how police lineups work, which officers told him, one of them shouting, “Either you can pick the man or you can’t!” One possible reason for this refusal to cooperate is that Condon, known to be melodramatic and to enjoy attention, wanted to wait for the trial so as to provide a sensational moment in the courtroom when he did finally identify Hauptmann. Another is that he was exacting some measure of revenge against the authorities who had not long ago treated him as a suspect. And lastly, there is the distinct possibility that Condon, who had spent the last year and a half examining an endless number of similar German-speaking suspects in mugshots and lineups, simply wasn’t certain. But this is not evidence that Hauptmann was not Cemetery John, especially when other witnesses, like the taxi-driver used as a message courier, did positively identify him. Rather, it just meant that Condon was simply not that strong an eyewitness.

Among the several persistent doubts about the case today is the idea that Hauptmann was only one member of a kidnap gang. From the very beginning, it was presumed by many that there had been more than one kidnapper. In fact, we hear it stated in newsreels as though it is fact. One persistent myth is that there were two sets of footprints at the scene of the crime, but in fact, the report of the New Jersey State Police who examined the scene does not mention two sets of footprints at all. Some have claimed that the ladder was too difficult to assemble and use alone, that Hauptmann must have had someone there to help him and perhaps hold it in place. However, one may assume that the man who built the ladder would be capable of assembling it, and examination of the crime scene showed, based on rubbing marks below the nursery window, that only two sections of the ladder were used. Moreover, there was evidence that the ladder broke and the kidnapper may have fallen, perhaps in the process killing the baby, which would further accord with the idea that no one else had been present to hold the sections of the ladder in place while the kidnapper descended. Nevertheless, the persistent assumption that the kidnapper did not act alone has led to many elaborate theories. Take the 2012 book Cemetery John by Robert Zorn. In it, the author presents a complicated case that two other German residents of the Bronx were Hauptmann’s co-conspirators, based mostly on the fact that his father, who had been neighbors with the men as a teen, recalled hearing the two men talk to a third man in German, and remembered them using the words “Bruno,” Hauptmann’s actual first name, and “Englewood,” the town where the Lindberghs usually stayed with Anne’s family, the Morrows, while their Hopewell home was being built. From this conversation, remembered in the 1960s and only shared with the author in the 1980s, Zorn weaves a large web, claiming that his father’s neighbor was Cemetery John, because, among other things, he was named John, because he lived in the Bronx just like Hauptmann, because his handwriting and accent also matched, and because he left America for Germany after Hauptmann was arrested and did not return until after his execution, at which time he opened some delis. He presumes a connection to Hauptmann without evidence, assuming they might have looked each other up because they were both from the same town in Germany. He makes a convincing case that his Cemetery John matched Condon’s description better than Hauptmann did because of a certain fleshy mass on his thumb, though when you realize that his evidence comes down to a blurry photo and a niece confirming privately to him the presence of a growth on his thumb, you start to realize his evidence is not ironclad. He presents the man’s trip to Germany as a kind of panicked flight, but in reality, he didn’t leave until the day of Hauptmann’s conviction. If he were really concerned about Hauptmann dropping the dime on him, why wouldn’t he have left five months earlier, when Hauptmann was arrested? And the man’s opening of some delis upon his return from Germany is presented as evidence that he was spending ransom money, but it must be remembered that no other person was ever caught in possession of the ransom money like Hauptmann was, and there is strong indication that the majority of the ransom money had either been spent by him, invested by him, or hidden by him. Add to that the fact that no ransom money was ever discovered to have been passed in Germany, and after Hauptmann’s trial and execution no further ransom money ever turned up, and it is clear that Zorn’s claims, while intriguing, lack much merit. 

The image Robert Zorn claims in Cemetery John shows clearly that his suspect had the lumpy thumb that proves he was the real culprit. Reproduced under the doctrine of “fair use.”

Both at the time of the initial investigation and ever since, many suspected that a household staffer must have been an accomplice, perhaps telling Hauptmann that the Lindberghs would be at their unfinished estate that week, identifying which window would give him access to the nursery and what time to make the attempt. However, witness statements indicate that Hauptmann may have been casing the Hopewell mansion, and staff testimony indicates that, if he had been watching, he would have had no trouble figuring out which was the nursery window. It seems that, the day before the kidnapping, Mrs. Lindbergh had been strolling the grounds and stopped to toss some pebbles at the nursery window to get the nursemaid Betty Gow’s attention. Indeed, an additional, smaller footprint that appears to have caused some of the confusion about multiple sets of footprints was believed by police to have been left by Mrs. Lindbergh. Hearing the tap of the pebble, Betty Gow came to the window, carrying the baby, and moved his little arm to make him wave down to his mother. So it was entirely possible for Hauptmann to have spied out which window to enter without ever colluding with any servants. But unsurprisingly, as she had been in the nursery the most and had discovered the crime, Betty Gow became the person the police were most interested in at first. She had received a phone call from her boyfriend a half hour before the kidnapping. Had that been a signal? Had she hastily sewn together the baby’s flannel undershirt to ensure he would be warm when taken out into the cold? They questioned Gow, determining that she had no ties to the organized crime syndicates involved in the so-called “snatch racket,” and they interrogated her boyfriend, finding only an empty milk bottle in his car to suggest he might have had a baby in it, which he explained by saying he simply liked to drink milk and often emptied a bottle while driving. In short, there was nothing on Gow. Likewise, as if to indulge in the trope of the butler having done it, the good names of the Whateleys were dragged through the mud in newspaper stories suggesting their involvement, even though the investigation turned up no reason to suspect they had anything to do with the kidnapping. The suspicion then spread beyond the Hopewell staff to the staff of the Morrow household in Englewood, where the Lindberghs had been staying, with the idea that a servant there may have known when they were staying in Hopewell. Suspicion fell especially on Violet Sharpe, who seemed nervous and evasive in her first interview, though she explained her demeanor herself, expressing resentment that they were even questioning her about the crime. Because of her reaction to initial questioning, though, Sharpe became a principal suspect early in the police investigation.

Police suspicion was further piqued by the fact that Violet Sharpe had been out on a date to the movies with a man she said she barely knew on the night of the kidnapping. When pressed for his name, she claimed not to remember it, as she had only met him on the street the day before their date and had not seen him since. Indeed, she even resisted naming the movie they had seen or even describing it, saying they had no right to pry into her private life. In her second interview, she changed her story and said they had gone to a speakeasy, but couldn’t remember just where it was. This time she recalled that her date’s first name was Ernie. Police eventually came to believe that her Ernie was a certain known thief named Ernie Brinkert, whose business card they had discovered in Sharpe’s room, and Violet actually positively identified him, but police were baffled when this Brinkert produced an ironclad alibi, proving that he was neither the kidnapper nor the man who took Violet out that night. Following the discovery of the baby’s remains, Violet was interrogated further, grilled more and more harshly. Eventually, saying she would not endure further interrogation, she killed herself, drinking cyanide chloride, which was kept in the house to clean silver. Of course, at the time, and ever since, her suicide was looked at as proof that she was involved or knew more than she was saying, as is always the case with deaths surrounding much-debated and publicized crimes like this. The fact is, though, that police would go on to track down her Ernie, who confirmed her story that he had taken her to a roadhouse called the Peanut Grill that night, and police further confirmed this alibi with others present at the speakeasy. It became clearer and clearer that Violet Sharpe had only lied and been evasive in her first interview because she didn’t want it known that she was frequenting speakeasies. And afterward, when she incorrectly identified Brinkert, police had been interrogating her against her doctor’s wishes just after a surgery to remove infected adenoids and tonsils. She had been weak, having wasted away and become thin during her hospitalization, and was even running a fever. In addition, she was greatly depressed following the news that the baby had been killed, and had even written a letter to a friend in England saying that “life is getting so sad I really don’t think there is much to live for any more.” Add to that the humiliation and emotional distress of being roughly interrogated by police and made to feel that everyone believed she was responsible for the baby’s death, and we might better understand why she was driven to take her own life. Even though the Morrows and the Lindberghs continually insisted that neither Violet nor any other household staff member was involved, the police kept pushing Violet Sharpe until she was over the edge. She is often considered the second victim of the Lindbergh Kidnapping Case.

An example of the news coverage of suspicion of Violet Sharpe. Reproduced under the doctrine of “fair use.”

Claims of conspiracy within the family’s household have not remained limited to the staff, either. Some have gone so far as to theorize that the Lindberghs themselves might have been involved, and that the kidnapping was a hoax. Among the first to make such claims were Gregory Ahlgren and Stephen Monier in their 1993 work, Crime of the Century: The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax, in which they suggest that Lindbergh, who was fond of rough play and practical jokes, may have accidentally killed his own son and then concocted the kidnapping as a cover-up. They offer no actual evidence for the claim, relying only on insinuation, suggesting that Lindbergh had his baby’s remains cremated quickly in order to avoid an autopsy, when of course the baby’s remains did undergo an autopsy, conducted by Dr. Charles H. Mitchell of the county coroner’s office. Next came novelist Noel Behn’s 1994 book Lindbergh: The Crime, which retreads a conspiracy claim that first appeared during Hauptmann’s appeals, when he had the New Jersey governor’s ear and numerous alternative theories were being bandied about to see what stuck. The claim is that the Eaglet, or Baby Lindy, as newspapers frequently called him, was actually killed in an act of revenge by Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s emotionally troubled sister, Elizabeth, who had apparently been in love with Charles and felt spurned when he chose to marry her sister. Yet again, though, the work is short on actual evidence, citing records that show Elizabeth, an emotionally unstable family member, was being sheltered from press scrutiny after the kidnapping, which of course is hardly surprising. The claim that she had hurt the boy originates from a lawyer who was investigating the matter for the governor, who at 93 years old confided in private discussion with the author that another Morrow household servant had implicated Elizabeth, though in all the extensive police interrogation of the staff, there is no record of this. And finally, there is Lise Pearlman’s 2020 book The Lindbergh Kidnapping Suspect No. 1: The Man Who Got Away, which posits, unbelievably, that Charles Lindbergh purposely sedated his child and surrendered him to a fanatical surgeon for eugenicist experimentation. Certainly Lindbergh knew this surgeon, and certainly the doctor’s influence would lead him to embrace eugenicist thought, which in turn would eventually lead to Lindbergh’s well-known Nazi sympathies and anti-Semitism, but again, there just isn’t evidence to support it, and in fact, there is ample evidence from Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s letters to demonstrate how much Charles loved his son. All of these conspiracy claims suggest that, to cover up the death of his child, Charles Lindbergh launched a nationwide news sensation, which seems rather counterproductive. They claim that Lindbergh personally taking over the investigation before the discovery of his son’s remains was a way for him to control the cover-up, yet he doggedly followed every lead and tirelessly saw every wild goose chase through to its conclusion. And all reports indicate the extreme emotional distress that he and Anne were suffering during this time. Think, for example, of Condon’s description of Charles’s hands trembling when he opened Cemetery John’s letter to find out the location of his son. Furthermore, for any of these conspiracy theories to have been true, it would mean that numerous people, including the household staff who had been so thoroughly interrogated that one of them was driven to kill herself, were in on it and took the secret to their graves. I have little sympathy for the Nazi apologist that Charles Lindbergh would eventually become, but I sympathize with him immensely as a parent who lost his infant child, and none of these outlandish claims, all of them cooked up to sell books, do I find the least bit convincing.

Many of the claims that Hauptmann was innocent rely on assertions that the police investigation was flawed or negligent or even a fraud. There is no reason to believe that, for example, police planted evidence in Hauptmann’s home. Hauptmann claimed that he had not written Condon’s phone number on his closet wall, but of course the really damning evidence was the ransom money that Hauptmann had stashed around his garage, and he never claimed police had planted that. He copped to possessing it, offering only the lame excuse that it belonged to a friend. However, it should be acknowledged that there were definite missteps in the police investigation. Because there was no discernible tread in either the footprints or the nearby tire tracks, police just photographed them and didn’t bother making plaster casts, but they didn’t properly record their measurements, instead eyeballing them using a flashlight for scale. After the baby’s remains were discovered so near the Lindbergh home, critics questioned why the police had not properly searched all the woods in the few square miles around the house, or why they had not used bloodhounds. The head of the State Police said dogs had not been available, but this was shown to be untrue. The real reason was that he incorrectly believed that the crowds and the rain would have prevented the dogs from picking up a scent. But Hanlon’s razor, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity,” should show us that this is not evidence of a police cover-up. The police were often blamed for heedlessly destroying evidence at the crime scene, with one writer, Henry Morton Robinson, claiming they were “trampling every clue into the March mud, systematically covering with impenetrable layers of stupidity every fingerprint, footprint, dust trace on the estate.” But this is a myth. They were in some regards neglectful, but otherwise made every effort to preserve evidence before the arrival of the real culprits, the throngs of reporters and looky-loos who almost certainly did corrupt the crime scene. Additionally, when Hauptmann was put in a lineup for Condon and others to identify, authorities appear to have simply thrown their suspect in among a group of policemen who looked nothing like him in build or features, providing another reason why perhaps Condon was at first loath to identify him, if it seemed the police were trying to rush the identification. However, none of these criticisms overturn the persuasive evidence of the ladder, the handwriting, and his possession of the ransom money.

Handwriting evidence from the trial, via HistoricalTrialTranscripts.com

Trial evidence of from Hauptmann’s attic, proving he had assembled the ladder, via HistoricalTrialTranscripts.com

A concession should be made that there is some compelling reason to entertain the idea that Hauptmann may have had an accomplice whom he never gave up. Around the deadline for surrendering gold certificates to the treasury, about $3000 in gold notes from the ransom payoff were passed by someone who wrote the name J.J. Faulkner on a deposit slip. The address provided had been fake, and no description of the person was ever obtained. We might simply presume that this was Hauptmann, except for the fact that the handwriting on the deposit slip did not match Hauptmann’s. Of course, this has led to extensive theorizing, especially since, during Hauptmann’s final appeals, a letter to the governor arrived, signed by J. J. Faulkner, claiming Hauptmann was innocent. Now, there are claims that the handwriting in this letter matched the deposit slip and matched the ransom notes, but these claims were made by a private eye working to exonerate Hauptmann and were not supported by handwriting experts. Moreover, it makes no sense to claim that the writing in the Faulkner letter matched that in the Faulkner deposit slip and the ransom notes, since it was determined that the handwriting on the deposit slip and the ransom notes did not match. One has only to read Faulkner’s letter to the governor, with its florid, sophisticated language and lack of the ransom notes’ telltale misspellings, to discern they were written by someone else, and the fact that photos of Faulkner’s deposit slip signature had appeared in newspapers made it highly likely that the eleventh-hour letter to the governor was a forgery and a hoax. This has not stopped a grand conspiracy from emerging that J. J. Faulkner was actually a certain international spy who had masterminded the kidnapping plot, and that Hauptmann was only guilty of purchasing “hot” currency from the kidnapper at a markup in order to pass it himself and make a profit. Of course, this theory completely discounts the clear handwriting evidence, and lacks logic, for if that were all Hauptmann was guilty of, why would he go to his death rather than confess it and clear his name of child murder? If the Faulkner deposit was made by an accomplice of Hauptmann’s, they must have played a small part in the crime, having only received a small portion of the ransom. But just as likely, Hauptmann could have asked someone else, someone who didn’t know who he was, to fill out the deposit slip for him. It has been pointed out by those who believe Hauptmann had accomplices that a few bills of the ransom payoff were identified as far away as Michigan, but it must be acknowledged that, when money enters circulation, it travels. We don’t know whether those who passed a bill received it in some private transaction from someone else, so whoever carried these few bills to Michigan may have had nothing to do with the crime. In the end, since Hauptmann denied everything to his last breath, we will likely never know if he acted alone.

Hauptmann certainly was guilty of involvement in the kidnapping. Numerous times, the police caught him lying, about his employment and whereabouts on the day of the crime, about how much of the ransom money he possessed, and about how long he had been in possession of it and aware of it. The earliest bills discovered in circulation, back in 1933, had been folded distinctively into eighths, and when Hauptmann was arrested, a bill on his person was folded the same way, convincingly demonstrating that it had been he who was passing the ransom bills all along. If he had played only a small part in the crime, as a go-between or an underling, as he had tried to make it out to seem when speaking to Condon in the graveyard, then one imagines he would certainly have tried to cut a deal for a further stay of execution in exchange for information that might lead to the other perpetrators, especially since he had the ear of the governor, who was actively looking for a reason to pardon him. Instead, he went to the electric chair insisting on his innocence, likely because, if he couldn’t beat the charges, he did not want his wife and son to remember him as a confessed child killer. Nevertheless, there is certainly a case to be made that a miscarriage of justice occurred. With the distinct possibility that Charles Lindbergh, Jr., was accidentally killed during the kidnapping, and with no evidence that Hauptmann ever intended to purposely murder the child, the typical requirement for a first-degree murder charge—proof of intent, premeditation, or malice aforethought—was not met. To convict Hauptmann of first-degree murder, then, they had to rely on the common law doctrine of felony murder, that a death, even an accidental death, that occurred during or because of the commission of a felony crime, constituted first-degree murder. The problem was, kidnapping at the time was not a felony in New Jersey, so they actually charged Hauptmann with burglary, or more specifically, the theft of the child’s clothing. After that, the Lindbergh Law made kidnapping a federal crime, and now many states have a felony murder rule on the books that would make any accidental death during a kidnapping into a first-degree murder. Many argue that the felony murder doctrine is used to justify extreme sentencing, out of proportion with the severity of the crime, and certainly there is no sentence more extreme than that which Hauptmann received. One wonders, if he had been sentenced to life instead of death, if we might have eventually discovered more about the kidnapping or even obtained the confession he refused to give while the eye of the nation scrutinized him. Or perhaps, like James Earl Ray, he would only have further encouraged from his prison cell the outlandish conspiracy claims that developed through the years, such as the numerous assertions of people who claim that the remains discovered were not actually those of the Lindbergh baby, and that in fact they are the Lindbergh baby. More on that in an upcoming exclusive patron minisode. To conclude this series, let’s just say that, much like the JFK assassination, despite the muddying of the waters by conspiracy speculators and the press, when the sediment settles, it’s pretty clear to see that they did catch the right guy and he probably did act alone.

A photographic composite depicting Hauptmann being prepared for execution, courtesy The Met.

Until next time, remember, conspiracy speculation, no matter how untenable, draws the interest of the media far more than rational analysis. Back in the 30s, it made for an attention-grabbing headline at the newsstand, and today, it makes for tempting clickbait links. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Further Reading

Behn, Noel. Lindbergh: The Crime. The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994.

Fisher, Jim. The Lindbergh Case. Rutgers University Press, 1987.

---. The Ghosts of Hopewell: Setting the Record Straight in the Lindbergh Case. Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.

Milton, Joyce. Loss of Eden: A Biography of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. HarperCollins, 1993.

Stout, David. The Kidnap Years: The Astonishing True History of the Forgotten Kidnapping Epidemic that Shook Depression-Era America. Sourcebooks, 2020.

Zorn, Robert. Cemetery John: The Undiscovered Mastermind of the Lindbergh Kidnapping. The Overlook Press, 2012.

The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping - Part One: The Eaglet

In 1924, Richard Albert Loeb and Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Jr., two wealthy University of Chicago students who fancied themselves intellectuals, abducted and murdered a 14-year-old Chicago boy simply to prove that they were smarter than authorities and could pull off the perfect crime. The trial of Leopold and Loeb for what the press at the time called the “crime of the century” became a media sensation, inspiring great outrage when famous lawyer Clarence Darrow’s impassioned 12-hour summation in their defense saved them from the electric chair. Besides Leopold and Loeb, most headline-grabbing crime in those years had to do with underworld gangsters, much of it revolving around the bootlegging of liquor during Prohibition. Nine years after the Leopold and Loeb verdict, however, the Wall Street Crash marked the start of the Great Depression, and as authorities struggled to enforce the Volstead Act during a time when Americans needed a drink more than ever, support for Prohibition waned. Shortly after taking office, FDR famously said “I think this would be a good time to have a beer,” and not long after signed a bill permitting the manufacture and sale of beer and wine. Bootlegging as a lucrative criminal enterprise had been on the decline for years as enforcement of Prohibition grew more and more unpopular. But at the same time, more and more Americans were becoming jobless and drawn to criminal endeavors. So what lucrative crime could these desperate individuals pursue? The answer came from the famous Crime of the Century: kidnapping, but for ransom, not for the thrill of getting away with murder. An epidemic of kidnapping developed in the late 1920s and early 1930s that was eventually recognized as “a Rising Menace to the Nation” by the New York Times. This forgotten backdrop is detailed in David Stout’s The Kidnap Years. One metropolitan police chief collected statistics from all over the nation and learned that in 1931 alone, there had been nearly 300 confirmed kidnappings, and of course likely many more, since it was typical for victims’ families not to inform the police of such crimes, as kidnappers usually instructed them. There had been famous cases of abduction and murder during the preceding years, of Marion Parker in California in 1927, and Grace Budd in New York in 1928, the latter killed by the notorious serial murderer Albert Fish. But in 1931, it seemed to become a standard business model. Among the biggest cases that year were the ransoming of the 13-year-old heir to the Anheuser-Busch beer fortune on New Year’s Eve 1930, the abduction of prominent St. Louis surgeon Isaac Kelley in April, and the kidnapping successful fashion designer Nell Donnelly in December. In March of 1932, a year before FDR would take office, a spate of kidnappings occurred. On March 2nd, the son of a wealthy contractor in Ohio was snatched, and on the 14th, a Peoria, Illinois, doctor was kidnapped by a crew of plotters consisting of a petty criminal, a Sunday school teacher, and a former mayoral candidate. Certainly one or both of these kidnappings would have captured the public’s interest had not they been so dramatically overshadowed by another kidnapping that had occurred on the first of March: the abduction of an American hero’s baby boy right out of his nursery, a case that would quickly take the title of “Crime of the Century” away from Leopold and Loeb, becoming a media sensation unlike any mystery before it, and spawning numerous pet theories and alternative views of what happened even after the crime had apparently been solved.

A full accounting of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, called by journalist H.L. Mencken “the biggest story since the Resurrection,” requires first an understanding of Charles Lindbergh’s celebrity, which itself requires a general understanding of his accomplishments as a pilot. Let us therefore begin with a brief description of Charles Lindbergh’s career and life preceding the events in question. Charles Augustus Lindbergh, nicknamed Slim, was a tall and slender young man of 25 when he earned his great fame. The son of a Minnesota congressman, he had been an Army Air Service cadet and later an airmail pilot. It was during this service that he began to dream about being the first person to fly non-stop across the Atlantic. For years, since 1919, there had been a standing prize offered: twenty-five grand would go to the first pilot who flew an airplane specifically non-stop from New York to Paris. Numerous trans-atlantic flights had already been accomplished by dirigibles and by planes if they flew the shorter distance between Newfoundland and Ireland or made a stop at the Azores on the way to Europe, but no non-stop plane flights from New York to France. That was actually impossible, many said, due the weight of the fuel that would be required to travel that distance without stopping, and supporting this assertion was the well-publicized failure of Paul-René Fonck, whose plane was so weighed down that it crashed on take-off. Indeed, there were several such crashes, a few of which resulted in the deaths of pilots. Nevertheless, Charles Lindbergh believed it could be done, with the construction of a custom aircraft. It would have to be a single engine plane in order to reduce weight, and additional fuel tanks would need to be built into the nose, which would block his view from the cockpit, requiring him to use a periscope to see ahead of him. He managed to get the aircraft built with the promise of paying back his financers with his prize money, and on May 20th, 1927, he took off in the custom-designed plane, which he had christened the Spirit of St. Louis. Already the press was following his attempt, and as he flew, listeners heard breathless reports of his progress on the radio. The next day, by the time he triumphantly landed in France, greeted by a cheering crowd, he was already world-famous. His life changed instantly, becoming a series of parades and parties, encounters with royalty and movie stars, and constant badgering by news reporters. More than just a celebrity, though, Lindbergh was thought of as an American hero, winning respect for U.S. aviators during a time when their achievements were largely overshadowed by Europeans. He was knighted in Belgium and awarded numerous different honors, trophies, and medals, including the Congressional Medal of Honor, which had to be awarded by a Special Act of Congress since it typically was only awarded for acts of valor in battle. Lindbergh commenced touring Europe and then the U.S., showing off his plane and waving to adoring crowds. The interest of the press only increased, and as he was an eligible bachelor, much attention was given to his personal life and romantic interests. When in 1929 he married Anne Spencer Morrow, daughter of a U.S. ambassador to Mexico, they had to conduct the ceremony in secret to preserve their privacy. In 1930, when Anne bore his son, Charles Jr., and the newspapers began giving the boy nicknames like Baby Lindy and the Eaglet, they finally decided that they’d had enough of life in the spotlight, and they bought 400 acres outside the little township of Hopewell, New Jersey, about 14 miles north of Trenton, thinking that the distance from the hubbub of the city might afford them more privacy. Little did they know they were about to be thrust into the spotlight far more even than before, and for horrific reason.

Lindbergh posing next to the custom-built Spirit of St. Louis.

On the night of Tuesday, March 1st, 1932, the Lindberghs were at their nearly complete new home in Hopewell, having come to stay for a weekend getaway. Present that evening in the two-story, 10-room stone house secluded in the woods overlooking Hopewell Valley were Lindbergh himself; Anne and little Charles Jr., who both were getting over colds; Oliver and Elsie Whately, who served as the family’s butler and cook, respectively; and Betty Gow, a young nursemaid recently engaged by the Lindberghs to look after Charles Jr. Because of the baby’s sniffles, when it had been time to put him to bed, his mother rubbed him with Vick’s Vaporub, and then she and Betty pulled two shirts over him to keep him warm, one of them a flannel garment Betty had hastily cut out and sewn together, before buttoning him into his onesie sleeping suit, placing him in his crib and pinning his blankets down to keep him well tucked in. At around 9:00 p.m., Charles would later recall hearing a clatter and assuming that an orange crate had fallen to the kitchen floor. At around 10:00 p.m., while Charles was in his library and Anne preparing for bed, Betty Gow went to check on Charles Jr. and, not hearing his breathing, she approached his crib and found he was not in it. She rushed madly to find Anne, to see if she’d taken the baby, and finding she hadn’t, she ran downstairs to see if the child with his father. Answering that he did not have the baby, and sensing Gow’s urgency, he went to a closet to find his rifle. They searched the nursery and, experiencing every parent’s true nightmare, found it empty. Charles noticed specifically that the blanket was still pinned down, such that the baby could not have gotten out on his own, and he further saw that the southeast window was up and its shutter open. That’s when his eyes fell to the sill, where he saw an envelope that he immediately suspected was a ransom note. “They’ve stolen our baby!” he cried. Anne ran to another window and peered outside. She thought for a moment that she heard the cry of her child, but Elsie Whately assured her it was only the wind. Charles warned everyone not to touch the envelope, as he wanted it fingerprinted first, and went outside to search the road, where he saw nothing. By 10:40 p.m., Hopewell police officers responded to their telephone call, and by flashlight, the first of the evidence was discovered: footprints in the mud, two deep impressions as from a ladder, and some 75 feet from the house, the ladder itself, a homemade affair separated into three sections. Lastly, a chisel was discovered beneath the window, a tool presumably used to force open the shutters. Upon closer examination of the ladder the next day, it was clear that it had been crudely made, though ingeniously designed so that it could be disassembled and fit into an automobile. Indeed a set of tire tracks had been discovered east of the property, but with no clear tread pattern. What’s more, the side rails of the ladder had split, causing Charles to suspect that the noise he had heard had been the kidnapper’s ladder breaking as he descended with the child. Other than these things, the biggest piece of evidence was the note, which demanded $50,000 in certain denominations and stated that the kidnapper would be in contact within a few days with the location to which they were to deliver it. The letter contained numerous spelling errors, and it concluded with a strange circular symbol with interlocking rings and holes punched into the paper. The kidnapper indicated that this symbol would appear on all future correspondence so that the Lindberghs would know the communication was truly from their son’s captor.

The house in Hopewell that the Lindberghs had hoped would be a peaceful refuge had turned into a circus. Police photographers flashed photographs well into the night outside as well as in the nursery, where they discovered some mud presumably tracked in by the kidnapper. And by the morning, word of the crime having reached the press overnight, their property was swarmed by reporters and even just interested onlookers. Before police were able to control the growing crowd, it is very likely that evidence not noticed in the dark of night was destroyed by their careless trampling the next day. Police efforts were swift and thorough, though. They questioned neighbors, notified hospitals, established roadblocks and checkpoints, and rounded up known criminals and suspicious individuals across New Jersey. No reliable leads turned up, but false leads abounded. Many were the reports of mysterious cars near the Lindbergh estate, or drivers asking directions to their home, or conversations about the baby being overheard, but nothing panned out. Likewise, forensic examination of the evidence yielded nothing. No fingerprints could be lifted from the note, the ladder, or the chisel, and just as no tread pattern was discernible in the tire tracks discovered, so too no tread pattern was visible in the footprints, but as the pattern of some kind of woven fabric could be observed, they suspected the kidnapper had wrapped his shoes in cloth. Concerned that the authorities, whom the kidnapper had stated must not be involved, could make some misstep that would result in harm to his son, Charles Lindbergh insisted that he be in charge of the investigation, an unusual demand, but considering who he was and the extraordinary nature of the case, one to which police investigators agreed. Lindbergh wanted to make contact with underworld figures, thinking they might be able to discover the kidnapper’s identity. Indeed, he brought a local racketeer into the investigation who suggested that the kidnappers were associated with Al Capone’s Chicago mafia organization, and there was even some communication with Capone himself, who was in jail at the time for tax evasion, and teased that he could help find the baby if only he were released. Detectives were doubtful, however, believing that they were dealing with an amateur kidnapper, as a professional would have demanded a far larger ransom. When these efforts also gleaned nothing, it seemed they could only wait for the kidnapper to mail them the next communication. The problem was that the Lindberghs had begun receiving mass quantities of mail, including useless leads from people who thought they were helping, mystical accounts of dreams and psychic visions that were likewise worthless, and new ransom letters that were clearly phony, lacking the kidnapper’s signature symbol. Lindbergh took to placing prominent statements in the newspaper, appealing to the kidnapper to begin communications. On March 4th, the next genuine ransom letter finally came. In it, the kidnapper, who as in the first letter used the collective first-person pronoun “we,” suggesting more than one person’s involvement, expressed anger at the Lindberghs having involved police and made the kidnapping public and demanded an additional $20,000, saying they were forced to involve “another person.” Not only was this letter signed with the unique symbol, it contained many of the same misspellings as the letter left on the nursery windowsill. After that, another letter was sent to the Lindbergh’s attorney, this one demanding some go-between to ensure there would be no police interference in their communications, and in a message published in the papers, the Lindberghs named two bootleggers and speakeasy owners as their representatives. Lindbergh had made their acquaintance during his underworld inquiries, and when he named them as his representatives, thinking the kidnapper would be more comfortable dealing with fellow criminals, it sparked a great deal of public criticism. When no word came from the kidnapper for more than a week, Lindbergh feared that he had made a terrible misstep and that communication had totally broken down.

The ransom note, with the kidnapper’s symbol, left in the nursery on the night of the kidnapping.

In the Bronx, meanwhile, an elderly retired grade school principal named John Condon had been following the news. He revered Charles Lindbergh and thought the crime a terrible disgrace, and after the furor over the intermediaries Lindbergh had named, he took it upon himself to offer his own services as intermediary. Condon was known to be a hardworking educator, and a patriotic and religious fellow, to the point that some thought him an arrogant and haughty busybody, making a show of his principles. In a letter published in the Bronx Home News, he made the offer and sweetened the deal by saying he would add one thousand dollars of his own money to the ransom. Many thought he was attention seeking by sticking his nose in the Lindbergh case. His detractors were quite as surprised as he was when the Lindbergh kidnapper sent him a letter accepting his proposition, enclosing another letter for Condon to deliver to Lindbergh. When Condon telephoned Lindbergh, who had him open and read the enclosed letter, Lindbergh did not seem to take it very seriously until Condon described the symbol at the bottom of the page. That night, Lindbergh made immediate arrangements to meet with Condon. The letter directed Lindbergh to put the ransom money in a custom made box, and included a sketch like something a carpenter might draw. Condon was to be given the money and await word on where to take it. Meanwhile, Lindbergh was to keep an airplane ready for when he was given the location of his son. They made arrangements, the Lindberghs putting messages in the newspaper to the effect that they accepted Condon as intermediary—though they called him by the code name Jafsie, based on his initials J.F.C., in order to keep the press from identifying him. Condon took some toys from the nursery, hoping to present them to the child if the boy were present at the meeting, and thereby confirm his identity by his reaction to them, and he also took the pins from the crib blanket, planning to ask the kidnappers whether they could say where they had seen them before and thus likewise confirm that he was indeed dealing with the genuine abductors. After the message was printed in the papers, Condon received a phone call from a man with a German accent who instructed him when to be at home and expect further instructions. Condon believed he heard the caller talking to someone else during the call, further supporting the belief that there were at least two kidnappers. By March 12th, Condon had in his possession the custom built box they’d made to the kidnapper’s specifications. It was empty, however, as they would not have the ransom money on hand for another several days. At the appointed time when he had been told to always be home in order to receive further communication, a man rang his doorbell. He was a taxi driver who had been approached by a man with a German accent and given an envelope to deliver. In it were directions on where to go with the ransom money, and instructions to be there within 45 minutes.

In a panic, John Condon drove to the location in the letter, a certain porch near a hot dog stand where the letter stated further instructions awaited. His only hope was to meet with the kidnappers and explain the situation, that he did not yet have the money to give them, that he needed more time. At the location, he found a note directing him into a cemetery across the street. Condon went alone into the cemetery, and finding no one, he thought at first that something had gone wrong. Eventually, though, he saw a man signaling him from afar by waving a white handkerchief. Condon approached the man, who wore a dark overcoat, pulled a hat pulled down over his eyes, and held his handkerchief to his mouth and nose to hide his face. He spoke with the same thick German accent Condon had heard on the phone, asking if Condon had the money, and Condon told him he could not bring it until he saw the baby. Seeing a security guard, the man in the overcoat became spooked, leapt over an iron fence and bolted. Condon chased after him, calling to him, and eventually the man stopped running and allowed the 72-year-old Condon to catch up. Explaining his sudden flight, the man said, “It was too much risk. I would get thirty years if I am caught. And I am only go-between. I might burn.” Condon seized on this remark, asking what he meant that he might burn. “What if the baby is dead?” he replied. “Would I burn if the baby is dead?” Condon demanded to know if the baby was in fact dead, and the man reassured him the baby was well. Condon then sought to confirm his identity as the actual kidnapper, producing the safety pins, which the man in the overcoat readily identified as the pins that had fastened down the baby’s blanket in his crib, contradicting his previous claim of being a mere go-between. That is when the man opened up. He said his name was John, that he was part of a six person gang, the leader being a “high-level government employee.” He stated that Charles Jr. was aboard a boat moored some six hours away. Condon offered to be taken hostage so that he could be shown the baby, but John, who would come to be called Cemetery John, refused, promising instead to send the baby’s sleeping suit as proof.  A few days after this initial meeting, the baby’s pajamas were indeed mailed to Condon.  In good faith, Lindbergh collected the ransom money. However, on the advice of the IRS investigator who had famously put Al Capone away, he recorded the serial numbers of all the bills, and the bulk of the money would be in gold certificates, for already it was believed that the country may soon end the gold standard, at which point the kidnapper would draw attention when spending them or would have to exchange them, affording some further chance of apprehending him.

John Condon, aka Jafsie, the volunteer intermediary.

The Lindberghs continued to communicate with their child’s abductor through vague newspaper ads and received several more, increasingly impatient letters from Cemetery John, or from his superior in the gang, each containing the same familiar spelling errors and circular symbol. It would take another two agonizing weeks to prepare the ransom package and communicate their readiness to make the payoff. On April 2nd, at the specified time, another cab driver left another envelope at Condon’s doorstep, this one directing him to carry the ransom to a certain florist’s greenhouse, where he would find a further note. This time, Charles Lindbergh came with Condon, and he was armed. Upon their arrival, the note once again told him to walk alone to a graveyard located nearby, which Condon did, though he disobeyed the instructions to bring the money with him. He was cagey, realizing that he might be murdered for being the only person who had seen Cemetery John’s face. He skirted the graveyard, looking for an ambush, and eventually, Cemetery John called out to him. They walked to meet one another, and Cemetery John, crouching behind a shrub, demanded he go and get the money. When Condon came back with the ransom, Cemetery John checked it and then gave Condon an envelope, instructing him not to open it for six hours. Condon and Lindbergh then drove some distance up the road before Condon convinced Lindbergh to stop and open the envelope. His hands trembling, Lindbergh read that his son was being cared for by two innocent women aboard a boat called “Nelly” moored near the Elizabeth Islands. That very night, at 2am, he drove to an airfield and took off in a large, amphibious Sikorsky aircraft to search for the boat. For six hours that morning, he scoured the waters surrounding the Elizabeth Islands, buzzing dozens of boat, none of which matched the description of the Nelly provided by Cemetery John. He would continue for days to search the coast for the boat containing his son, to no avail. Thinking themselves double-crossed, they left new messages in the newpapers, but there was no answer. As they waited, the U.S. treasurer distributed a pamphlet to banks everywhere containing the serial numbers of the ransom bills, and a couple days later, the press sleuthed out that this meant Lindbergh had paid the ransom but not received his child in return, and they made it front page news. The press further discovered that Condon had been the Lindberghs’ intermediary and began hounding him, making him useless as their go-between if the kidnappers decided to initiate communication again. These developments caused the Lindberghs to despair of ever seeing their child again. But six weeks later, after continuing to chase false hope in the form of hoax claims, they did see their baby again, though only in the most awful way. A truck driver hauling timber near the Lindbergh’s Hopewell property happened to stop to relieve himself on the side of the road, and as he made his way into the woods to do so, he discovered the remains of Charles Lindbergh, Jr. The Eaglet could be positively identified, as his blonde curls and dimple were discernible despite decomposition and the activity of scavenger animals. But more than that, the baby remained in his undershirts, including the one his nursemaid had sewn for him out of flannel on the night of the kidnapping, while his sleeping suit was missing, because of course his kidnapper had removed it and later mailed it to Condon. Detectives also found a burlap sack near the road in which some blonde hairs matching the babies had been discovered. It appeared that the Eaglet whom all the world was searching for and hoping to find alive had actually been dead more than ten weeks, killed on the very night of the kidnapping by a fracture of the skull, according to the autopsy, and dumped less than two miles from the bed out of which he had been taken.

Following the discovery of the remains, the Bureau of Investigation under J. Edgar Hoover took a more active role in coordinating the search for anyone spending the ransom money, which more and more looked to be the only legitimate avenue that the investigation had left, besides the continued interrogation of Lindbergh household servants and further fruitless searches for a boat called Nelly. A year after the kidnapping, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office and initiated his sweeping New Deal programs, which included his proclamation to return to the U.S. Treasury all gold as well as all gold certificates like those given to Cemetery John, which meant that about $40,000 of the ransom money would soon become rare and even more noticeable when spent than it already had been. After his first hundred days, Roosevelt centralized the investigation within the Department of Justice, giving exclusive jurisdiction to J. Edgar Hoover’s BOI. As resentment over Roosevelt’s reforms developed, and the suspicion of anti-Semites that he was part of some Jewish Communist conspiracy grew, FDR was actually accused of having something to do with the Lindbergh kidnapping. To many in the Depression, a crime against a wealthy individual like Lindbergh must de facto be a Communist plot, and wherever one cried Communist, another cried Jewish. Incredibly, an anonymous, widely-circulated pamphlet that alleged Roosevelt was protecting the murderer of the Lindbergh baby supposedly because he was Jewish. In fact, Roosevelt had done far more than his predecessor to ensure the killer was caught. In early 1934, as the second anniversary of the child’s abduction loomed, the BOI demanded close scrutiny of all bills being passed in New York, where the ransom currency was turning up at a rate of about $40 a week. Beyond just banks, they provided the booklet with the ransom money’s serial numbers, as well as handy key cards to help identify ransom bills quickly, to nearly every employee handling money in New York City, from grocery store clerks to postal employees, from department store cashiers to gas station attendants. Moreover, a New York City police detective assigned to the case sent letters to every gas station urging attendants to take down the license plate of any customer spending a gold note. That September, two and half years after the crime, these efforts would finally pay off, and an arrest would be made. To most, this would prove the final resolution of the mystery, but to many others, the mystery would never seem to have been solved.

*

Next time, I will discuss the apprehension of the man believed to be Cemetery John, the Trial of the Century, and the several alternative theories and conspiracy claims that still surround the case today.

Further Reading

Behn, Noel. Lindbergh: The Crime. The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994.

Fisher, Jim. The Lindbergh Case. Rutgers University Press, 1987.

---. The Ghosts of Hopewell: Setting the Record Straight in the Lindbergh Case. Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.

Milton, Joyce. Loss of Eden: A Biography of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. HarperCollins, 1993.

Stout, David. The Kidnap Years: The Astonishing True History of the Forgotten Kidnapping Epidemic that Shook Depression-Era America. Sourcebooks, 2020.

Zorn, Robert. Cemetery John: The Undiscovered Mastermind of the Lindbergh Kidnapping. The Overlook Press, 2012.

The Business Plot - Part Two: The Bankers Gold Group

Much like the phrase “fake news,” “fascist” is an adjective that has been diluted through overuse as a political barb. It has become synonymous with “totalitarian” and “authoritarian” in accusations of dictatorial overreach. It is lobbed by those on the right against leftists about as much as it is by those on the left against far-right extremists, such as those who originally coined the term. Fascism as a political ideology sprang up in 1915 Italy when Benito Mussolini, formerly a journalist and politician, abandoned Socialism for nationalism and founded a paramilitary organization to fight in the first world war. Afterward, his fascists, so-called after the fasce or bundle of sticks that is stronger when bound together, turned their violence against what he saw as the remaining threat to Italy, socialists. After strong-arming King Victor Emmanuel III into surrendering the country’s government to his dictatorial control, Mussolini assigned great importance to propaganda. As a former journalist, he knew that he had to exert absolute control over the press in order to maintain his authority. And it was not only Italian journalism he sought to influence with regard to how his regime was portrayed. He felt it important to export propaganda as well. One country in which his propaganda efforts had been quite successful was the United States of America. As the Great Depression worsened, many Americans came to believe that what the country needed was a “strongman” leader like Il Duce, as Mussolini was called. This sentiment was especially strong among the wealthy, who greatly feared a Communist revolution in their troubled times. They lapped up the image of Italian Fascists as patriots fighting a socialist threat and of Mussolini himself as a hero who saved his country from ineffective parliamentary rule and ensured prosperity even in the midst of economic calamity. This portrait of Mussolini, which turned a blind eye to the domestic terror campaigns of his so-called “action squads,” made many a Wall Street financier and conservative politician into self-avowed Fascists back before the world had learned to recoil from the word. In the summer of 1932, in fact, as FDR and Hoover vied for the presidency, Republican U.S. Senator David Aiken Reed stood in the Capitol and unashamedly stated, “I do not often envy other countries and their governments, but I say that if this country ever needed a Mussolini, it needs one now.” The capitalists openly admiring Fascism in those years had been swayed not always by firsthand observation of the goings-on in Italy, but rather by the American press, which had taken part in Mussolini’s propaganda efforts with alacrity, some even accepting payment to do so. Perhaps the most influential of these was William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper mogul and no stranger to using his media empire to influence politics. Starting in the late ‘20s, Hearst actually ran columns written by Benito Mussolini on a regular basis, just as later he would print columns penned by Nazis like Goebbels, Goering, and even Hitler himself! Nor was Hearst alone in his amplification of Fascist propaganda. Richard Washburn Child, editor of The Saturday Evening Post, took money from Mussolini and served as the editor of the dictator’s memoirs, which he also published. And esteemed New York Times foreign correspondent Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote glowing accounts of Mussolini’s charisma and his efficient regime, purposely not reporting on its brutality or corruption. And this is to say nothing of Fascism’s boosters in other industries, such as those on Wall Street, like Thomas Lamont, a partner at J. P. Morgan and frequent economic advisor to the Hoover White House who accepted $100 million from Mussolini and described himself as “a missionary” for Fascism, using all his considerable influence to push America toward a Fascist future. This distinct faction of American high society was on the lookout for the rise of our own potential Fascist leader, whom they called “the man on the white horse,” a savior figure ironically named after one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse associated with war and the end of days. And if Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not turn out to be the dictator they wanted, they thought they just might have to follow the example of Mussolini, who had seized power by marching his paramilitary army on Rome and demanding the king’s resignation. 

As mentioned in Part One of this series, many among Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s own patrician class hoped, despite his campaign rhetoric and progressive promises, that FDR might turn out to be the American Mussolini. After all, Mussolini himself had begun as a socialist before turning right. Indeed, William Randolph Hearst, who had not previously supported Roosevelt, later threw the weight of his media machine behind the president elect and even produced a Hollywood feature that was little more than a propaganda piece promoting the idea of a president who would do the country good by turning despotic. The film was entitled Gabriel Over the White House, and it depicted a president who is visited by the Archangel Gabriel and the ghost of Abraham Lincoln after a car accident. Thus divinely inspired, he goes on to seize dictatorial control of the U.S. government in order to accomplish his benevolent agenda. Roosevelt himself encouraged the propaganda, hoping to soften the shock when he sought unprecedented emergency powers after his inauguration. However, as I discussed in part one, regardless of one’s view of the executive and legislative power that FDR wielded during his first hundred days and afterward, what he used it to do, specifically bringing an end to the gold standard and demonizing the rich for gold hoarding, caused the Fascist fanboys on Wall Street as well as in the press to turn on him. And these were not the only reasons they had for giving up hope that FDR was their yearned for “man on the white horse.” Planters in the South and sweatshop operators in the North complained that their mistreated workers were leaving them for jobs created by Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, and industrialists bemoaned the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act in June of 1933, which regulated wages and protected the collective bargaining rights of labor unions. The admirers of Italian Fascism had imagined their strongman leader would likewise favor corporatism over labor interests, and when Roosevelt did not, they thought they smelled socialism, or worse, the dreaded Communism. Later that year, when Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union diplomatically, exchanging embassies with them, these critics who would have welcomed a Fascist coup declared that FDR was an outright Bolshevik actively transforming America into a Communist nation. Among many of these same critics, the activities of Eleanor Roosevelt also represented an affront to the American way. After her husband had basically invented the modern White House press conference, the First Lady began holding her own and insisting that only female journalists attend. She was an activist for women’s equality, and perhaps even more unforgiveable to the enemies arraying against her husband, she publicly declared that Fascism was a far more pressing danger to the world than Communism.

As I have discussed before, the Bolshevik revolution and the spread of Communism generally has always been associated with the conspiracy delusion and lie about a Jewish world domination plot. This destructive falsehood can most directly be attributed to the plagiarized forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which alleged that international Jewish financiers led the nonexistent conspiracy to control all nations and people. Thus, even though FDR was making enemies of bankers and financiers, since he had formerly palled around with them, and since he was initiating social reforms that looked a lot like redistribution of wealth, and more specifically because he had begun official relations with Soviet Russia, the critics of FDR folded anti-Semitic conspiracy speculations into their attacks on his administration. Taking America off the gold standard became, in the eyes of the paranoid and hateful, a scheme to give Jews control of all the gold in the world. Anti-Semites scrutinized Roosevelt’s appointees and used math to argue that the President favored Jews. Only 15% of Roosevelt’s appointments were Jewish, but anti-Semites argued that this was out of proportion to America’s Jewish population, which comprised only 3% of its total. One wonders if these individuals would have accepted the logical extrapolation of their own argument, that Roosevelt’s appointments should have matched national demographics in this way, which would have meant some 10% of his appointments should have been Black. But of course, we know they would have been against this, for as Eleanor Roosevelt observed, critics of the New Deal, and especially those anti-Semitic critics who called it the “Jew Deal,” were overwhelmingly against ameliorating the condition of Black Americans. As context, it must be remembered that Hitler and his Nazis were coming into power in Germany at the time, spreading a pernicious racialist political ideology. While many Americans admired and supported Mussolini, fewer knew what to make of Hitler, whose chancellorship was officially ratified the day after FDR’s inauguration. Even as reports of Nazi book burnings and violence against Jews filtered into the U.S., many believed him simply a peculiarity and a European problem, though the First Lady collected newspaper clippings on him, recognizing the global threat he represented. As Nazism metastasized abroad, in America, anti-Semitic conspiracy delusions involving the Roosevelt administration spread as well. In something like the Birther conspiracy claims spread by Trump about Barack Obama, leaflets were printed and circulated depicting the Roosevelt family tree and tracing his lineage back to a Dutch family then called “Rosenvelt” in Holland. This family tree was accompanied by speculation tracing that Dutch family through numerous name changes, Rosenthals, Rosenblums, Rosenbergs, back, allegedly, to a supposedly Jewish family called Rossacampo that had been expelled from Spain in the 17th century. This conspiracy claim relied on the idea that this Jewish family took the Dutch name Van Rosenvelt, which means “of a rose field,” but of course, FDR could just as well have been descended from Dutch Van Rosenvelts. FDR himself traced his family back only as far as Dutch immigrants to America, and was very open, in a letter replying to a Jewish newspaper editor who had inquired about the rumors, that he didn’t really care if he was Jewish, writing, “In the dim distant past they may have been Jews or Catholics or Protestants. What I am more interested in is whether they were good citizens and believers in God.” And of course, whether or not Roosevelt had Jewish ancestry still proves nothing about any involvement in a global conspiracy, let alone that such a conspiracy existed, but since leaflets depicting the Roosevelt family tree were often accompanied by pamphlet reproductions of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the anti-Semitic propaganda went a long way toward stirring up populist resentment against the President.

The growing Fascist sympathizers and converts in America, unsurprisingly, looked to what Mussolini had done in Italy, and what Hitler was now also doing, and took notes. One major commonality was the use by these dictators of paramilitary organizations to build power and seize control. Mussolini had his Voluntary Militia for National Security, known as Blackshirts for their customary attire, and Hitler, following suit, had his stormtroopers, known as Brownshirts. The authenticity of the Fascist threat in America can likewise be discerned by the appearance of numerous such paramilitary armies in the U.S. One of them, formed by Ku Klux Klansmen in Georgia, simply called themselves Blackshirts as well, while others differentiated themselves, but only by the colors of their shirts. Tennessee had their Christian extremist White Shirts, bent on taking over local government, and New York had their Gray Shirts, whose focus was removing leftists from teaching positions. Metaphysical writer, Christian nationalist, and Fascist William Dudley Pelley was among those who pushed the conspiracy claim that FDR was secretly Jewish, and he founded the Silver Shirts, a massive militia active in most states that stockpiled weapons and even stole rifles from a California naval airbase. Then there were the Khaki Shirts. Among the Bonus Army had been one fascistic leader, Walter Waters, who after General MacArthur’s destruction of their Hooverville had tried to form his own Fascist army, which he called the Khaki Shirts, but his fellow veterans were mostly uninterested, and his efforts fell apart quickly, such that the Khaki Shirts were not even involved in the next Bonus march on Washington. However, in 1933, one vet, Arthur Smith, reinvigorated the Khaki Shirts as an openly Fascist paramilitary organization with avowed intentions to overthrow Roosevelt, seize control of Washington, and even to “kill all the Jews in the United States.” Smith called himself a general and claimed he commanded 1.5 million men. However, it appears his movement was never that widespread, and during the summer following Roosevelt’s first 100 days, Philadelphia police arrested all of them for alleged plans to storm a National Guard arsenal. The Khaki Shirts collapsed after Smith held a rally in New York attempting to organize another march on Washington and anti-fascists confronted them, leading to one Khaki Shirt murdering a student counter-protester. Smith would eventually do prison time because of this act of violence, and would afterward abandon the group, absconding with twenty-five grand of their funds. The Khaki Shirts would eventually coalesce with Father Charles Coughlin’s militant Christian Front organization. As context for the astounding revelations of the Business Plot, however, suffice it to say that America was no stranger to Fascist movements bent on overthrowing the democratic order and marching on Washington to force Roosevelt’s resignation, and at least some of them were inspired by or grew out of the legitimate and overall peaceful protest of the Bonus Army marchers. And in response to this fascist groundswell, one Democratic representative from New York, Samuel Dickstein, who had witnessed violence erupting against his fellow Jews firsthand, convinced Congress to organize the House Un-American Activities Committee, or McCormack-Dickstein Committee, specifically with a mandate to investigate Nazi propaganda and fascist threats in the U.S.

William Dudley Pelley, leader of the fascist Silver Shirts.

This was the state of the country when Smedley Darlington Butler, the retired soldier’s general and veterans affairs activist who had supported Roosevelt and encouraged the Bonus marchers, received an odd visit at his Pennsylvania home from some strange men claiming to be wounded veterans, as he would later testify. One of these callers was William Doyle, and the other a bonds salesman named Gerald MacGuire, or Jerry MacGuire, if you like. Butler was immediately skeptical of the men because they arrived in a limo and sported expensive bespoke suits. They represented American Legion departments in Massachusetts and Connecticut, they told him, and they’d come, purportedly at the behest of numerous Legionnaires who disliked American Legion leadership and were concerned about Roosevelt’s treatment of veterans, to ask for Butler’s help in reforming the veterans’ organization. Butler was by then a popular public speaker and had been vocally critical of the American Legion, so this part of the men’s proposal, to place him in a leadership position in which he could effect change, interested him. However, he disagreed with their assessment of the President’s treatment of veterans, so he remained cautious, and his suspicions were further aroused, according to his later telling of the story, when MacGuire claimed that the White House had barred them from inviting him as a distinguished guest to an upcoming convention. Butler considered Roosevelt a friend and found the claim hard to believe, making him suspect that MacGuire was trying to plant a seed of enmity between him and the President. MacGuire explained that, in order for Butler to attend the American Legion gathering, he had arranged for him to be falsely credentialed as a Hawaiian delegate, and this was all too much for Butler, who refused to entertain the cloak and dagger scheme and sent the visitors away. MacGuire and Doyle returned with a different plan a month later, suggesting that Butler gather a few hundred Legionnaires--something that would be easy for him to do, considering the esteem in which veterans held him—and bring them to the convention, where they could initiate a cheer demanding that Butler be allowed to speak, at which point Butler could deliver a speech they had prepared for him. Butler protested that veterans couldn’t afford the train fare and lodgings they would need to attend the convention, to which MacGuire responded by whipping out his bank depositor’s book, which showed funds of more than a hundred grand that he said could be used to pay these expenses. That is equivalent to about 2.2 million dollars today. Butler’s suspicions only increased with this boast of exorbitant funding, and he thereafter became convinced that MacGuire was a mere front man for some extremely wealthy interests when he read the speech that had been written for him. He was surprised to find that it was essentially a call for Roosevelt to return to the gold standard so that veterans’ bonuses would not be paid in worthless paper currency. Believing that the average veteran understood and cared little about such matters as the gold standard, Butler carefully pushed MacGuire to reveal the backers of the scheme, and MacGuire assured him that the scheme had nine very wealthy financers, but that he could only reveal two of them: a Wall Street bigwig veteran, Grayson M.P. Murphy, whom Mussoliini himself had awarded an honorary Italian military title, and Robert Sterling Clark, heir to the Singer Sewing Maching fortune, with whom Butler had served and of whom he had a low opinion. When Butler craftily expressed doubt that MacGuire’s venture really was so well-funded, MacGuire responded by producing a stack of thousand dollar bills and offering them to Butler. Keep in mind that in 1933, the thousand dollar bill, a denomination that would be discontinued in 1969, was equivalent to more than 20 grand today. Thus proffering a stack of them would be the same as whipping out a billfold of more than a million bucks. Butler was reportedly aghast and reacted like someone being extorted, telling MacGuire, “You are just trying to get me by the neck,” and ending the conversation abruptly, saying, “I am not going to talk to you any more. You are only an agent. I want some of the principals.”

After his last strange encounter with MacGuire, Butler realized that he should try to collect evidence of whatever was being plotted by MacGuire and his backers, so he began to play along. He wrote to MacGuire, creating a paper trail, pretending to have come around, and requesting a meeting with the Singer heir that MacGuire had named as a backer, Robert Sterling Clark. During that subsequent meeting, Butler expressed his confusion about the contents of the speech the group wanted him to give, and Clark revealed that it had been written by the chief counsel of J. P. Morgan and Company at the behest of Morgan himself. Very quickly, Clark transitioned from talking about how a return to the gold standard would benefit veterans when they receive their bonuses to talking about how it would benefit the wealthy, like himself, outright admitting that he was spending so much of his money to back this scheme because “I have got 30 million dollars and I don’t want to lose it. I am willing to spend half of the 30 million to save the other half.” Finding this attempt to force public policy changes by manipulating veterans entirely distasteful and doubting that Roosevelt would even prove as compliant as the plotters believed, Butler refused to attend the American Legion convention. When it was convened, however, Butler read in the papers that its delegates were swayed by an inundation of telegrams to pass a resolution endorsing a return to the gold standard. Thinking the matter concluded, Butler was surprised when Macguire kept bothering him. For the rest of the year, he repeatedly invited Butler to veterans’ gatherings and offered to pay him to speak about returning to the gold standard, and in 1934, every time Butler arranged a speaking appearance, MacGuire would show up and offer him three times his speaking fee to include some remarks about the gold standard in his speeches. Finally, in the spring of 1934, MacGuire met again with Butler and revealed to him that he had recently been overseas, visiting foreign nations to better learn how Fascist movements used veterans’ organizations to seize control of governments. He explained how he had visited Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany, and Stalin’s Russia and discovered that veterans organizations or citizen armies proved to be the “real backbone” of each dictatorship. He didn’t think that Americans would accept such coups as Mussolini and Hitler had conducted with their private armies, but he said he saw in France a perfect model for what he and his backers hoped to achieve in America. On February 6th, 1932, a demonstration of far right nationalist groups turned violent, and due to the involvement of veterans’ organizations, like the anti-Semitic Croix-de-feu, or Cross of Fire, it was dubbed the Veterans’ Riot and viewed as a fascist coup that did not result in a dictatorship but did successfully topple the left-wing government. MacGuire insisted to Butler that the same could be accomplished here in the U.S. if Butler, who had the ear of every soldier, would encourage them to band together and march peacefully on Washington demanding change—a bloodless coup. Moreover, their coup would be entirely constitutional, he assured the increasingly alarmed general. “We have got the newspapers,” he declared, presumably referring to Fascist sympathizer William Randolph Hearst’s papers, “We will start a campaign that the President’s health is failing.” With pressure from the veterans’ armies like that which was previously exerted by the Bonus Expeditionary Forces, MacGuire said that Roosevelt, to ease the burdens of his office, would appoint someone to a new cabinet position, Secretary of General Affairs, who would in effect act as the chief executive, making FDR a mere figurehead. The entire scheme was clearly an imitation of Mussolini’s March on Rome and handling of the King of Italy. If Roosevelt didn’t agree to the arrangement, MacGuire explained, he would be compelled to resign, and one by one each person in the line of succession would decline the office for reasons MacGuire explained with eerie confidence, as if it had already been arranged, until by the laws of the time, the office would pass to their new man in the cabinet, the Secretary of General Affairs, regardless.

Symbol of the fascist Croix-de-Feu veterans organization that MacGuire believed could be emulated to affect a coup in America. Image Credit: Fauntleroy (CC BY-SA 4.0)

As soon as their group, which Butler would thereafter refer to as the Bankers Gold Group, had the reins of government, they would bring back the gold standard, and MacGuire insisted they had all the capital they would need to accomplish their objective, with three million dollars currently available and a total budget of $300 million. According to the worth of today’s dollar, that’s an astonishing $6.7 billion in financing, according to the American Institute for Economic Research’s Cost of Living calculator. Butler played it cool, saying he would need to think further on it, and MacGuire told him that if he read the news, he would soon get a sense of who his powerful backers were, as their superorganization was about to be publicly announced, and “[t]here will be big fellows in it.” Two weeks after those foreboding words, Butler read about the formation of the American Liberty League, an organization founded to protect property rights and bolster free enterprise, which came out the gate swinging at Roosevelt for “fomenting class hatred.” Among the financial supporters of the organization were the two names MacGuire had already given Butler, Grayson M.P. Murphy and Robert Sterling Clark. The rest of the names included conservative Democratic rivals of Roosevelt, Republican opponents, Wall Street royalty, and titans of numerous industries. Some of the more recognizable names present were financier E. F. Hutton, two du Pont brothers who had served as Presidents of the multinational chemical company, and Samuel Colgate, president of the soap company that bore his family name. Executives active in the mining, automotive, oil, and retail industries were listed alongside them, as were more than one of the builders of the Empire State Building. It was a veritable Who’s Who of American business and politics, and according to Butler, it caused him great worry about how he should proceed. Eventually, he decided to contact the press before going to the J. Edgar Hoover or to the President. The editor of the Philadelphia Record assigned investigative journalist Paul French to look into it, and Butler, who misrepresented the reporter as a newspaperman sympathetic to their cause, managed to get MacGuire to agree to speak with him. Astonishingly, MacGuire went ahead and confirmed the entire story to the journalist, including the information about his trip to observe Fascist armies abroad, adding the further tidbit that the du Ponts had arranged to arm their army of veterans with Remington rifles. The reporter quoted MacGuire as saying, unironically, “We need a Fascist government in this country to save the Nation from the communists who want to tear it down.” To cap it off, MacGuire actually told French that the country could easily resolve their unemployment problems by doing what Hitler had done and placing the poor into forced labor camps. Thus armed with journalistic evidence of the plot, Butler finally told MacGuire what he really thought of the plan being enacted by the Bankers Gold Group, or the American Liberty League, as they chose to style themselves, stating, “If you get 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right at home.” He then went, in the fall of 1934, to J. Edgar Hoover with the story. Disappointingly, Hoover claimed there was little his Division of Investigation could do, since there was no federal offense, even though there was clearly a case for sedition, inciting a rebellion or insurrection, and treason, and he had been tasked by Roosevelt himself to look into domestic Fascist threats. Instead, true to form, Hoover used this threat to further seize control of domestic intelligence, leading to the formation of the FBI. He did, however, spread word of the alleged plot around Washington, and soon the House Un-American Activities Committee contacted Butler and his reporter, French, to appear before them and answer some questions.

Paul French published his exposé of the Bankers Gold Group and their Wall Street Putsch two days before the two of them spoke to the committee in a secret executive session, with the headline “$3,000,000 bid for fascist army bared.” The story was picked up by major papers all over the nation, so the proceedings commenced with intense press scrutiny, such that the committee was obliged to assure the papers that they would go public when the revelations of the committee warranted it. In the meanwhile, those implicated by French’s exposé were widely quoted in the press categorically denying the allegations. Grayson M.P. Murphy suggested it was libel, and Robert Sterling Clark only admitted to urging Butler to endorse “sound currency,” which at the time was just another way of saying a return to the gold standard. Meanwhile the committee seemed to have lost steam, calling fewer witnesses than expected, and the “Public Statement on Preliminary Findings” they eventually published was lackluster. It started with a statement that it “has had no evidence before it that would in the slightest degree warrant calling before it” several of the more prominent politicians, military officers, and corporate executives implicated in the testimony. The intention, it seems, was not to give in to sensationalism and to avoid the Inquisition-like practice of acting on hearsay, but the result was that the committee appeared to be saying there was little to the accusations, and to some it seemed a cover-up was underway. However, the rest of their statement, as well as the public hearing that followed, and the official report published months later showed that in fact they had ample evidence of the plot. Not only was Smedley Butler’s testimony corroborated by the reporter Paul French, but they managed to acquire correspondence between MacGuire and his superior, Murphy, showing that he had indeed been studying Fascist military organizations abroad, and they further acquired bank records indicating that MacGuire had been given access to large sums of money for which he could not account. All of this disproved the common defense that it was just idle talk, a “cocktail putsch,” and the fact that MacGuire actually offered the money to Butler further disproves the alternative explanation that MacGuire was actually conning his Wall Street backers, since approaching Butler shows he was earnestly attempting to arrange the coup. However, despite the McCormack-Dickstein committee’s final conclusion that Butler had been truthful and there had been an unsuccessful attempt by wealthy and powerful men to stage a Fascist coup, the committee’s report purposely omitted mention of the American Liberty League and the names of the major plotters, and though they stated their intention to get to the bottom of the matter, their investigation petered out and their House Un-American Activities committee was dissolved until 1938, when under a new chair it turned its attention to Communist Party infiltration. To Smedley Butler, it seemed the committee had shrunk from doing their duty, but as a rumor suggested that President Roosevelt himself had met with the committee and quashed their investigation, and since the plot itself seemed at least to have been thwarted, Butler came away appeased. What proved to be more aggravating than the committee proceedings, however, was the fact that while the Fascist plotters did not have their names dragged through the mud, General Smedley Butler did.

Almost all contemporaneous press coverage of the Business Plot treated the allegations as something laughable, lacking any evidence and manifestly untrue. Time magazine called it a “plot without plotters,” and likened Butler to George Custer for “publicly floundering in so much hot water.” The New York Times asked, “What can we believe? Apparently anything, to judge by the number of people who lend a credulous ear to the story of General Butler’s 500,000 Fascists in buckram marching on Washington to seize the government.” And if a news outlet didn’t play down the story like this, they often as not simply chose not to write about it at all. Perhaps, knowing what we know about the aforementioned Fascist leanings of the American press at the time, it is not surprising that the press treated Butler’s accusations as a farce. If we do not want to view national newspapers as being in on a conspiracy, however, since as I have argued time and again, massive conspiracies simply cannot be credited, we might find other reasons for their doubt. For example, it certainly does seem at first blush that Smedley Butler would have been the worst possible candidate to recruit for such a scheme. I spoke previously about his disillusionment with America’s foreign capitalist adventures and wars of empire, which of course are hallmarks of fascism. And he was a prominent supporter of FDR, even considering himself a friend of the president. More than that, he had recently been in the news for making anti-Mussolini, and thus anti-Fascist, remarks. In 1931, he stated in a speech that a friend of his had been riding with Benito Mussolini in his Fiat when the dictator struck and killed a child, and without stopping, belittled the importance of a single life. To give a sense of how strong the sympathy for Fascism and admiration for Mussolini was at the time, Butler had actually been arrested and almost court-martialed for the remark, something that had not happened to a general since the Civil War. Some contemporaries and historians have suggested that Butler might have lied about this hit-and-run incident to smear Mussolini, since it appeared to be an unsubstantiated rumor, and that this shows he may have also been lying about the Business Plot. However, the friend whose story he had been repeating, Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, eventually corroborated the story in his memoirs, though by his telling Mussolini had not explicitly denigrated the value of a single life, but rather simply told him to “never look back.” After all is said and done, Butler looks like an honest man whose claims were corroborated again and again. For example, another person identified as in on the plot, a national commander of the VFW, likewise denied involvement but confirmed the plot by revealing he had also been approached by “agents of Wall Street” regarding a plan to stage a coup. In fact, rather unbelievably, the very next year, Smedley Butler claimed that Father Charles Coughlin telephoned him, trying to recruit him to lead a paramilitary force in an illegal attempt to overthrow the Mexican government and further suggested that an armed insurrection was being planned in the U.S. as well. It beggars the imagination that, after Butler’s revelation of the Business Plot, Father Coughlin would try to recruit him for another such conspiracy, and some have suggested that it was a hoax on Butler, but Butler also claimed to have evidence that Coughlin’s men in New Jersey had stolen firearms from a U.S. arsenal. Furthermore, Butler himself recognized that his claims would never be believed again and still felt so strongly about it that he chose once more to inform J. Edgar Hoover about the matter, though privately this time, not taking it to the press at all. Whether or not this supposed plot of Coughlin’s was genuine, the allegations were certainly prescient, as we know Father Coughlin did build a paramilitary organization, the Christian Front, and in 1939, numerous New Jersey members were arrested and charged with stealing munitions and conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government.

From another view, the choice of the Bankers Gold Group to bring in Smedley Butler makes perfect sense. Robert Sterling Clark apparently told Butler that he was not their first choice, that in fact, many of the financial backers wanted to approach General Douglas MacArthur with their proposition instead. The fact that they ended up contacting Butler shows that they were following the playbook of other Fascist movements. Clearly Butler, the soldier’s general who was universally admired by veterans, who spoke regularly at veterans’ events, and who had already been critical of the existing leadership of the American Legion, was the perfect person to take control of the organization and lead their army. Vets would remember that Butler had been for their cause when the Bonus Army was in Washington, whereas MacArthur had driven tanks over them. Clearly what was most important, in their mind, was Butler’s ability to muster and inspire and lead the rank-and-file vets, as that was what had brought Mussolini and Hitler into power, as MacGuire had reported from his fact-finding mission in Europe. The downfall of their plan was that they presumed everyone, including Butler, had come to hate Roosevelt as much as they did, and if not, that they could always buy a change of heart and allegiance with stacks of thousand-dollar bills. And just as they misjudged Butler, they also misread public sentiment, much like the January 6th insurrectionists, likewise deluded by propaganda in the news they consumed, misjudged what the nation’s reaction to their storming of the Capitol would be. Just as MacGuire and the Bankers Gold Group modeled their proposed coup on their Fascist and Nazi predecessors, so too the similarities with January 6th are striking. The paramilitary organizations involved this time around, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, whom all of America saw Donald Trump personally commanding on national television when he directed them to “stand back, stand by” during the debates, are largely comprised of military veterans. The majority of the Proud Boys indicted on seditious conspiracy are vets, and the trial of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes revealed how he manipulated veterans into joining their cause. The lesson of the Business Plot remains as important today as it might have been before January 6th, 2021, as chapters of the Proud Boys have surged all over the country since then. And now, in Brazil, we find that Bolsonaro, a Trump admirer and purveyor of similar false claims about voter fraud in Brazil, has encouraged another coup attempt modeled on those that have come before it. The old sentiment that “it can’t happen here” is now so thoroughly refuted that its alternative, “it can happen here,” has become trite. What we must remember is that it has happened here, and we must be prepared for it to happen again.

Until next time, remember, there is a difference between conspiracy speculation, which typically lacks irrefutable evidence and relies on fallacious logic, and actual conspiracies, which do occur. The difference, usually, is that the latter, inevitably, are publicly uncovered and proven to exist. The story of Smedley Butler goes to prove that someone always talks.

Further Reading

Archer, Jules. The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking TRUE Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR. Skyhorse Publishing, 2015.

Denton, Sally. The Plots Against the President: FDR, a Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right. Bloomsbury Press, 2012.

Galka, Bradley M. The Business Plot in the American Press. 2017. Kansas State University, Master’s Thesis, https://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2097/38255/BradleyGalka2017.pdf.

Katz, Jonathan M. Gangsters of Capitalism. St. Martin’s Press, 2021.

The Business Plot - Part One: The Bonus Army

There was a great and immediate controversy when a congressional committee was formed to investigate the recent attempt by the powerful and wealthy to manipulate populist discontent and foment a coup against the United States government. Still fresh in the memory of the public mind were the indelible images of the marchers on Washington, DC, the “rioters,” as they were called, a motley army of them, who were also called “insurrectionists,” indicating their intention to overthrow the American democratic order, amassing on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol building as the representatives within conducted a certain business in which these marchers wanted to intervene. Many wondered what might have resulted had that ragtag army of thousands not been foiled in their undertakings, and during the later House Committee investigation, they heard what may have happened. For it came out in committee hearings that there had been an overt and credible conspiracy to incite a popular uprising for the purpose of supplanting the power of the duly elected President, and raising an explicitly Fascist dictatorship in place of our representative democracy. Especially inflammatory were the allegations that it was those in high places, men of great wealth, privilege, and political power who had been behind the plot overthrow the U.S. government. The findings of the committee were not universally believed, but many saw the truth in them, knowing that our populace had been subjected to foreign propaganda for years and that many among the elite believed a dictatorship more friendly to their interests would enable them to retain and grow their fortunes. However, many others viewed the committee as a witch hunt and believed those implicated in the plot when they denied everything even in the face of clear evidence. In the press, however, the committee’s findings were roundly mocked, with the New York Times saying “The whole story sounds like a gigantic hoax” and that “[i]t does not merit serious discussion.” Perhaps this was because newspaper magnates were themselves implicated as conspirators, or perhaps it was because the populist insurrection being discussed in the House committee was completely unrelated to the very real march on Washington that had recently taken place and in this case had only been proposed and never actually occurred. Sorry, you seem confused. What do you mean the New York Times hasn’t viewed the Capitol Insurrection skeptically? What newspaper magnates are implicated? I’m referring to William Randolph Hearst. Oh… I see the confusion. You think I’m talking about the controversy surrounding the findings of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. No, no, no, I’m describing the proceedings of the 1934 House Committee on Un-American Activities, which convened in the years after one controversial march on Washington to investigate the claims of an alleged conspiracy by Wall Street fat cats to astroturf another march in an attempt to seize control of the reins of government. But actually, now that you mention it, I suppose I can see the similarities.

Constant readers will realize that I discussed the Business Plot, or Wall Street Putsch, in my post “The Perils of American Democracy,” but I gave it terribly short shrift there with only about half a paragraph, and it has been a topic that I have greatly wanted to explore in more depth for a number of reasons. One is, of course, the anniversary of the January 6th insurrection. Last year, on the first anniversary, I wrote a two-part post that drew parallels between January 6th and the Wilmington insurrection of 1898. I think that my examination of that incident showed a strong parallel between the use of fake news propaganda in galvanizing such insurrections and gaslighting the larger public to misrepresent the true nature of the situation, and I think it’s lessons about white supremacy and institutional racism remain vital. Go and read the Coup on Cape Fear parts 1 and 2 if you haven’t. But I find the story of the Business Plot perhaps even more instructive when it comes to contextualizing January 6th. We are talking about a nation in economic crisis, inundated by foreign propaganda, which drove a cabal of wealthy and influential titans of industry to orchestrate a martial uprising against the seat of American government in imitation of a more organic and well-intentioned but much-maligned protest movement, all of which is clearly revealed by congressional investigators whose findings are thereafter widely disbelieved and dismissed, leading to no real justice for those who enacted the plot. As I wrote and recorded this episode, the Department of Justice had charged nearly a thousand people in connection with the Capitol Attacks, most of them rank and file participants, and only a few with actual charges of seditious conspiracy. The DOJ has maintained an impressive 99.8% conviction rate in these cases, but it can be argued that they haven’t held the ringleaders, the congresspeople and executive cabinet members who incited the attack, to account. On Monday, December 19th, the January 6th panel did refer charges against former president Donald Trump to the DoJ, including one charge of “inciting an insurrection.” However, it remains to be seen whether Merrick Garland’s DoJ will indict him, what defense he may make, and what the outcome of that indictment might be. Furthermore, the fact that his indictment and trial won’t prevent his concurrent campaign to regain the presidency further complicates matters. If he were both reelected and convicted and an attempt was made to bar him from taking his elected office, one can certainly see the current partisan Supreme Court bench considering this constitutional crisis and inevitably finding in his favor, and the fact remains that any sitting president, be it Biden or some other 2024 challenger, has the power to pardon him. So clearly the resolution of the January 6th insurrection remains up in the air, and I believe the story of how the Business Plot shook out in the end to be supremely educational and sadly, perhaps prophetic. Lastly, I was inspired to produce this series by the fantastic 8-part series Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra. I don’t care what your opinions are of Maddow or MSNBC; this was a well-researched, lucid, fascinating, and astonishing account of a time when sitting members of congress were complicit in both a Nazi propaganda scheme and a conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government, leading to the largest sedition trial in American history. You can consider this 2-part series a kind of unauthorized prequel to Ultra, which I hope you’ll listen to at your earliest convenience. This isn’t a paid endorsement; I just think that it’s a very important podcast that everyone should hear.

Just as the story of the January 6th insurrection must be seen in the context of the recession resulting from necessary Covid restrictions and the widespread racial justice protests of 2020, with which the Capitol Insurrection is frequently and speciously compared, so too the Business Plot must be placed in the context of the Great Depression and the march of the Bonus Expeditionary Forces on Washington, DC. It began with a crash. Rebounding from a previous economic depression, the value of stocks had inflated beyond their worth between 1921 and 1929, prompting the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in order to slow the inflation—something we saw them doing again just last year. The resulting plummeting of stock prices in October 1929 led to the panicked sell off known as the Great Crash. But the Wall Street crash did not at first worry many or greatly affect the overall economy, since only a wealthy fraction of the populace invested in the stock market. However, a severe drought across the Great Plains, which would later come to be known as the Dust Bowl, soon led to America’s farmers facing major challenges, and a series of bank panics in the autumn of 1930 led to the “crisis of confidence” that then-President Herbert Hoover identified as the true culprit of the Great Depression. President Hoover had himself contributed to this crisis of confidence, as he had signed an international tariff act against the advice of economists that further strained the global economy and banks, especially those that provided loans to struggling farmers. All of this is a very simplistic description of the triggers of the Great Depression, but the result was that gold, upon which our currency was still based, began to leave the American economy as it was withdrawn from banks and hoarded or sent overseas by the wealthy. The very real consequence of this loss of capital was the closure of banks, the failure of businesses, mass unemployment, and hunger. Thus we get the immortal symbols of the Depression: men, women, and children, destitute, walking American roads and highways barefoot with no refuge. Soon, these symbols took on the name of the man seen as directly responsible for this catastrophe, President Herbert Hoover, who was ironically known for great humanitarian efforts overseas but remained staunchly against what he called the dole, or government assistance paid out to those in need, here at home, believing it made people lazy. Thus the carts that these Depression homeless pulled all their belongings in were dubbed Hooverwagons, and their encampments famously called Hoovervilles. Many of those affected were U.S. military veterans who had served their country bravely overseas and now could not survive in the broken economy at home. An idea arose, a lifeline for these desperate and starving veterans, that if they could just be paid their bonus early, it would mean the difference between life and death. Back in 1924, with the passage of the Bonus Act, these veterans had been promised a substantial payment for lost wages in the Great War, but in 1931, in the depths of the Depression, that bonus wasn’t to be paid for another 14 years. Veterans argued that it should be called the Tombstone Bonus, then, for most would not live to receive it.

When Hoover vetoed the immediate payout of the bonus, veterans’ organizations like the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars helped to mobilize destitute veterans all over the country into a massive protest movement. Calling itself the Bonus Expeditionary Forces, or the Bonus Army, they marched on Washington, DC, and tried to bring a petition to the White House, where they were barred at the gate. Leaving without incident, the Bonus Army would return in even greater numbers the following summer of 1932 to camp out on the lawn of the Capitol building when another bill authorizing early payment of their bonus that had been passed by the House of Representatives was being voted on by the Senate. When debate on the bill was tabled until the following year, many expected violence from the Bonus Army, but they merely sang “America the Beautiful” as they returned to the massive Hooverville that they had constructed from garbage across the river, within view of Capitol Hill. Most of the demonstrators left the city after that, but more than 8,000 of them stayed in their shantytown, the largest such Hooverville in the country. The following month, they were visited by a retired Major General who will be very important to this story. Smedley Darlington Butler was at the time a supporter of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover’s rival in the ongoing 1932 campaign for the presidency. Over the course of his career in the Marines, he had led men in various American imperial campaigns throughout the Caribbean, Central America, the Philippines, and China. During the course of his career, he had seen firsthand how the military was used abroad to further the business interests of American financiers and bankers, later describing war as a racket and himself as a “gangster for capitalism.” Smedley Butler entered the Bonus Army’s Hooverville camp and expressed great sympathy for their cause. Over and over, he warned them against lawless acts, assuring them that they had “the sympathy of 120 million people in this nation,” and that they’d lose it if they rioted. But otherwise, he listened to all of their complaints, staying with them into the early hours of the morning, and encouraged their continued demonstration, reminding them that they “didn’t win the war for a select class of a few financiers,” and urging them to “[h]ang together and stick it out till the gate bars of hell freeze over.” Butler had a reputation as a soldier’s general, rather than a general’s general, in that he was far more popular among those he commanded than among those who commanded him. The stark difference between Butler and other generals would soon be demonstrated with terrible clarity.

Bonus Army protesters raise their hands to confirm they are Americans who served overseas.

A striking parallel can be seen between Hoover’s response to the Bonus Army in the summer of 1932 and Donald Trump’s response to Black Lives Matter protesters in the summer of 2020, both incidents precursors to an organized coup attempt perpetrated by those who had vehemently opposed the preceding, legitimate protest movements. All of us should remember the George Floyd protests during the summer of 2020, and how Donald Trump and his extremist boosters called the protesters “thugs,” “anarchists,” and “terrorists.” In June of 2020, peaceful racial justice protesters in Washington, DC, were tear gassed and fired on with rubber bullets as Trump threatened to “deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem.” In a remarkable instance of history rhyming, Herbert Hoover, back in 1932, likewise believed that the Bonus Army marchers were dangerous and was considering the same measures. The nation’s top cop, J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Bureau of Investigation, precursor to the FBI, was whispering in the President’s ear that the Bonus marchers were Communist terrorists, all of them highly trained, armed with machine guns and airplanes, none of which was true, but J. Edgar Hoover was a fearmonger—that was how he built and funded the FBI, by manufacturing panic about domestic enemies. U.S. Army intelligence and General Douglas MacArthur were also telling Hoover that the Bonus marchers weren’t what they claimed to be, that they were “rabble-rousing insurrectionists and Communists” bent on revolution, which of course led to claims that they were all Jews, and that they weren’t even veterans, as they claimed. In truth, the Bonus marchers, whom MacArthur had begun derisively calling Boners, were a remarkably diverse group composed of about equal thirds white, Jewish, and Black Americans. MacArthur’s claims that they weren’t veterans were simply lies that the press amplified. The Veteran’s Administration had surveyed the Bonus Army and recorded that 94% of them were indeed vets, the majority having served overseas, and almost a quarter of them disabled in the line of duty. It’s true, maybe half of them were Communist or sympathetic to Communism, or at least with Socialist leanings, but this was not unsurprising at the time, as many in the Depression-era U.S. were more and more enamored with Communism, Socialism, and even Fascism, as we will further see. Indeed, in that very election year, the Socialist presidential candidate garnered three times the number of votes he had received in the previous election year. Certainly Communists would have liked to turn the entire Bonus Expeditionary Forces to their cause, but the fact was, most of the Bonus Army were just destitute and starving victims of the Hoover economy. In fact, they routinely destroyed Communist literature that was being circulated among them, and many embraced the mantra, “Eyes front—not left.” Just as with the BLM protests, some violence did erupt in clashes with police. When, on the President’s prompting, some veterans were evicted from derelict buildings that the police chief himself had previously arranged for them to camp in, they pushed back, some bricks were thrown, and the tousle resulted in one policeman shooting two veterans dead. Despite the fact that this was a pretty clear case of police failure to control a volatile situation, and it resulted in the deaths of demonstrators, not police, the incident was used to justify the unconscionable brutality that ensued.

General MacArthur convinced President Hoover that the situation warranted military action. MacArthur, along with his aides, future general George S. Patton and future president Dwight D. Eisenhower, were directed to expel the veterans from the city. Eisenhower and Patton apparently thought the entire thing too political and distasteful, but MacArthur appeared to relish the chance to bring the might of the U.S. Army against unarmed American citizens. In full military dress, he deployed infantrymen with fixed-bayonets, cavalry with drawn sabers, a machine gun detachment, and even five tanks onto the streets of the U.S. capital. The poorly-timed operation took place just as many federal employees clocked out for the day and entered the streets, such that crowds of Bonus Army veterans mingled with crowds of onlookers who mistook the military forces for some kind of parade. The cavalry charged the crowds, trampling men, women and children, while the infantry advanced on them, bayonet tips pressing the crowds back. Bonus marchers and city residents alike fled in abject terror as tanks ran them down and cavalrymen struck them with the flats of their sabers. Tear gas grenades burst in their midst, igniting fires and completing the transformation of the nation’s capital into a warzone. Within hours, all the Bonus Army vets had retreated to their shantytown outside the city, and despite the fact that President Hoover had ordered the military not to enter their encampment, MacArthur sent tanks, machine guns, and troops to surround the Hooverville. The veterans waved a white flag of surrender and asked for an hour to get their families out. MacArthur granted them this, and when the hour had elapsed, he sent his forces in to burn their shacks and lean-tos to the ground. President Herbert Hoover stood at a window in the White House and watched the fires. What he saw destroyed that night was not only the homeless encampment that bore his name. He was also watching his chances for reelection go up in smoke. Perhaps more than his handling of the economic crisis, his handling of the Bonus Expeditionary Forces provided his opponent, Democratic candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt, all the ammunition he needed to win his campaign.

The burning of the Bonus Army Hooverville at Anacostia Flats.

Perhaps few words are needed to introduce the next major character in our story, FDR, as he is widely known and considered by many to be the best or at least the most influential U.S. President of the 20th century. We know FDR principally as the architect of progressive New Deal legislation that helped America begin to recover from the Great Depression and programs that provided a social safety net for the future, and as the wartime leader who shepherded us through World War II, the mobilization for which would be what finally ended Depression. We remember him as the first president to enter our homes and reassure us in his Fireside Chat radio addresses. And we remember him seated on a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down by infantile polio, and therefore an inspiration to all overcoming physical disability. FDR was not, however, exactly as one might imagine him. He did not, for example, contract polio as a child, as the term “infantile polio” suggests. In fact he was a vigorous outdoorsman, enjoying sailing, horseback riding, and fishing up until the day he became ill at 39 years old, and indeed, he remained athletic after his paralysis, as his physical rehabilitation regime was robust. He became an avid swimmer and even had a pool installed at the White House. Despite his good health, his critics unsurprisingly used his paralysis against him to insinuate that he was ill or diseased or even unable to discharge the duties of the offices to which he was elected. Likewise, the circumstances of his birth were often used against him. He was not of such a background as one might expect for a social reformer. He had been born into great wealth and privilege, of the Hyde Park branch of the Roosevelts, former president Teddy Roosevelt his first cousin. We might credit the influence of his father, who instilled in him the importance of working to help the suffering and the poor, for the causes he would later champion, and we might further credit Eleanor Roosevelt, his cousin, whom he married, who regularly performed volunteer work in New York slums and worked tirelessly to improve the conditions of poor women and children. FDR was never a Communist or Socialist, however, as his critics on the far right would paint him. In fact, he was an inveterate capitalist, devoted to salvaging the economy rather than changing the economic order, as those on the far left would have preferred. And those on the far left did not claim him as their own, believing that he favored fat cats with his reforms and did not go far enough in redistributing wealth. The opposition of Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin, those two populist firebrands that history has deemed demagogues, reveals just how moderate FDR really was despite the revolutionary liberal reforms he would enact in his first hundred days. Both had supported Roosevelt in his campaign against Hoover, but in the terrible interregnum, as conditions further plummeted under the lame duck and Roosevelt—who was dutifully making plans for his first hundred days—went yachting, both turned against him, but for far different reasons, which illustrate the fact that FDR was no extremist. It happened that FDR was joined on his yachting excursion by one of the richest men in America, Vincent Astor, as well as several other wealthy members of the New York Yacht Club. Long and Father Coughlin both saw FDR as revealing himself to be a puppet of Wall Street, despite his rhetoric. To Long, this meant he served the elite, the financial powers that be, who hoarded wealth, rather than the people who were suffering without it. Father Coughlin too took FDR’s actions to indicate he was in the pocket of bankers, but as Coughlin’s ideology evolved, international banking interests came to mean an international Jewish conspiracy, which in turn meant Communism. So somehow, FDR being friendly with wealthy bankers made him a Communist, if that makes any sense. But of course, it doesn’t make much sense, for FDR had denounced bankers in particular, in no uncertain terms, as the “unscrupulous money changers” responsible for the banking crisis. And in his first hundred days, he made good on the promises of his campaign, such that those he formerly yachted with would come to view him as a “traitor to his class.”

When he took office, Roosevelt immediately declared a national bank holiday to stave off runs that would force further bank failures. In his first Fireside Chat, FDR successfully convinced many Americans to trust the banks again because of the changes he had pushed through Congress with the passage of his Emergency Banking Act, and banks saw a billion dollars returned to them over the ensuing weeks. If this was all the Emergency Banking Act had done, Wall Street would certainly have thought Roosevelt on their side. He was, after all, from a wealthy family. Surely he had a vested interest in protecting the wealthy classes. In fact, the way that Roosevelt was seizing broad executive powers in his efforts to right the ship of the American economy sat very well with many in his wealthy class, among whom Mussolini, the strong leader of Italian Fascism, had become more and more popular in recent years, in large part due to a widespread propaganda campaign in America that we will examine further in part two of this series. Many had high hopes that FDR would prove to be another Mussolini, whom they viewed as a benevolent dictator taking bold action to set his country in order. The Emergency Banking Act, however, also gave the Secretary of the Treasury the power to seize gold in an emergency. One of the principal concerns leading to the failure of the economy was the outflow of gold from the country during the ongoing crisis of confidence, and Roosevelt felt he needed the means of curtailing that if necessary. When his new executive powers suddenly enabled him to take their gold, that changed things for the wealthy. Roosevelt had assured the public that the gold standard was safe, but a couple of days after taking this power to seize gold, he signed an executive order forbidding banks to make gold payments in a further effort to prevent hoarding. This was taken as a signal that he absolutely intended to abandon the gold standard after all and resulted in even more hoarding by the very wealthy, the financiers and bankers whom FDR had been accused of serving. FDR then felt compelled to do exactly what he had promised not to, and a month and a half after taking office, he signed an executive order requiring all Americans to surrender their gold money to the U.S. government in exchange for paper currency. This was meant to be a temporary emergency measure to shore up the American gold reserves, but the wealthy, the very gold hoarders causing the emergency, worried that if they converted all their fortune into currency, rampant inflation would destroy their fortunes. To make matters worse, Roosevelt seemed intent on publicly shaming them for their gold hoarding. FDR had been pointing at gold hoarders as unpatriotic social enemies for some time, and when he took office, he threatened to have the names of all those who had recently withdrawn gold from the nation’s banks published by the press, prompting many to redeposit their gold just to avoid such disgrace. Then, Roosevelt threw his support behind the Pecora Committee, a senate subcommittee devoted to investigating and revealing to the public all the unethical and reckless practices of Wall Street insiders and financial institutions in manipulating the market, an investigation that, later that year, bolstered the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act which cleaved investment firms from banks and insured bank deposits. It is safe to say that, for every powerful enemy among the ultra-wealthy that chief counsel Ferdinand Pecora made over the course of his investigation, President Roosevelt made one as well.

Hoover and Roosevelt on the latter’s inauguration day.

On May 9th, 1933, exactly two months after his inauguration, Bonus Army marchers returned to Washington, DC. These poor veterans remained angry over the violence the former president had inflicted on them, and rightly so. They further had some gripe with the new president, FDR, who had recently slashed veterans’ benefits in order to reduce the deficit. Roosevelt, however, took a very different tack in resolving their grievances. He directed the veterans to be housed at an abandoned Army camp in Virginia, where they would be provided medical care, fed well, plied with hot coffee and even treated to concerts by the Navy Band. It was a major humanitarian effort, and to top it off, Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady of the United States, visited the camp and gave the protestors a sympathetic ear. This gesture was not lost on them: “Hoover sent the army,” they said, “Roosevelt sent his wife.” While Roosevelt did not work to award the vets their bonus, he did work to resolve their unemployment. One of his principal New Deal programs was the Civilian Conservation Corps, putting young, unmarried men to work planting trees and laying telephone poles. In order to help the members of the Bonus Expeditionary Forces, Roosevelt waived the original age requirement of the corps and put thousands of the disaffected veterans to work. This all seems like something of a happy ending, but there were forces conspiring against Roosevelt. I have argued in the past against conspiracy theories about so-called “smoke-filled rooms,” but here certainly, considering what we know about what followed, some such secret meetings must have been convened. The powerful enemies that Roosevelt had made were seeking a way to remove him, despite or perhaps because of all the good he was doing the country. They sought to preserve their own wealth above all else, the rest of humanity be damned, and they saw in the veterans’ organizations that had mobilized a dissident army to march on the capital a tool that in their hands could give them everything they wanted.

Until next time, remember the famous Mark Twain quote, “History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes.” And further remember that Mark Twain never actually said or wrote that. As near as the wonderful online sleuth at Quote Investigator has been able to determine, that quote first appeared in 1970 and was later misattributed to Twain. However, Twain did once write “History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends,” and that’s just as true, if not quite so quotable.

Further Reading

Archer, Jules. The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking TRUE Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR. Skyhorse Publishing, 2015.

Denton, Sally. The Plots Against the President: FDR, a Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right. Bloomsbury Press, 2012.

Galka, Bradley M. The Business Plot in the American Press. 2017. Kansas State University, Master’s Thesis, https://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2097/38255/BradleyGalka2017.pdf.

Katz, Jonathan M. Gangsters of Capitalism. St. Martin’s Press, 2021.

A Very Historically Blind Xmas: The Iconic Christ

For the last 20 years or so, conservative commentators have convinced the Christian Right that there exists a “War on Christmas,” in that secular society is moving away from what they consider the “true” meaning of Christmas. I don’t intend to retread once again the true origin of the holiday; I encourage everyone who hasn’t listened to go back and listen to the first three of my Very Historically Blind Christmas specials for more insight into the historical and folkloric basis of the holiday. But I want to start our conversation this year by looking at the outrage over taking the Christ out of Christmas. We hear it almost every year, when some media company or retail chain wishes us an inclusive Happy Holidays rather than a very explicitly Christian Merry Christmas. Perhaps the most outrageous controversy occurred in 2015 when café juggernaut Starbucks toned down the seasonal imagery on their red cups. But a great example of the historical blindness of these claims is the argument that the common abbreviation of the word “Christmas” as “Xmas” is a clear representation of this supposed anti-Christian trend, in that it literally crosses out the word Christ. In reality, the letter X has long stood for the word or name “Christ.” In Greek, the original language of the New Testament, the word for Christ, Christós, is spelled starting with a big old capital “X” and an “r.” Constantine the great, the 4th century CE Roman Emperor who famously converted to Christianity, is said to have popularized the letters “XR,” or chi and rho, as an abbreviation of Christ’s name emblazoned on his military banner. The “R,” or rho, looked like a P in Greek, and the first Anglo-Saxon usage of the abbreviation to shorten the word Christmas dates to 1021 CE, written as “XPmas.” The shortening became more common through the centuries, with Google Ngram showing spikes in usage in the 16th and 18th centuries, and a gradual upslope in the 1800s, when many examples of it can be found in literature. Indeed, Ngram shows that its use had actually dropped significantly by the 21st century. But never mind the actual truth of the matter that history shows, I guess. In the same way, we can see episodes in history when there really was a literal War on Christmas, and that historical perspective refutes those who claim that plain red cups and wishing people Happy Holidays is a suppression of their religious observance and should make them feel rather silly. After all, Christmas only started to become a legal holiday in U.S. states in the 19th century. Back in the 17th century, in New England, Puritans had outlawed it, and even after the Crown brought it back, it was out of favor for a long time. The objection was that Christmas encouraged a Catholic sort of worship, which Puritans considered pagan in character, and idolatrous. This view can be traced back to Europe and the Reformation. First, Lutherans did away with the celebration of saints’ days, keeping only Christ Mass to honor Jesus, but Calvinists did away with Christmas and Easter too, reasoning that only the Sabbath was acceptable to observe, as it was the only holy day mentioned in scriptures. This view was further popularized in Great Britain among Presbyterians who banned Christmas in Scotland in the 16th century, and among Puritans in England, who outlawed it during the 17th-century Civil War. Clearly the long history of carousal and topsy-turvy, anything goes partying during the holiday contributed to the Puritan distaste for the celebration, but a large part of the Protestant resistance to the holiday resulted from their iconoclasm. Calvinists especially criticized the Catholic veneration of saints and Mary through portraits and statuary as a form of idolatry and paganism, and it seemed to them that all the trappings of Christmas smacked too much of a Catholic-style religion. Indeed, this debate is occasionally raised even today, as Catholics call Protestants hypocrites for criticizing them over their veneration of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in statuary when they put up nativity scenes in their homes every Christmas. Who knew that the image of baby Jesus in the manger could cause such controversy? Well, the answer to that should be most people—Christian apologists, theologians, biblical scholars, historians, art scholars, and even just your average Christian—for many and various are the robust debates and controversies about the image and likeness of Christ.

To begin our study of popular imagery of Christ, and to more concretely anchor the discussion as a holiday topic, let us look more closely at depictions of the Nativity. The first thing that may jump out to a critical mind when examining most nativity scenes is that the Christ child is very often pictured as a lily white babe. But we will get to depictions of race or ethnicity in icons of Christ. Here at the start, let us examine how the image of the Christ child became so tied up with Christmas imagery. I have spoken at length about the origin of midwinter celebrations and how they came to be viewed as a commemoration of Christ’s birth despite the fact that he most certainly wasn’t born during that time of year. This notion of the birth of baby Jesus being celebrated in December led to some odd adaptations of former traditions during the Reformation. Gifts had formerly been given to children on December 6th, the feast day of St. Nicolas, but Martin Luther, seeking to move away from the veneration of saints, insisted on focusing on Christmas Eve as the day of gift-giving. This led to a notion of a visiting gift-giver other than St. Nicolas, which Luther told children was Christ himself, or rather the Christ child, or Christkind. The legend of a gift-bearing Christ child visiting households on Christmas eve spread among Germans and evolved. Unsurprisingly, this Germanic Christkind was depicted like a little blonde white boy. On Christmas Eve, children were sent to their rooms to await the Christkind, whose arrival was announced by a ringing bell, but when the children raced out to see, the Christkind has already gone, leaving their presents behind. Over the centuries, the depiction of the Christkind evolved, such that the little boy became a little girl, and eventually a little white female angel. Likely this is because the figure of the Christkind, also called the Christkindl in the diminutive, was conflated with the angel characters that accompanied him in Christmas parades. The iconography is most distinctive in antique Christmas postcards, with the Christkindl depicted as a little girl carrying a bell or lantern, bearing a basket of presents across a snowy countryside. The figure of the Christkindl was even folded into the myth of the gift-giving St. Nicolas, or Santa Claus, who would sometimes himself be called Kris Kringle, a corruption of Christkindl, and on some postcards both can be seen pictured together, Santa cradling the Christkind angel child in his arms as both beam. And where is the image of Christ in this? It is the perfect example of how iconography evolves and adapts to other cultures until it is absolutely unrecognizable from its original subject.

A typical image of the Christkindl from a vintage Christmas card.

So let us move to modern depictions of Christ and begin our journey back through the ages to better understand how images of Jesus have likewise evolved to the point that they cannot be viewed as legitimate portraits of the historical man. To begin with, we must start with the most popular of images of Christ. It may surprise many that the most widely used image of Christ today, called the Head of Christ, can in no way be considered an accurate portrait. Also called the Sallman Head, the portrait was drawn in 1924 by an American, Warner Sallman, who sold it to a devotional magazine and later reproduced it as a painting. After the image was popularized, having been provided to soldiers in World War II for them to carry around and meditate on, the artist claimed to have sketched it from a miraculous vision late one night after beseeching God in prayer, but that rather sounds like mythmaking after the fact. The image has been venerated by the Coptic Orthodox Church since 1991, when it credited the report that a boy in Texas miraculously recovered from leukemia after seeing the portrait shedding tears. It is no surprise that the portrait was around in the nineties for that young leukemia patient to contemplate, as since the reproduction was painted, a company devoted to marketing lithographic prints of the portrait made it into the single most popular portrait of Christ, rivaled only by the Divine Mercy Image, a painting commissioned by a Polish nun who claimed to have received specific instructions from Jesus about what it should look like during a 1931 vision. Since both images are claimed to be divinely inspired, some might claim that they represent accurate portrayals of Christ, and there are some real similarities between the images, a white robe, long wavy brown hair and trim beard, long nose, high forehead, and white skin, or at least a light olive complexion, depending on how one perceives the tone and lighting. Importantly, we cannot compare the images to written descriptions of Christ in the scriptures, as those are glaringly absent from the New Testament and even from apocryphal works. Lacking any textual description, then, do we have any way of checking the authenticity of these supposed products of divine inspiration? Well, they are not the first images of Christ, of course, so we may begin by comparing them to predecessors to see how they fit into the genre of Christian iconography.

Interestingly, the Divine Mercy Image shares some striking similarities with a famous work of the High Renaissance called Salvator Mundi, or Savior of the World—not just in the likeness of Christ but even down to the position of Christ’s hands. This work is either an original work by Leonardo Da Vinci, or it is a copy of a lost work by Da Vinci. This in itself is something of an interesting mystery, but it opens to our discussion the work of Da Vinci and how his portrayals of Jesus Christ might be viewed as the invention of the modern image of Christ. Da Vinci’s depictions of Christ would certainly be influential on Christian iconography. That cannot be reasonably argued against. However, there are some odd claims that must be addressed made about the work of Da Vinci and who he used as the model of his portraits of Christ, including Salvator Mundi and The Last Supper. One notion is that since Da Vinci is believed to have used his young pupils and assistants, Gian Giacomo Caprotti and Francesco Melzi, as models, that one of them may have served as his model for Christ. Since these young men were intimate companions of Da Vinci’s, this theory has sometimes been used to troll conservative Christians by saying their image of Christ was modeled on a homosexual, but in truth, we don’t have concrete evidence about the nature of Da Vinci’s relationship with these men or whether either served as a model for Christ. Another tale has it that he used a fine-looking young man named Pietro Bandinelli as his model for Christ in The Last Supper, and years later, as he continued work on the fresco and it came time to paint Judas Iscariot, he went looking for a wretched looking beggar, and that model turned out to also be Pietro Bandinelli, who had fallen on hard times and whose beauty was marred by a sinful life. This story appears to have been wholly invented by a 19th century Presbyterian evangelist named John Wilbur Chapman for a sermon intended to show the harms of sin. Lastly, there is the claim, virally circulated as a meme on the Internet, that the modern image of Christ was modeled on Cesare Borgia, son of the controversial Pope Alexander VI, and that Borgia’s father commissioned images of Christ by Da Vinci and others and commanded that his son’s likeness be used. To this is added the claim that the pope did this to rid the world of images of a semitic Jesus, and even ordered all such other images be destroyed. The problem with this claim is that there is no evidence for it. Novelist Alexandre Dumas, of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo fame, is credited with recording this “fact” in his essay on the Borgias, but Snopes debunked this, finding no evidence of the claim in Dumas’ work. We know who Da Vinci’s patron was for The Last Supper, and it wasn’t a Borgia or a pope. Moreover, images of a European-looking Christ predate the Renaissance. There may be some kernel of truth present in this that has nothing to do with the model Da Vinci may or may not have used, in that there is reason to believe Da Vinci was influenced in his depictions of Jesus by an effort to Europeanize Christ’s image, even if he may not have been aware of it.

Salvator Mundi, attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci

In the latter half of the 14th century, some 35-40 years before Leonardo Da Vinci began work on The Last Supper, a curious letter was published and circulated around Italy. Purported to be a missive written by a Roman official identified as the governor of Judaea, or sometimes as the governor of Jerusalem, the letter’s purpose is to inform the Senate of Christ’s existence and his activities, specifically the miracles he was performing, such as curing disease and resurrecting the dead. Curiously, though, these momentous reports are mentioned only briefly, rather offhandedly, and the bulk of the letter is devoted to a physical description of Christ. The Letter of Lentulus says he is tall, with a respectable countenance. More specifically, it says his hair is the color of “an unripe hazelnut,” or light brown, is parted in the middle and straight until his ears, at which point it falls curly to his shoulders. A beard, too, is described, full, also brown, but not long, and forked at the chin. Even the color of his skin is suggested with a line about its “slightly reddish hue,” indicative of a certain cheerful disposition according to the medieval notion of bodily fluids, or humors, determining temperament, but also hinting at a very European lightness of skin tone, in which ruddy complexions are more common. The circulation of the Letter of Lentulus in Italy during the High Renaissance offers a clear and convincing explanation of the origin of modern images of Christ. In Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi and The Last Supper, as well as in later variations like the Divine Mercy Image, we see it all, the good looks, the mild expression, the pale skin, the light brown hair, long and parted in the center, and even the forked beard. However, this image was certainly a 15th century invention, as scholars agree that the Letter of Lentulus is not genuine. It identifies one Publius Lentulus as the praeses or governor of Judaea or Jerusalem depending on the version, and putting aside the problem that there was no governor of the city of Jerusalem, other than a military commander, the actual term praeses as an honorific designating a governor would not be used until the 3rd century CE, and thus is anachronistic. Moreover, some of the earliest versions of the letter give the name of an emperor who would not have been in power at the time the letter was supposedly written, an error that was amended in future versions. But the biggest tell that this was a fabrication is the simple fact that the letter’s entire purpose seems to be to establish that Christ looked like a European. Simply put, it was a piece of fake news, a hoax artifact, designed to rewrite history by representing an ancient Middle Eastern Jew as European-looking, and it succeeded, not only by inspiring many works of art, but also, later, by inspiring white supremacists.

From the 19th century onward, the Publius Lentulus Letter has been resurrected and touted by those who argue Jesus was white. Long after it was discredited as a forgery, it began to gain credence among whites in America and Britain, where most acknowledged that it was a fraud but nevertheless felt that it rang true or wanted it to be true. In the U.S. especially, where Judeo-Christian scriptures were used to bolster first chattel slavery and later Jim Crow oppressions, the Lentulus Letter gradually went from being a known forgery, to being disseminated in the Gilded Age as a true eyewitness description of a white Jesus. Later, the Nazis would follow suit. Their Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life put great effort into promoting the notion of an “Aryan” Jesus, promulgating the false history that Galilee was peopled by nothing but converted Gentiles or non-Jews, so it stood to reason that Christ, who was from Galilee, was himself a Gentile. This, however, is pure speculation, and misrepresents the ethnic demographic of Galilee. Roman-Jewish historian Josephus does mention forced conversion when Judaea expanded just before the time of Christ, but to suggest the populace of Galilee was comprised only of Gentiles is insupportable. Indeed, all passages touching on his ethnicity in canonical scriptures clearly indicate he was a Judaean Jew. In Galatians, it is said he was born under Judaean law, which is matrilineal, in that his mother, Mary, was Jewish, and in Romans, it is said he was of the seed of David, and not metaphorically, clarifying that this was “according to flesh.” Later in Romans, again, it specifies that Christ was descended from the “root of Jesse,” the father of David. Essentially, Christ was descended from the royal lineage that had formerly ruled Judah. While it’s true that the gospels indicate this Davidic line of descent from Joseph, who was not his biological father according to the doctrine of Immaculate Conception, and that there were traditions in the 2nd century CE suggesting Christ’s real biological father was a soldier named Panthera, there is no claim that Panthera was not himself a Jew. In addition to his Jewish status as the son of a Jewish woman, there is the further evidence that, in John, it’s said of the Jews in Jerusalem that “his own did not accept him,” and when the Romans crucified him, the sign hung on his cross to define his crime said he was killed for being “King of the Jews.” All signs point to Jesus being a Jew, and any who argue otherwise do so with some bias or agenda.

A so-called “Black Madonna” portrait, appearing to depict the Christ child with darker skin.

White supremacists are not alone in misrepresenting Christ’s likely skin color, though. In the 19th century, a dubious connection was made between the story of Christ and the Hindu god Krishna by English antiquarian and reformer Godfrey Higgins, who suggested that their names were derivative, and that Krishna, typically depicted as blue but whose name means “black” or “dark blue,” originated as the god of a black people, therefore making Christ black. This claim has evolved over the last two centuries, such that atheists and critics of Christianity will delight in claiming that the story of Christ was stolen from the ancient Hindu story of Krishna, claiming that Krishna too was born on December 25th, of a virgin, in a manger, lived only 30 years, and was crucified, and rose again after three days, none of which is true. Even the etymology of their names is known to be completely unrelated, as the name Christ is derived from a Greek word approximating the Hebrew word for messiah. The notion of a Black Jesus would rise again, as it were, championed Black American ministers, starting with George Alexander McGuire in 1924, who pointed out that, since Christ is said to have been descended from David, and David counted among his forebears some ancestors of Hamitic descent, and Ham was widely thought to have been cursed with dark skin, making him the origin of the Black race, then it meant that Christ was at least of mixed race Black heritage. Of course, the entire notion that Blackness is a curse put on Ham and his descendants by God is a pernicious claim that was long used to justify slavery and racist oppression. Although it must be admitted that McGuire’s turning of this logic against white supremacists is admirable, as a basis for a real inquiry into Christ’s appearance, it is not sound. Starting in the 1950s, civil rights activists and radical theologians continued to preach against the notion of a white Jesus and argue instead for a Black Jesus, but not typically on grounds previously cited. The first major champion of the movement in the Civil Rights era was Albert Cleage, Jr., a Detroit minister whose black separatist message was based principally on revolutionary anti-racist sentiment. He wrote numerous books claiming that Jesus was literally, ethnically Black in his effort to remake Christ as a messiah more closely identified with the Black Church. Mostly Cleage relied on the claim that Christ’s people, Judaean Jews, were a people who, having come out of Egypt, had mixed with dark-skinned African peoples, and his evidence was itself just as problematic as any evidence of Christ’s whiteness in that he relied on the numerous Black Madonnas, or statues and paintings of Mary and the infant Jesus that seem to depict them with dark skin. These works are typically Byzantine in origin, and depictions of people with darker skin are common in such Greek style works of that era. Additionally, many of them are believed by art scholars to have darkened with age and exposure to candle smoke. The argument for a Black Jesus would be further developed in the 1960s by James Cone, but his Black Liberation Theology was not focused on arguing that Christ literally was African. Rather, his was more of an iconoclastic theology, calling out White Jesus as an idol that ought to be smashed. Later developments of the Black Jesus doctrine suggested that Christ’s identification with blackness had nothing to do with the color of his skin but rather the parallels of the historical suffering and oppression of both the Jews and Black people. Despite the fact that no strong literal argument has been put forward with historical source evidence to support the notion of Jesus as a Black man, the idea, both literal and figurative, stands as an admirable challenge to white supremacists and remains popular. Recently, an image claiming to show the earliest known depiction of Christ, revealing him and all of his apostles to have dark brown skin and hair, went so viral that it was even picked up and spread by the the Daily Mail. In reality, however, the painting, which hangs in the Coptic Museum in Cairo and depicts Doubting Thomas placing his finger in Christ’s wound, dates only to the 18th century. Like the Black Madonnas, the darker skin tones of figures in it can be attributed to the Byzantine style and darkening because of age and smoke. As of now, the artistic work that holds the record as the earliest depiction of Christ is called “The Healing of the Paralytic,” a Syrian work dating to 235 CE that pictures Christ beardless, with short hair, in a sketch that makes it impossible to determine skin tone.

So the conundrum is apparent. In a world in which the racial identity of this religious figure has become an important point of contention, we really have no clear sense of what he looked like. Most early images show a shorter haired man, and the bearded Jesus doesn’t seem to have shown up until centuries later, but even the earliest images of him as a short-haired, beardless man originate from more than two hundred years after his death. So after all of this, essentially we find that all works of art depicting Christ prove inadequate and untrustworthy in credibly portraying what Christ the historical man may have looked like. However, the faithful will tell us that we should not look to the works of man for an accurate depiction of Christ, but rather to the portraits made without hands, acheiropoieta, icons supposedly formed miraculously, through some supernatural impression. I have spoken a great deal about such artifacts in the past, such as in my investigation of the Guadalupe Tilma. More germane to our topic today, I devoted an entire episode to the Shroud of Turin, in which I raised numerous issues such as its carbon dating and indications of pigment having been added to the blood present in the image. When I researched and wrote that episode in 2018, I left it somewhat open-ended because of recent evidence published in PLOS ONE that the iron particles present in the blood traces on the shroud’s fabric are consistent with the blood of a human enduring trauma. However, since that time, that paper was retracted. Furthermore, I’ve come around to the possibility that the staining may have been accomplished through the suffering of a person purposely imitating Christ’s suffering as a kind of penance, a not uncommon practice in the Middle Ages, which would be consistent with the carbon dating. So we can rule out the Shroud of Turin. Additionally, in a patron exclusive, I spoke of another acheiropoieta, the vernicle or Veil of Veronica, a supposed miraculous impression of Christ’s face made when he wiped his bloody sweat upon a woman’s veil on his way to crucifixion, and in both my episode on the Turin Shroud and my minisode on the Vernicle, I spoke about the Mandylion, or the Image of Edessa, another supposedly miraculous image of Christ’s face on cloth. Both, it turns out, began as legends, and only much later did actual portraits appear purporting to be the legendary images, with many competing versions, all of which are manifestly works of art. Neither are these the only acheiropoieta to discuss. There is the Ancha icon, called the Keramidion and said to have been miraculously copied from the Mandylion through contact with it. This artifact is actually just a hot wax painting. Then there is the Kamuliana, once venerated in Constantinople, which was supposedly an image of Christ imprinted on a piece of linen and discovered in a well by a pagan woman who had previously doubted Christ’s existence.  Except it was actually painted on canvas, and it turned out to be big business for the churches built to house it and charge people admission to view it. Lastly, there is the image of Christ in the Sancta Sanctorum within the Lateran Palace in Rome. This image, unlike the others, was never claimed to be anything other than a painting; however, at the time of its first veneration, it was claimed that it was painted by angels. Afterward, it was said that St. Luke sketched it and angels finished it. Eventually, it was just said that St. Luke painted it, which would suggest it was an original portrait by a biographer of Christ, but in truth, there is no record of the image until the 7th century CE, and it is further useless as evidence of Christ’s appearance since it long ago faded to become indiscernible and was replaced by a different silk painting of Christ. In the end, all these supposedly miraculous images turn out to be mere works of art, just as untrustworthy as any other painting, none of which can be relied on as accurate portrayals of Jesus. 

The Ancha Icon, or Keramidion, said to be a genuine acheiropoieta, or miraculously created image of Christ.

If no image can be trusted, we are forced to rely on the written record. With the Publius Lentulus Letter revealed to be a fraud, we look to the Gospels, which as I have already said, are curiously silent about Christ’s stature, facial features, hair color and style, and his clothing. They give us absolutely nothing to work with. And why is that? It is a remarkably curious omission. It is not a matter of physical description merely being uncommon in ancient works of biography. As Joan Taylor, author of my principal source, What Did Jesus Look Like?, points out, most ancient Greek biographies give ample details about the appearance of their subjects. This was even true of ancient histories focused on Moses, and elsewhere in New Testament scriptures, descriptions are not withheld, so why did the writers of the Gospels resist telling us what the most important figure in their religion looked like? Strangely, the closest we get to a description comes after Christ’s resurrection, when he appears to the Apostles and they fail to recognize him! This episode would go a long way toward supporting the theory I discussed in my recent patron exclusive that perhaps it was not Christ who was crucified, or that it was another, such as his own brother, who appeared to disciples after the crucifixion claiming to be a risen Christ. Some early Christian scholars and Gnostics, however, took this as further evidence of the notion that he was polymorphous, a shape-shifter who might appear differently to those who looked on him depending on the quality of their souls. But regardless of the value of either of these hypotheses, this passage raises the idea that Christ may have been so very unremarkable that it was difficult to describe him, and perhaps even difficult to recognize him. What would a biographer say if he was not tall nor short, not handsome nor ugly? Taylor points out that if he were handsome, it may have been something the authors of the Gospels would have emphasized, as attractiveness was commonly thought to be typical of royalty, and this would have demonstrated Christ’s kingly heritage. But if conversely, he were unattractive, this might have been emphasized as well to drive home the point that he was a longsuffering servant of his Father. Indeed, in later years, citing a passage in Isaiah thought to prophesize the appearance of Christ as a “Suffering Servant,” it would be said that “he had no form of majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity, and as one from whom others hide their faces.” Indeed, not counting prophecies believed to be speaking of him, the earliest known genuine physical description of Christ, from 2nd century philosopher and critic of Christianity Celsus, tells us that, “as they say, [he] was little and ugly and undistinguished.” Celsus’s description has variously been criticized as malicious name calling by a critic or as yet another identification of Christ with Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, but as Taylor points out, the wording “as they say” indicates he is sharing what others at the time said about Christ, opening the possibility that he had heard an accurate description passed down from one who had seen or known Jesus. The notion of a short and ugly messiah lines up with the image of Jesus as a philosopher, she points out, suggesting he may have been a kind of unkempt wandering sage, and this may account for many of the aspects of the image of him we have received, such as his being bearded and clothed raggedly in robes. The fact remains, though, that none of Christ’s biographers specify these details of his appearance. Taylor suggests that they might have been stuck, not wanting to portray him either way, as good-looking or ugly, and so purposely avoided the matter. Many faithful would say this had something to do with modesty or focusing more on matters of the spirit than on the physical, but of course, a simpler explanation comes from the consensus view among scholars that the writers of the Gospels weren’t there and didn’t know Christ and therefore could not accurately describe him. What are we left with, then? Simply the knowledge that he was a Judaean Jew, living around the turn of the Common Era, and that he may have been exceedingly average in his looks. And that, it turns out, is enough.

Running with the aspect of Celsus’s description of Christ as “undistinguished,” Taylor sets out to develop the thesis that Jesus was exceedingly average, an ordinary-looking man for his time and place and ethnicity. A more accurate image of Christ can then be extrapolated based on a scientific understanding of the circumstances of his birth and life. From the ample data on the measurements of human remains kept by the Israel Antiquities Authority, as well as other osteological records, she calculates an average height among Judaean Jews of his locale and age as five feet, five inches tall. She cites expert biohistorian Yossi Nagar who asserts that, based on historical knowledge of intermarriage or lack thereof and analysis of chromosomal pools, the extant people today who appear most like ancient Judaean Jews are Iraqi Jews, which fills in with relative certainty several prominent features of the historical Christ. He must have had black or dark brown hair and brown eyes. As for the much debated color of his skin, it likely was some shade of olive or honey, though of course there would have been variation in any community, such that his complexion may have been dark or light within that certain range. What we know about the common practices among Jews at the time when it came to hair, practices governed by religious codes as well as by the need to keep oneself free of lice, Christ likely had short hair and a beard but not a long one. As for his dress, the notion of a robe is not that distinguishable to us today from the traditional Jewish garb he actually wore, a mantle, called a tallith, wrapped around the body and slung over a shoulder. Here we have as precise and credible a description of Jesus Christ as we are likely to ever find, and still, we cannot know the exact tone of his skin or the features of his face. In 2001, a BBC documentary famously attempted a computer modeled approximation of a Judaean man’s face from a skull in an effort to see what Christ may have looked like, but the shape and arrangement of soft tissue features like lips and nose and eyebrows can only be guessed at in such models, and even if it were accurate for that skull, to suggest that all Judaean Jews of the era must have had similar faces is the very definition of stereotyping. So after everything, we don’t, we can’t know what Christ looked like, not really. But we can determine that the innumerable popular images of Christ are inaccurate, no matter their age or whether they are claimed to be miraculous depictions. We see a clear tendency in all art depicting him and all cultures in which he is venerated to remake Jesus in our own image, just as we are said to have been made in God’s. The inclination is so strong that it is etched into people’s brains, such that they think they see the image of Christ everywhere they look, in clouds, shadows, trees, frying pans, toast, tortillas, and once, in 2011, on a dog’s butt. In reality, though, this Jesus, only ever existed in their heads.

Until next time, remember, when you fry up a grilled cheese sandwich, it’s not Jesus you see on its toasted side, but rather a politicized and racialized iconographic representation of a historical figure who you probably wouldn’t recognize if he showed his face on your dinner.

Further Reading

Ambrosino, Brandon. “The X in Xmas Literally Means Christ. Here's the History Behind It.” Vox, 14 Dec. 2014, www.vox.com/2014/12/14/7374401/jesus-xmas-christmas.

Armstrong, Dave. “How Protestant Nativity Scenes Proclaim Catholic Doctrine.” National Catholic Register, 17 Dec. 2017, www.ncregister.com/blog/how-protestant-nativity-scenes-proclaim-catholic-doctrine.

Flesher, Paul V.M. “UW Religion Today: Who Was Against Christmas?” University of Wyoming, 9 Dec. 2015, www.uwyo.edu/uw/news/2015/12/uw-religion-today-who-was-against-christmas.html.

Jones, Victoria Emily. “Instead of Santa, Christkindl.” The Jesus Question, 14 Dec. 2015, thejesusquestion.org/2015/12/14/instead-of-santa-christkindl/.

Kidd, Colin. The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Taylor, Joan E. What Did Jesus Look Like? Bloomsbury, 2018.

Lilith, The Phantom Maiden (An Apocryphal Catechism)

In William Peter Blatty’s 1971 religious horror novel, The Exorcist, as well as the classic 1973 film based on the book, a demon named Pazuzu possesses a young girl and must be cast out by a stoic and dutiful Catholic priest. In the beginning of both the book and the film, the titular exorcist is present at an archaeological dig in Iraq, at which is uncovered a statue of Pazuzu, ancient Mesopotamian King of the lilu, or wind demons. This demon appears to be a chimera, with wings, bulging eyes on a canine face, feet like the talons of a bird of prey, and a serpent wound around his phallus and leg. A surface reading of the book or viewing of the film might cause one to think that the exorcist himself was ironically responsible for somehow freeing the demon by digging up the statue, but what was intended seems more like a portent of the imminent confrontation the exorcist will have with Pazuzu, whom he has struggled with before. However, it would seem that, maybe, Blatty chose poorly or researched only shallowly when deciding what Assyrian demon should be his antagonist. Pazuzu, in one aspect, was a domestic spirit of the home, and even in its more fearsome aspect, as depicted in the statue, was considered a protector. The lilu wind demons were considered evil spirits, it’s true, and Pazuzu chief among them, in that they were related to destructive winds and locusts that brought famine. But they weren’t associated with danger to youth. Quite the opposite. Pazuzu was called upon to drive off other demons. His statue was used as an apotropaic, an amulet, especially to protect the young from one particular demoness, Lamashtu. This she-demon, sometimes viewed as an evil goddess, was depicted much the same as Pazuzu, with talon feet and sometimes holding a snake, but hairier, without wings, and with the head of a lioness. According to Mesopotamian lore, she brought disease and nightmares, harmed women giving birth, abducted and slayed children, drank their blood, and chewed on their bones. Now there’s a villain Blatty might have made the torturer of a possessed child. But the lore of ancient Mesopotamian demons is all confused now. It has been combined and recombined with other folklore, evolving as the basis for new superstitions, incorporated into religion after religion, as the lines between what must have once seemed real figures have been syncretistically blurred. Here we see the protector become the ravager, but so too we see the evolution of Lamashtu, who eventually became identified with the lilu, her nature rewritten through the ages, reinvented by medieval Kabbalists who gave birth to an apocryphal legend.

As with my previous post on superstitions, this topic occurred to me rather organically while researching my Halloween series on vampire lore. Claims that lore about vampires extends all the way back to ancient myth are common. I looked into the assertions about links to Greek myth and the so-called “vampire bible,” the Delphi Scriptures, and found it utterly unconvincing and lacking support. I mentioned that at the end of my series. However, there are other prevalent claims that the lore and superstitions about vampires can be traced back to the figure of Lilith, and before her, Lamashtu. Unlike the supposed myth of Ambrogio, there is a lot of real history and folklore to unpack here, tangled up in syncretistic iterations, and I was not prepared to discuss its impact on vampire lore then. I am now. The connection seems clear enough. It is said that Lamashtu drank the blood of children. However, we know that the original vampire lore, deriving from claims about revenants, often had little to do with blood drinking. Also, to claim that Lilith was the prototypical vampire really doesn’t work, since she was known more for strangling that drinking blood, as we’ll see. Moreover, vampires are and always were the risen dead, humans transformed because of the circumstances of their death and burial, or due to the influence of the Devil. Their nature can be attributed to the various aspects of a decomposing corpse dug up by those who suspected its posthumous activity. In no way does this correspond to these spirits and deities, who were never human and appear as animal hybrids. Yes, I’ll get to the claims about Lilith’s human origin, but that’s irrelevant here, since according to her origin, as you’ll see, she was not a human, or undead. Moreover, revenants were never known to attack only children. The entire claim seems predicated on the detail about Lamashtu’s blood drinking, like someone went looking for the first ever thing thought to drink blood and then made the unsupportable assertion that there was some direct line of folkloric descent from that legend to vampires. A more logical but equally insupportable claim would be that the blood drinking aspect of vampires derived from other parasites known to suck blood, like leeches, or mosquitoes, which also spread disease like malaria, dengue fever, and yellow fever, though we didn’t know it back then. But on another level, there are some clear parallels between folklore and superstitions about vampires and those about Lamashtu and Lilith. As with revenants, Lamashtu was a scapegoat, blamed for the spreading of disease, likely blamed for sleep paralysis since she was thought to bring nightmares, and held responsible for any number of illnesses that might result in a child’s death or the death of a mother during childbirth. Lamashtu was even said to kill the unborn, so she appears to have been the scapegoat for stillbirth as well. It is clear that the figure of Lilith descended in some ways from the demoness Lamashtu, and it is clear that she too served as a scapegoat for a number of misfortunes, some similar and some quite different, but her myth took on ever more strange aspects, and she developed amazing importance in more than one religious tradition. So let’s begin with a look at the first real appearance of Lilith, not as a creature but a woman, the so-called “phantom maiden.”

A Pazuzu statue like the one shown in The Exorcist. Image credit: Lamiot (CC BY-SA 3.0)

I have spoken at some length, in my series on giants and my series on Flood Myths and Noah’s Ark, about the Epic of Gilgamesh. In case this is your first episode or you missed those others, the Epic of Gilgamesh is an ancient Mesopotamian epic poem that may have served as the source material for numerous biblical traditions. I spoke about the Flood Myth of Utnapishtim serving as the basis of the story of Noah, but additionally, there appear to be parallels and connections to the Genesis story of Adam and Eve in Eden. For example, the eating of the forbidden fruit appears to correspond to the Sumerian god Enki eating forbidden flowers and being cursed by his goddess wife, Ninḫursag, and dying. Each part of his body died, and when Ninḫursag relented in her curse, giving birth to goddesses who would each heal a part of Enki’s body, especial focus is given to his rib, and the goddess Nin-ti, or lady of the rib. Indeed, the Sumerian word for rib, ti, apparently also meant “to make live,” so Nin-ti meant both “the lady of the rib” and “the lady who makes live.” Some scholars believe that this ancient pun may be the origin for the part of the story of Genesis in which God makes a woman live from the rib of Adam. This aspect of the Genesis narrative will be very relevant to our discussion of Lilith later, but right now, what is more relevant, is the story of the Huluppu Tree, which some see as a parallel of or perhaps the origin of the story of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, in which dwelled the Serpent. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the goddess Inanna finds a primeval tree growing on the Euphrates River. In its roots, a snake or dragon nested, and in its uppermost branches, a massive, fire-breathing bird. Inanna wants to make a throne and bed of the tree, but these creatures stood in her way, and worse than they, in the trunk of the tree, so the poem states, Lilith, the phantom maiden, made her home. The word translated as Lilith here is Lillake, meaning ghost or phantom. In the Sumerian King List, an ancient chronicle kept to legitimize and delegitimize the reigns of various rulers, it is said that Gilgamesh, the basis of the poem who likely was a real king, was himself the son of a lilu demon. There is a strong sense among scholars that gradually, the monstrous she-demon Lamashtu and the evil lilu wind demons like Pazuzu, who were called lilitu in the feminine form, gradually came to be viewed as similar or the same. Such that the Lillake described in the Huluppu Tree was described as a ghostly young woman, a phantom maiden. Here is an inflection point in the development of the myth of Lillith. Gilgamesh drives the serpent from the tree roots, the great bird from its branches, and the phantom maiden from its trunk, and it is said that she flees from there into the wilderness or desert. It is there where we next find her.

Only once in all of the Bible is Lilith mentioned, and even then, the mention is dubious and demonstrates the nature of the figure as well as how she changed through the ages. In the book of Isaiah, chapter 34, verses 13 and 14, as the 8th century Israelite prophet, speaking of God’s judgment on nations and listing the many misfortunes that will befall a nation being divinely judged, talks of wild beasts and other creatures overrunning it: “Thorns shall grow over its strongholds, nettles and thistles in its fortresses. It shall be the haunt of jackals, an abode for ostriches. Wildcats shall meet with hyenas; goat-demons shall call to each other; there also Lilith shall repose and find a place to rest.” There is some debate about the historical context of the book of Isaiah, as well as its authorship, owing to changes in style and anachronisms that suggest everything after chapter 39 or 40 may have been written by a different, later author, but this chapter that makes mention of Lilith, quoted here in the New Revised Standard translation, is believed to represent the words of Proto-Isaiah, the prophet himself, who lived in the 8th century BCE in the Kingdom of Judah. A closer look at the original Hebrew and a comparison of the various translations may help us better understand this reference. The word lilit, taken in some translations as a proper name, is in other versions translated as night-spirit, night-monster, night-demon, night hag, night animals (plural), night bird, and screech owl.  Some versions even change the name entirely to Lamia, an analogous child-eating female spirit from Greek myth who seems to be yet another iteration of the original Lilith figure, likely itself derived from the ancient Lamashtu. But this is a leap, for the Hebrew word being translated is lilit. I find the New Living Translation’s choice to refer to a plural, night creatures, as apt, since otherwise the verses in question are referring to plural beasts taking residence in the desolate nation. Remember that the original basis for the name Lilith seems to have been the plural word for Mesopotamian wind demons, lilu in the masculine, and lili or lilitu in the feminine. Thus the verse may not be referring to a singular figure, as many have believed, but rather a class of demons. Many translations view the previous creatures mentioned as goat demons, sometimes translated as satyrs; therefore, the verse would be describing both wild creatures and demons making the judged nation their abode. Other translations have it, however, that these verses are only describing wild creatures, specifically wild goats, and they translate lilit as a kind of bird, or specifically a screech owl. This seems questionable to me, since a few verses earlier, in verse 11, an entirely different word is widely translated as screech owl. However, the mythical Lilith, or particular female examples of the class of demons called lilitu, had long been associated with owls. One terracotta relief out of Babylon, the Burney Relief, has been discovered depicting her as a beautiful nude woman with wings and the feathered talon feet of an owl. And this image of her as a chimeric hybrid appears contemporaneous with the account in Isaiah, as on a 7th-century BCE tablet out of Syria, the Arslan Tash amulet, she is depicted as a kind of winged sphinx creature. Thus she may have been viewed as both a demoness and a wild creature, as she had previously been portrayed nesting in a tree in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Strange then that she would later be viewed as so human, less beastly and more beautiful.

The Burney Relief, depicting a monstrous Lilith. Image credit: Aiwok (CC BY-SA 3.0)

To make a clear and striking juxtaposition, Lilith today is viewed as a dark and beautiful woman with long hair. When we aren’t hearing about her as the progenitrix of vampires, she is thought to be the mother of all demons. Rather than originating as an offspring of a god, as did Pazuzu and Lamashtu, making her a kind of demigoddess, as were the demons from which her lore derives, she instead is claimed to have originated in Paradise, when the Judeo-Christian God created man and woman. She in fact is said to have been the first wife of Adam, formed from the dust just like him and therefore equal to him, not formed from a part of him like Adam’s second wife, Eve, and thus not subservient to him. Because of this aspect of her myth, she has become something of a feminist icon, representing an empowered and coequal gender, whom Adam rejects for not acquiescing to his domination. Thus Lilith, spurned but also defiant, sprouts wings and flies to freedom. In some depictions of her, like Pazuzu before her, she is associated with a serpent that winds itself around her, and as her myth developed, she became associated with the the figure of Satan. Some tellings have it that she returned to Eden to tempt Eve, whom she resented, with the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Thus we see again Lilith nesting in the tree in paradise, as in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Other versions focus on her insatiable sexual appetite and after her fall make of her more of a succubus demon who returns to Adam to have intercourse with him, and from her unholy unions with Adam as well as with other men, she conceives and gives birth to other demons, an entire race of succubi and incubi, called lilin, and so once again we return in a roundabout fashion to the notion that Lilith is not unique but rather one of an entire race of demons with similar attributes and behavior. But how did we get from the notion of Lilith as the later version of Lamashtu, a wild, animalistic demoness, part bird, who devours children, to the notion that she was one of God first creations, made in his image in Paradise? The answer is that it was invented, whole cloth, during the Middle Ages in an apocryphal work of Aramaic and Hebrew proverbs.

The Alphabet of Ben Sira is believed to have been composed anonymously between 700 and 1000 CE. The work was clearly inspired by a Hebrew collection of ethical lessons written in Jerusalem in the 2nd century BCE by one Ben Sira, but scholars believe the medieval work to be more of a satire. The author likes to address topics such as sexual intercourse, masturbation, urination, and flatulence. In fact, fair warning, any discussion of this composition, as well as certain aspects of Lilith, will get a bit bawdy and weird. It has been suggested that the Alphabet of Ben Sira may have actually been written by a Jew as a kind of burlesque comedy poking fun at his own traditions, or by a non-Jew as a kind of mockery of Judaism. One example of the parodic nature of the work is that its protagonist, Ben Sira, is said to be the grandson of the prophet Jeremiah, whom God had commanded not to marry or have children. Well, according to the Alphabet of Ben Sira, Jeremiah did have a partner, and had a daughter with her, but in an effort to obey God’s command, would apparently practice Onanism, or coitus interruptus—which, at the risk of being crude, is basically pulling out to spill one’s seed. According to the author, the prophet Jeremiah did this once in bathwater that his daughter afterward bathed in, resulting in his impregnating his own daughter, making Ben Sira both the grandson and son of the prophet Jeremiah. One can see why this work is apocryphal and rejected even back in the Middle Ages by Jewish philosophers and rabbis. The passage in which the author invents the modern legend of Lilith occurs when King Nebuchadnezzar asks Ben Sira to heal his son, and Ben Sira blames Lilith for the boy’s illness and makes an amulet for his protection. He then explains who Lilith is to Nebuchadnezzar, saying God created her for Adam so that Adam wouldn’t be alone and made her out of earth just as He had made Adam. However, they began to argue over sexual positions, with Lilith refusing to be on the bottom, and Adam insisting that he was superior and therefore must be on top. Lilith protests that they are, in fact, equal, being made from the same stuff, and when Adam denies it, she abandons him, sprouting wings and flying away to the sea. Adam, of course, complains to God that his woman has run off, so God sends angels to bring her back. Lilith, however, refuses to return and claims she “was created only to cause sickness to infants.” The story concludes with Ben Sira explaining that, because of the deal she struck with the angels sent after her, the amulet he had made would be effective at driving her off. The story further indicates that she is the mother of demons, many of whom are doomed to perish every day. The tale given in the Alphabet of Ben Sira is the first known suggestion of her creation in Eden as Adam’s wife, but the notion of her as a bringer of misfortune to children, which is also present, was likely inherited from her forerunner, Lamashtu. How she came to be known as the mother of demons is not especially clear, but it would come to define her persona.

Adam clutches a child in the presence of the child-snatcher Lilith.

The next development of the Lilith myth came in another medieval Jewish text, the Zohar. This work was said to have been composed actually long before the Alphabet of Ben Sira, in the 2nd century CE, supposedly by the famed sage Rashbi, or Shimon ben Yochai, but this claim appears to only have been made by the man who first promoted the text, Moshe ben Shemtov, or Moses de León, a Spanish rabbi and Kabbalist, a kind of traditional mystic. The problem is that Moses de León was known to compose pseudepigraphal Kabbalistic tracts, meaning he falsely attributed his writings to other, typically ancient and more authoritative sources, which increased their value. In other words, he was a forger. Indeed, de León’s widow, according to one report, explicitly revealed the Moses de León wrote the Zohar himself in the 13th century and attached Rashbi’s name to it in order to make it more valuable. Nevetheless, within fifty years, it was considered a core sacred text among many Spanish Kabbalists. Regardless of the authorship controversy, the book purports to be a collection of the teachings of the sage Rashbi, as well as commentaries on the Torah and allegorical narratives. In it, Lilith is discussed some sixty times, and in other Kabbalistic writings, her myth is further expanded. The notion that she was created of dust the same as Adam is reinforced, but in some Kabbalistic works, it is claimed that, for some unclear reason, when God made Lilith he formed her not of good, clean dust or soil, but rather of unclean filth. The idea that she fled Paradise after a quarrel with Adam remains. However, in the Zohar, we learn that Adam actually impregnated Lilith before she fled, and that when she bears his children, they are demons or spirits, thus clarifying Lilith’s role as a mother of demons. A further aspect clarified is her perpetual yearning for male companionship, such that when she fled from Paradise, at one point she found herself near God’s throne, which was surrounded by Cherubim, and since cherubs looked like little boys, she attached herself to them. But it was Adam she longed for, and Kabbalist tradition tells us she returned to the garden, but finding Eve with him, she schemed to be rid of her by tempting her, thereby contributing to Adam’s Fall as well. But Kabbalist tradition is far more intricate than this. Kabbalist mystics actually rewrote much of the origin story of Lilith, suggesting that rather than a creation of God she was a spontaneously generated divine creature, a kind of manifested aspect of God, an emanation from beneath his throne, which kind of sounds like a fart to me. By this alternative version, she was only part of an androgynous, dual entity, Lilith being the female half and Samael, a rebel angel and adversary to God identified with Satan, was her male counterpart. Thus, Lilith and the Devil were one and the same, so she was the Serpent in the Garden just as much as he was. Despite this development of Kabbalistic lore that has Lilith being more of a demoness from the start, she is always depicted as longing for Adam and for the company of all men. After the Fall, she copulates with Cain, bearing many demons. And Adam, upon finding out that their expulsion from Paradise and the murder of his son may have had to do with his connubial relationship to Lilith, decides to be celibate and not even lie with Eve for a whopping 130 years. However, during these many years, it’s said that Lilith comes to Adam in his sleep, stealing his seed, and begetting many demons, an entire demonic race, in fact: the Lilin, a plague upon mankind that are said to lurk in dark places, such as doorways and wells and in pits used as latrines. Thus, in the Middle ages, a tale that likely began as satire was expanded upon by forgers and mystics into the full-fledged myth of a separately created woman, a nymphomaniac spirit who caused the fall of man and became a succubus that mothered an army of demons.

A simple explanation for the popularity of this growing and changing myth is that, much like her folkloric precursor, Lamashtu, Lilith served as a useful scapegoat and superstitious explanation for a variety of misfortunes and embarrassing or baffling experiences. While the philosophers and mystics spoke of her origin and nature, the everyday people only feared her and blamed her for things. Her nature as a succubus who stole the seed of men to give birth to demons meant that Lilith was commonly believed to be the cause of nocturnal emissions. Whenever a male had a wet dream, it was said that Lilith had come to him in his dreams and succeeded in arousing him to the point of impregnating her. Perhaps the men or boys who had these nocturnal emissions and were embarrassed by them or confused were consoled by this superstition. Men also likely claimed to their wives that they had better engage in frequent intercourse with them or it would be their fault when Lilith came to them, and it was thought that when Lilith succeeded in seducing a man, she gained some rights of cohabitation in the household. Thus later artifacts that bear the name of Lilith, like incantation bowls and other charms, are inscribed as literal writs of divorce, declaring that Lilith had no rights there. The danger was even thought to exist when a man slept with his wife, whether he spilled his seed outside of her on purpose, if you’ll excuse the frankness of my remarks, or even if some of his semen was lost accidentally. Lilith was thought to lurk in the bedsheets, waiting to steal it, and rather comically, men would shout out at the moment of orgasm, “Release, release! Neither come nor go! The seed is not yours!” Nor were men alone the supposed victims of Lilith or her other succubi children, for some of her demon offspring were male incubi and were said to visit women in their sleep and impregnate them. Of course, one can easily imagine this scapegoat being quite handy if a woman needed to explain a seemingly inexplicable pregnancy. And it must also have been used as a defense by rapists, who could easily blame a woman’s violation on some incubus. But this idea of the incubus seducing or assaulting women in dreams returns us to the notion of sleep paralysis and the “incubus phenomenon,” the sleep disorder in which one feels pressure on them and even has a vision of a dark figure or night hag—the origin of the word nightmare. So Lilith and her brood can be seen as a superstitious explanation of those hypnopompic hallucinations, another parallel with revenants or vampires. And also like revenants, they were blamed for inexplicable deaths or illnesses. It was said that Lilith attacked pregnant women because of her resentment of Eve and her partnership with Adam. Thus when a woman died in childbirth or afterward, from the all too common childbed fever, it was said Lilith had taken her. Likewise, Lilith, like her antecedent Lamashtu, was said to prey upon children, blamed for stillbirths and miscarriage, and was also blamed when children died in infancy. She was sometimes said to drink their blood, which aspect had likely been carried down through the centuries from superstitions about Lamashtu, but mostly she was said to strangle babies in their cradles. As one might imagine, then, Lilith took the blame when the terrible and seemingly incomprehensible tragedy of crib death, or what we might today call Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, occurred. Indeed, even adults who died in their sleep were said to have been taken by Lilith or her Lilin; it was said that after a succubus or incubus demon successfully seduced someone, they might change form and kill them. Thus, Lilith evolved to become a kind of catch-all superstition, a scapegoat for most mysterious phenomena related to sleep, maternity, and infancy.

Illustration of Lilith’s involvement in the temptation of Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden.

As we have seen, through syncretism, dubious satirical texts, pseudepigraphal forgeries, and mystical apocrypha, the myth of Lilith grew through the ages. But how, some may rightly ask, could an orthodox believer, a modern Christian or Jew who credits only canonical scriptures, ever come to believe in the figure of Lilith when she is only explicitly mentioned in Isaiah and even then only in some versions? The answer comes in a unique interpretation of the Genesis Creation story. The book of Genesis actually appears to have two versions of the story of God’s creation of mankind, in chapters 1 and 2. In chapter 1 verse 26, it says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness…’” and concludes in the next verse, which states, “So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” Then in chapter 2, it tells a slightly different version of the story, having God make man first, saying in verse 7 “then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Only later, beginning in verse 18, is woman created: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner’… then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.” This double telling of the story is easily explained if one views Genesis as a combination of traditional texts which vary in their particulars. After all, Chapters 1 and 2 have distinctly different styles, present the events of Creation in a different order, and even use different words for God. The orthodox view of the separate accounts is just that Chapter 1 represents a larger overview of the cosmological events of Creation and Chapter 2 zooms in for a more human focus. But if one is wanting to find evidence of Lilith in Genesis, one will certainly be inclined to view the first Creation story as being the Creation of Adam and Lilith, and the second as being an explanation of the reason for Eve’s later creation. When God says it’s not good for man to be alone, it must be because Lilith has fled from Adam, for God is omniscient and must have known such things even before Creation. It’s an interesting interpretation, but one can creatively interpret scripture in many such ways to find evidence of things that aren’t there. Consider the “Gap Theory” or gap creationism. To reconcile the Genesis story of Creation with the geological time scale, theologians have suggested that each day of creation actually represented an entire age, whereas others have said that some extended gap occurred between the creation of the heavens and earth in verse one and the rest of the creative acts that are listed starting in verse two. Such an interpretation allows believers to trust in a literal interpretation of the Bible without denying many of the findings of modern science, such as the age of the earth, and the fossil record, dinosaurs, etc. However, it has also led some to believe that, since there was a first creation, and later a second creation that included mankind, that there must have existed some first attempt at creating humans, a so-called “pre-Adamic” race. Unsurprisingly, in the 19th century, this notion was latched onto by racists looking for some religious support for their ideas that non-white people are inferior, suggesting they are the descendants of a separate Creation, a failed dry run at humanity. All of this from literally reading between the lines, a mythos of hatred born from the blank space between the first two verses in Genesis. We see how these ideas spread and evolve, and how they are used to justify superstition and false beliefs. The development of the apocryphal myth of Lilith is much the same, syncretistically adapted from ancient pagan folklore, fictionalized and expanded on through the inventions and interpretations of charlatans and mystics, until even modern theologians find arcane reasons to credit it because they want to. It seems like it should be enough to cause any honest critical thinker to lose faith in such claims and interpretations.

*

Until next time, remember, ancient texts are often a mish mash, a collage of pieced together traditions, compilations of copied manuscripts, a palimpsest through which can be discerned traces of previous writings and ideas, often falsely attributed to some famous figure when they were actually composed by some faceless scribe. Can’t we just appreciate them for what they are, a priceless cultural artifact that teaches us about our past, without insisting they’re actually some monolithic divine pronouncement?

Further Reading

Blasdell, Heather L. “‘...And There Shall The Lilith Repose.’” Mythlore, vol. 14, no. 4 (54), 1988, pp. 4–12. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26812954. Accessed 21 Nov. 2022.

Kramer, Samuel N., and W. F. Albright. “Enki and Ninḫursag: A Sumerian ‘Paradise’ Myth.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Supplementary Studies, no. 1, 1945, pp. 1–40. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/20062705. Accessed 21 Nov. 2022.

Patai, Raphael. “Lilith.” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 77, no. 306, 1964, pp. 295–314. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/537379. Accessed 21 Nov. 2022.

Soza, Joel R. Lucifer, Leviathan, Lilith, and Other Mysterious Creatures of the Bible. Hamilton Books, 2017.

Omens, Charms, and Rituals: A History of Superstition

On many porches right now there rot pumpkins that were hollowed out for Halloween and transformed into lanterns with candles or electric lights, illuminating grimacing grins from within. Long is the history of this ritual, though it was not always pumpkins that were carved, but rather turnips and other vegetables, their glowing visages said to ward off the spirits that walked the earth that day. They are called Jack-o-lanterns, however, because of a Western European folktale about a particular spirit said to walk the earth. The story of Jack of the Lantern, or Stingy Jack in the Irish version, is the story of a wicked man who tricked the Devil. The specifics of the tale vary from region to region, but essentially, this man Jack, either a blacksmith or a common thief, convinced the Devil to transform himself into a coin, which Jack put into his pocket next to a cross, or that he lured the Devil into a tree and carved a cross onto its trunk, or by some tellings he did both, trapping the Devil more than once. The thrust of the story is that Jack promised to free the Devil if the Devil promised not to take his soul. When Jack eventually died, he was too wicked to go to heaven, but the Devil, because of their bargain, could not take him. Thus, he was doomed to forever wander the darkness. The Devil gave him a burning coal to light his way, which some say he placed into a hollowed out turnip. In fact, the legend of Jack o’ Lantern is merely one iteration of an older folktale, in which the man’s name is given as Will rather than Jack, and he is doomed to wander with a bundle of sticks used as a torch, called a “wisp.” You may have heard of the Will-o’-the-Wisp: they are reportedly magical lights seen in the night, said to lure travelers to their doom. They have been called many things through the ages, including fairy fire and fairy lights, hinkypunk, and Irrlicht, or deceiving light, in German, which was later Latinized as ignis fatuus, or foolish fire. The reason for these latter names is clear. The lights were most commonly seen in marshland and swamp, and if a traveler followed them, they became lost, thus making them portents of ill fortune and death. They were first written about early in the 14th century, in a Welsh work that gave another interesting name for the phenomenon: the corpse candle. This indicates that the lights were often seen floating around graveyards as well, which corresponds to the claims of modern ghost hunters who have reported sightings of ghost lights or orbs in cemeteries. As it turns out, there are some rather compelling scientific explanations for this phenomenon. Due to the decay that occurs both in marshes and graveyards, the presence of methane gas likely results in a chemical luminescence, or chemiluminescence. This is, essentially, the much maligned “swamp gas” explanation of UFO sightings, but it remains the most likely rational explanation of will-o’-the-wisp, fitting the features of reports better than other explanations, like bioluminescent insects, St. Elmo’s Fire, or ball lightning. While science provides a rational explanation today, though, it must be recognized that folklore did the same job in ages past, providing a rationalization of an otherwise unexplained phenomenon. And the fact that it was thought to be a harbinger of bad luck too makes sense, for certainly there must have been travelers who wandered into a swamp following the lights they saw there and got stuck, or lost their wagons and carts or even their lives. They saw the lights, and afterward, they met ill fortune or death. But of course, the real cause of it was leaving the road and forging into marshlands, not the luminescent phenomenon in the distance. Such is the nature of superstition. It attributes a false cause to both good and bad fortune, giving believers some agency in it, through ritual, as well as some sense that they understand a world that is full of mystery and misfortune.

To connect this topic to the recent series, the myth of vampires was, from its origin, a superstition. The word derives from a Latin word which means “to stand over in awe,” and it’s typically defined as an irrational belief borne out of ignorance and fear, but as I stated, many superstitions can be seen to have derived from fallacious reasoning, specifically the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, which means “after this; therefore, because of this” and describes the flawed logic of ascribing a cause to some phenomenon simply because the phenomenon occurred after it—your basic confusion of correlation or coincidence with causation. In the vampire superstition, we see villagers assuming that some rampant disease that occurred after a certain person’s death must be caused by that dead person. Thus, it seems, superstition can beget folklore, or vice versa. As a further example of the folklore of vampirism being related to superstition, we see the element of vampire lore that revenants have no reflection in a mirror, which, even if Bram Stoker was first to connect it to vampires, still reflects, if you will, the superstition that mirrors captured and showed the human soul, which Count Dracula did not have. Of course, we can see this explanation of reflection as an attempt to rationally explain, in the absence of a true understanding of the process, why one could see oneself in a looking glass. That wasn’t you in the glass; it was an embodiment of your eternal self. Thus we can easily understand the superstitious belief that breaking a mirror, or even looking at one’s reflection in a cracked mirror, can result in bad luck. In fact, it was sometimes believed to portend death. The very specific number of seven years’ bad luck may have evolved from an old Roman belief that the body and therefore the soul renewed itself in seven year cycles, a superstition that remains popular today, with many believing the erroneous myth that the human body undergoes a kind of cellular regeneration every seven years. This belief about mirrors was once so pronounced that if one broke a mirror, it was considered imperative to grind up its pieces in order to free the soul trapped within. The notion that mirrors separated the soul from the body in this way led many to believe that they made our souls vulnerable to being taken by the Devil or by other spirits. This appears to be the origin of the superstitious practice of covering mirrors after someone has died. If one wasn’t afraid of the ghost of the departed spiriting away one’s soul from the mirror, then one was typically afraid of looking into the mirror and seeing the reflection of the ghost behind them. Thus, mirrors have also long been used as a kind of spirit trap, placing mirrors in doorways to catch any ghosts that might step into them, thinking they were walking into another room. 

Accusing the anointers in the great plague of Milan in 1630. This image comes from Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom. Refer to Wellcome blog post (archive). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

As we see in vampire lore, disease breeds superstition, and nothing is so likely to generate such beliefs as an epidemic disease, like the Plague. The superstitious ritual of blessing someone who sneezes is sometimes claimed to have originated with the Plague, but this is not accurate. Medieval texts as far back as the 13th century describe people responding to a sneeze with the phrase “God helpe you” as a blessing against pestilence. It is true, however, that the Black Plague originated numerous false cause claims as the blighted communities sought to blame the disease on something or someone. These false cause superstitions typically resulted in scapegoating, which we have seen in the libels and persecutions against Jews, when they were said to have poisoned wells. I spoke about this in my episode In the Footsteps of the Wandering Jew. Churchmen also blamed the plague on sin, and on witchcraft. Indeed, in Italy, there was even a name for the scapegoats of the plague, whether Jewish or not. They were called “anointers,” and they were thought to spread the disease through poisonous oils that they sprinkled from vials. This led to many innocent people being hunted by mobs simply because someone, likely a personal enemy or rival, accused them of being an anointer. As an example, in one incident, an 80-year-old man seen brushing off a bench in church before sitting on it was said to be anointing the benches with poison and was set upon by an angry mob and dragged through the street, likely to his death. Other superstitions borne from casting about for a cause of the plague resulted more from ignorance about the nature of disease rather than from scapegoating. As I have discussed before, the miasma theory of disease reigned prior to our modern understanding of germ theory, and it was thought that vapors or emanations spread disease, providing a very basic understanding of airborne disease. The bubonic plague was not airborne, however. It was caused by the bite of infected fleas or by being exposed, through broken skin, to infected material. Nevertheless, as it was noticed that those near other infected or who were around the plague dead frequently became infected themselves, it was thought that they must be contracting the disease by inhaling the infectious vapors, those bad smells, which they reasoned could be countered by good smells, or even just different smells. Thus the line, “pocketful of posies,” is immortalized in the nursery rhyme Ring around the Rosie, inspired by the Black Death, as flowers were kept on one’s person to stave off the smell that slays. This miasma theory of disease also resulted in the superstition that one should hold one’s breath while passing a graveyard. Less logical were other supposed charms against the bubonic plague, such as wearing a toad around the neck or rubbing pigeons on one’s buboes. Nor were all flowers alike considered effective against the plague. Indeed, hawthorn blossoms were thought to actually bring the plague, since they apparently smelled of the plague dead. This has since been explained by science as the presence of Trimethylamine, a compound present in hawthorn as well as in decaying flesh.

Hawthorn trees and shrubs seem to have become connected to numerous superstitions, perhaps because of the smell of death surrounding them. In Vampire lore, it was often stakes of hawthorn, or hawthorn cuttings with thorns, that were used to “kill” vampires or to keep them away. So while they seemed bad luck as they related to the Plague, they were good luck when it came to dealing with revenants, and this mixed significance, as we will see, is rather common. Romans believed hawthorn sacred and used it for torches, or tied their leaves to cradles to ward off evil. Pliny the Elder wrote that destroying a hawthorn bush would get you struck by lightning. Yet when the Christian Church spread, it was claimed that the thorns placed on Christ’s brow were of hawthorn, giving it a negative connotation that was amplified when it was later claimed that witches commonly used the plant in their spell-making. Likewise, the belief that walking under a ladder is bad luck comes from the fact that a ladder, leaning against a building, forms a triangle. Triangles were symbolic of life to Egyptians, and of the Trinity to Christians, so pagan or not, passing through such a sacred symbol was considered blasphemous. Or at least, that’s one explanation. There is also the simpler explanation that ladders were used in medieval gallows, and one just wouldn’t want to pass under those, or the even simpler explanation that you wouldn’t want to pass under a ladder because objects or people were apt to fall on you. The true origins of bad luck superstitions are often hard to pinpoint like this. Was it bad luck to pass someone on a staircase because it was believed ghosts haunted staircases, or because one was more likely to have a bad fall if they ran into someone there? Was it bad luck to let milk boil over because it was believed to harm the cow and make it more likely to stop producing milk, or because milk was precious and only kept in small quantities, fresh, in an age before refrigeration? Is the number 13 considered so unlucky (such that it causes a fear complex known as Triskaidekaphobia) because in ancient astrology it was thought that during the 13th millennium chaos would reign? Or because in Norse mythology, Loki attended a feast of the gods as the thirteenth guest and initiated Ragnarök—the destruction of the gods—with a deadly prank? Or rather, is it because, at the last supper, the betrayer, Judas Iscariot, was the thirteenth person at the table? We may never know, but we do know that, to Jews, it is an auspicious number, the age at which a boy becomes a man, a number representing the word for love. Then again, it has also been suggested that fear of the number 13 actually derives from an anti-Semitic fear of the Jews.

a mummified hand of a hanged man, used for folk healing as well as folk magic. Image credit: www.badobadop.co.uk. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Many superstitions go further than just a fear of bad luck when, like the witnessing of the will-o’-the-wisp, objects or events are considered to be omens of imminent death. Much like one’s image in a mirror came to represent their soul or their self, and the destruction of that mirror was considered an ill portent, portraits too were thought to represent a person’s well-being or true self, and if they fell from the wall, it was thought an omen of death. Perhaps this notion is what inspired Oscar Wilde’s wonderfully creepy short story, “The Portrait of Dorian Gray”—if one could safekeep their portrait for an eternity, perhaps it might render them immortal, and might the portrait itself change along with the quality of its owner’s soul? Likewise, as clocks became were used by more and more people, and as we began to measure our lives in minutes and hours rather than by the progress of the sun in the sky, by the 19th century, a stopped clock had come to represent the ceasing of life. Thus it is no great stretch to understand why a stopped clock that may suddenly and unexplainably chime could be seen as an omen of death. Many were the unsupported claims that a broken clock would inexplicably ring out just before an ill loved one’s passing. This may have been related to superstitions about not talking during the chiming of bells, since that sound had been associated with death all the way back to the Plague, when churches rang their bells to mark a death and were ringing almost constantly. Many such superstitions arose from those who dealt with death and attempted to understand the process by which death spreads, as we saw with the lore of revenants. The souls of the dead were thought to remain a while and to pose some mortal or spiritual threat to the living in other ways besides rising from the grave a vampire, as we saw with beliefs about mirrors. This idea explains why it was considered bad luck to encounter a funeral procession and not take off one’s hat or join the procession for the rest of its march, and it was thought that pointing at such a procession would mean certain death within a month’s time. Likewise, a superstitious individual would not walk over anyone’s grave nor remove flowers from a resting place, and if they felt a chill, they thought someone had walked over their grave—even if they had not yet chosen their burial place. Not all superstitions about the dead involved ill fortune, though. For example, it was thought that touching a dead person at their viewing could impart good luck, could heal certain illnesses or conditions like warts, which they believed were passed to the deceased, or would at least prevent the dead from haunting you. More specifically, it was believed that being stroked by a dead criminal’s hand could cure facial cysts and goiters. It was not so much their criminality but rather their untimely death at the gallows, for if you recall, there was a belief about people having an appointed 70 years of life. Thus, one who dies before their time, while one folk belief said they may rise as revenants, another had it that the additional life denied them acted as some kind of mystical palliative. As murder victims and suicides were not frequently stumbled upon, it was criminals, who were publicly hanged, that became the source of this strange medicine, and it was not uncommon so see people approach the freshly hanged to touch their hands, or for mothers to pass their afflicted infants to the executioner so that he would press the hands of the dead on their faces. The belief was so prevalent that doctors were known to keep withered hands in their kits to rub on their patients.

There are numerous superstitions about animals having premonitions about death as well, for example, dogs, which were invested with prophetic abilities in both the Egyptian and Roman cultures. Perhaps because of this ancient folklore, the howling of dogs became an omen of death in various European cultures. However, some may have had other reasons to be struck with terror at the sound of a howl in the night. If I were speaking of France, you might assume that I refer to the howling of wolves as striking terror into the hearts of those who hear it, but hearing howling at night was also a cause of great fear throughout the UK long after wolves were stamped out in the 14th century. You may suspect that I’m going to bring up werewolves now, but instead, I speak of the beasts on the moor, or folktales about fearsome black dogs. Many are the tales of these supposedly supernatural creatures: the Cú-sith of Scotland, the Gwyllgi of Wales, and the Gytrash of Northern England. But perhaps the most famous is the Black Shuck which is thought to range through countryside of East Anglia. Like werewolves, and like the will-o’-the-wisp, it was thought to haunt dark roads at night and prey upon travelers, recognizable by his blazing eye, which, of course, sounds like it could be mistaken for a will-o’-the-wisp. It was claimed that its terrifying howl could be heard, but not its footsteps as it galloped to set upon you, which of course causes one to doubt that anything was actually running toward those who claimed to have had close encounters with it. If one was not killed by the Black Shuck, it was still considered bad luck to encounter them, and travelers were advised to close their eyes if they heard the beast’s howling, even if it might just be the wind, a specification that certainly suggests many such supposed close calls were only encounters with the howling wind. One encounter describes a more corporeal beast, however. In Suffolk, in 1577, it is recorded that a black dog burst into Holy Trinity Church, leaving scorch marks on the door that today are called the “devil’s fingerprints,” and then killed two churchgoers where they knelt. Accounts like this one, and superstition surrounding the Black Shuck and other black dogs like it would go on to inspire the Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound of the Baskervilles. If I were to act the Sherlock here, I’d point out that archaeologists have examined the teardrop shaped scorch marks and determined they were apparently purposely made with candle flames, and descriptions of the Black Shuck entering the church with the sound of a thunderclap, in conjunction with the fact that a violent thunderstorm occurred on the same night, leads one to believe that the imaginations of those present may have run away with them.

Account of the appearance of the ghostly black dog "Black Shuck" at the church in Suffolk in 1577.

Superstitions about black dogs now lead me back to the trailhead by which I embarked on this investigation, recommended to me by generous patron Jonathon: black cats. Jonathon suggested I devote an entire episode to black cat superstition, and I hope he’s not disappointed that instead it serves as just part of a longer episode about superstition generally. As we saw with other categories of superstition, whether something represents good or bad luck is not always clear and varies from culture to culture. The same is true of cats, and black cats specifically. As with dogs, cats have been domesticated since great antiquity, giving us plenty of time to develop folklore and superstitious beliefs about them. In various global traditions, they long served as symbols for protection, independence, and good fortune. Going all the way back to Egyptian and Norse mythology, cats are considered sacred, servants of the gods, vanquishers of evil spirits. Their positive reputation as protectors of the household grew with their role as mousers over the centuries. And while it is commonly thought in America and many other places that a black cat crossing one’s path is bad luck, in Great Britain, Scotland, and Ireland, exactly the opposite is true. Owning or even seeing a black cat is thought to be a sign of coming prosperity. Indeed, so strong is the belief that a black cat brings good luck there that it is thought their deaths can bring an end to good fortune. Charles I, the Stuart king, apparently believed as much and set his guards to protect his black cat as if they were protecting his very life, which he believed to be so. As legend has it, his cat died regardless, and the very next day, while he mourned the loss of his beloved pet and his good luck, Cromwell’s men showed up to arrest him, leading to his eventual execution. This story certainly smacks of embellishment, but it illustrates the extent of the belief that black cats are good luck. Another example is the presence of dried cats walled up in buildings as lucky charms. Not only in the UK but also in other European cities and even in the buildings of colonial America, cats that were desiccated through smoking and then placed within the walls of buildings and posed as though in the act of catching a mouse, have been discovered. It’s thought that they were placed there as a kind of scarecrow, to drive off potential ghosts or evil spirits, but in truth, we don’t know the purpose of the practice. One thing that modern science has shown us, though, is why the black cat’s coat is black, and it does indeed seem to indicate that the creatures are good luck. Their coats are black due to a certain mutant gene that also makes them more resistant to disease, and which scientists are studying for possible applications in medicine, specifically to treat HIV.

A depiction of Cathars worshipping a cat as if it were the Devil, and preparing to kiss its backside, an act called “osculum infame,” the kiss of shame. Image credit: cathar.info

Unsurprisingly, we have the Christian Church to thank for demonizing black cats. It seems to have begun with the odd belief that cats are somehow lewd. Well, certainly they do often present their anus to us with an upturned tail, but I rather think that such a belief says more about medieval Christians than it does about cats. I imagine they saw a cat’s exposed rear and then interpreted the cat’s backward glance as some kind of come hither look. Cut to them thumping their bibles and calling cats harlots. Eventually, it was thought that they were not just lewd creatures but also the very Devil in disguise. In the 12th-century tale of St. Bartholomew, the Devil takes the form of a cat. And in the Albigensian Crusade, a 13th-century military campaign against heretics in the south of France, it was claimed that the Cathar sect there did things like kiss the anus of the Devil, who had taken the form of a black cat. Indeed, it is suggested that this was the why they were called Cathars. From there it is no surprise that the same accusations were resurrected against accused witches by the Inquisition. Thus black cats were either the devil incarnate, or they were the familiars of witches. Some claim that the association of witchcraft with cats goes all the way back to Greek mythology, when a figure named Galinthias, servant of Hera, tried to interfere with Heracles’s birth and was punished by being transformed into a cat and cast into the underworld to serve Hecate, goddess of witchcraft. However, this is a stretch. Hecate was more of a goddess of magic, as without the Christian notion of a devil, the concept of witchcraft was not really the same in Greek myth. Also, some versions have it that Galinthias was transformed into a weasel, making this a tenuous basis for the origin of the witch and black cat relationship. Nevertheless, they were believed to be connected, and this is the very origin of persistent superstitions about them. If a black cat crosses your path, it is thought bad luck because it means the Devil has taken notice of you. And a cat is thought to have nine lives because it was thought that witches could take on the forms of their familiars, but could only do so nine times. It may even be related to the notion that cats steal your breath, though this has the pretty simple explanation that cats like to lie on sleeping persons for warmth and may have unwittingly been responsible for smothering some children. But of course, rather than come to terms with such an innocent tragedy, the superstitious want someone to blame, and so it is not a cat that smothered their child, but rather a witch or even the Devil himself.

The suspicion that someone has performed sorcery against someone else has created many a superstition. There is a long-held, widespread belief in a curse that can be placed on people called the Evil Eye. It is mentioned in many ancient texts around the world and is even acknowledged in the Bible and the Koran. Essentially, the Evil Eye is thought to be cast by those who are envious, so it is thought that young children and those who are fit and beautiful are the most at risk. Because of this, outsiders with miserable lives were often accused of casting the Evil Eye, just as they were also singled out as witches. Because the curse, which was blamed for a variety of illnesses, was thought to be cast with a hateful look, people with eye imperfections, like a squint or a lazy eye, were also accused of giving the Evil Eye, when of course they could not help how they looked at people. Belief in the Evil Eye curse brought about numerous other superstitions in the form of lucky charms. The most common were amulets with eyes on them, but another you have likely heard of is the horseshoe. The symbol of the horseshoe has evolved through the millennia, from something that wards off the Evil Eye to something that brings general good luck, and how it is used has also changed, from keeping the opening facing downward to keeping it facing up, but its origin as protection against sorcery is certain. Likewise, there are a variety of superstitions about brooms, such as not sweeping after dark or not taking brooms with you when you move into a new house, all of which originate from the supposed use of brooms by witches. Likewise, it was common practice in the 15th century to put a pinhole in eggshells because it was thought a witch might otherwise use the eggshells to cast a spell on whoever had eaten the egg. Parents avoided cutting their child’s hair or fingernails in the first year of their lives for fear witches might use the cuttings to cast spells against them. Some superstitions that had their origin in fears about witchcraft contradict each other. It was said that cutlery laid crosswise was a sign of witchcraft, and indeed an easy way to support witchcraft allegations against an enemy, and thus even long after witch persecutions it was considered unlucky to lay cutlery across each other. But while it was claimed that witches laid cutlery into the sign of a cross, it was also claimed that they could be made uncomfortable in a room by hiding open scissors somewhere, again because it made the sign of the cross. But problems of logical consistency aside, belief in witchcraft led to belief in numerous apotropaic superstitions like this, such as the hanging of hagstones, or river stones with natural holes in the middle of them that were thought to have been made of hardened snake saliva and were believed to be effective charms against witches, or like the carving hexafoils, designs like pentagrams and daisy wheels that appeared to have an infinite pattern, into the walls of buildings as protection against witches, who were thought to get lost in following the patterns.

As I have looked further into superstitions for this episode, I have happily come to find that they are perhaps one of the more perfect expressions of historical blindness in the sense that the reasons for these traditions are murky. Often, they are the result of ignorance, but also of syncretism, the synthesis of different beliefs that happens when cultures clash. Ancient pagan beliefs are adopted and adapted by Christianity, obscuring their origins in a kind of revision of history. We have seen this again and again in my holiday specials about Christmas folklore and traditions. Another example is the superstition about things moving widdershins, or counter-clockwise. This originated in traditions that worshipped the sun and held sacrosanct its trajectory through the sky, but with the advent of Christianity, it became associated with witchcraft and the Devil. Likewise, the belief that spilling salt was bad luck originated with the simple fact that salt used to be a precious commodity, but Christianity transformed this into an act of the Devil, saying that salt must be sacred because it is used in making Holy Water. This then led to the notion that salt could be used to drive away evil, perhaps in combination with the odd idea that, like the infinite patterns of hexfoils, a pile of salt might confuse and waylay witches and demons who felt compelled to count them all. Thus we have the further superstitions of throwing salt over one’s left shoulder, where the Devil was thought to lurk, or protecting one’s home with applications of salt. What we see here is ancient tradition, twisted through syncretism until we have little sense of its purpose, and strengthened by ignorance, to forge a false cause belief that flies in the face of logic. Now, I may sound a little salty, and you may take my conclusions with a grain of salt, if you’ll excuse the puns, but I think all these examples, and many others, all of which I read about in my principal sources, Black Cats & Evil Eyes: A Book of Old-Fashioned Superstitions by Chloe Rhodes and Superstition: White Rabbits & Black Cats—The History of Common Folk Beliefs by Sally Coulthard, bear out this final evaluation. We live in a world of nonsense that has been handed down to us as wisdom and truth.

*

Until next time, remember, every time you tempt fate by boasting about your good fortune, and you knock on wood—or touch wood, as they say in other places—but you don’t know why, it all derives from Druidic belief in dryads, or benevolent tree sprites… or is it from the ancient Greek belief that touching an oak provided protection from Zeus? …or is it just from the 19th-century children’s game of Tig, from which we get the modern game tag, in which touching the wood of a tree made you safe? Jeez, I dunno what the point of researching this stuff is if I get three different answers.

Further Reading

Coulthard, Sally. Superstition: White Rabbits & Black Cats—The History of Common Folk Beliefs. Quadrille, 2019.

Davies, Owen, and Francesca Matteoni. “'A virtue beyond all medicine': The Hanged Man's Hand, Gallows Tradition and Healing in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century England.” Social history of medicine : the journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine vol. 28,4 (2015): 686-705. doi:10.1093/shm/hkv044

“The Devil’s Fingerprints.”  Atlas Obscura, 25 June 2020, www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-devils-fingerprints.

Edwards, Howell G. M. “Will-o’-the-Wisp: An Ancient Mystery with Extremophile Origins?” Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, vol. 372, no. 2030, 2014, pp. 1–7. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24505048. 

Merelli, Annalisa. “Hysteria Over Coronavirus in Italy Is Reminiscent of the Black Death,” QUARTZ, 24 Feb. 2020, qz.com/1807049/hysteria-over-coronavirus-in-italy-is-reminiscent-of-the-black-death. 

Rhodes, Chloe. Black Cats & Evil Eyes: A Book of Old-Fashioned Superstitions, Michael O’Mara Books, 2015.

The Revenants - Part Two: VAMPIRES in Fantasy

In 1897, the quintessential treatment of the vampire legend was published: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, an epistolary novel that owed much to John Polidori’s and Lord Byron’s first vampire tale, in that again, the vampire is depicted as an aristocrat, living in a castle, who once more preys upon women with a dark charm and sensual allure. However, Stoker’s vampire is an entirely new creation, a bringing forth of the modern legend in its entirety, fully formed, while at the same time acknowledging much of the folklore from which it sprang. Four years after the publication of the novel, an Icelandic translation of the book appeared, entitled Makt Myrkranna, or Powers of Darkness. This edition was adapted from a Swedish version that had been anonymously translated, and whose publisher remains unknown. Interestingly, Powers of Darkness appears to have been translated from some early draft of the novel, with significant differences from the book as the rest of the world has come to know it. Nor was it unauthorized, as Stoker himself wrote a preface, in which, surprisingly, he appears to state that the story is true, or based on true events. He indicates that the characters are real people, stating that he “let the people involved relate their experiences in their own way,” but changed their names. According to Stoker, “I am quite convinced that there is no doubt whatever that the events described really took place, however unbelievable and incomprehensible they might appear at first sight.” More recently, the great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker, Dacre Stoker, revealed that, according to his research, Bram Stoker had always intended his book to be read as a work of non-fiction, as a warning of a very real supernatural evil that he had discovered. He describes how his publisher refused to print the book as it was, saying that such claims of a blood-letting monster on the loose in London would only cause a panic of the kind they were still recovering from following the Whitechapel murders of Jack the Ripper. He forced Stoker to excise the first hundred pages and reframe the book as a work of fiction. This is a truly intriguing story, which even a hundred years later has led some to believe that maybe, just maybe, there really is such a thing as vampires. However, the fact of the matter is that all of these claims appear to have been made to sell novels. Dacre Stoker has made a name for himself off of his great-granduncle’s work, writing a sequel called Dracula: The Undead, and later a prequel, Dracul. These claims were made by Dacre and his co-author as part of that prequel, suggesting that the completely fictional story that followed, about Bram Stoker himself struggling against vampires, was a believable filling in of the missing story. However, the novel he co-wrote is far longer than the supposed missing 100 pages he claims were censored, and if the Icelandic version were adapted from a complete draft, it too omits everything that Dacre Stoker and his co-author imagined. Furthermore, the claim that a publisher would refuse to print anything on the grounds that it might enflame public fear like Jack the Ripper, whose murders occurred a decade earlier, is somewhat preposterous. An entire cottage industry had sprung up for publishing books about Jack the Ripper, including The Whitechapel Murders Or, The Mysteries of the East End and The History of the Whitechapel Murders, both in 1888, then The Whitechapel Murders, Or, An American Detective in London and The Whitechapel Mystery, both in 1889, not to mention a bevy of journal articles in the intervening years. To suggest that writing about Jack the Ripper was not done, especially a decade later, is patently false. As for the Powers of Darkness, there is suspicion among scholars that, though it may have been adapted from an early draft of the novel, its translator took great liberties with the story that Stoker may not have even known about. And Bram Stoker’s own preface can easily be explained as another publicity stunt, an attempt to drum up interest among a new audience by falsely claiming that the story had some basis in reality, when in fact, it was entirely fictional. It must be remembered, after all, that Bram Stoker, who had long worked in the theater, as an actor’s assistant and as a critic, was nothing if not a showman.

As we discuss the possible basis for the foundational vampire novel, Dracula, many may object and say that of course Bram Stoker based his monster on a true story, at least to some degree, in that it is common knowledge that he based his Count Dracula on Vlad Drăculea, or Vlad Țepeș, Vlad the Impaler, the Voivode, or leader, of Wallachia, the famously ruthless son of Vlad Dracul, the Dragon. Vlad the Impaler is said to have been so bloodthirsty that during his campaign to cement his control of Wallachia, when he captured dissident Transylvanian Saxons, he had them impaled, thus earning his name. However, besides Vlad Țepeș not being a Count or a Transylvanian, there is quite a bit wrong with this notion. First, rather than being a hermit in a castle feared by all the peasants for his evil or cruelty, he was widely celebrated as a just ruler and is remembered in Romania as something of a national hero who established peace. His reputation for cruelty was real, however, from his impalement of enemies to the burning of his own subjects for being lazy and poor, so the surviving view of him as some sort of just tyrant is dubious, at best. However, none of this is really relevant to vampirism. There was never any historical connection between Vlad Țepeș and blood-drinking or revenant folklore. The connection only exists in Bram Stoker’s novel, because he took the name Dracula. In the 1970s, it was argued by two researchers, Raymond McNally and Radu Florescu, that Stoker based his character on that historical figure, but since then, scholars have argued convincingly that he seems not to have known much about Vlad the Impaler at all. He appears to have found the name Dracula in a book on Wallachian and Moldavian history and decided that it sounded appropriately scary. Among all of his papers, no mention of or evidence of research into the historical figure of Vlad the Impaler has ever been discovered. The working name of the character before he changed it to Dracula had been Count Wampyr. But Vlad the Impaler is not the only real life figure that scholars have argued inspired the novel’s creature. Some suggest he may have been more inspired by Attila the Hun than by Vlad Țepeș, as in the novel, the character claims descent from him. Others suggest that Bram Stoker was inspired by the real-life vampire story of Mercy Brown in Exeter, Rhode Island, which I spoke about in substantial detail in a recent patron exclusive. In fact, an 1896 newspaper clipping about the destruction of Mercy Brown’s corpse for fear she had turned revenant was found in Bram Stoker’s papers. He had been touring America with a theater company that year, and certainly seems to have heard of the story. Add to that the fact that Stoker makes mention of an English town called Exeter, from where his character Jonathan Harker leaves for Transylvania, and it makes for a convincing argument. However, whether it helped shape the novel at all, the story of Mercy Brown could not have inspired it, for by the time he acquired the clipping, he was already far along in composing it. In fact, the next year it would be published. More recently, one historian, Louis S. Warren, has even argued, rather convincingly, that Bram Stoker based the character of Count Dracula on Buffalo Bill Cody, whose Wild West show had toured London in 1887, at which time Bram Stoker actually spent time with the American showman. Warren believes that, to Stoker, Dracula’s transformation and decay was a direct result of his living on the frontier among other races, and that the novel stands as a reflection on the American frontier and how the colonizer is changed and eventually was colonized himself by the racial other. Read this way, the novel has decidedly white supremacist themes, and the vampiric plague visited upon England in it comes to represent the fear of racial degeneracy. Is this what Stoker was writing about? Is this what he viewed as the true story behind his novel? God, I hope not. In the end, maybe it’s better that we only read the book as a terrifying yarn rather than as commentary on some real threat.

Vlad Țepeș, the Impaler, the usual suspect for the model of Dracula, though Bram Stoker appears to have studied him little during the composition of his novel.

If we are to compare the vampire of novels and films to reality at all, it must be to the original vision of vampires from European folklore, which I described in nauseous detail in part one of this series. So let us look at the vampire, meaning its appearance. How do the revenants of Central and Southeastern Europe, the vampir of Serbia, the Nachzehrer of Germany, the vrykolakas of Greece, compare with the bloodsuckers of modern horror fiction. As I joked about at the end of Part One, by simple appearance, they are very unlike one another. The modern vampire is thin, and pale, but according to folklore, “real” vampires are bloated, supposedly with the blood of their victims but actually with putrefying gasses, and rather than pale, it was a darkening of the skin, or more accurately, a reddening of the skin that typically indicated to real vampire hunters when a corpse had become undead. It is clear enough how this change came about. Pallor is closely associated with death; when one imagines a dead man, one thinks of the color leaving their cheeks, so that was obvious enough. As for the trim physique, from the very moment the folklore entered the realm of fiction, in John Polidori’s The Vampyre, the creature had been reimagined as an attractive figure who might walk among us unnoticed. Stoker’s Count was simply walking in the footsteps of Polidori’s Lord Ruthven, himself a caricature of Byron. The vampire never really had a chance to be its true, shambling, distended self, though I think that might have been even more horrifying. The image of the vampire evolved further from the dashing debonair in the 1920s, with the silent film Nosferatu, in which the vampire was depicted more ratlike, or perhaps batlike, and some scholars have suggested this representation was an anti-Semitic trope, presenting the vampire as the feared foreign-born Jew who was seen as an invader of white society, leeching off of and tainting its populace. So the racist meaning behind vampire fiction can again be clearly seen. By the time of Nosferatu, the teeth of the vampire had become a prominent feature, but where did they come from? It is possible that the notion of fangs derived from the receding of gums from the teeth in corpses, just as the receding of skin made it appear that hair and nails were growing, but there is not clear mention of fangs in any folkloric accounts. Indeed, when blood drinking is mentioned at all in the folklore, the vampire is said to have drunk from the trunk of his victim or some other place on the body, not the neck. Polidori’s story makes early mention of teeth marks left by the vampire on the neck, but not of fangs. It seems that this little detail was invented by Bram Stoker, and it certainly sunk in, if you will. There is some evidence, however, which I will expand on momentarily, that Stoker was greatly influenced by the folklore writing of Sabine Baring-Gould, a priest from Exeter, curiously enough, whose description of werewolf folklore was well known at the time, and which I made heavy use of myself in my own series on werewolves. So it would seem that the fangs of the vampire were borrowed from the werewolf.

Also like the werewolf, and likely borrowed from Baring-Gould’s Book of Werewolves, are the vampire’s shapeshifting abilities in the novel Dracula, as the Count is depicted as transforming himself not only into a bat, as is commonly thought of when one thinks of vampiric transformations, but also into a large dog and a wolf. In fact, though this is pretty accurate to the folklore of revenants as well. “Real” vampires, or revenants, which were not always actually believed to physically leave their graves, appeared on their nightly perambulations as their old self but also were said to appear as dogs and as wolves, but also as cats, goats, horses, donkeys, frogs, chickens, owls, mice, and even butterflies. Strangely, bats are one of the rare animals not named as a form taken by the vampire. This wide variety of forms should cause one pause. If in many cases the dead person who was rumored to have returned from the grave to trouble the living was said to take so many different forms, then it casts even more doubt on eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen revenants. If one believed that a disease was being caused by a revenant, and one was on the lookout for a revenant, especially one that others in town had been claiming they had seen, one might see that revenant in every innocent creature that crossed their path. Or, they might not have seen anything at all, for it was even said that revenants might be invisible. Perhaps this is the folkloric origin of Dracula’s ability to travel by moonbeam or appear as a mist. In reality, though, we must consider that this means any tragedy or hardship or annoyance might have been blamed on a revenant, whether accusers really believed they had seen them or not. If an animal was within view, that was the tricky vampire, and if no animal was around to blame it on, one could just say that the revenant must have been invisible. According to the folklore, only twins who were born on a Saturday and had reversed their clothing could see an invisible revenant, so obviously that would make it hard to spot them. In this way, the vampire was quite similar not only to the werewolf, but also to the witch, who it was thought could appear as an animal and could even make herself invisible through her use of the Devil’s salve. And the similarities do not end there. As we know, witches were women, often outsiders, accused of dealing with the Devil, and so too were werewolves believed to have made deals with Satan. Well, as it turns out, vampires also were often said to have been reanimated through a diabolical power. Indeed, sharing the same pool of potential suspects with witches and werewolves, it was often outsiders or criminals or people believed to be practitioners of sorcery who were expected to turn into revenants after death.

Sabine Baring-Gould, the priest whose folklore writings about werewolves appear to have greatly inspired the novel Dracula.

In fiction, there is some disagreement about how one becomes a vampire. According to Stoker, one only has to be the victim of a vampire to become one, and this reflects some folkloric traditions well, when it was feared that any who died of the disease being blamed on a revenant would themselves become revenants. However, the strange customs behind the vampire myth do not always agree. In later fiction, it is said that a vampire must make a victim must drink the vampire’s blood to become a vampire, but in the original folklore, the vampire’s blood was something of a cure for vampirism. Just as we saw in the story of Mercy Brown with the ashes of the supposed revenant, the blood from the alleged vampire, as well as soil from its grave were often used to cure a victim or to ward off further attacks. And in many cultures and traditions, one did not need to be attacked at all to become a vampire. As previously stated, just as it was common for anyone considered an outsider or who was not well-liked to be accused of witchcraft, the same might easily be claimed to have been reanimated by the devil after their death. Take, for example, the vrykolakas of Mykonos discussed in Part One. De Tournefort specifically mentioned that he was unliked. Another category of person thought likely to turn revenant upon their passing was a person thought to have committed suicide, such as the shoemaker of Breslau. This supposed predisposition toward vampirism meant that there was probably always a handy scapegoat when a disease began to trouble a village, for any person who had killed themselves or who was suspected of sorcery or even who was not well-liked could be the culprit. Consider this list of the types of people most likely to be accused of becoming revenants, compiled by Dagmar Burkhart, expert on Slavic folklore: “the godless…evildoers, suicides, in addition sorcerors, witches, and werewolves; …robbers, highwaymen, arsonists, prostitutes, deceitful and treacherous barmaids and other dishonorable people.” Indeed, it appears that alcoholics were often prime candidates, and they, like suicides, were sometimes exhumed and dealt with as revenants before anyone had reported their supposed return from the grave. The act of suicide itself was not always believed to have opened the deceased to the influence of the Devil, though. Rather, it was the fact that they had died before their time. We see this also among those taken suddenly by some disease or in some other way suffering an untimely demise. In Psalm 90, it is stated, “Our days may come to seventy years,/ or eighty, if our strength endures,” and this line of scripture led some to interpret that God had appointed at least that number of years to all of us. Therefore, if one is taken early, by accident, or disease, or by their own hand, or even by the hand of another, they may rise from the grave a revenant. Murder victims and those who meet untimely ends in the wilderness especially are at risk of vampirism because if their remains are left undiscovered, they do not have the benefit of a proper burial. But none of this may matter, according to some traditions. One may be well-liked, and god-fearing, and live out all their appointed days on earth, but if they were born a certain way, they may be damned from the start to become a vampire. Babies born with teeth, it was said would become a revenant, or those born with a red caul, or with a split lip, or a supernumerary nipple or vestigial tail or red birthmark. Again, the folklore of the vampire is reminiscent of that of the witch, who was said to have been marked by the Devil with some of the very same bodily signs.

One prominent feature of the fictional vampire is its sexual magnetism. From Lord Ruthven to Count Dracula to Anne Rice’s Lestat, vampires are depicted as darkly alluring or even rapacious. They enter the bed chambers of their victims and take them in an intimate embrace, pressing a their red mouths to their victim’s necks, and exchanging fluids. Whether one sees this as a metaphor for sex, or in a more horrifying sense, as a representation of violation, the subtext is there. Surprisingly, this too can be viewed as deriving from some aspects of vampire folklore. For example, the revenant was thought to be a sexual creature. This may be the result of the so-called “wild signs” observed in corpses exhumed on suspicion of being vampires, which is believed to be a euphemism for an erection. Such anatomical reactions are an apparent common thing in decomposing bodies, as a result of the bloating that I spoke about in great uncomfortable detail in Part One. These signs of what must have seemed to be arousal likely then led to further claims about the sexual activity of revenants. It has been claimed, for example, that the revenant was apt to visit his widow and wear her out with his lovemaking. Beyond these reports, though, many were the claims that the revenant entered the bedchambers of his victims and lay down on top of them. This was not necessarily said to be a sexual act, however, or a rape, but rather a physical assault in the sense that the revenant was trying to smother them. But, if we really think about these incidents, we come away with an entirely different explanation. If a person today were to describe seeing a shadowy figure enter their room, and said they were unable to do anything as this figure got on top of them and pressed down, smothering them, we might more likely attribute this to not only a nightmare but the terrifyingly real phenomenon of sleep paralysis with hypnopompic hallucination. Those who suffer from this well-known sleep disorder feel that they cannot move while in a state between sleeping and waking, and the hallucinations that accompany this sensation are often terrifying, involving shadowy figures and creatures entering their room, sitting on their thorax, creating the feeling of pressure there, and sometimes carrying out some sexual act on them. This has been called “the incubus phenomenon,” relating to folkloric demons like the incubus and succubus that were said to seduce and have intercourse with sleeping men and women. Statistical analysis has shown that this incubus phenomenon may be experienced by as much as 11% of the general population, and up to 41% of those who experience sleep paralysis. Rather than a demonic figure, this creature that sits atop a sleeping person is viewed as an old hag in many traditions, also called the Night Hag, and is more of a witch-like figure. In fact, this hallucinated entity is actually where we get our word for nightmare. A mare in Scandinavian folklore was a damned woman who visits villagers in their sleep to sit on their chests and bring them terrifying dreams. Clearly this known sleep disorder serves as a sound rational explanation for many reports of nightmarish revenant visitations.

The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli (1781), a classic depiction of sleep paralysis and the incubus phenomenon.

All that remains to consider when it comes to the vampire myth are the odds and ends, things like the origin of driving a wooden stake through their hearts, their lack of reflection in a mirror, their aversion to silver and garlic, and their reaction to crosses and to sunlight. The staking of a vampire is clear enough; we have observed that because of the folklore of the revenant, many original vampire hunters drove stakes of wood through supposed vampires. The truth of the matter, however, is that this may have originated not as a means of destroying the vampire. For that, beheading and burning served their purposes far better. The stake, it seems, was actually a means of keeping them immobile, driving the stake through their bodies and into the earth beneath so that they could no longer rise to trouble the living. Among the Finns, for example, the staking of a vampire was only to pin it in place. Other folklore indicates that the stake may have been a kind of apotropaic, or charm to ward off the vampire, as it was believed that revenants could be driven away by the mere presence of sharp things generally, not only stakes, but even thorns and knives, which were placed under pillows to ward off vampires. This may have been the origin of the belief that silver could kill a vampire, since the knives kept under mattresses and pillows were often silver. The folklore says little about the effect of crosses on vampires, though we may presume that this Christian element of the myth was incorporated later, with the spread of Christianity, in conjunction with the notion that the Devil was responsible for raising the revenant. Indeed, early accounts indicate the opposite effect of crosses, though. My principal source, Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality by Paul Barber, describes an incident in which a sword is driven into a suspected vampire, and then it is worried that, because the cross guard of the sword made a cross shape, it would prevent the Devil from leaving the corpse. Garlic, though, it seems, was indeed a recognized apotropaic against vampires, for the sole reason that it was stinky, and it was believed that revenants would be repelled by the stink. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that it was claimed the revenant did not stink as it should have, but the fact is that garlic was not unique. Any stinky thing was thought to repel the vampire, and villagers were known to spread feces on cloth as revenant repellant. As for the absence of a vampire’s reflection, there is speculation that this relates to the notion that vampires had no soul, and mirrors were thought to show or capture the soul. In fact, according to some folklore, it was actually believed that vampires had two souls, and even two hearts, thereby allowing them to survive death. It was thought that vampires talked to themselves because of their dual souls, and I would imagine this led to numerous mentally ill persons being posthumously accused of vampirism. Others have thought that the vampire’s issue with mirrors is that most used to be backed with silver, but the truth of the matter is that the element of vampire lore having to do with mirror images never appeared until Bram Stoker invented it. Likewise, the vampire’s inflammable reaction to sunlight is nowhere to be found in the folklore or early vampire fiction and appears to have been invented in 1922 by F. W. Murnau in his Dracula ripoff, Nosferatu.

There is an explanation given from ancient mythology for many of the elements I just spoke about, however. They originate in the Scriptures of Delphi, the so-called “Vampire Bible.” Said to be passed down from the word of the Oracles at Delphi themselves, it tells the story of Ambrogio in ancient Greece, who was cursed by Apollo, the sun god, to have his skin burned by sunlight, and who thereafter lost his soul to Hades, god of the underworld. The goddess of the moon and the hunt, Artemis, further cursed Ambrogio to be burned at the touch of silver, and grants him immortality but only if he drinks blood to sustain himself. If such a Greek myth were real, it would indeed appear to be the origin of the vampire story. The problem is, the earliest mention of the “Scriptures of Delphi” and the story of Ambrogio that I can find is 2015, and though some vampire enthusiasts claim it was unearthed by archaeologists in Delphi, I’ve seen no evidence of this. It appears to me that this is likely a modern hoax. Thus vampire mythmaking continues today. And fiction writers are not alone in expanding the vampire mythos. Well-meaning scientists and medical professionals too have added misinformation to our understanding of the subject. In 1851, British anatomist Herbert Mayo hypothesized that revenants were merely people in a coma or suffering from catalepsy who had been buried alive and who woke up only when dug up and impaled. This doesn’t account for all the reports of revenants who had no reaction at all when cut open or staked or those who had been in the grave for months and clearly would have been dead regardless of whether they’d been alive when interred. It would also require us to believe that some villages had a habit of burying a great many people alive. Also clearly false is the more recent hypothesis that vampires were actually people suffering from porphyria. This blood disorder, which has also been tried as an explanation of werewolves because of excessive hair growth being one side effect, is raised as an explanation mainly because of the porphyria victim’s sensitivity to sunlight, an aspect of vampires that we know was invented for cinema. However, other aspects lend themselves to this explanation, such as a supposed aversion to garlic because of its sulfur content, which could worsen their condition, and the receding of gums supposedly making fangs (though as we’ve seen, fangs were also never part of vampire folklore). Proponents of this theory claim that the lack of a reflection in mirrors, which we have seen did not originate from folklore, really refers to a porphyria sufferer avoiding mirrors because of how the disorder ravages their faces. And they even go so far as to claim that since the urine of a porphyria sufferer is red, it would have been presumed that they had been drinking blood (which is rather absurd considering blood in the urine is common of many ailments and not some strange condition that would encourage such speculation). The further claim that, since blood infusions would later be used as a treatment, perhaps porphyria sufferers used to try to treat the disorder by drinking blood, is also completely unsupported conjecture. The fact is that as a theory it seems believable, but since the symptoms it attempts to account for were largely fictional, it makes no sense, and furthermore, it makes no effort to account for the fact that those who were accused of vampirism were already dead and buried, and there is not always mention of them having been diseased in life or drinking blood when they supposedly rose from the grave. SO at the end of our examination of vampires, what it boils down to is a superstition, borne from a lack of understanding of disease and death, which has since been embellished by fiction writers and earnest men of science into a wide-ranging legend of an abominable and fiendish monster…who wants to suck your blood!!

Until next time, remember, if there is anything that my Halloween series have shown--from “The Specter of Devil Worship,” to the “Shadow of the Werewolf,” to “A Rediscovery of Witches,” to “The Demoniacs” and “The Revenants”—it’s that monsters, as such, may not be real, but those who claim to hunt, cast out, prosecute, and destroy them certainly have proven themselves monstrous. 

Further Reading

Barber, Paul. Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality. Yale University Press, 1988. 

Molendijk, Marc L et al. “Prevalence Rates of the Incubus Phenomenon: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Frontiers in psychiatry vol. 8 253. 24 Nov. 2017, doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2017.00253

Stoker, Dacre, and J.D. Barker. “Bram Stoker Claimed That Parts of Dracula Were Real. Here's What We Know About the Story Behind the Novel.” TIME, 3 Oct. 2018, time.com/5411826/bram-stoker-dracula-history/.

The Revenants - Part One: VAMPIRES in Reality

It was a dark and stormy night when in late spring of 1816 the travelers arrived in Geneva, but more than that, it was a dark and stormy season all around, for that was the “Year Without a Summer,” when the volcanic ash clouds spewed out by Indonesian volcano Mount Tamboro resulted in darkness and unseasonable rainfall. The poet Percy Shelley, his lover and the mother of his son, Mary Godwin, their boy William, and Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont were in the midst of a tour of France and Switzerland that May, having just traveled through an unseasonably bleak and wintry country to reach Lake Geneva, where they stayed in a small chalet. During a particularly dark and stormy time of their stay, they abandoned their lodgings to stay in the far more lavish Villa Diodati that had been leased by Percy’s poet friend, the famous playboy, Lord Byron. Sexual tension abounded in the Villa during their stay, as Claire Clairmont, whom Lord Byron had previously taken as a lover, sought once again to draw the poet’s attentions, and Byron’s personal physician and companion, John Polidori, tried to draw the eye of Mary Godwin, but she remained devoted to the father of her child, whom she soon would wed, becoming Mary Shelley, though she already referred to herself as Mrs. Shelley. With some among them frustrated in their romantic interests, and all of them frustrated in their recreations, unable to go sailing on the lake because of the foul weather, they stayed indoors, read German ghost stories, and with thunder rumbling and lightning flashing outside, they spoke about the life-giving power of electricity, the then-popular notion of galvanism. This spooky atmosphere eventually led to a friendly contest among the writers, to compose the most frightening story. Lord Byron struggled, starting a story about a man who promised to return from the grave to visit his friend, but in the end abandoning it and working instead on his poem, The Darkness, which reads, in part, “I had a dream, which was not all a dream. / The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars / Did wander darkling in the eternal space, / Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth / Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.” Meanwhile, Mary Shelley too was troubled by a dark dream or nightmare, inspired by all their talk of galvanism. The result was her masterpiece, Frankenstein, the story of a monster raised from the dead. Her tale easily won the day, and today remains a classic of gothic horror literature. But it is Byron’s fragment of a story, which would later be taken up by his physician, John Polidori, and completed as a story called The Vampyre, which would eventually inspire an entire genre of horror storytelling and reinvent an ancient legend as a modern nightmare. Both were stories of things that came back from the dead, but Byron’s fragment was more clearly a representation of the old European notion of a revenant, a person that becomes resurrected and calls on people he knew in life. Polidori used the old Slavic word for a revenant, vampir, but the similarity ends there. In his story, the vampire is a nocturnal aristocrat named Lord Ruthven who preys on women. Clearly, Polidori rewrote the story as a parody of his friend, Lord Byron, but in the process, he single-handedly invented the vampire archetype, a well-dressed and mysterious gentleman with a dark, sexual charisma. In ensuing years, after his story was adapted into plays and an opera, his version of the vampire stood as the model for many imitators, and it reached an even wider audience later that century when a penny dreadful rip-off called Varney the Vampire serialized a similar tale on the cheap for a far broader readership. But today we easily forget that the basis of this fictional trope is a creature from European folklore that many cultures believed was utterly real.

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I often try to create some throughline in episode topics. For example, I had a solid run this summer, from my episode about the Tartaria urban myth to my series on giants, and my examination of the Book of Enoch, and my study of the Flood myth and Noah’s Ark. Often there is no clear transition between my topics, though, like from JFK’s assassination to Tartaria, or from Noah’s Ark to gun violence, or gun violence to MK-Ultra, or Montauk to demagogues. However, if I were to attempt some tenuous connection here, I suppose that demagogues could be seen as a kind of vampire on a democratic society. Vampires are commonly used as metaphors or symbols, signifying greed and misuse. In fact, Merriam-Webster lists these metaphorical uses of the term as valid definitions, including “one who lives by preying on others” as one meaning, and even the disarmingly misogynist definition that a vampire might refer to “a woman who exploits and ruins her lover.” To suggest that the vampire is only present today in fiction or metaphor, however, disregards the continued belief among some that vampires are real. Such modern belief can be traced back to Christian apologism, or more specifically, the work of Montague Summers, the colorful clergyman and popular writer who styled himself as a kind of modern witch-hunter and demonologist in the early 20th century. I have spoken at some length about Montague Summers in my 2-part series Shadow of the Werewolf, as well as in my 2-part series A Rediscovery of Witches, both of which, if you haven’t listened, would make for a great podcast binge this Halloween season. Suffice to say that Montague Summer, who was undeniably erudite and whose work cannot be faulted for lack of scholarship, differentiated himself from any contemporary academic writers on the occult with his apparent absolute belief in his subject matter. He argued that witches really had made pacts with the devil, and that werewolves were real, having also made pacts with the devil. He made similar arguments that vampirism was and remained a real phenomenon. His claim can be clearly discerned in his second volume on the subject, The Vampire in Europe, when he writes of “the fundamental truth, which, however exaggerated in expression and communication, essentially informs the vampire-tradition.” Likewise, he states in no uncertain terms, “That a large number of cases of vampirism must be accounted certain only the most prejudiced will deny. Even in many other relations which cannot be pressed in detail it seems beyond doubt that the main facts are true.” Nor is this an obsolete view that cannot be entertained even by the bright light of modern science, as there exist today various subcultures that believe in vampirism, members of which even consume blood and believe it sustains them. So, in examining the folkloric origins of the vampire, we are not only examining the source material for a literary invention. Rather ridiculously, it seems we are obliged to refute the notion that vampires, as such, ever really existed.

Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva, where one dark and stormy night, much of modern horror was born.

First, we will examine some of the most widely cited reports of supposed real vampirism, looking at the primary source material to determine the real basis for the legend. One of the earliest firm accounts of such a revenant is preserved in a book of Prussian folklore. In this report, we are told of an affluent shoemaker of Breslau, in what was then Silesia, who committed suicide in 1591, cutting his own throat with a knife. The remains of people who had committed suicide were traditionally buried using alternative funerary rites and were not buried in the churchyard. It was, therefore, not uncommon for the bereaved loved ones to hide the true cause of death. Such was the case of the Silesian shoemaker, whose widow claimed he had died from a stroke and went to great lengths to hide the truth of the matter, not accepting visitors to view the corpse, and having it wrapped tightly so that its wound would not be perceived. Her efforts paid off, and the shoemaker was buried with traditional ceremony. However, rumors soon surfaced about his suicide and became such a scandalous gossip that the town council confronted the widow, who continually changed her story, saying first that he had actually fallen on a rock, then that he had fallen on his own awl and she had thrown it away to prevent others from injuring themselves. However, her neighbors continued to distrust her because they said they had begun to receive visits by the shoemaker. In the tradition of the revenant, the dead man was seen walking the city and visiting people he knew after his death. The text does not call him a revenant, or a vampire, or even a Nachzehrer, a northern German word for the same sort of creature, but rather a Gespenst, or ghost. As is common in revenant folklore, the shoemaker frightened those it visited, waking some up from slumber and in some cases entering their houses and assaulting them in their beds. People left their homes and spent the night in the company of others, keeping their lanterns burning the whole night through, but still they reported seeing the shoemaker making his nightly visit to oppress them. The troubles were so great, that the council determined to open the shoemaker’s grave and see for themselves that he truly was dead. What they found was a great swollen corpse, but they found him complete and undamaged by decay, and the fact that he was not stiff as they expected him to be caused them to believe that his was no normal corpse. Moreover, his skin had peeled away, revealing fresh skin beneath, and it was said not to stink as other corpses stank. They set a guard on the corpse and allowed the townspeople to come and view it for themselves, but regardless, the revenant continued to visit and trouble the people. Finally, the shoemaker’s widow admitted that he had killed himself and urged the council to end the troubles by killing him a second time. In order to utterly destroy the revenant, they cut off his head, hands and feet, removed his heart, and cremated the remains.

Of course we see the bare bones of a vampire story here: a creature that has risen from the dead to attack the living who is finally dealt with by attacking his heart, beheading him, and setting him on fire. As we look closely at the story, however, we see already how different the traditional stories of revenants are from the later vampire tradition. First and foremost, there is no drinking of blood. Instead there is only some noisy bothering of neighbors and perhaps some mild throttling. This is essentially a ghost story, complete with unfinished business. It is not the body itself which rises from the grave to vex his neighbors; the grave appears to have been undisturbed and the visits continued even when the body was watched. Rather, the story seems to indicate that the spirit of the shoemaker set about bothering and even physically attacking people until the truth about his death came out. As we shall see later, there is ample reason to doubt the reports of the revenant’s victims, as many may have imagined the visits, encouraged by the mass panic, or made false reports in an effort to further encourage the widow to come clean about the rumored true nature of the shoemaker’s death, or someone may even have been disguising himself as the shoemaker and going around bothering the people for any number of reasons. But the story of the shoemaker from Breslau does clearly introduce some elements of European folklore surrounding revenants: that when they are exhumed, they appear not to have properly decomposed. Indeed, it is claimed that the corpse of the shoemaker does not even smell bad, although, it should be noted that immediately after stating that there was no stench, the text concedes that “the cloths in which he was wrapped had a repulsive smell.” It seems unrealistic to believe that those who dug up the shoemaker, upon smelling a repulsive stench, then went about sniffing things more closely to determine whether it was the cloth or the corpse itself that stank. So the reliability of the report is called into question. Likewise, we read that the body was “undamaged by decay” but in the same breath it’s stated that it was “blown up like a drum,” as if those who examined it did not recognize swelling as a part of the decomposition process. Thus we must consider that they may not have been the best judges of whether or not the corpse should have been stiff at this stage in its decomposition, or whether the fresh skin they saw beneath the peeling skin was or was not an aspect of normal decay. To these strange features of the revenant in his grave we will add a few more before essaying to provide some rational explanation other than that they represent signs of the undead.

A depiction of a revenant visitation

The next historical account of a supposedly real revenant, and one who can more accurately be called a vampire since he was Serbian, and that is the Serbian word for the phenomenon, comes to us from the 18th century, when Serbia and Walachia were occupied by Austria, and it was noticed that the locals had the strange practice of digging up corpses to “kill” them. In a village called Kisilova, after a man named Peter Plogojowitz died and had been buried, nine different people took ill and died swiftly, after only a day of symptoms. These people, as they lay dying, supposedly claimed that Plogojowitz had visited them in their sleep and attacked them. The villagers knew just what this meant—they had a vampire on their hands. So they opened Plogojowitz’s grave, in which they noticed that his hair and beard and even his fingernails had continued to grow after death, that his dead skin had peeled away to show healthy looking skin beneath, that his body did not stink, and that it was entirely intact after more than three months. More than this, fresh blood could be seen on his mouth, which the villagers believed he had sucked from his victims. To destroy the fiend, they drove a sharp wooden stake through his heart, whereupon great quantities of fresh blood erupted from the wound as well as from his eyes and mouth. Afterward, they burned his remains. This report adds features of the revenant in his grave that we will address in due course: the fresh blood seen in his mouth and flowing after being staked and the growth of hair and nails. Notable is the mention of blood sucking, and the staking of the heart. Here we find the vampire tale more complete but still not fully formed. Some vampire tales make claims about a disturbance of the grave, but more often, as in this tale, there is no indication that the corpse has left the grave or even that the villagers believe he had physically done so and then somehow reburied himself. Rather, again, it appears the revenant is seen as a kind of spirit, whose nocturnal attacks seem to create some effect on the corpse lying still undisturbed back in its grave. It is interesting that the report indicates the corpse is perfectly intact and “fresh,” yet admits an exception, saying, “except for the nose, which was somewhat fallen away.” Once again the reliability of the report is questionable based on its own claims and logic. But perhaps most interesting here is the indication that the vampire is being blamed for an illness that is spreading through the village. Vampirism in folklore and fiction has since been portrayed as a kind of plague in its own right. It spreads like a disease when one vampire turns two victims into vampires, who in short order then each turn victims of their own, and so on. We don’t see vampirism spreading like an infection here, but it does appear to be a vector of some other infection in this tale, as we see his victims dying after a brief illness. But these sick villagers only essentially said that they had had nightmares about Plogojowitz. Again, if they even really made these claims, this could very well have been the result of some rumors that Plogojowitz had turned into a vampire. One wonders how many others who weren’t sick might have had similar nightmares with such rumors going around. Viewing the scenario in this more rationalist light, it becomes a case of scapegoating. We know nothing about Plogojowitz’s character in life or how he was viewed by villagers, but for whatever reason, when three months after his death a disease began spreading among the villagers, some chose to explain the mysterious illness by blaming it on the dead man, and the claim took on a life of its own, as it were. Who knows how many cases of vampires can be similarly explained as an attempt to find some comforting explanation for a frightening danger. The village of Kisilova knew of nothing they could do to defeat this communicable disease, but they knew just what to do about a vampire.

The explanation that vampirism was simply a way to cast blame for a plague when there was no one really to blame does much to explain every instance when a village chose to dig up and desecrate a corpse in this way. It was an established belief, which would of course encourage further claims of visitation by a recently deceased revenant whenever an illness was sweeping through a village. According to the account of the vampire Peter Plogojowitz, the people of Kisilova had heard of entire villages being wiped out by such a vampire. Of course, by this explanation, they were actually wiped out by diseases they did not understand, which they only explained by claiming a vampire was attacking them. As the notion that vampires cause disease transformed into the notion that vampirism spread like a disease, the act of digging up and destroying corpses itself sometimes became epidemic. According to a report published in Nuremberg in 1732, it sometimes resulted in villagers digging up entire cemeteries in the belief that they were full of vampires. In the village of Medvegia, a belief that vampires were visiting people and sucking their blood had arisen. The villagers claimed that their troubles could all be traced back to a soldier named Arnod Paole, who had died falling off a haywagon. While still alive, Paole had told people that a vampire used to attack him. He claimed to have finally rid himself of the vampire by eating soil from its grave and smearing its blood on himself. When Paole died, there were further claims that he had turned into a vampire and begun to bother villagers, and that he had even posthumously killed four people. One assumes they probably died from some illness, but regardless, the village dug him up, claimed he was not decayed, and that fresh blood flowed from him and that new skin and fingernails had grown on him. As was their custom with vampires, they staked him, whereupon he groaned and bled profusely, and thereafter they burned his remains. However, in Medvegia we see that whatever plague had been troubling them did not fade, so they needed further scapegoats and therefore claimed that all of Paole’s victims must likewise have been transformed into vampires. Thus they began digging up every corpse that had supposedly been killed by a vampire, which had probably actually expired from some disease, and each of these they decided had also not properly decomposed and showed the signs of vampirism, perhaps because they seem to have exhumed them in the winter, when cold weather slowed their decay. And when they ran out of dead people to blame for the disease and the disease continued to rage, they claimed that vampires had attacked their cattle too, and therefore anyone who had eaten of their meat must also have been transformed into a vampire upon dying. And when they dug these up—these people who hadn’t claimed to have been troubled by vampires but had likely died from the same illness nonetheless—they found that they too showed the signs of vampirism. It makes you wonder how many corpses they would have to observe before they started to suspect that the features they were so certain indicated vampirism might actually have been typical of a corpse in certain stages of decomposition.

An image depicting the rising of the dead from their graves.

Perhaps the best and most revealing report on such peasant superstitions comes to us from a French botanist named Pitton de Tournefort in early 18th century Mykonos, where the Greeks called such revenants vrykolakas. De Tournefort viewed the peasant superstitions more critically, and his skeptical account offers a rarer look at what was actually going on. He described a certain man on Mykonos who was unliked because of his quarrelsome nature, who had been murdered, with the culprit never having been discovered. Afterward, he was said to have been seen walking the island at night, or even entering homes and playing pranks like snuffing out lanterns, overturning furniture, or seizing people from behind and scaring them half to death. After ten days of this, they said a mass, exhumed his corpse, and cut out his heart. De Tournefort observed the practice, remarking on how inexpertly the butcher who completed the task performed it. Rather than observing a lack of stench, de Tournefort describes how the men who examined the corpse burned incense to cover the smell, which causes one to wonder whether that might be the case in other reported instances as well, but that the practice went unrecorded. Nevertheless, de Tournefort asserted that it did not decrease the stench at all, but rather magnified it. In fact, de Tournefort states that he suspects the men would have claimed the body did not stink at all if he had not been present to contradict their claims, giving the sense that a skeptic’s presence was all that prevented them from exaggerating their claims such that they would better match those of other accounts. Instead, some of the men began to cry out that smoke was coming from the body of the supposed vampire after it had been opened, proving it was a vrykolakas, though the botanist was certain that the smoke was obviously just from the incense. Likewise, he described the crowd of people proclaiming that the corpse was not stiff and that its blood was still red and warm, although de Tournefort seemed to express skepticism on the matter. He suggested that some warmth was to be expected when “rummaging about in entrails, which were putrefying,” and he further states, “as for the pretended red blood, …this was nothing but a stinking mess.” After the people thought they had rid themselves of this supposed vampire, the pranks continued, such that townsfolk left their homes and congregated together at night, finding their houses further ransacked and rummaged through upon their return. The believers argued over the proper way to dispense with the vrykolakas, suggesting they should have said mass after cutting out the heart rather than before, etc. Meanwhile de Tournefort had a different idea, suggesting that a number of vagabonds had run wild in the town, vandalizing homes and eating and drinking their fill at night when the villagers left their houses vacant and unguarded. Here we see a further explanation, other than scapegoating for a disease. We see that the supposed vrykolakas or vampire was hated for his behavior and character, and even killed for it. So perhaps others, like Peter Plogojowitz, were likewise disliked, making them a more likely target of blame when a disease came around, or in this case, on Mykonos, a crime wave. In the dark of night, as unknown figures are seen striding outside the home, or when some brute bursts into your house and knocks over your lamp, making it impossible to properly identify him, and goes on to break your things and assault you, who can you blame? Well if the folklore of revenants is common in your culture, you may be more likely to blame the ghost, or the corpse, of that one guy who was always such a dick.

So we have some notion of why a village might decide that a certain dead person was responsible for their woes, and we understand how social contagions work, that such claims might only grow with each retelling, becoming a mass delusion. But what of the claims about the vampire’s body not rotting as is to be expected. We might presume that the claims of there being no smell are exaggerated, but what of the consistent claims that the bodies are still fresh, with new growth of skin, hair, and nails, fresh, uncoagulated blood, with no stiffness as we might expect from rigor mortis, and even that they groan, or sometimes even cry out, when pierced by a stake? First it must be pointed out that, while accounts of vampire killing often claim that there are no signs of decomposition, they almost always belie an ignorance of what decomposition looks like. The falling away of the nose is a clear sign of decomposition, or the bloating that is described in almost every report. Vampire killers often believed the revenant was bloated because it had been drinking blood, but the bloating of corpses is common, due to the release of methane during putrefaction. The lack of stiffness was also a common sign of vampirism, but the fact is that rigor mortis is a temporary phenomenon. During the course of regular decomposition, the body again becomes flexible. Likewise, what they saw as the sloughing off of old skin and the growth of new skin is also a natural phenomenon, something called skin slippage, in which the outer layers of skin peel away, revealing not fresh skin beneath, but raw layers of the epidermis. What they saw as the hair and fingernails growing was actually the flesh having retracted from them, the beginning of a process of shedding the hair and nails. Much is made of the uncoagulated blood, but this too is common. Blood may coagulate but then liquify again, depending on the conditions of the body during decomposition, and the pressure of the gasses bloating the corpse commonly force the pooling blood past the larynx, explaining the supposedly fresh blood on the vampire’s lips. This liquid blood pools in the torso and especially in the heart, further explaining the copious bleeding when the vampire-killers stake revenants, and the very act of violently piercing the trunk of a corpse that has filled with gasses explains the sounds of groaning or even crying out that were frequently reported. Why would some bodies look different from others, though, as so many of these reports claim? The answer is simple. There are many factors that might hasten or retard decomposition, including moisture, temperature, microorganisms, and the presence of air or insects. Indeed, some bodies may actually be unusually preserved through accidental mummification and other processes. Some cultures in which vampires were believed to be common actually buried their dead in lime, which they believed hastened decay but could actually preserve the corpse. Another process is saponification, when fat is transformed into adipocere, causing a pinkish red discoloration in the muscles which may be mistaken for a robust complexion. But a better question is why European peasants would presume that such seemingly unnatural preservation of the dead was a sign of evil when otherwise, as in the preservation of saints, it would be viewed as a miracle of God denoting sanctity. Simply put, the fears these people faced were not fears of a fiendish monster. It was, instead, a quite natural fear of death, something they could not fully comprehend. For this reason, because of that deep-seated dreadful terror at the heart of vampire lore, I would argue that vampires remain the most horrifying of all monsters.

In Part Two we will further explore how this lore evolved into modern myth.

Further Reading

Barber, Paul. Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality. Yale University Press, 1988.

Buzwell, Greg. “Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and the Villa Diodati.” British Library, 15 May 2014, www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/mary-shelley-frankenstein-and-the-villa-diodati.

Summers, Montague. The Vampire in Europe. Taylor & Francis, 2013.

The Enigmatic Kingfish, Huey Long

Huey Pierce Long was a controversial figure on the national stage during the Great Depression. The former governor of Louisiana turned senator made few alliances in Washington. In fact, he had even moved to oppose the New Deal plan of the very popular president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and in 1935, he announced his candidacy for U.S. president, a campaign Democrats feared could divide support for Roosevelt, for while he was not popular among his congressional colleagues, he had grown more and more popular among the public, many of whom listened to him on the radio, where he expounded like a preacher on his Share Our Wealth program as an alternative to the New Deal, promising to make “Every Man a King.” And back in his home state, where he had done much to help the common man, he was truly revered by his constituency. “I’m a small fish here in Washington,” he was fond of saying, “But I’m the Kingfish to the folks down in Louisiana.” And it was not just the voting public he held sway over in Louisiana. He still dominated the political scene there. He had handpicked his gubernatorial successor, Oscar K. Allen, and the system of patronage he had established back when he had been governor remained in place, such that, even away in Washington, he could get state legislation passed or struck down seemingly as he pleased. In fact, he was in Baton Rouge on September 8th, 1935, just a month after declaring his candidacy for president, on just such state business. On that day, there was a special session of the state legislature. The business of the day was the ouster of an avowed political enemy of Long’s, Judge Benjamin Pavy. Long had arrived, accompanied by his armed guards, to personally see to it that certain bills would be passed that would allow the legislature to gerrymander Pavy’s district and ensure his political downfall. Huey Long stood tall and proud, secure on his home turf, as he walked between the marble pillars of the Louisiana capitol. Two times that evening, a man in a white suit, Carl Weiss, Judge Pavy’s son-in-law, tried to approach Long and engage him in some sort of conversation, but Long brushed him off. At 9:20pm, Weiss came at Long one more time, eliciting some angry retort from Long that appeared to trigger Weiss into assaulting him. The result was a shootout, as Long’s security, trying to prevent Long’s assassination by Weiss, gunned the judge’s son-in-law down. However, they were too late, for it appeared Weiss had already gotten a shot off. They rushed Huey Long to the nearest hospital, and surgeons immediately went to work trying to save his life. However, they could not stop the internal bleeding from his wound. For two days, Long clung to life, but in the end, he died. His final words were reported as “God, don’t let me die. I have so much to do.” When his passing was announced to the public, many mourned the death of a great reformer, feeling a loss of hope comparable to what the country would feel 30 years later after the murder of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr. Meanwhile, many others sighed with relief to be rid of a dangerous demagogue, an authoritarian whom many believed to be a homegrown fascist akin to Hitler.

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In the previous post, when I revisited my first topic about Trump’s demagoguery, I suggested the current perils U.S. democracy faces are similar to those in the 1930s, and I specifically cited the demagoguery of Father Coughlin. But Huey Long is often mentioned in the very same breath as Father Coughlin. It would have been quite easy to lump him in among the threats to democracy of that period, but Long deserves further analysis, which in turn requires some further clear-eyed analysis of demagoguery. Some scholars reject the term altogether, suggesting it is too difficult to define and is a label too easily flung at those whom we oppose as a means of discrediting them. The word originally only meant “a leader of the people” in ancient Greece, but even so, it has always carried with it a negative connotation, indicative of manipulation or deception. Today, however, we might recognize the validity and even the importance of certain radical political agitation that may not have been condoned in the past. So where is the line between radical leader and dangerous demagogue? Perhaps the ultimate example of a dangerous demagogue is Adolph Hitler. The way Hitler cultivated his public image as a leader of the masses, his spellbinding oratory, his appeal to prejudices and his reliance on scapegoats are all perfect examples of the stereotypical demagogue. In fact, it has been argued that demagoguery is the definite first stage of a fascist movement. It is certainly important, even vital, to remember the rise of Hitler and be vigilant against the rise of another like him. However, comparisons to Hitler are not always the historical parallel we should use. First of all, you run the risk of offending Holocaust survivors with such analogies. Second, you may be too easily dismissed as alarmist or hyperbolic. Perhaps the better example to use when evaluating whether Huey Long was a demagogue would be the stereotype of the Southern demagogue. We can take as our exemplar “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, another Southern governor and senator. A leader of the Red Shirts whom I described in my episodes on the Wilmington Insurrection, Tillman engaged in wholesale race massacres during Reconstruction in his efforts to ensure continued white supremacy. Like others who fall into the Southern demagogue category, Tillman rose to power by whipping up the emotions and prejudices of voters. He exploited the hot-button issues, manipulating the discontent of a white, agrarian culture and blaming all of their woes on the black citizens that he painted as their enemies. The demagogue cultivates his image as a champion of the downtrodden, when often he has never been one himself, as was the case with Tillman, who came from a wealthy slave-owning family. The demagogue is charismatic in their speechmaking, but it is the emptiness of their rhetoric that is more important, since great oratory is not a fault. The demagogue is no resolver of social problems. Rather, he distracts from problems with his scapegoating, and more often than not, race-baiting, as the demagogue’s currency is prejudice and resentment. And finally, revealing that the demagogue cares more for his own elevation than serving those who raise him up, he is no keeper of promises, and he usually reveals himself to be corrupt, engaging in fraud, and betraying the principles of democracy to further his own empowerment. These attributes can be seen very clearly in Hitler, and quite clearly in “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman and other Southern Demagogues. But the question of this episode is did the Kingfish meet these criteria?

Southern Demagogue “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman

Huey Long grew up in a district of Louisiana that thrived on populist politics, and he appears to have learned much about the whipping up of crowds from politicians in the so-called People’s Party, which appealed to farmers and rural laborers. Long always presented himself as being one of the working class, from a poor background, but in truth, he was from an affluent family, most of whom were Democrats, the party of Jim Crow segregation and black disenfranchisement until the party realignment that was underway during Long’s lifetime. Here we seem to be checking a box in favor of demagogue, as Long cultivated his image as one of the common man, when in fact members of his own family, upset by his later politics, publicly contradicted his tales of growing up poor. However, self-presentation is an artform practiced by all politicians, especially today with their teams of public relations experts and publicists and media messaging strategists. Adopting a rustic persona and reinventing oneself to appeal to the public is almost a requirement of the job. Yes, it’s disingenuous, but it’s also, maybe, a commonplace evil in a world where all politicians show up to disaster areas with their shirtsleeves rolled up as if they really intend to physically do anything beyond giving some prepared remarks. This alone we might dismiss as a matter of optics, a politician doing what politicians do. So let us search for further signs of demagoguery. He started his career as a lawyer, and even back then we can see his tendency to fight for the little guy, winning compensation for his clients from the enemy he would focus on throughout his political career: big corporations. His political career commenced with a position as Public Utilities Commissioner, in which role he again championed the less advantaged, supporting independent oil companies and taking on the behemoth Standard Oil. His critics will point out that he had a conflict of interest here, as he actually owned stock in the independent oil companies that he was helping. This assertion certainly paints Long as a corrupt and deceitful leader whose supposed principles only served his own ends. However, recent legal scholarship casts doubt on the long-held assumptions that Huey Long improperly profited from independent oil company profits. As it turns out, the stock shares in question, in the independent Win or Lose oil company, came into his possession years after he first began fighting for companies like them, even after he had left the governor’s office. And regardless, in his work for the Utilities commission, he not only fought for smaller companies, but also for the consumer, pushing for affordable rates. It may be difficult to argue that Huey Long was not corrupt, but to characterize all the genuinely beneficial reforms he pushed for as cynically self-serving is unfair.

During his governorship, Huey Long did undeniable good for the state of Louisiana. It is somewhat absurd to read his critics argue that he only exploited the poor and disadvantaged to achieve power, but then concede that he did actually keep his promises and enact reforms that benefitted them, but also claim that he only did so to hang on to his power. It’s a bit like arguing that a certain saint does not deserve to be sainted because they only did all that charity work and performed all those miracles in an effort to become a saint. It’s rather hard to discern the purity of one’s motives, since we judge by their actions. In office, Huey Long enacted so many reforms they became known as the Long Revolution, and the reforms would be considered progressive even by today’s standards. He pulled the state out of its Depression nosedive with broad infrastructure projects that vastly improved employment. Yes, some projects may have been vanity projects, like a new governor’s mansion and a new capitol, but they put laborers to work all the same, and most projects were not, including the construction of a new seawall and spillway to shield New Orleans from flooding, improvements to that city’s port and warehouses, a new airport, numerous bridges and railroads, and almost 4,000 miles of newly paved roads, a record at the time for a state in the Deep South. Beyond these projects, he built new health care facilities and fought for more sanitary and compassionate mental health facilities. In education, he allocated funding to improve school facilities and provide free textbooks, and as a result increased enrollment in public schools. He also established night schools and managed to significantly reduce adult illiteracy in Louisiana. Those who call him a demagogue argue that he only helped all these people in order to serve himself, but he actually did much to empower local government over big government, which would seemingly reduce his own power. If demagogues don’t keep their promises and are in the business of distracting from real world social issues by blaming scapegoats, Huey Long doesn’t fit the bill. He drew attention to real social ills and enacted concrete programs to alleviate them. The enemies he vilified were the extremely wealthy and large corporations, validly pointing out a concern that we must recognize has only gotten more concerning: that many of society’s ills derive from the distribution of wealth. It causes one to ponder, can it really be called scapegoating if you are accurately casting blame?

A Huey Long for Governor campaign flyer

While he won the enthusiastic support of Louisianians, especially poor and rural citizens, Long made many enemies as governor, and later, in Washington. Perhaps this accounts for the divisive nature of his legacy. The first time he ran, in 1924, he lost, but in 1928, through his innovative campaigning and captivating speeches, he succeeded with the slogan “Every Man a King but No One Wears a Crown.” Early in his tenure as governor, having made enemies of industrialists with his proposal of an oil tax, he was nearly removed from office under an impeachment resolution that listed accusations ranging from bribery through patronage and controlling the courts through his appointments, to carrying concealed weapons and suborning murder. The last was hearsay, a rumor that Long had suggested, while drunk, that someone kill a rival’s son and leave him in a ditch. The accusations resulted in an all-out brawl in the legislature, remembered as Bloody Monday. Long insisted the whole impeachment campaign was a conspiracy by Standard Oil to prevent his reforms, and in the end, after a battle of bribes and counter-bribes on both sides, Long was victorious. Afterward, he came to dominate state politics, such that one critic rewrote his slogan as “Every Man a King but Only One Wore the Crown.” His mechanism of influence was machine politics. He cultivated allies in the legislature through patronage. He would appoint legislators to positions in state agencies, providing them additional income, and then expect them to play ball when it came to passing laws for his reform programs, and as we saw on the day he was shot, he attended legislative sessions in person, ready to bowl over opponents of his agenda with his folksy and charming rhetoric, as well as his scathing personal attacks. His opponents he thereafter dealt with harshly, supporting those who ran against them in elections and even using his power to take petty revenge, like firing anyone in their family who happened to work for the state. It’s no wonder he was disliked by those who stood in his way, and absolutely his system of patronage was ethically dubious, but those who admire his reform programs, and especially those who benefitted from them, like the poor, tended to view him as playing the game the way it had to be played in order to keep his promises and make his changes. One argument is that he may have started out an idealist and only resorted to the corrupt means that his enemies employed because his ends justified them. Moving beyond his time as governor, though, after his election to the Senate, when he remained in firm control of Louisiana through his machine and the puppet governor he’d chosen to replace him, it may very well be that he succumbed to his ambitions, not wanting to give up his influence, and seeking greater power in Washington, whether because he lusted after it or because he really believed that only he would use it for the good of the country.

At first, Huey Long allied himself with Franklin D. Roosevelt and campaigned for him, but eventually he turned on the president, opposing his New Deal programs as not doing enough to resolve the hardships of the Depression. It has been claimed by his critics that Long only moved against Roosevelt because the president had blocked his further political ambitions, but again, this is a matter of presuming Long’s motivation. It is certainly true that he had his eye on the presidency. He even wrote an imaginative account of what his presidency would be like. He anticipated dividing Roosevelt’s support, resulting in a Republican presidency, after which Long believed he would be swept into office. His critics further claim that his alternative program, the Share Our Wealth Society, was little more than a ploy to get him into office by bribing the poor for their support. And it is true that his alternative program was rather light on details and perhaps overpromised what could be accomplished at the time, but looking at it in a modern light, Huey Long was advocating for many reforms that were ahead of his time. He spoke about the richest 2% owning far too much of the wealth, and he proposed capping wealth and redistributing it to the poverty-stricken. He wanted to enact a temporary moratorium on debt during the economic crisis, a policy that was recently enacted under the Trump administration and furthered under Biden to provide relief during the pandemic. But more than that, Long pushed for universal healthcare, free college education, and a universal basic income. All of these proposals are still advocated for by progressive reformers today. So perhaps Long’s program was not the transparent ploy that some historians have claimed. Certainly Roosevelt recognized the appeal of it, as he came to view Long as “one of the two most dangerous men in America,” the other being General Douglas MacArthur. To address this threat, Roosevelt sicced his IRS on Long, putting his finances under the microscope in an effort to bring him down, and played Long’s own patronage game against him, declaring, “Anybody working for Huey Long is not working for us.” Roosevelt recognized not only Long’s threat to his presidency and to his New Deal programs. Almost certainly, Roosevelt’s assessment of Long as a danger reflected the belief common among Long’s critics that he was a fascist. Indeed, many were the comparisons of Long to Hitler. One New Dealer called him “the Hitler of one of our sovereign states,” and one journalist suggested Long could possibly “Hitlerize America.” American Communists called him “Louisiana’s Hitler,” and described him as “the personification of the fascist menace in the United States.” Domestic sympathizers of fascism said he was “the nearest approach to a national fascist leader.” Even Huey’s own brother said he was “trying to be a Hitler,” and some historians and biographers have immortalized this view of him. But was it accurate?

Long delivering a speech with his signature awkward gesticulation, which was sometimes compared to Hitler’s oratorical style.

There are indeed undeniable parallels between the Kingfish and fascist dictators like the Führer and Il Duce. They all rose to power in the wake of the Great Depression, taking advantage of the public’s dissatisfaction with an ineffective government. They were all mesmerizing orators and master propagandists. Huey Long pretty much invented the modern campaign media blitz. He was the first to outfit a truck with speakers and have it driven through the streets to encourage people to attend his rallies, and he was the first politician to use radio for national addresses, a practice that both FDR and Hitler later took up. However, in several key regards, Longism does not match up with fascism. A key element of fascism was race hate and racial scapegoating, obviously with the anti-Semitism of Nazism but also the Italian fascist racism against Slavic ethnic groups. However, Huey Long, while known to make remarks that betrayed a typically Southern view on race, was said by one who knew him to have “far less racial prejudice in him than any other Southerner in the Senate.” In his reform programs, he helped the poor black community the same as the poor white, securing jobs for black workers, improving conditions for black students, and reducing illiteracy among black Louisianians from 38% to 23%. He even insisted that black citizens too must receive an equal share in his plan to redistribute wealth. “Black and white, they all gotta have a chance,” Long said. “They gotta have a home, a job, and a decent education for their children.” As for anti-Semitism, despite working with some rabid anti-Semites, like Gerald L. K. Smith, Long himself was not anti-Semitic, having close Jewish friends and allies, one of whom, Abe Shushan, he honored by naming the new airport in New Orleans after him. Beyond these differentiations, there is the fact that Long’s politics were simply too far left to be considered fascist. You’ll hear some ill-informed people claim that fascism and Nazism were leftist movements, for the simple reason that Nazism was short for National Socialism, but Hitler was never a leftist or socialist. He used the term to gather broad support, but he explicitly said that he was redefining the word. In 1923, he said, “I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.” Very quickly his party revealed itself as a far-right movement, and that is how fascism is always and has always been characterized, despite what some who fear the far left might claim today. Nazism and Italian fascism both rose in clear opposition to Communism. Now Huey Long presented himself and his Share the Wealth proposals as an alternative to Communism, but his proposals were certainly far too socialist to be considered fascist today, especially since, when he had power, he did not forget about the people to whom he had made promises, as Hitler did, but rather delivered reforms to improve their condition. And Long himself certainly resented the comparisons, responding, “Don’t liken me to that sonofabitch.”

While Huey Long was no fascist, the further argument is that he at least had authoritarian tendencies. And of course, while fascism is undoubtedly a phenomenon of the far right, leaders on the far left of the political spectrum may indeed be autocrats heading a totalitarian state. One need look no further than Stalinism for an example of this. Examining Huey Long for evidence of authoritarianism, we find definite cause for concern. Even T. Harry Williams, one of Long’s most admiring biographers, concedes that Long, while seeking the power to overcome his opposition so that he could do good, may have ended up grasping too much after power and doing inadvertent harm. In wielding his unprecedented influence over the state legislature, he betrayed some rather anti-democratic sentiments, such as when one lawmaker reminded him that Louisiana had a constitution they were bound to follow, and Long replied, “I’m the constitution around here now.” As a senator and presidential hopeful, when he was pushing for wealth redistribution and was asked how he might respond as president if the Supreme Court blocked his program, he said he would get Congress to pass a law that extended the Supreme Court bench to include all congressmen and would have the case considered again. While I acknowledge and even distrust and denounce the counter-majoritarian nature of the Supreme Court, especially today as an openly partisan and extreme right bench rolls back civil rights, what Long was proposing, effectively merging the judicial and legislative branches of government, was not just unrealistic but extremely dangerous. While these remarks and Long’s unprecedented influence over every aspect of the government in Louisiana may be indicative of some anti-democratic tendencies, when we hold up Louisiana under his auspices to scholarly criteria for a totalitarian regime, we find that it doesn’t quite fit. A totalitarian system is characterized not only by a leader who holds extraordinary power as Long held. It is further characterized by the existence of only a single party and an official ideology, which just wasn’t the case with Longism. It is further characterized by an iron-fisted control over media and education and the economy, none of which Long ever held. Indeed, Long struggled with opposition newspapers and rival parties, and he once said to a newsman who suggested he was a dictator, “You and I both know that if the people want to throw me out they’re going to do it.” Besides the broad power Long wielded in Louisiana because of his political machine, the one other criteria he could be argued to meet was his commanding of a “secret police” capable of terrorism. Long’s use of the state police as his personal security was widely criticized, with comparisons unsurprisingly made to Hitler’s Brownshirt private army. And in 1928, he pushed the infamous Act 99 through the legislature, establishing the Bureau of Criminal Identification, a law enforcement agency independent of the police, which Long controlled by appointing its head officers, and which was capable of making arrests without a warrant. Long’s critics declared it his own Gestapo… but it didn’t engage in official campaigns of terror as predicted. In fact, today, it is just the wing of the state police in charge of fingerprinting.

Huey Long surrounded by his armed guards.

When Long first established this bureau, the BCI, it was specifically to investigate a number of armed militia groups that had formed in opposition to him and which had engaged in criminal violence and armed insurrection. These groups were, like so many others then and today, openly racist, overtly likening themselves to white supremacist movements like those that enacted reigns of terror all over the South during Reconstruction, much like those I described in my series The Coup on Cape Fear. These groups were responsible for death threats, not only to Huey Long but also to the Long-supportive administration, headed by Long’s successor as governor, Oscar K. Allen. They attempted arson on more than one occasion, and once even took a pot shot at Long’s home in New Orleans. At one point, when during a recount for a voter referendum on some constitutional amendments, Governor Allen declared martial law, necessitating that the recount occur under armed guard, many cried fraud, but the clear reason that Allen had to call in the National Guard that day was that these militia agitators had staged an armed rebellion in the district where the recount was occurring. Hundreds of armed members of the opposition militia group calling itself the Square Deal Association had stormed the East Baton Rouge Parish courthouse. And rather than some draconian crackdown, Allen’s declaration of martial law resulted in the Square Dealers dispersing without violence. These Square Dealers were the central focus of the BCI, who had infiltrated them with informants. It was because of these spies that the BCI was able to arrest many in this group the very next day, when the BCI surprised fifty armed Square Dealers at the Baton Rouge Airport. A shootout ensued, but no one was killed. Several were arrested, and the group’s leader fled across state lines. The informants that the BCI had among these opposition groups also provided information on meeting locations, at some of which Long stated they had recorded evidence of murder plots. Ever the purveyor of political spectacle, Huey Long dramatically read the minutes of these meetings on the Senate floor. Indeed, if they can be trusted, it does seem that the men at the meetings were talking about killing Long, specifically shooting him and sinking his corpse into the Gulf of Mexico weighted with chains and speculating that Roosevelt would pardon them for doing it. Whether this was idle talk or earnest plotting remains unclear, but all this seems enough to warrant Long’s security details and the establishment of the special investigative force, even if it does not excuse the unconstitutional granting of unlawful search and seizure powers. When later that year Long was killed in the Louisiana capitol, his armed guards failing to protect him, unsurprisingly, the event spawned a number of conspiracy theories, which I intend to discuss in a patron exclusive Blind Spot.

The figure of the Kingfish, Huey Long, is hotly contested by biographers and historians who variously call him a hero or a despot, a champion of the people or a demagogue. I have endeavored to judge him fairly in this episode, and to indicate where I thought he may have been unjustly criticized or unfairly characterized, but I must be clear that I don’t approve of his machine politics or his lack of regard for the separation of powers and for constitutional rights. I think that his plan for the redistribution of wealth, while admirable in many regards, was simplistic and unrealistic as outlined and likely a calculated attempt to steal the New Deal thunder and help him realize his designs on the presidency. I think Long actually showed his lack of support for the working classes in numerous ways, such as his lack of support for labor unions, his failure to push for a minimum wage law in Louisiana, and his opposition to the ratification of the Federal Child Labor Amendment. Nevertheless, one cannot help but wonder what concrete beneficial reforms he might have managed to achieve as president. On the other hand, while Long may not fit many of the criteria of a demagogue or a fascist, when we apply the same criteria to Donald Trump, an unsettling conclusion must be drawn. Huey Long kept his promises to the people who supported him, whereas Trump, who made concrete promises such as investing $550 billion in infrastructure, bringing back U.S. manufacturing jobs, guaranteeing 6 weeks paid maternity leave, and generally improving the economy, healthcare, and education, did not keep the promises he campaigned on. He was carried into office largely by poor, rural whites, convincing them that he was fighting for them, but inequality only deepened when Trump was in power. Huey Long did not distract from real issues by race baiting, is common of demagogues and fascists, but Donald Trump ran on hate for immigrants, specifically Latin American migrants and Muslims, and since that time, he has made his political opponents and the media into his constant scapegoats, blaming the left and fake news whenever his corruption is revealed. Huey Long was regularly accused of corruption and graft, and after his death, those who inherited his political machine were definitively caught using it in corrupt ways to enrich themselves, but try as his critics might to posthumously link their crimes to him, Long has remained unimplicated in their crimes. Conversely, Trump ran on draining the swamp or ridding Washington of corruption while acting as corruptly as any President before him, or worse, conning donors to his campaign and his defense fund out of hundreds of millions and flagrantly enriching himself through the powers of his office. He is a compelling, if buffoonish and overdramatic speaker, as was Long and as was Hitler, and he certainly benefits from propaganda in conservative news media and through online disinformation campaigns. While Long was a progressive populist and used his control of law enforcement to combat lawless militia groups, Trump has proven himself a far-right extremist, far closer on the political spectrum to textbook fascism, and his apparent personal command of white supremacist anti-government paramilitary goon squads like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys serves as a far more apt comparison to Hitler’s Brownshirts and Mussolini’s Blackshirts, and they have proven themselves more prepared to engage in terror campaigns. As I acknowledged at the beginning of this episode, comparisons to Hitler and fascism can often be viewed as offensive or alarmist or hyperbolic, and I do not make the comparison lightly. I’ve laid out the criteria and considered it thoughtfully, as you’ve seen. At a certain point, after comparing how something looks and how it swims and how it quacks, you’ve just got to admit when it passes the duck test.

Further Reading

Amenta, Edwin, et al. “Stolen Thunder? Huey Long’s ‘Share Our Wealth,’ Political Mediation, and the Second New Deal.” American Sociological Review, vol. 59, no. 5, 1994, pp. 678–702, https://doi.org/10.2307/2096443.

Haas, Edward F. “Huey Long and the Dictators.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, vol. 47, no. 2, 2006, pp. 133–51. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4234177.

Hogan, J. Michael, and L. Glen Williams. “The Rusticity and Religiosity of Huey P. Long.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs, vol. 7, no. 2, 2004, pp. 149–71, https://doi.org/10.1353/rap.2004.0040.

Leuchtenburg, William E. “FDR and the Kingfish.” American Heritage, vol. 36, no. 6, Oct./Nov. 1985, www.americanheritage.com/fdr-and-kingfish#1.
Jeansonne, Glen. “Challenge to the New Deal: Huey P. Long and the Redistribution of National Wealth.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, vol. 21, no. 4, 1980, pp. 331–39. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4232034.

Schafer, Elizabeth D., and Anthony Connors. "Huey Long: Was Huey Long a Progressive Reformer or a Dangerous Demagogue?" History in Dispute, edited by Robert J. Allison, vol. 3: American Social and Political Movements, 1900-1945: Pursuit of Progress, St. James Press, 2000, pp. 86-94. Gale In Context: Global Issues, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX2876300019/GIC?u=sjdc_main&sid=bookmark-GIC&xid=6decfee2.

Seidemann, Ryan M., et al. “The Kingfish’s Mineral Legacy: An Analysis of the Legality of State Mineral Leases Granted to W.T. Burton and James A. Noe During the Years 1934–1936 and Their Relevance to Former United States Senator and Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long.” LSU Journal of Energy Law and Resources, vol. 5, no, 1, 2017, pp. 71-152. LSU Law Digital Commons, digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/jelr/vol5/iss1/8/.

The Perils of American Democracy

This installment is greatly focused on the historic figure of the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump. Any who may not read on because they simply don’t want to hear about him anymore, I understand. But to any who object because they resent partisanship in political discourse and historical analysis, I would argue, at this point, that criticism of Donald Trump’s actions in office and out of it is no longer partisan. If you care about American democracy, you should listen on.

It was recently reported that President Joe Biden took some time in early August to sit down for a 2-hour conference with a group of history scholars who spoke to him with some urgency regarding the historical moment in which the United States now finds itself. Specifically, this varied group of historians included Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Jon Meacham, Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss, expert on Human Rights Allida Black, Pulitzer -winning journalist Anne Applebaum, and Sean Wilentz, whom you may remember for his unfortunate criticism of the 1619 Project, which I spoke about in my defense of the project. These experts raised concerns not only about the rise of authoritarianism and threats to democracy around the world, but specifically to the danger that American democracy currently faces. These historians are not alone. According to a very recent NBC News poll, “threats to democracy” have replaced concerns about the economy as the most important issue to voters. Many are those who think they’re clever but only reveal their ignorance by pointing out that “We’re a republic, not a democracy,” but of course, a republic, by definition, is a democracy. Specifically, it is a form of government in which power resides in the voting populace, with their will exercised by their elected representatives. Or as Founding Father Alexander Hamilton once wrote of the Constitution, “This representative democracy as far as is consistent with its genius has all the features of good government.” The fragility of American democracy is not a new concern. Even back when our democratic system of government was still in the intermediary stage between the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, we more than once almost went a different way with our experiment. In 1782, there was there a conspiracy among the leaders of the Continental Army, who had not been paid, and who threatened what would essentially have been a coup d'état, proposing to establish a constitutional monarchy with General Washington as its king. Had it not been for Washington’s famous rejection of the offer and subsequent efforts to quell the so-called Newburgh Conspiracy by arranging payment for the troops, our country might have taken a decidedly different path. Then in 1787, during the convening of the Constitutional Convention, rumors swirled about the Continental Congress scheming to offer a proposed regency over the United States to Hohenzollern Prince Henry of Prussia. Indeed, the anxieties and the protest ran so high that the conclave at the Philadelphia Convention had to print an official denial that they intended to establish another monarchy. For decades, these rumors and accusations were unsubstantiated, but in the early 20th century, corroborating evidence appears to have been found in the royal Prussian archives in Charlottenburg. A letter from Henry of Prussia, addressed to an old friend, Baron von Steuben, a Prussian-American general who had whipped the Continental Army into shape during the Revolution and was retired in New York at the time of the Philadelphia Convention, remarks pretty directly on the offer. In French, Henry writes, “I confess that I cannot believe that we can resolve to change the principles of the government which has been established in the United States of America, but if the entire nation should agree to establish others, and would choose for its model the constitution of England, according to my judgment I must admit that it is of all constitutions the one that seems the most perfect to me.” Now if either the Newburgh Conspiracy or the Prussian Scheme had succeeded in their designs, we cannot claim that America would be any less a democracy than is the UK, but both stories serve to show that now is certainly not the first time the fate of our particular brand of democracy has been threatened. This is not to say that concerns are unwarranted. Rather, it is to demonstrate that vigilance is required to preserve our way of life.

Let us begin this discussion by bringing the blog full circle back to the topic of my very first installment, which I removed from the podcast feed a while back because the sound mix wasn’t great and the subject matter caused some new listeners who started at the beginning to not give the podcast a chance. However, the transcript is still available here. Its topic was demagoguery. From the establishment of our federal government, the biggest threat to American democracy has always been the danger of a demagogue coming along and manipulating the people for his own benefit. George Washington wrote to Marquis de Lafayette during the Constitutional Convention that he feared “some aspiring demagogue who will not consult the interest of his Country so much as his own ambitious views” might exploit the opportunity to seize power. And during the convention, numerous speeches indicate that this danger was on many minds. James Madison spoke of the “Danger of Demagogues,” Elbridge Gerry asserted that “Demagogues are the great pests of our government, and have occasioned most of our distresses,” and Alexander Hamilton warned over and over against the threat of demagogues. In The Federalist Papers, he warned that they were the historical cause of the overturning of most republics—men who start out as demagogues, “paying an obsequious court to the people,” thereafter becoming tyrants. This danger is one of the principal reasons for the checks and balances baked into the system. Specifically, the power of impeachment was the ultimate check against a demagogue chief executive. So what is a demagogue? We might judge from one revision to the records of the convention, in which Elbridge Gerry states that “The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue; but are the dupes of pretended patriots.” This term, pretended patriots, had originally been taken down as “demagogues” and was later changed. This sentiment seems rather anti-democratic at first blush, as if the people don’t know what’s good for them and need governing, but in fact, his concern is exactly that some authoritarian ruler may fool the American people into raising him up, that the populace might be exploited by one who only pretends to serve them but in fact serves only himself. I’ll revisit the quote from James Fenimore Cooper that I shared in my first episode, “The peculiar office of a demagogue is to advance his own interests, by affecting a deep devotion to the interests of the people…. The demagogue is usually sly, a detractor of others, a professor of humility and disinterestedness, a great stickler for equality as respects all above him, a man who acts in corners and…appeals to passions and prejudices rather than to reason, and is in all respects a man of intrigue and deception, of sly cunning…instead of manifesting the frank, fearless qualities of the democracy he so prodigally professes.” In that first episode, without stating it outright, since back in 2016 it seemed gauche, I implied, rather heavy-handedly, that this described Donald Trump to a T, as it were, and I went on to compare him to Lewis Charles Levin, a 19th century nativist demagogue. Now, today, there are many valid reasons that the public fears U.S. democracy may be in peril, such as polarization, misinformation online, loss of trust in the media, etc. But without leaning too heavily on the I-told-you-so button, I must argue that the principal threat to our democracy in recent years has been and continues to be incorporated in the person of the former president. There are many historical parallels to the danger we now face and the threat he continues to represent, and we will examine them, but it must be conceded that this existential threat to American democracy, embodied and incited as it is by a disgraced former leader of the country, is utterly unique.

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, by Howard Chandler Christy (1940)

After the failure of the Capitol Insurrection on January 6th 2021, it seemed Trump had finally been revealed as the anti-democratic force that he clearly is. More than a year later, with the revelations of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol and Trump’s central role in inciting the insurrection made more and more clear, it has been truly disheartening to see so many Republican representatives and talking heads on conservative media fall in line to defend the indefensible. And now, since the FBI search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago and the revelation that Trump illegally took classified documents out of the White House and kept them at his private residence for years, it has been further dispiriting to see Trump’s civilian foot soldiers launch more than one assault on FBI offices. These criminals who have taken up arms against federal law enforcement in what should rightly be considered a second insurrection do so because they think the agency is wrongfully persecuting Trump, and they believe Trump’s explanations that he was just taking work home with him because don’t we all do that? When it was revealed that the “work” Trump removed from the White House included classified and Top Secret documents, these true believers credited Trump’s further explanation that he had actually declassified the documents he took home, under a standing order that anything he took out of the Oval Office be automatically declassified. This last claim was called “preposterous” by national security experts who explain that the classification system has been established over the course of numerous executive orders since World War II, requiring the head of whatever department or agency originally classified the document to review them before declassification and to consult with any other agency or department that may have some interest in the classified material before officially removing the classification marking from the document. Anyone who would believe that the very act of removing the document from the Oval Office declassified it just because Trump said it did, without any official executive order to change the declassification process, simply doesn’t understand the matter and should defer to the experts. The fact of the matter is, Trump appears to have broken numerous laws by taking these documents home with him. Section 1924 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code specifies that a person removing classified information without authority and keeping them “at an unauthorized location” can be fined and imprisoned for five year. Of course, Trump is arguing that, as the chief executive, he had that authority, but the Presidential Records Act of 1978 further clarifies the powers of a sitting President when it comes to document handling. It is pretty fitting that Trump, who is the only U.S. president to have been impeached twice, has now run afoul of a law passed because of Richard Nixon, another flagrantly corrupt President who made history as the only president to have resigned in the face of certain impeachment and removal from office. When Nixon resigned in 1974, he wanted to take all of his presidential documents home with him, including recordings that were important evidence of his crimes. Fearing that evidence would be destroyed, Congress passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, making Nixon’s records public property. And in 1978, having learned our lesson about what a corrupt president might try, the Presidential Records Act was passed so that no future president could remove documents from the White House like Nixon tried to do. Under this law, the American people own those records and documents, and upon a president leaving office, they must be removed directly to the National Archives. Trump’s further explanation that his exit from the White House was simply chaotic, and that the documents were taken by mistake, is perhaps more believable but does not excuse his actions. What it reveals is that he was so certain that he would succeed in overturning the election that he never bothered to pack and ended up having to do what many call an old fashioned shit-shove. However, ignorance is no justification, and since it has come out that someone in his inner circle informed the FBI that these classified materials were in his possession, it seems apparent that even if he didn’t realize what he'd taken at the time, he certainly must have known a year and a half later, especially after a grand jury subpoenaed Trump for the documents in June and he still did not surrender them, necessitating the FBI search of his home.

In fairness, we do know of at least one other American president to have taken home classified documents, and it was a Democrat: Lyndon B. Johnson. Of course, this was years before the passage of the Presidential Records Act and decades before section 1924 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code. In 1969, when Nixon took office and Johnson vacated the White House, he secretly told a staffer to smuggle out some highly classified documents. The contents of the documents and the reason for their removal takes us back further, to the 1968 presidential race, when Richard Nixon, who had previously been Dwight Eisenhower’s vice-president and had been thwarted in his presidential aspirations by the popular John F. Kennedy, Johnson’s late predecessor, ran against Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s VP. This was during the height of the war in Vietnam and the anti-war protest movement. In fact, the American public’s widespread opposition to the war was one of the principal reasons LBJ chose not to run for president again, though he had only served one term as an elected president. As election day drew near in 1968, Johnson saw a path to ending the war in Vietnam in a way that would be acceptable to him, and wanted to pursue it, believing that any indication of his administration ending the war might help Humphrey beat Nixon. However, Richard Nixon became aware of these efforts, and in a stunning betrayal of his country, worked to sabotage peace efforts. Through Anna Chennault, who raised funds for the Republican Party and led the political support group “Republican Women for Nixon,” Nixon made contact with the South Vietnamese government and put pressure on them not to cooperate with Johnson’s peace initiatives. President Johnson, in turn, became aware of Nixon’s sabotage and ordered the FBI to place Chennault under surveillance. From wiretaps, he uncovered evidence of Nixon’s plot “to monkey wrench it,” as one of Nixon’s aides put it. Unsure of what to do with this information, Johnson was on the eve of the election convinced by his cabinet advisers to bury the story. Their reason was that disclosure of the story would be bad for the country, in that it would irreparably harm the American people’s trust in their elected leaders. Certainly this would have been the case. Nixon was elected the next day, but even if disclosure of the story right before Election Day had resulted in a victory for Humphrey, the story would have shown a former vice-president and popular presidential candidate playing politics with the lives of soldiers. In between 1968, when the war in Vietnam might have ended, and 1975, when it did end, countless further lives were lost that might have been saved but for the callous political chess game played by Richard Nixon. And in hindsight, it seems Johnson’s noble motives for keeping Nixon’s treachery a secret were all for nothing. The American public was already disillusioned with the government and its elected leaders. They had been since the start of the Vietnam War and especially since the assassinations of the 1960s that many believed had been orchestrated by our own government. And certainly after Watergate, any vestiges of trust in the American presidency were obliterated regardless. Johnson’s surveillance of Americans in contact with the South Vietnamese embassy in Washington, D.C., was not, at the time, illegal, nor was his removal of classified documents relating to what that surveillance uncovered. In fact, in telling this story, I would argue that rather than comparing what Trump did to what Johnson did, a more apt comparison is to compare Nixon’s betrayal of the country to Trump’s alleged treason.

Richard Nixon gives a speech on the conflict in Vietnam, which he prevented from being resolved in order to win the presidency.

Here we address more clearly what makes Trump a clear and present danger to American democracy. Clearly he was unwilling to give up power and sought to unlawfully overturn the election and steal the presidency. Anyone who denies this now is performing mental gymnastics and ignoring all the evidence presented in the January 6 Committee hearings. But what makes both the insurrection he clearly orchestrated AND his removal of highly classified documents from the White House even more egregious is the evidence that he has improperly colluded with hostile foreign governments. In the wake of the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, when it was revealed that some of the classified documents seized were marked above Top Secret, or S.C.I., which stands for sensitive compartmented information, and that among these were documents containing U.S. nuclear secrets, speculation has run rampant that Trump may have been enriching himself by selling secrets to foreign governments. What evidence is there that Trump has actually done this? The evidence is mostly circumstantial. For example, in the weeks before the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, Trump hosted a controversial Saudi-Arabian funded golf tournament at his golf course in New Jersey, and the timing between this event and the revelation that the FBI recovered classified nuclear documents from Mar-a-Lago resurrected some former allegations raised in 2019 by the House Oversight Committee that the Trump administration attempted to “rush the transfer of highly sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia,” even suggesting that his actions may have violated the Atomic Energy Act. Even more recently, since it’s been revealed that a Russian-speaking woman “infiltrated” Mar-a-Lago and Trump’s circle, by posing as a member of the Rothschild banking family, Russia is brought to mind. If we are going to worry about Trump betraying American secrets to a foreign government, we should really be talking more about his collusion with Russia. Throughout his presidency, as the collusion between Trump’s election campaign and Russia was being investigated, Trump maintained that it was a baseless conspiracy theory, but unlike most baseless conspiracy theories, there is overwhelming evidence that his campaign worked with Russia, even if he managed to insulate himself personally. Also unlike baseless conspiracy claims, the evidence for Russian collusion has been vetted and uncovered by credible investigative journalism, not fringe researchers. Again, denying Trump’s involvement with Putin’s Russia takes a purposeful refusal to acknowledge overwhelming documentary evidence. Though Mueller’s report, heavily redacted by Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr, didn’t explicitly implicate Trump himself, his investigation resulted in the conviction of numerous advisers and aides to Trump who had lied about their involvement with Russia, including Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, and Steve Bannon. Then there are the uncovered connections between Russia and his administration and close family members, like his Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, his White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, his first Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his son, Don Jr. As for Trump himself, even discounting the questionable contents of the so-called Steele Dossier, the opposition research that purported to reveal that Trump had been cultivated for years as a Russian asset through blackmail, Trump’s very public praise of Putin in the years leading up to the 2016 campaign, his public call for Russia to hack the Democratic National Committee—which they promptly did—and his actions favorable to Russia while in office all go to support, if not prove, that he may have had, and may still have, an inappropriate relationship with a foreign power that should cause all Americans even greater concern after learning that he attempted to secretly keep classified nuclear documents after being voted out of office. 

The warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago did not actually list the Presidential Records Act as a reason for their search. Rather, it cited the section of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that criminalizes the destruction or concealment of documents intended to obstruct an investigation, as well as a section of the U.S. Code dealing with the concealment of public records, and, rather importantly, it cites the Espionage Act. This law was passed in 1917, during World War I, long before Harry Truman penned the first executive order governing the classification of sensitive documents. When searching for a historical parallel for potential prosecution under the Espionage Act of persons accused of mishandling nuclear secrets, one cannot help but consider the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. In the summer of 1950, amid the height of the Second Red Scare, as the Korean War began, a number of Jewish members of the American Communist Party were arrested for conspiracy to commit treason. It began with Ethel Rosenberg’s brother David Greenglass, who worked in the nuclear program as a machinist and was charged with stealing secrets related to our atomic bomb technology. Greenglass pled guilty and named Julius, his brother-in-law, as a co-conspirator. The Truman administration then leaned hard on Julius Rosenberg to get him to name others in their spy ring, but Julius maintained his innocence. The Truman administration claimed Julius was the head of the ring and arrested Julius’s wife Ethel, with whom he had two young sons, despite Greenglass’s insistence that his sister was innocent in the matter. Ethel’s arrest seems to have been only a means of coercing Julius to talk, but he remained uncooperative. So they pursued a death penalty, still, it seems, mostly to scare Julius Rosenberg into giving up others in the ring. However, what Truman seems not to have counted on was the clamorous mob mentality of the American people at the time, who had been led to fear Soviet infiltration and to mistrust all Jews as Communist conspirators. According to polls taken at the time, almost three-quarters of the country wanted to see the Rosenbergs executed. Internationally, however, there were nearly universal calls for clemency. Finding himself in a bind, Truman simply passed the buck to his successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who feared looking weak and, over the protest overseas as well as the counsel of his own advisers, chose to capitulate to the bloodlust of the people, and sent Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to their deaths in 1953. To the end, they maintained their innocence, and for decades, many social critics and scholars likewise argued that the case against them was weak, with evidence predicated on the testimony of an informant trying to save his own skin, evidence as absurd as a Jell-O box being in their possession that was said to be carried as a signal to other spies in the ring, when of course, in the 1950s, one would be hard-pressed to find a household that did not contain a box of Jell-O. These critics were mostly silenced, however, in 1995 with the public disclosure of certain cables intercepted by the Venona project, a U.S. counterintelligence program, which showed that, indeed, Julius Rosenberg had been part of an atomic spy ring.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, in custody.

The fact that the Espionage Act was invoked on the FBI’s warrant to search Mar-a-Lago does not indicate there is any evidence that Trump was selling or disclosing information related to national defense. The Act is used not only to prosecute those who spy for a foreign power but also those who mishandle secrets, including those who leak secrets to the media as whistleblowers. It seems pretty clear, however, that Trump, who openly reviles leakers and all legacy media outlets, was not doing the latter. However, even if he were caught giving American secrets to Russia or the Saudis, let me be clear that I am not advocating for the death penalty. Even in the case of the Rosenbergs, I would argue that justice was not served by taking their lives. Certainly the evidence against Ethel Rosenberg was inconclusive. She was accused over the denials of their informant, and the only evidence against her was a set of notes that she allegedly typed, but it’s impossible to ascertain who actually typed the document. The extent of her crime might have been some vague knowledge of her husband’s activities and tacit approval of them, but this should not have been enough to extinguish her life and leave her children parentless. Even if you do believe that her passive involvement earned her a capital punishment, there is the matter of the unequal apportionment of such sentences. David Greenglass’s wife Ruth was just as likely to have been aware of their activities, but she was never charged. And Greenglass himself, who was more directly guilty of stealing atomic secrets, was sentenced to 15 years and only served nine of them. We might attribute this to his cooperation with investigators, but others involved also were not sentenced to death, such as Klaus Fuchs, a scientist who actually worked directly on the bomb at Los Alamos and only served 9 years. When we consider the Rosenberg case with this context, they appear to have been singled out, perhaps because of Julius’s alleged leadership position in the ring, or perhaps because they had been uncooperative, or perhaps because they were Jews from an immigrant family. Whatever the case, I agree with scholars who argue that in trying not to appear weak, Eisenhower clearly demonstrated his weakness by sacrificing their lives to boost his approval ratings. Ironically, though, while I would not advocate for Trump to face the same sentence as the Rosenbergs, even if it were proven beyond doubt that he did indeed sell or surrender nuclear secrets to a foreign power, he does advocate for death sentences in such cases himself. Speaking about Bowe Bergdahl, Trump on several occasions advocated for shooting traitors.

One should not ask whether or not the former president is capable of treason. He is a human being, and thus fallible. He is capable of it. He has shown throughout his careers, both business and political, that he has no qualms about putting himself before his country. Consider his years of tax avoidance, or his serial disregard of the Emoluments Clause as he used the power of his presidency to enrich himself. If you’re unaware of any of these facts, I might suggest that you choose different news sources. Regardless, though, asking whether he betrayed his country in his handling of Top Secret documents is something of a moot point. The very fact that he incited an insurrection at the Capitol in his efforts to overturn the legitimate results of an election and retain power against the will of the American people is proof enough that he has already betrayed his country and done damage to our democracy. However, as I said, he is just one man. The fact that this man, who openly admires dictators, was elected U.S. president and was thus able to do all this damage is more of an indictment on those who voted him into office, though, than it is to him alone. It is the people who raise up demagogues. And it is the fact that so many Americans voted for Trump and continue to support him despite everything that really has the historians who met with Biden worried. They compared the political climate today to other times in U.S. history when American democracy was at risk, such as before the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln cautioned, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Does this mean we face the threat of another Civil War, as we did in the disputed election of 1876? Or is our situation more like the years before the U.S. joined World War II. I favor this analogy, since just as today we see an entire wing of the support for Donald Trump coming from White Nationalists, the threat to American democracy in the late 1930s was not just from Hitler but also involved a rise in fascist sentiment and anti-Semitism within America, fueled by demagoguery. While fascism was spreading across Europe, Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest with a radio program, spread fascist ideology to his some 30 million listeners. He had started out as a booster of Roosevelt and the New Deal, but his broadcasts turned more and more anti-Semitic, until finally he was praising fascist policies implemented by Hitler and Mussolini. In a kind of deplatforming akin to what happened to InfoWars demagogue Alex Jones, Roosevelt eventually intervened to get Father Coughlin’s program cancelled and make his newspapers illegal to mail. Father Coughlin faded into obscurity after that, unlike Alex Jones. Perhaps it is counter-democratic, but history has shown that the best way to weaken a demagogue is to deny them a platform. Donald Trump, however, is a different beast entirely. Having once held the highest office in the land, voted into office by 63 million citizens and winning the vote of 74 million Americans even when he lost his reelection, he simply cannot be deplatformed. When social media companies tried, validly citing his spread of misinformation and incitement of unlawful acts on January 6th, he simply started his own platform, and his followers, as is their nature, followed.

Father Charles Coughlin giving a speech.

In the years since Trump’s election, numerous books have been published pondering the future of democracy, with titles like, How Democracy Ends, and How Democracies Die. The number of magazine, newspaper, and web articles about democracy being in danger, or in crisis, or decline are countless. And this spring, the Brookings Institution started The Strengthening American Democracy Initiative. Tellingly, the 1930s saw the same rise in alarmed concern for the health of democracy. All over the country, lectures were delivered with titles like “The Future of Democracy,” “The Prospects of Democracy,” “The Crisis of Democracy,” and “How to Save Democracy.” And the similarity did not end at the fact that they faced the spread of authoritarian ideology via demagogues over mass media, just as we do today. Their concern, much like ours in the wake of January 6th, also stemmed from what appeared to have been a failed coup. In 1933, shortly after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected, numerous right wing paramilitary militias, most of them explicitly white supremacist, formed for the express purpose of inciting rebellion against the progressive president. If this reminds you of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, it should. In this volatile climate, it was not so surprising when, that summer, a Marine Major General named Smedley Darlington Butler informed the FBI that he had been approached by a cabal of Wall Street businessmen and asked to lead a fascist coup, marching on Washington at the head of an army of veterans, to eject not only FDR but also the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and every other politician in the order of succession. In their place, Butler was tasked with raising up a dictator. Just as Trump-supporters and their complicit media outlets today call the Russian scandal a hoax, so too did much of the press declare that the Business Plot, or the Wall Street Putsch, as it was called, was a hoax, but the congressional committee tasked with its investigation found it to be all too real. And neither were they in the business of just stirring up baseless political controversy. In fact, according to Butler, the committee actually protected the wealthy conspirators by having their names redacted from their final report. It might be tempting to say worries in the 1930s were nothing but hand-wringing, and that the same is true today, that the Wall Street Putsch never would have succeeded in overthrowing democracy, and neither were the Capitol insurrectionists really capable of doing irreparable harm to our democracy. Maybe that’s true. But what about the next time? What about the next demagogue, the next coup?

As I said at the top of this episode, this is not a partisan argument. Any truly patriotic Republican must be just as alarmed as I am by Trump’s actions and his influence on their party. Really they should be even more concerned. But with the recent primary results, in which so many of Trump’s picks took nominations and most of the incumbent Republicans who voted to impeach him lost their support, his stranglehold on the GOP’s electorate appears unyielding. If deplatforming won’t thwart Trump, the most powerful and probably most destructive demagogue in American history, then prosecuting him for his crimes may. And if it is impossible to hold him accountable for his attempt to unlawfully overturn the election, then we must prosecute him under the laws listed on the FBI’s warrant. We need not lock him up, as he was so fond of chanting about Hillary Clinton when she was accused of being careless with classified communications. Rather, a simple fine will suffice as long as he is convicted under the third law on the warrant, Section 2071 of title 18 of the U.S. code, which criminalizes the removal and concealment of records. Conviction under this law makes him ineligible for holding federal office. As for his followers, who pose the real threat, we must welcome their legal protest but likewise aggressively prosecute those who resort to violence and insurrection, which we know they are prone to do. And afterward, we must remain vigilant. We must work to foil the next demagogues, who may have seen what Trump proved was possible and prove themselves more capable than he of carrying it off. And it is not just the next demagogue we must worry about, but also the next coup, which may not be a coup of force but rather a more insidious legal coup. Take, for example, the pending case Moore v. Harper that will be considered by our abjectly partisan Supreme Court. This case will determine the constitutionality of the “independent state legislature” theory, which if recognized as valid by this packed bench, would give state legislatures not only carte blanche to aggressively gerrymander, but would also grant them the ability to throw out presidential election results and appoint electors as they please. Essentially, it would make the overturning of legitimate presidential election results legal. So raise your voice, cast your vote, and pray to whatever power or principle you hold dear that the Department of Justice and elected representatives who genuinely seek to preserve democracy will have the moral fortitude and courage to do what must be done.

*

Until next time, remember, according to the Democracy Index, the United States is already deemed a “flawed democracy.” If we slip further into the autocratic range of the spectrum, it will have been a pretty short and sad run for a country that prides itself on representing freedom to the whole world. After all, we could only truly consider ourselves a democracy after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making us a relatively young democracy compared to most others, like, for example, New Zealand, which as a self-governing colony became the first country in the world to adopt universal suffrage in 1893. We may like to pretend we were the grandfather of democracy, but for most of our existence, we were a democracy in name only. And calling yourself a democracy means nothing. To illustrate, Hitler and Mussolini were also quite fond of boasting about their “democracies.”

Further Reading

Denton, Sally. “Why Is So Little Known About the 1930s Coup Attempt Against FDR?” The Guardian, 11 Jan. 2020, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/11/trump-fdr-roosevelt-coup-attempt-1930s.

Farrell, John A. “Nixon’s Vietnam Treachery.” The New York Times, 31 Dec. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/nixons-vietnam-treachery.html?_r=0.

Herenstein, Ethan, and Thomas Wolf. “The ‘Independent State Legislature Theory,’ Explained.” Brennan Center for Justice, 6 June 2022, www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/independent-state-legislature-theory-explained.

Krauel, Richard. “Prince Henry of Prussia and the Regency of the United States, 1786.” The American Historical Review, vol. 17, no. 1, 1911, pp. 44–51. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1832837.

Lepore, Jill. “The Last Time Democracy Almost Died.” The New Yorker, 27 Jan. 2020, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/03/the-last-time-democracy-almost-died.

Lynd, Staughton. “Is There Anything More to Say About the Rosenberg Case?” Monthly Review, vol. 62, no. 9, Feb. 2011, pp. 43–53. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.ezproxy.deltacollege.edu/10.14452/MR-062-09-2011-02_4.

Myre, Greg, and Wynne Davis. “The Reason Why Presidents Can't Keep Their White House Records Dates Back to Nixon.” NPR, 13 Aug. 2022, www.npr.org/2022/08/13/1117297065/trump-documents-history-national-archives-law-watergate.

Savage, Charlie. “Laws and Lists in Search Warrant Offer Clues to Trump Document Investigation.” The New York Times, 12 Aug. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/08/12/us/politics/search-warrant-trump-investigation-documents.html.

Scherer, Michael, et al. “Historians Privately Warn Biden That America’s Democracy Is Teetering.” The Washington Post, 10 Aug. 2022, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/10/biden-us-historians-democracy-threat/.

Schwartz, Jon. “  It’s Not Just Trump — LBJ Took Classified Documents Too.” The Intercept, 11 Aug. 2022, theintercept.com/2022/08/11/trump-fbi-mar-a-lago-classified-documents-lbj/.

 West, Darrell M. “Trump Is Not the Only Threat to Democracy.” Brookings, 25 July, 2022, www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2022/07/25/trump-is-not-the-only-threat-to-democracy/.

Quinn, Melissa. “A Look at the Law Governing Presidential Records.” CBS News, 9 Aug. 2022, www.cbsnews.com/news/a-look-at-the-law-governing-presidential-records/.

Stranger Things Have Happened - Part Three: The Philadelphia Experiment and the Montauk Project

On a summer afternoon in 1752, as storm clouds gathered over Philadelphia and rain spattered the city, writer, diplomat, inventor, scientist and all-around polymath Benjamin Franklin did not seek shelter inside as so many others did. Rather, he saw an opportunity to conduct an experiment that he had been planning for some time. He prepared a kite, but rather than a paper kite, this one was a silken handkerchief stretched over crossed sticks, making it more likely to withstand the wind and the rain of the storm, and he attached to the kite a house key. Most Americans are very familiar with this experiment, but in its countless retellings, it has become a historical myth, with many claiming that, in conducting it, Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity. In truth, electricity had been a recognized form of energy for more than a thousand years. In fact, numerous scientists had studied the nature and effects of static electricity, going all the way back to 546 BCE, when Thales of Miletus (Thay-leez of Meal-le-tus) produced electricity by rubbing wool against amber. The purpose of Franklin’s experiment, rather, was just to prove the electrical nature of lightning. This was a popular theory at the time, winning French scientists accolades for their speculation on the topic, based on the observation that lightning appeared to be attracted to spikes, or high points, a fact about which Franklin himself had formerly been skeptical. The design of his kite experiment, however, clearly demonstrates how much was known about the conduction of electricity. Franklin attached a wire to the top of his kite, and made sure that the twine was wet, so that the lightning, or “electrical fire” as he called it, would be conducted from the wire at the kite’s tip down to the key at the end of the twine, which would collect the charge. And to protect himself from the electricity, at the end of the wet twine, where the key was tied, he attached another string, this one of silk, which he did his best to keep dry, for he held the other end of it. At the conclusion of his experiment, he was able to charge a rudimentary capacitor, called a Leyden jar. He published the details of the experiment, and thus the myth was born. Some other mythical aspects of the experiment have to do with where he stood, with some accounts describing him being in a field, when in fact he explicitly described standing in a doorway so as to keep his silken tether dry. Other versions have it that he climbed the spire of Christ Church to conduct the experiment, but this is a corruption. In fact, he intended to use the spire on Christ Church for his experiment, but at the time the church had no such steeple. Franklin even financed its construction by organizing a lottery, but it would not be built until a couple years after he went ahead with the experiment using a kite instead of a steeple to reach the height necessary. And lastly, most tellings of the story have it that the key-adorned kite was struck by lightning. If that were the case, Benjamin Franklin would very likely have been killed. In fact, the year after, a similar experiment in Russia did end up electrocuting the physicist conducting it. Rather, in Franklin’s experiment, the wire collected the ambient electricity in the storm cloud and conducted it to the key. This experiment, which for a long time was referred to as the Philadelphia Experiment, really happened and was rather momentous in the study of electricity and meteorological phenomena, but like other real incidents in history, it has gathered myths over time. In contrast, today, the term “The Philadelphia Experiment” is used mostly to refer to another momentous scientific achievement around 200 years later. The difference is, this one never really happened. However, it too has evolved into numerous historical myths, including wild conspiracy claims that our government has abducted children for psychic experimentation, opened portals in time-space, and brought actual monsters into our world.

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I described this series as an exploration of the historical and pseudo historical basis of the Netflix series Stranger Things, and it is here that we veer into the decidedly pseudohistorical. Some may protest that the topics I’ve been covering, MK-Ultra human experimentation and CIA-sponsored studies of anomalous mental phenomena, were not the actual basis of the series. Rather, the creators of Stranger Things were inspired not by history but by 80s science-fiction, and this is certainly the case. One of the great pleasures of watching the series is in identifying each bit of homage that they’ve woven into it. But we can see that one of the biggest influences on the show, Steven King’s Firestarter, was itself influenced by the intelligence projects I’ve been discussing. The novel clearly references MK-Ultra drug trials as well as CIA efforts to develop a psychic asset in its premise about a scientific intelligence agency that gives test subjects psychic powers by dosing them with a psychoactive drug. Certainly the first season of Stranger Things, which has government agents chasing after a little girl with psychokinetic powers, owes much to King’s novel and its film adaptation. However, it has been reported that the show’s creators certainly were inspired by the real-life urban legend of the Montauk Project, which I will be discussing in this episode. The original name of the series was actually Montauk, and a couple of years after the series premiere, the creators were sued for plagiarism by a man who claimed to have pitched them a feature film called The Montauk Project, about an abducted child, secret experiments in a military installation, and an inter-dimensional monster. Eventually the lawsuit was withdrawn, either because the case was weak or because the plaintiff was paid handsomely to drop the charges. Regardless, these facts are enough to confirm that the story of the Montauk Project, a wild and thoroughly debunked tale that continues to be believed by many fringe researchers and paranormal conspiracy theorists, was the principle basis for the show Stranger Things. However, before we can even begin to approach the story of the Montauk Project, we must first examine the legend of the Philadelphia Experiment, which would become the bedrock upon which the later legend was built.

Promotional material produced to help sell the concept of Stranger Things, made to look like a dog-eared Steven King paperback, with the original title: Montauk. Via ScreenCraft

The legend began in 1952, when Morris K. Jessup, a UFO researcher, received a letter from someone calling himself Carlos Allende, who took issue with Jessup’s urging of legislators to fund research aimed at completing Einstein’s Unified Field Theory as a means of developing antigravity propulsion and advancing space travel technology. Over the next year, Jessup received more than 50 letters from Allende, who claimed that, contrary to common knowledge, Albert Einstein actually had completed his Unified Field Theory and had used it while working with the Navy on a top secret experiment. For any other lay person, like myself, the Unified Field Theory was the idea that all the forces of nature, specifically the field equations of relativistic gravitation and electromagnetism, must be connected and thus should be describable with a single, integrated theory. This notion obsessed Einstein, who indicated in a 1923 Nobel lecture that he “cannot rest content with the assumption that there exist two distinct fields totally independent of each other by their nature.” He worked on unification for the last thirty years of his life, even poring over his notes on his deathbed, but he never achieved a working theory. Some say this is because he was simply ahead of his time, as back then, only two subatomic particles were known, whereas now we’ve discovered several others. Also, only the two fundamental forces of nature he was trying to unify were recognized, but now we recognize two others, the so-called strong and weak nuclear forces at work inside of atoms. Others will say that Einstein was simply not keeping up with the vanguard of physics in his day because he had rejected quantum mechanics, or they will say he had simply strayed too far from physical reality in his mathematical theories, which more and more had to involve theoretical dimensions in order to work. Today, it’s thought that string theory, which likewise requires the theoretical existence of numerous dimensions, may eventually lead to the Theory of Everything that Einstein sought, though string theorists too have been criticized for straying too far from physical reality and not producing testable theories. However, according to Morris K. Jessup’s mysterious correspondent, Carlos Allende, Einstein actually did complete his unified theory and tested it at a Naval shipyard in Philadelphia, in 1943, when he managed to make a naval destroyer, the U.S.S. Eldridge, disappear. According to Allende, as part of the war effort, Einstein was applying his unified theory in an effort to make the warship invisible, but as an unforeseen result of the experiment, the destroyer was teleported to Norfolk, Virginia, and back again. Allende knew about this because he had witnessed it. He had been a merchant mariner aboard a shipping vessel at the time, and he had seen strange equipment brought aboard the Eldridge, such as transmitters and generators, as well as what appeared to be a Tesla coil that that was wrapped around the entire vessel. Before the ship disappeared, he claimed to have seen it become enveloped in a bright green haze. Over the course of his many letters, Allende described the experiment in greater detail, explaining that sailors aboard the Eldridge became disoriented, that when the vessel reappeared in Norfolk, some crew members’ bodies had physically fused with the solid matter of the ship’s bulkheads, and that some had disappeared entirely.

In the spring of 1957, the year after Jessup had received the increasingly strange letters from Allende, agents from the Office of Naval Research contacted him. They had in their possession a volume of Jessup’s 1955 book, The Case for the UFO, that had been anonymously sent to them annotated by what appeared to be three different people using different colored ink. Something in the annotations, which implied knowledge about the propulsion technology of UFOs and suggested Jessup was too close to figuring out the truth, had interested the agents, and of course this helps fuel conspiracy theories about official cover-ups. When Jessup read the annotations, he found their technical jargon similar to that of Allende and showed the officers Allende’s letters. According to the story, these Naval investigators went to the Pennsylvania return address that appeared on the letters, but found only an abandoned farmhouse. Afterward, the Navy seems to have lost interest—or maybe they had never been all that interested at all?—but Morris K. Jessup grew more and more obsessed. The legend almost died with him, however, when Jessup committed suicide in 1959 without publishing anything about the Philadelphia Experiment. However, Allende would not let it die. He began writing further letters to UFO researcher Jacques Vallee almost a decade later, and word of the strange story spread throughout the UFO researcher community. In 1968, a book was published, and suddenly the Allende Letters, and copies of the annotated Jessup book—called the Varo edition, after the company that made 127 reproductions of it—became nearly mythical among UFO researchers. These conspiracy theorists variously speculate that Jessup was actually murdered—even though there is evidence of his psychological distress before his suicide, resulting from a failed marriage and poor health after an automobile accident—and that Carlos Allende, who remained in hiding for his entire life, posting letters from various locations in America and Mexico, was actually an extra-terrestrial. Then in 1979, the story of the Philadelphia Experiment really reached prominence in the public imagination when a widely read paranormal writer, Charles Berlitz, who had previously popularized the idea of the Bermuda Triangle, teamed up with UFO researcher Bill Moore to write a book about it. Listeners of the show should recognize those names, as Moore and Berlitz were the duo who later popularized the legend about the Roswell Incident, and Moore would eventually be made a pawn in the UFO disinformation games of Rick Doty, helping to torment Paul Bennewitz and propagate the hoax Majestic 12 documents. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I invite you to listen to my three-part series UFO Disinfo, released last year around this time. Moore, who also apparently corresponded with the mysterious Carlos Allende, expanded on the mythology. The experiment was code-named Project Rainbow, Berlitz and Moore wrote, and the research into invisibility may have applied Einstein’s Unified Field Theory, but Einstein’s theory had been completed by Townsend Brown, an inventor of questionable background and character who claimed to have developed in the 1920s an antigravity thrust technology, called the Biefeld-Brown effect, that today is recognized as a misunderstanding of the ionic or coronal wind phenomenon. Furthermore, according to Berlitz and Moore, the application of this unified field technology toward invisibility was developed by mathematician and Manhattan Project collaborator John Von Neumann. Of course, exactly how Townsend’s “electro-gravitation” might have produced invisibility, let alone achieved teleportation, is, unsurprisingly, not exceedingly clear.

Morris K. Jessup

Carlos Allende’s story was, of course, dubious from the start. For example, if he had seen the ship disappear and reappear in Philadelphia, how did he know where it had teleported to? And why was there no record of the event from other witnesses? Even if no others on Allende’s ship had seen it, the sudden disappearance of a destroyer, which would have displaced around 2,000 tons of water, would have been noticed simply because of the resulting turmoil in the waters, as it would have created massive waves that would have crashed through the naval shipyard. In fact, ship logs and naval records indicate that the ship may not have even been in Philadelphia in October 1943, and in 1999, sailors who had served on the Eldridge reunited and said the ship never docked there. And in 1994, in an article in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, UFO researcher Jacques Vallee writes about an interview he conducted with one Edward Dudgeon, who had been a sailor aboard the U.S.S. Engstrom, which had been docked at the Philadelphia Naval shipyard in October 1943. Dudgeon revealed rational explanations for everything Carlos Allende might have observed if he really were there, watching the strange activities on the destroyers in the Navy yard at the time. They had indeed been loading unusual high-tech equipment onto destroyers that night. These included new sonar devices as well as new depth charge launchers, and rather than being wrapped in Tesla coils, they were being wrapped in high-voltage cables to alter the ships’ magnetic signatures, making them more difficult for magnetic torpedoes to target. It was a process known as degaussing, and it sometimes produced no smell of ozone, as Allende described. It’s even possible that Allende may have overhead a sailor saying something about how it would make them invisible, not to the naked eye or even to radar, but to torpedos. As for the green haze, this was a common enough occurrence at sea, a weather phenomenon called St. Elmo’s Fire, caused by electrical discharge, which we might assume to have been pronounced by the degaussing process. And Dudgeon even offered an explanation for the disappearance of whatever ship Allende had seen and believed was the Eldridge, as well as its appearance in Norfolk and reappearance at Philadelphia in too short a time for such a journey. According to Dudgeon, who actually claimed the Eldridge was there in Philadelphia, which does conflict with other reports, a destroyer leaving the Philadelphia shipyard one night, appearing in Norfolk shortly thereafter, and then reappearing back in Philadelphia would have seemed impossible to a merchant marine, as their ships would have to take a 2-day trip to the harbor entrance, but the destroyers were able to take the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal, an inland channel, that would make such a short trip possible, and necessary, as Norfolk was where such ships were loaded with ammunition. Therefore, it is somewhat understandable that such a tall tale might be told by a merchant marine who saw the destroyers loaded up with secret anti-submarine technology and witnessed the unusual and definitely classified process of degaussing the ships, and who may have seen the ships engulfed in a strange kind of green fire during the process, and who later that evening noticed a ship had departed but the next morning saw it was present again, and perhaps even later heard through the grapevine that the same ship had been at Norfolk in the middle of the night, a round trip that would have seemed to him impossible to complete in so short a time if he were unaware of the shortcut naval warships were taking between the two Navy yards.

It is impossible, though, to give Allende the benefit of the doubt and suggest he may have actually been there and seen something that he honestly mistook for a ship teleporting. From the beginning, in his correspondence with Jessup, there was evidence that he was perpetrating a hoax. How, for example, could a merchant marine aboard a separate ship have even known all the particulars he claimed to know, down to Einstein’s involvement and his secret completion of the Unified Field Theory? And what else but an elaborate hoax could explain his annotation of Jessup’s book, in which he pretended to be three different people, or rather beings, engaged in a conversation in the margins about mere humans and their inability to grasp the explanations of various paranormal phenomena. The only rational alternative to it being a hoax is it being the product of mental illness. In 1969, though, Carlos Allende, or a man claiming to be him, appeared at the Arizona office of APRO, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, and confessed that his letters and annotations in the Varo edition of Jessup’s book had been a hoax. Bill Moore and Charles Berlitz chose not to believe this, though, and Allende later recanted. However, a year after the Berlitz-Moore book, Carlos Allende was discredited once and for all. In 1980, researcher Robert Goerman, who happened to live in the Pennsylvania town Allende had given in his return address, decided to look into it. Apparently little serious research had been done to track down Allende, as the address previously said to have been a vacant farmhouse was not vacant at all, and Goerman was pretty easily able to locate the estranged parents and siblings of Carlos Allende, whose real name, it turned out, was Carl Allen. In fact, it further turned out he knew the man’s father pretty well, and the family was only too willing to share stories about the eccentric drifter he had grown up to be, showing Goerman all the letters Carl had sent home over the years, in which he bragged about being the author of books that he had merely scribbled in, including not just Jessup’s book but Berlitz and Moore’s as well. The portrait that emerged from Goerman’s interviews was of a mischief-maker possessed of a gifted intellect. According to the Allen family, Carl had squandered his potential and had nothing to show for his life but a widely-believed urban legend. That legacy, however, continued on strong even after his discrediting in 1980, with a feature film dramatizing the story of the Philadelphia Experiment in 1984 executive produced by horror master John Carpenter, whose work, including his self-composed synth scores and the 1982 classic The Thing, has been paid extensive homage by the series Stranger Things. Indeed, this film adaptation of Berlitz and Moore’s book seems to have gone on to inspire the next clever fabricators of urban legend who came along, or rather, if they are to be believed, the movie just jogged their erased memories.

Carl Allen, AKA Carlos Allende, fabricator of the Philadelphia Experiment Hoax.

Around 1988, a videotape called The Truth about the Philadelphia Experiment began circulating in ufology and fringe belief circles. The video featured three men talking to a small audience in a private Long Island residence while they shared a slide show projected onto a bedsheet. Underground tapes like these sold for $20-$30 a pop and were copied and shared among likeminded conspiracy theorists who felt like such videos made them privy to secrets of which the sheeple were blissfully unaware, and it was through such independently produced and disseminated media that misinformation and hoaxes were spread before the advent of the modern Internet in the 1990s. In the video, the three men, Preston Nichols, Duncan Cameron, and Al Bielek, spoke about how they had recovered long repressed memories about their involvement with outlandish secret government experiments after viewing the film The Philadelphia Experiment. Preston Nichols claimed that he had been working in the 70s and 80s as a microwave engineer on Long Island but began moonlighting at nearby Montauk Airbase, ostensibly to work on their radar equipment. But he had recovered memories, he said, of his involvement with a series of bizarre experiments in an underground bunker at Camp Hero, a military installation that was at the time officially abandoned. According to the mythos, John Von Neumann, who Berlitz and Moore had claimed was instrumental in the development of the technology used in the Philadelphia Experiment, had gone on to further develop the electrogravitic field technology and apply it to some completely different purposes. Using technology contributed by Nicola Tesla for the Philadelphia Experiment, Von Neumann supposedly designed a chair that amplified and relayed human thoughts to a computer, which through some hocus pocus field technology then materialized that thought into reality. They could think of a can of beer and then it would appear, so real they could drink it. What does this have to do with the Philadelphia Project, you may be asking? Well, so the story goes, the participants used this technology that brought into reality whatever the person in the chair thought about, in conjunction with weather manipulation technology that allowed the opening of vortices, to open wormholes through space and time. Exactly 40 years after the Philadelphia Experiment, they opened one such wormhole and became linked to the field that had teleported the Eldridge from Philadelphia to Norfolk and back. Enter Al Bielek and Duncan Cameron, who claimed to be sailors aboard the Eldridge who leapt overboard during the experiment and landed in Camp Hero, 40 years in the future. Through an astonishing coincidence, Bielek and Cameron were not just any sailors. Bielek was a brilliant scientist-engineer who had been closely involved with the technical aspects of the Philadelphia Experiment, so he went to work at Montauk in the 1980s, and Cameron just so happened to be a gifted psychic, making him the perfect operator of the Montauk chair. All three of them claimed to have only recently remembered these events, after having seen the 1984 film, because they’d had their memories wiped by CIA brainwashing techniques. This is perhaps the least outlandish aspect of their story, but as we saw in part one of this series, it too is hard to credit, since the CIA failed to ever develop any such targeted amnesia effects. But however convoluted and unbelievable the story already sounds, strap in, because it only gets more tortuous and preposterous from here.

In the 1990s, terrestrial radio became a major channel for the spread of such hoaxes and conspiracy claims, and the biggest purveyor was Art Bell, host of Coast to Coast. Al Bielek and Preston Nichols appeared numerous times on Art Bell’s program to promote their claims and, of course, to sell copies of their tape, or of the series of books, co-authored by one Peter Moon, that Nichols began to self-publish in 1992. Over the course of these retellings, as the Montauk Mythos was revealed, or coalesced, or evolved, or was sporadically improvised—however you want to look at it—it grew more and more sensational. Al Bielek claimed to be a man out of time, whose identity had been rewritten. He was actually Ed Cameron, he said, and Duncan was his brother, but over the course of their time travel experiments at Montauk, he had gone back and forth in time and had even been age regressed into a 1-year-old’s body to have his identity erased, which seems far too elaborate a plan to get rid of him when the shadowy group running the Montauk Project could have just had him killed. It conveniently accounts, however, for there being no record of either Cameron on the Eldridge and also explains why there is no evidence that he, Al Bielek, had ever earned the advanced degrees in science and engineering he claimed to possess. As for who that shadowy Montauk group was, as with much of the story, this changed over time. It was a secret government operation a lá Mk-Ultra, involving Nazi scientists recruited via Operation Paperclip, performing experiments on psychic test subjects. Or rather, it was the project of a secret Nazi order that had survived the fall of the Third Reich and, funded by Nazi gold, sought to bring the Reich back through manipulation of the timeline. But then again, it used technology not just developed by Tesla and Einstein, but by extra-terrestrials who had signed a secret treaty with the U.S. government. The projects undertaken with the teleportation and time travel technology developed were equally wide-ranging and fantastical. For example, they claimed to have teleported to a facility beneath the pyramids on Mars in order to deactivate a defense grid that prevented aliens from entering the Solar System, and they described a plot to go back in time, assassinate Jesus Christ with a pistol, steal his blood, clone it, transfuse it into Duncan Cameron and then have him arrive on a flying saucer to Earth, the idea being that when scientists tested his DNA against traces on the Turin Shroud, they would have successfully faked the Second Coming. As with much of the mythos, these supposedly brilliant scientists seem to lack a fundamental grasp of much of the technical claims they make, for example, a blood transfusion does not change one’s DNA. But we will look at the plausibility and logical flaws involved with their story shortly. To conclude, we should point out the parts of their meandering mythology that seem to have inspired Stranger Things. According to the books, the Nazis or aliens or Nazi aliens behind the project began abducting children in the 1970s to experiment on them, torturing them and either uncovering their innate psychic abilities or cultivating them. Finally, in an act of resistance to the project, Bielek’s psychic brother, Duncan, used the thought-form-generating chair to bring a monster into being, and as this monster rampaged through Camp Hero, they ended up having to destroy the lab’s equipment to make it dematerialize, resulting in the end of the Montauk Project. Here we see all the seeds of the Netflix series Stranger Things, from missing children, to experiments on abducted psychic children, to the opening of portals with the power of the mind and the drawing of a monster into our reality. But as we will see, and as you should already be able to discern, the show was not based on anything real. It was inspired by a work of fiction that is even more far-fetched than the show is, and that only masqueraded as a true story.

Al Bielek, supposed time traveler.

As I started to write this section of the episode, which the entire series has built up to, it occurred to me… do I really need to debunk so absurdly ridiculous a conspiracy claim? Is it not enough to stick my thumb toward some of the most outrageous claims these people have made and just shrug? It feels embarrassing to even dignify the story of the Montauk Project by putting effort into disproving it, like it’s beneath me. However, if I were to share it without demonstrating its clear falsehood, I would be engaging in the same kind of media amplification that allows hoaxes like these to spread and achieve the status of legend. So here we go. It should be enough to point out that the burden of proof is on those making the claims, and as they are extraordinary claims, according to the Sagan standard, they require extraordinary evidence, but none has ever been provided. Oh, it’s been promised, though. For the remainder of his life, until his death in 2007, Al Bielek assured the public that he was working on a definitive book that would demystify the science behind all the experiments he claimed to have been involved with, but unsurprisingly, this world-shattering treatise on teleportation and time travel never appeared, nor is there any indication that he ever penned an academic article that he attempted to get published in a scholarly journal, or that he ever made an effort to demonstrate any of his claims to a bona fide scientist. Oh but he sure made the time to coauthor a book on “UFO conspiracies” with paranormal writer Brad Steiger. Likewise, when asked in an interview why Preston Nichols didn’t publish anything regarding the secret scientific advancements he was always on about being privy to, he hand waved the question by saying there was no market or audience for that. I’ll just point out, first, that there would obviously be a massive market for such a scientific breakthrough, including any number of private corporations that would jump at the chance to patent such technology, and second, Nichols was tacitly confessing here that he was in the business of promoting paranormal conspiracy theory because there is an audience and market for that. As for the credibility of the men, consider Bielek, who has been caught in errors both logical and technical and then simply changes his story. Even if you were to believe his claim that his true identity was erased, along with evidence of his higher learning, one fundamental lie about his background has been discovered. He claimed to have never heard of the Philadelphia Experiment before seeing the film and recovering his memories, but UFO researchers have revealed that they had known Bielek since the early 1960s and known him to be obsessed with UFOs and with the Philadelphia Experiment, even owning and sharing a copy of the annotated Varo edition of Morris Jessup’s The Case for the UFO (something Bielek himself eventually conceded), so it’s pretty clear that his entire story is founded on a fundamental lie. As for Preston Nichols, discrediting him takes us to darker places. After the publication of Nichols’ books, when he would speak about Montauk on the paranormal circuit, men began to approach him saying they thought maybe they had been Montauk boys and had their memory erased. Preston encouraged them in their beliefs, meeting with them privately to “deprogram” them of their falsified memories. Numerous participants in these deprogramming sessions, including Nichols himself, describe how he touched the subjects’ bodies with his hands in something like the Mesmeric stroking I recently described in my Blind Spot exclusive minisode on Mesmerism and hypnosis. But more than that, it has been established that Preston Nichols convinced these men that in order to deprogram them, he had to masturbate them, while applying some kind of electromagnetic radiation—a well-known pseudoscientific alternative medicine called radionics. At the end of this bizarre journey, then, it becomes strikingly clear that these men perpetrated an elaborate hoax to make money off of the famously credulous UFO conspiracy theorist community, and at least one of them, Preston Nichols, used his mystique to take sexual advantage of numerous men.

So there we have it, the dark heart of the source material for the Netflix series Stranger Things. I greatly enjoy the show, and I’ll say that I’m far better able to suspend my disbelief while watching it than I am while reading about the Montauk Project. It is very strange to think that it was likely inspired by this outlandish conspiracy claim that has been used to molest its adherents. So after all, we might say that the series Stranger Things is not based on any real history, since the elements of real history it uses were present in the fiction that inspired it, and the story of the Montauk Project is also fiction. Indeed, the books that established and expanded the Montauk mythos, including those written by Preston Nichols and Peter Moon, as well as later books written only by Peter Moon, and books written by Stewart Swerdlow, one supposed Montauk boy who underwent the handsy deprogramming of Preston Nichols and then claimed to have recovered his memories about Montauk, all of them are published by Sky Books, Peter Moon’s publishing house, and all of them are officially categorized as fiction despite their claims to authenticity. In fact the Sky Books slogan is “Where science fiction meets reality.” However, if you visit their website, you’ll be directed to their sister website, The Time Travel Education Center, and if you dig in there, you’ll feel like you stumbled on the web presence of a cult. And that’s essentially what it is. In fact, it has quite a lot in common with that other, more famous conspiracy-addled, Internet-based cult, Qanon. Like it, the Montauk cult has become a breeding ground for baseless conspiracy delusion. Qanon’s habit of trying to integrate all conspiracy theories has been remarked on before, including by myself in my series on Illuminati conspiracy claims. Like them, Preston Nichols, Peter Moon, and Stewart Swerdlow have brought every conceivable conspiracy theory into the fold, managing to weave in legendary artifacts like the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, and the Spear of Destiny, and enigmatic figures like John Dee, L. Ron Hubbard, Aleister Crowley, and Jack Parsons. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one talking point of Qanon was being spread by Stewart Swerdlow long before the purported revelations of Q, as Swerdlow was known to claim that the Montauk boys were tortured in order to extract that sweet adrenochrome from their pineal glands… never mind that adrenochrome is derived from the adrenal glands, which are nowhere near the pineal gland. One wonders if Al Bielek ever would have made such an elementary error as this. Really, this is representative of the general devolution of hoaxery that we see today. Whereas thirty years ago, one had to be a clever and convincing storyteller capable of spinning an intricate yarn and firehosing technobabble on live radio, today we have conspiracy influencers like Canada’s Qanon Queen Romana Didulo who just uploads videos in which she claims to be “the only visible leader on this planet,” suppressed by, who else, pedophile globalists, and she still finds dupes to eat it up, turning their sometimes violent ire on whoever she targets, be it healthcare workers for administering vaccines or police for enforcing business closures and masking. Honestly, it’s this nauseating reality today that makes me so nostalgic for my childhood in the 1980s, and for stories like Stranger Things, in which an innocent but savvy group of kids overcome the machinations of bumbling but no less nefarious adults.

The less than impressive Preston Nichols.

Further Reading

Goerman, Robert A. “Alias Carlos Allende.” FATE, Oct. 1980. Carlos Allende and his Philadelphia Experiment, windmill-slayer.tripod.com/aliascarlosallende/.

Margaritoff, Marco. “Inside The Montauk Project, The US Military’s Alleged Mind Control Program.” All That’s Interesting, 7 May 2022, allthatsinteresting.com/montauk-project.

Metzger, Richard. “THE MONTAUK PROJECT: THE IDIOTIC CONSPIRACY THEORY THAT INSPIRED ‘STRANGER THINGS.’” Dangerous Minds, 4 May 2020, dangerousminds.net/comments/the_montauk_project.

The Philadelphia Experiment from A to Z, www.de173.com/.

Tretkoff, Ernie. “This Month in Physics History: Einstein's quest for a unified theory.” APS News, vol. 14, no. 11, Dec. 2005. APS Physics, www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200512/history.cfm.

Valee, Jacques F. “Anatomy of a Hoax: The Philadelphia Experiment Fifty Years Later.” Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 8, no. 1, 1994, pp. 47-7 I. CiteSeerX, citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.541.6200.

Stranger Things Have Happened: Psychic Spies

In a previous series, I spoke in great depth about Nazi occultism. Among many in the Third Reich, their nationalist and racial ideology was founded on a view that Germans were the descendants of lost race, and that the power of this race survived in ancient Norse runes, Teutonic magics, and legendary artifacts scattered around the world. Heinrich Himmler was the most prominent and influential of these true believers, and he started Das Ahnenerbe, the Institute for the Research and Study of Heredity, to investigate and prove the veracity of his obsessions. The man he placed at the head of this organization was Karl Maria Wiligut, a medium who claimed to be in psychic contact with the lost Aryan race Himmler imagined were his forerunners. Wiligut had previously been certified insane, but Himmler believed in his abilities, and under Wiligut, Das Ahnenerbe delved into more and more arcane areas of study, beyond the archaeological expeditions to prove their theorized heritage or the pseudoscientific conjecture about weird cosmological views like the Hollow Earth Theory or the World Ice Doctrine. Through the “Survey of the So-Called Occult Sciences,” they investigated spirit channeling, divining, astrology, and other forms of extra-sensory perception, or ESP. However, Adolf Hitler called all of it “nonsense” and complained about Himmler wanting to bring back the mysticism they had left behind when he had suppressed the Catholic Church. Indeed, in 1941, Hitler launched Special Action Hess to suppress the occult, arresting all known practitioners of ESP or the divining arts, be they fortune-tellers, astrologers, healers, or just anyone who claimed to be clairvoyant, and he seized all their literature and the trappings of their arts as well, including crystal balls and tarot cards. But Hitler had good reason for this outside of his distaste for their supernatural claims. The Special Action was named after Rudolph Hess, his former deputy Führer, who in May of that year had secretly flown to Scotland on an unauthorized peace mission and been captured. Hitler believed Hess had been encouraged in his plans by false horoscopes manufactured by the UK as propaganda, and this, it seems, was the real reason for the suppression of the occult in Special Action Hess. While the Nazis were earnestly studying divination and anomalous mental phenomena, British intelligence was making use of such practices in more devious ways. It is unclear whether Hess really was influenced by fabricated horoscopes, but it is known that British intelligence, aware of how many Germans trusted in astrology, did forge horoscopes as propaganda. In fact, they engaged the services of a woman famous for claiming to be a “witch,” Sybil Leek, to write these bogus horoscopes. Likewise, the most famous astrologer in America, Louis de Wohl, whose popular syndicated column, called “Stars Foretell,” usually focused on the war in Europe, was unbeknownst to his U.S. readers actually a propagandist for British intelligence, fabricating reports for the sole purpose of convincing Americans that the U.S. should enter the war. In the aftermath of the war, as U.S. intelligence competed with the Soviets to seize Nazi science, it was discovered that Das Ahnenerbe was taking ESP seriously, and much as the race for mind control began, this marked the very start of what would become a Cold War psychic arms race. 

If you haven’t read part one of this series, check it out before reading on. It’s not a single story, and you can enjoy this installment alone, but you should know that this series is an exploration of the historical and pseudohistorical basis of the popular Netflix series Stranger Things. As you may or may not know, the premise of that show involves a psychic character whose powers were studied and cultivated by a secret U.S. government experimentation program. In part one of this series, I discussed the very real human experimentation programs conducted by the CIA under the cryptonym MK-Ultra in search of mind control technology, and in this episode, we will look at government sponsored programs studying extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis. These categories of phenomena cover most of the capabilities of the psychic character in Stranger Things, who demonstrates the ability to move objects with her mind, see others’ thoughts or memories, and even spy on someone over a great distance as though through out-of-body experience, a technique that has come to be called “remote viewing.” Just as all of the dastardly human experiments undertaken by MK-Ultra were absolutely true, so too are the U.S. government studies and experiments with ESP. However, whereas Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA eventually came to accept that the elusive mind control drugs or techniques they sought did not actually exist, many of the scientists involved with ESP programs were true believers. What we must consider in this installment of the series is not just what happened, but also whether what happened was genuine anomalous mental phenomena or can be more rationally explained. Among the first government-sponsored ESP experiments organized after World War II were those in 1952, when the Department of Defense tasked J.B. Rhine with studying the psychic powers of animals. Rhine had coined the term ESP back in the 1920s and conducted some of the first experiments to study it in his Parapsychology Lab at Duke University. For the DoD, he conducted tests to determine whether dogs could psychically discern the location of landmines, whether cats could telepathically follow instructions to choose one food dish over another, and how homing pigeons made their way home. His experiments with dogs and cats yielded no results that couldn’t be explained by chance, and as for the abilities of homing pigeons, those remain a mystery today. After these failed experiments, the U.S. government’s interest in ESP resumed, perhaps unsurprisingly, when it coincided with its search for a viable mind control drug.

J.B. Rhine, Father of Parapsychology, testing subjects’ ESP abilities with Zener cards. Via NCDR.gov

Under the umbrella of MK-Ultra, Subproject 58, headed by Morse Allen, involved the search for the legendary “magic mushroom,” a fabled Mexican drug that it was thought could be useful, if not as a mind control agent then perhaps as a poison. The problem was that the “magic mushroom,” or teonanáctl, the “god’s flesh” mushroom, had never been proven to really exist. In his search for it, Morse Allen had sent a chemist to masquerade as a botany professor and infiltrate various mycology enthusiast groups, with little luck. Eventually, a man who had reportedly traveled to Mexico and been in contact with shamans who used the mushroom in their rituals came to their attention. They learned of him through a third party, Andrija Puharich, a towering figure in the study of ESP. Puharich had been fascinated with the topic since he was a child and believed he had calmed an aggressive dog with only the power of his mind. After serving in the armed forces, he earned a medical degree and published numerous papers theorizing that some unknown energy force connected to the brain and nervous system might explain anomalous mental phenomena. Dashing and charismatic, Puharich seemed to attract wealthy benefactors who gladly bankrolled his research projects, allowing him to start the Round Table Foundation, dedicated to experimentation that might take the topic of ESP out of the realm of parapsychology and into the realm of science proper. Among the admirable work that Puharich undertook was the study of human hearing, which he suspected may overlap with or provide insight into ESP. During the course of his foundation’s study of the topic, a revolutionary surgery to restore hearing was discovered by one of the doctors on his staff. Furthermore, during his study of psych ward patients who hear voices, it was he who discovered that a man’s dental fillings can actually receive the broadcast of nearby radio stations and thereby saved some otherwise mentally healthy individuals from unnecessary institutionalization. Puharich left his Foundation for a time to work for the government. Having delivered a speech to the Office of the Chief of Psychological Warfare, the Army thought ESP might just be a worthwhile field of inquiry and called him back into service, stationing him at the Army Chemical Center in Edgewood, Maryland, and tasking him with finding “a drug that might enhance ESP.”

It was, of course, during his search for ESP-enhancing drugs for the Army that Puharich first took interest in the “god’s flesh” mushroom, which legend had it provided divinatory powers to the shamans who consumed them during rituals. However, when Puharich tracked down the explorer who had found the Mexican mushroom-eating shamans and brought him to the CIA’s attention, hoping to get security clearance and join MK-Ultra Subproject 58, there was a problem. Puharich was viewed as something of a crank, and for good reason. He had a habit of giving in to his confirmation bias and falling for the acts of stage mystics and charlatans, becoming obsessed with each new psychic he studied. In fact, his interest in the “magic mushroom” had only been stirred because a spirit channeler named Harry Stump had claimed while in a trance that it “would stimulate one’s psychic faculties,” and Puharich took this as gospel truth. In the end, Morse Allen chose not to grant Puharich security clearance and instead circumvented him, approaching the explorer, a man named R. Gordon Wasson, who happened to also be the vice-president of J.P. Morgan bank, directly. Financing his further expeditions, the CIA was then in on the ground floor when Wasson became the first white man in history to partake of the drug and returned to America with enough of the mushroom that the CIA could grow more. Once again, as with LSD, the CIA was responsible for the entrance of psychedelic mushrooms into our culture, and though Puharich had been cut out entirely, Wasson still gifted him a supply of the drug. Leaving the Army, Puharich returned to his Foundation and began further experiments, locking up the supposed psychics who obsessed him, like Harry Stump, in Faraday cages as a laboratory control and feeding them mushrooms. Gradually, Puharich’s personal life and his experiments would drift out of control, until both his marriage and his Foundation failed, but he always found a way to stay afloat. He sold his services as an expert in mushroom toxicology to the Army and later won funding from various other government entities, like the Atomic Energy Commission and NASA, for further ESP experimentation programs throughout the 1960s, all the while investigating a variety of purported psychics. In the 1970s, his study of one such individual, Uri Geller, would eventually bring the CIA around to working with him after all. As the Cold War had dragged on, it was feared that the Soviets had themselves a psychic super soldier. Therefore, we would need one ourselves, or at least we would need to seem like we had one.

Andrija Puharich, perhaps the most prolific tester of psychic phenomena on behalf of the U.S. government.

The CIA had good reason to fear Soviet progress in psi research, but they also had good reason to doubt it. The reason for this dichotomy was that intelligence reports had revealed the ESP and psychokinesis studies the Soviets were conducting, but there was always the strong possibility, especially in so fantastical a field, that what they’d learned was actually disinformation intended to mislead the U.S. about their capabilities. Certainly it was true that the Soviets were conducting psi experiments, and they had taken care to do so under euphemistic names, trying to present such research as strictly scientific since any mysticism or religion was anathema to good Marxists. So their research facilities were given pseudoscientific names like the Special Laboratory for Biocommunications Phenomena, and the topics of their research were equally coded. Psychokinesis, or PK, what we might call telekinesis today, was referred to as “emissions from humans,” which if I were a little less mature I might make a crude joke about. Likewise, telepathy was called “long-distance biological signal transmission.” But what troubled U.S. intelligence more than these was what they called “psychotronic weapons.” Intelligence suggested that the Soviets’ investigations in the area of so-called biocommunications were two-pronged; they studied individuals who claimed to be capable of the phenomena, but they also developed weapons meant to neutralize the capabilities of such persons, which meant devices that generated “high-penetrating emission(s),” typically microwave or electromagnetic, intended to interfere with brain function. Indeed, it was discovered in 1962 that such emissions were being actively transmitted toward the upper floors of the U.S. embassy in Moscow, which realization sent U.S. intelligence scrambling to study the technology themselves. Though their research could not definitively prove that the emissions were having a harmful effect on embassy staff, certainly the presence of the microwave radiation disrupted U.S. intelligence operations and had them chasing their tails for a while, secretly testing the health of everyone in the building. There are other theories and considerations with the Moscow Signal, of which I’ll have more to say in a patron exclusive, but perhaps that was the point of it, just to mess with their heads in a psychological sense. Such an objective could also be ascribed to the most terrifying of supposed Soviet breakthroughs in psi: the experiments conducted on Ninel Kulagina. This woman, a former Soviet soldier, was purported to be gifted with astounding psychokinetic abilities. The West knew this because state-run Soviet television had produced a special documentary about her, showing her moving small items like matches and salt shakers with her mind. Think of the scenes in Stranger Things when the psychic character sits staring at a Coke can, trying to crush it with her thoughts. But U.S. intelligence had acquired supposedly classified footage of Kulagina supposedly stopping a frog’s heart with her mind, which raised the possibility of a psychic assassin being able to perpetrate untraceable murders. Of course the American intelligence community recognized that it might all be fake, that the feats shown in the footage were a clever fraud, and that the TV program as well as the classified film in their possession was just propaganda. Just the same, it seemed the U.S. was in the market for our own psychics capable of telekinesis, or at least some people we could suggest were capable of it to the world and specifically to our Communist rivals.

The candidate that Puharich brought to the CIA’s attention was an Israeli man named Uri Geller who had made quite a name for himself. He performed in theaters like a stage magician, but he claimed his powers were real, not illusion. Not only did he perform feats of supposed mental telepathy, but he also bent spoons with only the power of his mind, or so it seemed. Unsurprisingly, Puharich took an interest and brought him to America for testing, and when he called up the CIA to say he had a genuine telepath capable of psychokinesis, the agency was so pressured by rumors of Soviet psychic soldiers that they took Puharich up on his suggestion of funding his research with Geller. However, the CIA still thought Puharich a liability, and furthermore, there were rumors that Geller was with Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. If American and Soviet intelligence were in the business of finding or pretending to find psychic assets, then it followed that Mossad may have been following suit. Furthermore, the feat that brought Geller great international fame was when he appeared to predict that Gamal Abdel Nasser, the President of Egypt, had been killed, information that might have been advanced to him by his handlers to bolster his claims. The CIA therefore insisted that an agent of their own, Kit Green, oversee the study of Geller, and to distance themselves from association with Puharich and his foundation, they directed their funds to the Mind Institute of Los Angeles, an organization created by Edgar Mitchell, a former astronaut interested in the research of psychic phenomena whom they insisted be involved. Despite what seem to have been precautions taken to avoid exposure in the press, Uri Geller’s celebrity in America and the UK continuously rose, such that it was compared to Beatlemania. Considering the kinds of mystifying feats he performed and how much of a household name he was, I would compare him more to David Blaine today. The height of his fame came when he went on BBC Radio and urged all of the UK to concentrate with him at the same time, willing a spoon to bend, and the BBC’s switchboard was inundated with calls from listeners claiming to have bent spoons and other items in their own homes. Of course, these reports were never confirmed, nor could they be, really. But aside from the obvious doubts about Uri Geller’s abilities, which we will discuss next, there is the burning question of why the CIA, who were conducting classified research into his abilities, would allow him to parade them around the world on a press tour. On paper, Puharich was blamed for this breach of secrecy, but one cannot help but wonder if this is exactly what the CIA wanted: well-publicized reports that they too had in their employ psychics whose powers might rival those of the mysterious Ninel Kulagina.

Ninel Kulagina, moving a compass in what is certainly a Soviet propaganda film probably faked using magnets under the table.

With Geller’s fame arrived accusations of fraud. But these were not lobbed just by sardonic journalists in the usual skeptical editorials. Geller’s outrageous claims of possessing supernatural powers and his unprecedented celebrity were enough to galvanize the scientific community. Astronomer Carl Sagan, mathematician Martin Gardner, and psychologist Ray Hyman came together with magician James Randi, who insisted Geller was an illusionist rather than a genuine psychic, and formed the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, a noted skeptic organization that is still active today, for the sole purpose of combatting the surge in irrational belief they were observing. Most criticism of Geller comes down to his act being a pretty typical stage magician’s act, using distraction to pre-bend spoons and then hold them in such a way as to dramatically reveal the bend, making it look as if it is only then being bent. Indeed, there have been times when Geller refused to even perform if magicians were present, likely because he knew they would see through his tricks. As for his telepathic demonstrations, he has even admitted that his manager, a young man named Shipi Shtrang, helped him to fake certain psychic feats like guessing audience members’ license plate numbers. As for secondary effects, such as the people who claimed Geller had somehow imparted to them the ability to bend spoons themselves, a simple explanation is that mass delusions can be encouraged by the power of suggestion, and that believing a thing to be true can have concrete effects that may seem to confirm its truth, a phenomenon related to the concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy or the Tinkerbell effect, a sociological concept called the Thomas theorem, which states that “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” But regardless of skeptical opposition, the CIA continued their experiments with Geller. According to later declassified reports, Geller was the subject of experimentation by nuclear scientists working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who tested his ability to affect the computer program cards inside an ICBM, exploring the proposition that a person with psychokinetic abilities could feasibly deactivate nuclear missiles in flight. Strangely, after these experiments, the scientists involved experienced weird poltergeist activity at home, seeing unexplained phenomena like floating images and orbs. It was so bizarre that Kit Green, the CIA agent overseeing the experiments, reportedly came to believe that they had become the focus of a CIA psychological operation, using drones and holograms—the fact that a CIA man, and one who himself said he ran the ”weird desk,” would think this the likeliest explanation of such paranormal phenomena goes a long way toward supporting some of the theories about UFO disinformation programs that I discussed in previous episodes. Aside from this, though, it’s hard to know what to make of this bizarre report. What is more curious, to me, is the fact that the results of one of the Geller experiments was declassified in 1979, revealing that a magnetic program card had seemingly been erased when Geller was concentrating on it. If the result of this experiment is to be trusted, why would U.S. intelligence declassify it? It occurs to me that, if this were a genuine breakthrough in the use of psychic powers as nuclear self-defense, we would want to keep it secret at all costs. However, if it were not genuine, but we wanted our enemies to believe we were developing such capabilities, only then would we want it declassified. Framed in this manner, it makes one wonder how much of U.S. intelligence’s psychic experimentation programs that have remained classified were purposely falsified and leaked as disinformation, just as it was suspected that the footage of Ninel Kulagina had been.

Uri Geller was not the only psychic asset being studied by the CIA in the 1970s. Another man, studied at the same facility where Geller was often studied, the Stanford Research Institute, or SRI, was Ingo Swann, who formerly acted as a psychic test subject for the oldest psychic research organization in America, the American Society for Psychical Research. During his time with the ASPR, he began to undergo experiments involving the projection of his consciousness outside of his body, called travelling clairvoyance. These experiments involved suspending a tray in the air across the room and asking him what was on it. These experiments drew the interest of a physicist named Hal Puthoff, who invited Swann to SRI, a laboratory affiliated with the Defense Department, and reportedly tested him by directing him to agitate a magnetometer located several feet below him, encased in concrete. The story differs according to the telling, with Puthoff and Swann describing a perturbation of the device’s readings as having never been seen before or since, representing it as a successful demonstration of Swann’s psychokinesis, while other scientists have suggested it was a relatively common frequency variation for which Swann merely took credit, or that the machine had malfunctioned coincidentally and remained out of order afterward. One thing is certain, though; they never repeated the experiment, which any scientist worth his salt would have done before thinking to tout it as evidence of anything. During his time at SRI, Swann adapted his travelling clairvoyance routine and renamed the feat “remote viewing,” a name that Hal Puthoff and another physicist at SRI, Russel Targ, preferred because it sounded far more scientific. At first, their remote viewing experiments involved an individual going somewhere and concentrating on what they saw while Swann sat in a Faraday cage and tried to sketch what he thought the individual was looking at. However, since they were working for the CIA and clearly developing techniques for espionage, even if they weren’t openly acknowledging it, it became apparent that, even if this process produced results, it was pretty pointless, since if they were sending an operative into the field to infiltrate some site, they wouldn’t need the remote viewer at all. Rather, to be useful, Swann discerned that a psychic would need to be able to remote view any location, without a person present at the site sending back willful thoughts about the place. He came up with the idea that they would use coordinates. Kit Green asked an acquaintance for a set of coordinates, not knowing what was at the location, and Swann sketched the place. The results were rather vague, and at first didn’t seem to match the location Green’s acquaintance had provided: a family cabin. However, when another individual volunteered his remote viewing services, the details were far more precise, and it appeared the remote viewers were focused not on the cabin but rather on a top secret military facility called Sugar Grove just nearby the cabin.

Uri Geller, celebrity psychic, displaying a spoon he claims to have bent with his mind. Notice the film does not show the spoon bending. Gif uploaded by MindBob on Tenor.

This other, more accurate remote viewer was a Scientologist named Pat Price, and he presented himself to the researchers at SRI in a very strange way. He just approached them while they were out buying a Christmas tree for their lab and said he could help. Later, when Ingo Swann was in the process of attempting to remote view the coordinates provided by Kit Green, Price just called up Puthoff and offered his services. Curious, Puthoff gave him the coordinates, and a couple days later, Price called him back with an astonishingly detailed account. When it was discovered that the two men, Swann and Price, seemed to be viewing the Sugar Grove facility, Price’s reading raised alarms. Apparently, it was so precise that it described the color of filing cabinets and the names that appeared on the files therein. Even the rather credulous Hal Puthoff could hardly believe it and came to suspect Price was a CIA plant, ordered to approach them and test whether they could detect a fake who might have been feeding them sensitive intelligence as if it were psychic impressions. After all, Geller was still suspected of being Mossad, so the CIA had reason to fear they might be fooled. Very quickly, though, the interest of the agency shifted from Ingo Swann to Pat Price. Swann left SRI, perhaps a little resentful, and Price left to work directly for the CIA. This can’t necessarily be taken as evidence that he wasn’t working for them all along, however, as it’s quite possible that because of Price’s performance, the CIA decided the program at SRI was a liability, and Price left just to come back into the fold, his operation concluded. Certainly the CIA got out of the psychic research business after that, but not until after a very mysterious event. Pat Price was on a visit to Las Vegas in 1975 and met up with Kit Green and Hal Puthoff for dinner and reminiscence. At dinner, he left early, not feeling well. Afterward, he died of a heart attack in his room. An unidentified man arrived later with Price’s medical records and waived an autopsy. The researchers at SRI suspected murder, but who to suspect? The CIA themselves, or perhaps the KGB? Apparently, the Church of Scientology even came under suspicion. In the end, though, we don’t know what Price did for the CIA, or why he might have been killed, or whether he even was killed, for after all, he might have simply succumbed at 57 years old to a cardiac event.

After the CIA discontinued their funding of the psychic research at SRI, Uri Geller continued in his quasi-mystical, illusionist-esque career, fading slowly into relative obscurity and becoming something of a joke. Most recently, he threatened to telepathically prevent Brexit, and obviously failed to do so. While the CIA may have given up on remote viewing, though, the U.S. government in its entirety did not, and afterward, the Defense Intelligence Agency revived the endeavor under the codename Stargate Project. With a manual for training soldiers to remote view written by Hal Puthoff and Ingo Swann, they kept psychics on the payroll, loaning them out to whatever agency or branch of the armed forces wanted to use them, until the project was declassified in 1995. At that point, as the DIA sought to transfer the project back to the CIA, two academics, statistician Jessica Utts and psychologist Ray Hyman, one a believer and one a skeptic, were engaged to evaluate the 20-year project. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they came to opposite conclusions, but Hyman’s reservations, published in Skeptical Inquirer, show that, even 20 years later, much of the same fundamental problems with psychic research remained. The problem of inadequate laboratory controls has always been an objection of skeptics. For example, the original remote viewing activities of Ingo Swann and Pat Price, in which they described the Sugar Grove facility, were completed at home, with no supervision.  They could have researched the coordinates or received outside information. Additionally, the problem of the bias of the researchers who undertake these studies, like Puharich and Puthoff, who were always entirely convinced of their subjects’ abilities, was always an issue. Just the same, in the 90’s, Hyman’s central objection was that all the remote viewing studies, which involved the evaluation of sketches to determine likenesses to the target supposedly being viewed, relied on a single judge, the person conducting the experiment, who was invariably a believer. He pointed out that even statistically significant results, which seemed to indicate something more than chance, were suspect until independent judges could reproduce the same results. And the repeatability and reproducibility of supposedly successful results in psychic research has also always been problematic, with researchers routinely claiming that results cannot be reproduced if observed by non-believers, a difficulty that should not be and is not an issue in science generally. In the years since its declassification, remote viewing became the stuff of satire, like the book and movie The Men Who Stare at Goats, and today these experiments are something of a laughing stock to many, despite the former participants in the program and practitioners publishing numerous books and speaking regularly on the paranormal circuit. But even as far-fetched as their claims are, they still pale in comparison to the final and perhaps biggest inspiration of the series Stranger Things, which was an outright hoax.

The Stanford Research Institute group, from left to right: Hal Puthoff, Russell Targ, Kit Green, and the mysterious Pat Price. Via Vice.

Until next time, remember, in science, experiments must devise positive tests to discern whether a phenomenon is present or absent, but no such tests have ever been devised for psychic powers, which are defined negatively: when normal explanations are eliminated, researchers claim that is evidence that psychic phenomena exist. But that’s not how science works. You can’t point to any fluctuation in the data of your study and claim it proves your pet paranormal phenomenon is real. 

Further Reading

Hyman, Ray. “Evaluation of the Military’s Twenty-Year Program on Psychic Spying.” Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 20, no. 2, March/April 1996, pp. 21-23. Center for Inquiry,  cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1996/03/22165045/p21.pdf.

Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations Into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Little Brown, 2017.